Life by Chocolate


Friday, June 24, 2011


I am beginning to think people have the wrong idea about Steampunk. It's not a fashion movement nor is it putting together interesting and fun objects with brass fittings, though by all means, enjoy doing that and have fun. Rather, I look at Steampunk as imagining a world that starts in the mid 1850s to 1900s, with all the technology of that error and try to create today's society by branching that timeline and avoiding all the advances in physics and perhaps biology and chemistry that occurred in the twentieth century. Though the parameters have to be nailed down somewhat, this wouldn't include say, Steampunk lightsabers but rather, would include, say, a steam powdered analog computer, no solid state. Or perhaps an electro-mechanical computer, like the mark 5 that is steam powered, or a combination of electrical and steam power. Or it could be a completely mechanical computer, powered manually or physically. And by all means, don't spare the brass fittings.

The important thing is, where are you branching, before or after electricity? And what are you avoiding in this, our current, time line wrt ideas and technology? What would the political landscape look like? What would the dress code be? What would technology look like? Would it be more biologically based or more manually based?