Entry posted by Ethan
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I !@#$@#$ hate steampunk. Alright, maybe that's inaccurate and hurtful. I don't dislike it as a fashion statement or as an aesthetic, but I'm miffed that this is the thing that's replaced cyberpunk as something the cool kids talk about now a days. It's not entirely steampunk's fault, though.
Cyberpunk based itself on inventions and trends--the internet, wireless connections, globalism--which are now mundane to us. The attitude, as well, is now not only mundane but alien to us (I'll address this in a later essay). Because much of the more shallow parts of cyberpunk--the amazingness of the internet, trenchcoats and sunglasses, black clothing, are not only mundane but boring, those who were attracted to the aesthetic of cyberpunk have now moved on to steampunk.
On a pedantic level steampunk and cyberpunk are similar. Both have prosthetics as a major 'look', and thematically both take their inspiration from similar sources--steampunk from the Gilded Age of the 1880's, with its caste like class system, and cyberpunk from the 1980's, with its nascent international corporations. The trope of rapid technological advancement is present in both. However this is true of all science fiction, so besides the aesthetic of COGS and gears and goggles, and the trope of scientific advancement, what is there in common with steampunk stories?
In fact, !@#$, are there any steampunk stories at all? There's the difference engine, a couple of Sterling books which take place in the Renaissance, there's Fullmetal Alchemist, and there's GirlGenius. But the problem is that the only examples I can think of as a huge nerd of steampunk stories have little to nothing to do with each other, thematically. The Difference Engine was basically a cyberpunk novel that took place in Victorian times. Girl Genius is partially about generational shifts, but admittedly as a long running serial webcomic I could put nearly any trope or theme I wanted into it. Fullmetal Alchemist is a story about magic and religion, with steampunk parts being a part of the magic.
I feel that Fullmetal's treatment of steampunk--as magic--is most telling. The writer of Girl Genius himself said that it was in fact fantasy. This, however, clashes with the more realistic depictions of steampunk which you see to some extent in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in some of the Studio Ghibli movies, and in Steamboy and the Difference Engine. But even amongst those examples, they have very little to do with each other, and in both Miyazaki and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the steampunk aspects are simply parts of the setting, the same with the Last Exile, which is more about the use of airplanes for warfare then the cogs those airplanes are about.
Now, here's the point I'm trying to make about Steampunk--it isn't actually a genre. It's a look, it's a feel, it's a collection of aesthetics and a setting, but it's not a genre, it has no backbone of ideology behind it. When you look at cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk stories, you see the same themes--the power of information alongside the attempt to market it, the strength of counterculture, and the anti-establishment forces (sometimes as a part of the counter culture) attempting to change the world for the better. In the amazing book Pattern Recognition, William Gibson writes a cyberpunk novel that takes a cyberpunk storyline and puts it in the modern day, and it has the same feel to it, the same themes. Could you have a steampunk story without the steam? I highly doubt it. Now there is nothing wrong with something being an aesthetic. Nearly all cultures and subcultures have both and ideological and a fashion element. But I'm going to just throw out a quote here
"Avril Lavigne and her ilk proved that you can co-opt the imagery of punk and sell it. In fact, any image-conscious movement can now be defused, suborned and marketed. There are rebels and counter-cultures around, but they are, perhaps by definition, uncool. The cool ones get sold. The Establishment didn't win, or rather it continues to be in charge (it's the Establishment, dummy!) Now, marketing departments? They won."
In co opting the movement of cyberpunk, steampunk replaced a philosophy with a fashion. And in creating a genre and subculture based mostly around buying stuff, you have destroyed what cyberpunk actually means.
However, steampunk only co opted the fashion side of cyberpunk, the ideas of it were taken by a totally different genre...
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