The Crossroads of the Aether
NPR article cites a blog post that looks down its nose at steampunk...
Article here which in turn links to a blog post here both deriding steampunk as a genre. I don't think the comment threads there will foster much worthy discourse, but I'd love to find out what everyone's reactions here are to this (especially the latter, as the NPR article is pretty much just a shoutout to it)
I think, largely, that these come from a place of Critical Research Failure and just Not Getting It.
To quote:
"We know about the real world of the era steampunk is riffing off. And the picture is not good. If the past is another country, you really wouldn't want to emigrate there. Life was mostly unpleasant, brutish, and short; the legal status of women in the UK or US was lower than it is in Iran today: politics was by any modern standard horribly corrupt and dominated by authoritarian psychopaths and inbred hereditary aristocrats: it was a priest-ridden era that had barely climbed out of the age of witch-burning, and bigotry and discrimination were ever popular sports: for most of the population starvation was an ever-present threat...It was a vile, oppressive, poverty-stricken and debased world and we should shed no tears for its passing..."
"Viewed as a fashion trend for corsets and top hats, steampunk is no more harmful than a fad for Che Guevara tee shirts, or burkas, or swastikas; just another fashion trend riffing thoughtlessly off stuff that went away for a reason (at least in the developed world)"
"Forget wealthy aristocrats sipping tea in sophisticated London parlours; forget airship smugglers in the weird wild west. A revisionist mundane SF steampunk epic — mundane SF is the socialist realist movement within our tired post-revolutionary genre — would reflect the travails of the colonial peasants forced to labour under the guns of the white Europeans' Zeppelins, in a tropical paradise where severed human hands are currency and even suicide doesn't bring release from bondage. (Hey, this is steampunk — it needs zombies and zeppelins, right?"
To which say "Uh.....huh."
because this smacks of someone who has not bothered to look at the steampunk community - because ARE actively having these discussions all over the internet ; or at the greater body of literature - which DOES contain a lot of stories that address the uglier parts of the Victorian era ; or at the entire concept of alternate history, which explores not what actually was but what might have been and how it might have come to be that way. To me, this article just seems woefully uninformed and in fact quite offensive - ESPECIALLY as pertains to the middle of the three above quotes, which manages to pack all sorts of hateful racism and xenophobia into about three lines.
What does everyone else think?
I think, largely, that these come from a place of Critical Research Failure and just Not Getting It.
To quote:
"We know about the real world of the era steampunk is riffing off. And the picture is not good. If the past is another country, you really wouldn't want to emigrate there. Life was mostly unpleasant, brutish, and short; the legal status of women in the UK or US was lower than it is in Iran today: politics was by any modern standard horribly corrupt and dominated by authoritarian psychopaths and inbred hereditary aristocrats: it was a priest-ridden era that had barely climbed out of the age of witch-burning, and bigotry and discrimination were ever popular sports: for most of the population starvation was an ever-present threat...It was a vile, oppressive, poverty-stricken and debased world and we should shed no tears for its passing..."
"Viewed as a fashion trend for corsets and top hats, steampunk is no more harmful than a fad for Che Guevara tee shirts, or burkas, or swastikas; just another fashion trend riffing thoughtlessly off stuff that went away for a reason (at least in the developed world)"
"Forget wealthy aristocrats sipping tea in sophisticated London parlours; forget airship smugglers in the weird wild west. A revisionist mundane SF steampunk epic — mundane SF is the socialist realist movement within our tired post-revolutionary genre — would reflect the travails of the colonial peasants forced to labour under the guns of the white Europeans' Zeppelins, in a tropical paradise where severed human hands are currency and even suicide doesn't bring release from bondage. (Hey, this is steampunk — it needs zombies and zeppelins, right?"
To which say "Uh.....huh."
because this smacks of someone who has not bothered to look at the steampunk community - because ARE actively having these discussions all over the internet ; or at the greater body of literature - which DOES contain a lot of stories that address the uglier parts of the Victorian era ; or at the entire concept of alternate history, which explores not what actually was but what might have been and how it might have come to be that way. To me, this article just seems woefully uninformed and in fact quite offensive - ESPECIALLY as pertains to the middle of the three above quotes, which manages to pack all sorts of hateful racism and xenophobia into about three lines.
What does everyone else think?
Tags: Blogosphere, Criticism, NPR
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Professor G. L. MacGregor on -
What part of FANTASY does this person not understand?
I find the same spoilsports occasionally when I go to Renaissance festivals. They're the ones who smugly point out how this or that is not historically accurate. Yes, there was poor sanitation and disease back then. Yes, the Scottish and the English would not have been cordially drinking ale together at a pub. Yes, there should be more peasants and fewer royals. That's not the point.
The point is that this is not some sort of perfectly accurate living history display. It's about having fun! The Rennies and the Steampunkers already know this.
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Permalink Reply by Joie-Elise Prideux on -
Simply put, the writer has managed to utterly miss the point. He seems unable to wrap his brain around the fact that the genre is intended to be as scientifically and historically inaccurate as possible. The author of the original blog post writes hard sci-fi, so I suspect he's simply not capable of thinking outside his paradigm. He's too bogged down in the details to get any pleasure out of the genre, and his own failure to do so frustrates him.
