Steampunk?


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Liberty's Edge

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I'll just leave this here for the Goblin Apparatchik.

Sadly I can't find an acoustic version for people to use as a period piece.


Well, one thing we can agree on is that this Steampunk stuff is super trendy these days


Thank you, Citizen K(e)rensky. It reminds me that I should dust off my story of when Comrade Bragg told me to "shut up" as part of my running series "Celebrity Leftists Who Have Told Comrade Anklebiter to 'Shut Up'." Maybe after work.

Liberty's Edge

But what did Kipling's ghost tell you to do?


Look for the bare necessities?

Last Kipling I read was Captains Courageous when I was wee, but last time we spoke of ol' Ruddy I think I mentioned this comic to you.

Pertinent bit:

Spoiler:
The scope of this issue is bigger than simply Kipling as Carey provides numerous hints about the larger world of “The Unwritten” and the group that is seemingly moving against Tom Taylor. A young Kipling is approached by a man named Locke while in India with the promise that he could be made a well known, successful writer with Locke’s group’s help. They admire Kipling’s belief in the British Empire and wish for him to champion the Empire in his writing. While reluctant, Kipling doesn’t exactly turn Locke away and, quickly, he is the voice of British imperialism -— soon, detractors like Oscar Wilde are disgraced and Kipling sees the sort of men he’s been dealing with. The plot unfolds in starts and stops, skipping years to focus on moments, an effective way to tell this story since its focus isn’t so much Kipling’s life but how his life fits into “The Unwritten.” The culminating scene between Kipling and Locke is powerful, full of harsh truths, and is almost uncomfortable to read.

If you thought “The Unwritten” was an English lit major’s dream comic before, this focus on Rudyard Kipling -- partly a celebration of his writing, partly a damning critique -- solidifies that sentiment. Thankfully, this comic is so much more than just an illustrated essay or biography, it’s a story first and foremost. And it’s a very good one at that.


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havoc xiii wrote:
I love literature I hate literature school people.

This is pretty much my take in a nutshell as well, and not just on literature and art. When people start to hyper-analyze anything, I tend to zone out or get irked, depending on my mood.


Ah old thread how I miss ye


But, sort of, if we didn't have literature school people, all we'd have are, um, stories.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

Aubrey the Malformed wrote:

But the thing is, we all play a game which is set in a predominately medieval world. Do we have to endure lectures about how terrible it was in the feudal period - arbitrary justice, constant wars, disease, childhood mortality, suppression of women, unaccountable rulers, serfdom, relgious perscution, brutal punishments - every time someone wants to talk about that? Every time someone wants to talk about the Wild West, does that mean I'm honour-bound to start going on about the treatment of native peoples - reservations, massacres and military actions, deliberate infection with smallpox, and so on? Or do I just want to get a life and enjoy some escapist fun? History is full of people being sh1tty to one another - people need to get over it without trying to score points. Every period is full of this - we have ISIS, child abuse scandals, and much more in the modern day. If I'm going to play some sort of modern day thing, do I need to go on about that too?

You don't have to do any of that.

You think the premise of The Matrix is stupid because of the inefficiency of human-powered batteries.

I think that a steampunk setting that ignores the effects of colonization and imperialism isn't as worth constructing as one that includes those things. I think that a Wild West setting that ignores the effects of "Manifest Destiny" on Native American tribes isn't as worth constructing as one that includes those things.

I mean, it's cool if you want your speculative fiction and games to be escapist fun. But if that escapism means erasing or ignoring the parts of history where white imperialism destroyed, exploited, and stole from other people around the world, then that's not something that I'm interested in.


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I think the premise of the Matrix is stupid because you can't seem to find a way to make all the electricity you need so you tap into human bodies, however, you seem to have a few thousand gravity defying super strong robots, any one of which lashed to a treadmill would replace your entire human battery population, so wha...?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Orthos wrote:

I think the funniest revelation in this entire conversation is that, at least according to Elter and Aubrey's definitions, I'm apparently not a sci-fi fan at all, or at least a very minimal one. Everything I enjoy about sci-fi apparently falls better under sci-fantasy or futuristic fantasy genres. I guess that means I learned something today?

Granted, that still doesn't stop most bookstores and libraries from stocking those books in a sci-fi section.

What you're finding out is that the term science fiction is becoming more meaningless by the decade.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Orthos wrote:
thejeff wrote:
I just don't think "serious science" is a hard requirement for science fiction.
Seconded.

Then the real question is how much can an author blatantly ignore, contradict, or otherwise abuse science before you no longer consider the story on a science-fiction basis? Admittedly as I've stated before, the lines between Fantasy and Science Fiction have become all but erased in modern usage.


