Steampunk
Imagine if the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were history, rather than fiction.
My description of steampunk
Steampunk is a relative of cyberpunk and is a similar contraction, combining Steam and Punk. Steam harkens back to the late 1800s and early 1900s – where Victorian ideals of dress, manners, propriety and style were combined with the Industrial Revolution’s explosion of devices of convenience powered by steam and clockwork. Dirigibles and massive mechanical thinking engines ala Charles Babbage feature heavily. Punk has the attitude of rejecting the status quo, the current ideals and replacing it with a solid dose of rebellious self reliance. Constructions made by the self or a group rather than mass produced commercialism is a key concept here.
Some unifying elements of steampunk are Do It Yourself (also helps when things inevitably break; if you know how it went together it’s easier to fix), Neo-Victorian/ Late-Victorian aesthetic (chances are most people have garments that could fit this aesthetic that need tweaking), Retro-futurism (jetpacks et al.), Romanticism (steamy!).
ROSEA, the Royal Omnitological Society for Electrodyne Adventurers, formalized around six core members and has expanded to include other talented individuals. Joined by the Brisbane steampunk group known as FAUST the two have a loose alliance termed STEAM and are happy to help any like-minded people with advice, camaraderie and a nice cup of tea when possible.
I have created two applications to help with the budding steampunk costumer – one for generating cogs of any size and another for generating gauges for embedding into artefacts. The gauge generator was used in the Thing-o-meter’s corset inspector attachment.
A previous version this page had a selection of links from my Delicious bookmarks that were tagged Steampunk. Instead, I’d like to direct you to my Tumblr feed where I’ve attached all the links that were in the below list in a much easier to interact with fashion.
A steampunk aficionado getting with the times, who knew?