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Fidelius on
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No, we recognize that the era we are playing with was pretty ugly (according to our current social views) but they recognized their issues, and we are where we are today because of reforms they inititated. No society is perfect, no society was perfect, no society ever will be perfect.
That being said, we are not trying to mimic our forebears, we are trying to be better.
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Permalink Reply by Connie Frumious Bandersnatch on -
"Steampunk" and its community is a such an umbrella term for a whole bunch of people who are interested in a lot of different things that vaguely centre around the 1800s, which is why I think there's always so much debate about what it is. On a superficial examination of the genre I can definitely see where he would get the impression steampunk is when goths discover brown since the media portrayals I've seen have all been somewhat watered down, and perhaps much more focused on the fashion than anything else.
But if he's talking about the literary output - well yeah, SO MUCH of the literature does tackle the historical settings of steampunk and the parallels with the problems we face in society today. I will also go with "woefully uninformed" with a large dash of WTF for the line about burkas and swastikas. O.o
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Permalink Reply by Cordelia Igor (aka Leska Noir) on -
"The romanticization of totalitarianism" That is, I think, my new favorite term. What's so wrong about romanticism? I mean really? The rose colored glasses are pretty and they keep the sun out of my eyes. To me, this person seems, not only woefully misinformed, but incredibly close minded. He reminds me of all those people who refused to read Harry Potter only because it was popular.
"~ Only none of this stuff is fun, exactly, so I suppose it has to go on the list of "Novels I will not write" ... filed under "too angry".~"
There's a list? How long?
It's really sad to think that there are people out there who have had their souls burned out of them. Their inner child must be nothing more than a shriveled husk that wallows in acute agony for all their ruthless attempts to squash it's presence. I pity this person. Truly and sincerely. They can't even accept that there are people out there that may want to still have fun and for them, the world must be a very dark place indeed.
Ignorance is not bliss in this case... it's a slow acting poison that leads to intolerance and hatred. So you can go sit on your science fiction pedestal, and claim you're better than all of us. We'll be out at the party drinking and comparing war stories from the Third Rebellion on the Queensland Front.
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Permalink Reply by Zebulon Vitruvius Pike on -
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science FICTION and ALTERNATE history. Did I say that loudly enough? FICTION! As a Hugo award winning author, Charlie Stross should already know this, even as a writer of "hard" science fiction. And for a guy who started out writing D&D articles and modules, he should understand that the medieval fantasy world bares little resemblance to the real middle ages, even discounting the orcs and elves. I seriously doubt that oppressive feudal monarchies and the Black Plague were integral, defining parts of the modules he wrote.
Secondly, not even all fiction written during the time of Dickens was Dickensian.
He just don't get it, either steampunk or even the broad nature of science fiction.
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Permalink Reply by C.D. Fleur on -
Perhaps he has never heard of Sturgeon's Law? "Ninety percent of Science Fiction is crud."
It is a big surprise that SF publishers rush to jump on an emerging bandwagon, with less-than-stellar offerings, hastily selected? And from what alternative universe does the author hail? One in which this is a new trend?
to quote:
I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud.
Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms.
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Permalink Reply by Connie Frumious Bandersnatch on
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Well said.
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Permalink Reply by Bill Harrison on -
What part of Alternate History does this person not understand.
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Permalink Reply by Bill Harrison on
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Funny, actually I posted my previous message without reading the rest of the posts, Imagine my joy at seeing that most of us said the same thing..
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Permalink Reply by Duke of Argylle on -
Having been a fan of Stross for some years now I can see where he's coming from.
Also, to an extent, he has a point. Your first quote and your last quote is Stross asking about if steampunk followed the "real world" a little more closely. Or that it was edgier. I think the comparison between living history and Renn fair might be apt. But then I cringe when I see medieval recreationists in golf buggies at Pennsic. Or wearing white sneakers with armour.
I think Mr. Power has summed it up best. What Stross is b******* about is the 90%. Possibly in an extra ranty way but then that's what I've come to expect from his blog. I think he gets steampunk and even likes some of it. But putting say, John Norman's Gor books in the same category as Lord of the Rings. Or even L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth books in the same category as Frank Herbert's Dune. Or better yet with Twihard books and anything to do with actual vampires. As Mr. Pike pointed out, Stross IS a hard SF writer and probably likes his steampunk a little less fluffy than a lot of the stuff that's around at the moment.
@ Mr. Harrison, obviously you're not familiar with Stross's 6 volume ALTERNATE HISTORY series. He understands the genre very well.
I don't think Stross has taken into account the steampunk community, any more than he would care about how SF fans dressed when it comes to appreciating SF novels. I'd say for him steampunk is a SF genre and the steampunk community is neither here nor there as to whether he thinks the novels themselves are crap. I know I'd b**** about Twilight quality steampunk.
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Permalink Reply by Tobias Killick, Esq. on -
It seems to me that the blogger, like most self-important types, has probably never had a moment of fun in the entire run of his/her life. I am happily a part of this marvelous community because it contains the most stimulatingly fun people (all of you, my friends!) I have ever known.
And, of course, we are all "in" on it...
Cheers! To the pub then, aye???
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