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I click on a thread with a title about something I like
I read the thread
I regret it


mechaPoet wrote:
I mean, it's cool if you want your speculative fiction and games to be escapist fun. But if that escapism means erasing or ignoring the parts of history where white imperialism destroyed, exploited, and stole from other people around the world, then that's not something that I'm interested in.

Well pardon us for wanting our fictional worlds to be less s%!*ty than reality.

You just can't win in this regard. If you create a world where none of this stuff happened and those civilizations thrive and flourish, people get pissed because you whitewashed history. If you create a world where it did happen, people get pissed that you didn't take the opportunity to make a setting that isn't yet another "white man takes over the world".


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LazarX wrote:
Orthos wrote:
thejeff wrote:
I just don't think "serious science" is a hard requirement for science fiction.
Seconded.
Then the real question is how much can an author blatantly ignore, contradict, or otherwise abuse science before you no longer consider the story on a science-fiction basis? Admittedly as I've stated before, the lines between Fantasy and Science Fiction have become all but erased in modern usage.

And yet 90% of the reading population seems to have no problem with this or with assigning the vast majority of books to one or the other (along with a few explicitly cross genre books).

You, on the other hand, want to cram the vast majority of science fiction into fantasy.


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mechaPoet wrote:


I mean, it's cool if you want your speculative fiction and games to be escapist fun. But if that escapism means erasing or ignoring the parts of history where white imperialism destroyed, exploited, and stole from other people around the world, then that's not something that I'm interested in.

Yes, I did so enjoy the section of Lord of the Rings where Frodo dies of dysentery, or where the cut on Sam's head from the orc fight gets infected. And that bit in The Once and Future King where Lancelot falls of his horse in the middle of a river and drowns,.... truly epic.


Orthos wrote:
mechaPoet wrote:
I mean, it's cool if you want your speculative fiction and games to be escapist fun. But if that escapism means erasing or ignoring the parts of history where white imperialism destroyed, exploited, and stole from other people around the world, then that's not something that I'm interested in.
Well pardon us for wanting our fantasy worlds to be less s*#!ty than reality.

It's actually possible to do both: Alternate settings in which colonialism failed due to the natives having stronger magic to hold off the more technological Europeans, for example.

Doesn't ignore the problems, but also can make for a nicer world.

I don't really see a way to have a classic mythologized Wild West setting without having the Native Americans present and treated badly though. They're too integral a part of the setting and yet they have to be displaced to let all the cowboys in.


This is the main reason I tend to stay away from alternate-history type games and just go with completely made-up worlds. There's just too many ways to get something wrong, and you're bound to trip over at least one of them no matter what you do.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
thejeff wrote:
LazarX wrote:
Orthos wrote:
thejeff wrote:
I just don't think "serious science" is a hard requirement for science fiction.
Seconded.
Then the real question is how much can an author blatantly ignore, contradict, or otherwise abuse science before you no longer consider the story on a science-fiction basis? Admittedly as I've stated before, the lines between Fantasy and Science Fiction have become all but erased in modern usage.

And yet 90% of the reading population seems to have no problem with this or with assigning the vast majority of books to one or the other (along with a few explicitly cross genre books).

You, on the other hand, want to cram the vast majority of science fiction into fantasy.

I don't have to. It long ago marched there on it's own. I'm simply saying that science fiction has become so diluted a concept, that it has lost any real distinction from fantasy fiction save in the wrappings.

Liberty's Edge

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mechaPoet wrote:

I think that a steampunk setting that ignores the effects of colonization and imperialism isn't as worth constructing as one that includes those things. I think that a Wild West setting that ignores the effects of "Manifest Destiny" on Native American tribes isn't as worth constructing as one that includes those things.

I mean, it's cool if you want your speculative fiction and games to be escapist fun. But if that escapism means erasing or ignoring the parts of history where white imperialism destroyed, exploited, and stole from other people around the world, then that's not something that I'm interested in.

Because it's soooo much more fun and useful to beat ourselves up with the myth that every single problem in human history has been caused by straight white men, regardless of what history actually shows.


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great session tonight everyone, I hope you had fun removing smallpox from all those blankets


mechaPoet wrote:


I think that a steampunk setting that ignores the effects of colonization and imperialism isn't as worth constructing as one that includes those things.

Except "the effects of colonialism and imperialism" aren't actually relevant to a large fraction, perhaps even the majority, of steampunk settings, because colonialism and imperialism are largely affecting The Other.

As a non-steampunk example, colonialism and imperialism were really only relevant to one Sherlock Holmes story (albeit an important one, The Sign of Four). Given that all the rest of Doyle's stories were set in England and mostly in London itself, the actual conditions in the Indian colonies were no more relevant than the rainfall levels in Argentina. All that was necessary or appropriate was to acknowledge that, yes Colonel Moran had been in India, because that was what army officers did. Captain Croker (Abbey Grange) is a merchant seaman working the Australian route, but he could as easily have been working been doing the New York to Liverpool route.

