Steampunk is one
of those words that seems to evoke a mixture of responses. If I had a nickel for every blog post I've
read entitled "What is Steampunk," I'd have at least five nickels. So I'm not going to try defining steampunk on
this blog. Instead, this blog is
entirely for fun, describing things I like in a wide-open genre that defies
definition and welcomes virtually any medium.
Anyone who chances across these pages is liable to find references, links and reviews to clockpunk, dieselpunk, Victorian Science Fiction, lacepunk, Baroque Science Fiction, gaslamp fantasy, and any other label you can apply to the general theme of taking historical periods and mixing in fantasy/sci fi/alternate events to taste. I will not apologize to the purists who insist that "in steampunk corsets are worn outside the clothes and in Victorian sci fi corsets are worn on the inside." I will not break my "-punk" into periods whereby dieselpunk is restricted to a vague notion of time between steampunk and atomicpunk. I enjoy it all, and since the premises and themes are similar if not identical, I find no value or enjoyment in breaking this entertaining genre into sub-categories.
That being said, I don't object to anyone else doing it. After all, it can be enjoyable to debate over details that might be meaningless to others. I certainly do that for some subjects, because it's fun and it can lead to insights about your chosen passion. But for steampunk and its related categories, I find that I like it all so much and it's all so closely intertwined that debating what belongs to which category detracts from my enjoyment of the genre and the ambience. Again, that's just for me. Everyone else can do what they like. Which is kind of the point, anyway.
So this entire blog is about nothing more than things I like in a variety of genres and sub-genres that are linked by certain themes and settings. Books, movies, video games, products, miniatures: I'll talk about them all! I'll talk about what I liked and what I didn't, post photos of things I make that seem steampunk to me, and post articles with information from science and history that may be of interest to retro-futurists. A lot of the posts will have a distinct military theme. I won't apologize for that either. We all like what we like, and life is far too short.
Anyone who chances across these pages is liable to find references, links and reviews to clockpunk, dieselpunk, Victorian Science Fiction, lacepunk, Baroque Science Fiction, gaslamp fantasy, and any other label you can apply to the general theme of taking historical periods and mixing in fantasy/sci fi/alternate events to taste. I will not apologize to the purists who insist that "in steampunk corsets are worn outside the clothes and in Victorian sci fi corsets are worn on the inside." I will not break my "-punk" into periods whereby dieselpunk is restricted to a vague notion of time between steampunk and atomicpunk. I enjoy it all, and since the premises and themes are similar if not identical, I find no value or enjoyment in breaking this entertaining genre into sub-categories.
That being said, I don't object to anyone else doing it. After all, it can be enjoyable to debate over details that might be meaningless to others. I certainly do that for some subjects, because it's fun and it can lead to insights about your chosen passion. But for steampunk and its related categories, I find that I like it all so much and it's all so closely intertwined that debating what belongs to which category detracts from my enjoyment of the genre and the ambience. Again, that's just for me. Everyone else can do what they like. Which is kind of the point, anyway.
So this entire blog is about nothing more than things I like in a variety of genres and sub-genres that are linked by certain themes and settings. Books, movies, video games, products, miniatures: I'll talk about them all! I'll talk about what I liked and what I didn't, post photos of things I make that seem steampunk to me, and post articles with information from science and history that may be of interest to retro-futurists. A lot of the posts will have a distinct military theme. I won't apologize for that either. We all like what we like, and life is far too short.
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