What Is Steampunk?

Steampunk is a culture dedicated to a revamp of the Victorian Age. This classical age is mixed up with fantasy, typically filled with massive steam-powered mechs, and extravagant dirigibles. Steampunk genre is depicted in various different forms, including clothing, music, art, and literature.

Steampunk has become a major hit in the fashion industry. Various designers are beginning to incorporate cogs, and gears, classic steampunk designs, into there clothing lines, and fashion shows. Typically, however, steampunk fashion can be seen as a growing trend within the cosplay scene. Groups of friends get together, wearing stylized, and often modified, Victorian style clothing, portraying themselves as pirates, explorers, adventurers, or even mild mannered socialites. Outfits include decorated coats, and top hats, goggles, and sometimes ray guns! This particular type of fashion caters greatly to the “Do-It-Yourself” community, where most the accessories carried by the cosplayers, are painted, and created entirely on there own. Ray guns are masterfully designed by mixing Nerf guns with standard household accessories. The bravest and the bold of this community actually fabricate these items themselves out of wood, and metal.

Steampunk elements within the music genre aren’t as popular as other styles; however it does encompasses all different styles of music, including rock, rap, . Steampunk rock has a particular sound to it, the beats are dark, and gritty, are mixed with a presence of folk, and can often have a shanty sound to them. Abney Park is an aptly named Steampunk band that is not only influenced by it in there music, but also in the instruments and personas they carry with them on stage Other, rap and hip-hop influenced music usually has a dark up-beat bass, with lyrics depicting a post-apocalyptic world, or even that of a mad scientists workshop. Dr. Steel is an example of this. His beats are catchy and heavy hitting, but his character resembles that of a mad scientist.

The Art culture has picked up on the Steampunk trend surprisingly fast. Paintings of vast desolate landscapes, with dirigibles and other flying machines soaring through the grey skies can be easily discovered not only online, but also in galleries. The art style is like any other, but the perspective and purpose of these paintings is unlike anything else. Dark and dreary, these portraits usually depict a deadened world, a violent sea, or even the inside to a dungeon like lab, with Frankenstein-esque instruments strewn about tables and the floor. Again, it is fairly easy to identify a Steampunk inspired painting nowadays, since it is such a unique style.

Literature has made breakthroughs with the Steampunk culture. The birth of this trend can actually be linked back to H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne. Without there knowledge, the inventions, and worlds that these two writers depicted became the base of what we see in today’s Steampunk community. The idea of a massive submarine, such as the one in “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, and a brass time machine in “The Time Machine” set up the idea of futuristic, yet what we would call retro nowadays, machines that seem so out of place in there given time periods. This idea was the very basis of Steampunk, and has been the driving force for many fanatics and hardcore fans.

Steampunk Book Reviews

• Soulless By Gail Carriger