Similarly, most of Dickens is set in London and the only effect of colonialism is to threaten The Artful Dodger with transportation.

This corresponds more or less exactly to the steampunk world of K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices; it's largely a steampunk mystery set in the immediate London environs, and, if I remember correctly, doesn't even involve characters of the class that would have spent time in India. No Colonels or Captains there.


Lamontius wrote:

great session tonight everyone, I hope you had fun removing smallpox from all those blankets

Well, I would have, except I had to treat Gandalf's lung cancer.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
mechaPoet wrote:


I mean, it's cool if you want your speculative fiction and games to be escapist fun. But if that escapism means erasing or ignoring the parts of history where white imperialism destroyed, exploited, and stole from other people around the world, then that's not something that I'm interested in.
Yes, I did so enjoy the section of Lord of the Rings where Frodo dies of dysentery, or where the cut on Sam's head from the orc fight gets infected.

Well, they did mostly skip the disease, but there was a section in the Appendices talking about the Numenoreans returning to Middle-Earth and setting themselves up as kings over the men living there.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

Pot: stirred. I didn't expect it to boil over so quickly--silly me.

All I'm saying is that it would be cool to see what effects the steampunk setting would have on, for instance, Indian resistance to the British East India Company. It doesn't all have to be in a whitewashed London.


it isn't

Liberty's Edge

mechaPoet wrote:

Pot: stirred. I didn't expect it to boil over so quickly--silly me.

All I'm saying is that it would be cool to see what effects the steampunk setting would have on, for instance, Indian resistance to the British East India Company. It doesn't all have to be in a whitewashed London.

* Hands you a copy of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Sterling's The Peshawar Lancers.


thejeff wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
mechaPoet wrote:


I mean, it's cool if you want your speculative fiction and games to be escapist fun. But if that escapism means erasing or ignoring the parts of history where white imperialism destroyed, exploited, and stole from other people around the world, then that's not something that I'm interested in.
Yes, I did so enjoy the section of Lord of the Rings where Frodo dies of dysentery, or where the cut on Sam's head from the orc fight gets infected.
Well, they did mostly skip the disease, but there was a section in the Appendices talking about the Numenoreans returning to Middle-Earth and setting themselves up as kings over the men living there.

not to mentioned that both Numenorean kingdoms collapsed mainly due to disease...

Plagues and diseases occupy an important part of Middle Earth's history and one of the "dear" themes of Tolkien, from the meant-to-be-funny "thag you berry much" cold-afflicted Bilbo to Frodo's departure to the West due to his sickness.

But I feel we digress here...


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mechaPoet wrote:
I mean, it's cool if you want your speculative fiction and games to be escapist fun. But if that escapism means erasing or ignoring the parts of history where white imperialism destroyed, exploited, and stole from other people around the world, then that's not something that I'm interested in.

*shrug* Everyone's entitled to their preferences.

I certainly don't share yours.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
mechaPoet wrote:


I think that a steampunk setting that ignores the effects of colonization and imperialism isn't as worth constructing as one that includes those things.

Except "the effects of colonialism and imperialism" aren't actually relevant to a large fraction, perhaps even the majority, of steampunk settings, because colonialism and imperialism are largely affecting The Other.

As a non-steampunk example, colonialism and imperialism were really only relevant to one Sherlock Holmes story (albeit an important one, The Sign of Four).

Of course, almost every other story also mentions Watson's wound from serving in Afghanistan...


Krensky wrote:
mechaPoet wrote:

Pot: stirred. I didn't expect it to boil over so quickly--silly me.

All I'm saying is that it would be cool to see what effects the steampunk setting would have on, for instance, Indian resistance to the British East India Company. It doesn't all have to be in a whitewashed London.

* Hands you a copy of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Sterling's The Peshawar Lancers.

I loved how that one started with the hero banging his Indian mistress, who, conveniently enough, is offed somewhere in the beginning so he can settle down with his white girlfriend.

And, IIRC, you have to read The Mysterious Island, or, at least, LXG, to find out that Nemo is Indian.


Terquem wrote:
I think the premise of the Matrix is stupid because you can't seem to find a way to make all the electricity you need so you tap into human bodies, however, you seem to have a few thousand gravity defying super strong robots, any one of which lashed to a treadmill would replace your entire human battery population, so wha...?

"Whether you suffer from glacoma or have just rented The Matrix, everyone needs medical marijuana."

--Homer Simpson (I think; also a paraphrase)


My favorite setting with steampunk ideas involved is probably Deadlands: The Weird West. Yes it's super lethal, no steampunk is not the only thing cool about the setting, but dang is it cool.


reading this really long thread in bits and pieces, but I'll leave this here. Feel it must be said.

All good writing, or fiction in general, needs to follow it's own internal logic. Anything that doesn't is bad writing, regardless of setting.


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ElterAgo wrote:
Also most of the people that I know that are really into steam punk all insists that it does follow real world rules.

Honestly - herein, I think, lies perhaps one of the issues... Are the

people you refer to engineers like yourself - or just 'fans' of the genre?
If the first - then perhaps you may need to check their credentials...
If the second - honestly, really? They don't know what they're talking
about...and you're right to be concerned.

Something that was mentioned higher up the thread, but wasn't really
focused upon, is something that may (or it may not) help you.
Steampunk is thematically based upon a Victorian level of scientific
understanding. This is not to say this stuff works, but at the time
that scientists were postulating that these things 'must' be how 'xyz'
worked. A good example would be the aether. Some really believed in it
back then, but quite obviously it has long since been disproved.

Steampunk of today takes those beliefs of a bygone era, & expands upon
them in a 'what if' fashion. What if those things actually did work.
(Yes, we know they don't Mr Engineer...but what if?) :)

I think for you to understand this, all that is required is a suspension
of disbelief. (Isn't it always!)
NO!!! Not disbelief of the science involved, but disbelief of who &
where you are sir!! (my assumption, but fit's thematically with a rant
from a Steampunk era!)
To appreciate Steampunk - you need to think like someone from those
times...and you seem to be failing in that respect.

In closing, I honestly don't see any difference between that or fantasy.
If playing/reading/watching fantasy & loving it, you need to be able
to place yourself in that realm. e.g. one in a place far, far away...
Oh - sorry, slipped between my fantasies for a moment... ;-p


Philip Knowsley wrote:
ElterAgo wrote:
Also most of the people that I know that are really into steam punk all insists that it does follow real world rules.

Honestly - herein, I think, lies perhaps one of the issues... Are the

people you refer to engineers like yourself - or just 'fans' of the genre?
If the first - then perhaps you may need to check their credentials...
If the second - honestly, really? They don't know what they're talking
about...and you're right to be concerned.

Something that was mentioned higher up the thread, but wasn't really
focused upon, is something that may (or it may not) help you.
Steampunk is thematically based upon a Victorian level of scientific
understanding. This is not to say this stuff works, but at the time
that scientists were postulating that these things 'must' be how 'xyz'
worked. A good example would be the aether. Some really believed in it
back then, but quite obviously it has long since been disproved.

Steampunk of today takes those beliefs of a bygone era, & expands upon
them in a 'what if' fashion. What if those things actually did work.
(Yes, we know they don't Mr Engineer...but what if?) :)

I think for you to understand this, all that is required is a suspension
of disbelief. (Isn't it always!)
NO!!! Not disbelief of the science involved, but disbelief of who &
where you are sir!! (my assumption, but fit's thematically with a rant
from a Steampunk era!)
To appreciate Steampunk - you need to think like someone from those
times...and you seem to be failing in that respect.

In closing, I honestly don't see any difference between that or fantasy.
If playing/reading/watching fantasy & loving it, you need to be able
to place yourself in that realm. e.g. one in a place far, far away...
Oh - sorry, slipped between my fantasies for a moment... ;-p

Well said, and much more eloquently put than my attempt at getting that general message across. +1 to you, good sir.


Philip nails it on the nose.

Take Scott Westerfield's Leviathan series for example. It's set in the World War I era, relatively shortly after Charles Darwin's time - his granddaughter is a major character, as is Nikola Tesla. At this time, we in the real world were just barely starting to understand biology, DNA had only recently been discovered, and we didn't have a great deal of understanding about how it worked.

We know NOW that you can't just mix-and-match DNA pieces from one species to another, that they're mostly incompatible with one another outside a very limited scope, and most of the outer regions of that scope result in infertile hybrids like mules or degenerative species like ligers. But in the immediate-post-Darwin age, they didn't know that.

Leviathan takes that mistaken impression, assumes it's actually true, and runs with it. The "Darwinist" faction of the world, led by the British, specializes in crafting and creating hybrid creatures as living engines, ships, and weapons by stringing DNA together between multiple different kinds of creatures to synthesize the species they want, then growing them in eggs and vats.

It would never work in the real world, but it's treated with the legitimacy and respect of a true science in the world of Leviathan.

Now the author goes out of his way to point out "It doesn't actually work like that" in the afterword, but I'm fairly certain most of us didn't need him to do that.


Artemis & Orthos - thanks to you both for your kind words...
I must say that if this is the result of writing when I'm really, really tired -
Perhaps I ought to do it again... ;-p

I only hope that it helps the OP.

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