The Crossroads of the Aether
Vintage Tomorrows: A book review
A link on The Traveller’s Steampunk Blog announced the release of “Vintage Tomorrows” by James H. Carrott and Brian David Johnson from MAKE and O’Reilly Media and included an email address to request a review copy.
I’m a steampunk, I have made things and I can read so I could totally write a review, the typical price that needs to be paid to obtain a free review copy, so I sent my email and received my book.
I have, of course, read plenty of steampunk stories and novels beginning with “The Difference Engine” in 1991 when the paperback came out and, while I have some steampunk non-fiction on my shelf (I have far too many books in the “still to be read” category), this was surprisingly the first book that I had actually read about steampunk itself.
I think it was a good first choice.
It starts off with an interview with Timothy Leary. No, really. And it makes perfect sense. If you are going to investigate culture, subculture, counterculture and where steampunk fits into that spectrum, why not start with the most dangerous man in America? And, once you do start looking at how culture changed with the beatnicks of the 50s and the the hippies of the 60s, you begin to look at steampunk from a fresh perspective outside the gearbox. You separate yourself from why you got involved and start thinking about why we, as a collective, are involved.
The book actually focuses on two “whys;” Why steampunk and why now? And to do it, there are a lot of interviews. They start with Timothy Leary who has nothing to do with steampunk, he merely sets the stage, but they move on to Cory Doctorow, Cherie Priest (“Boneshaker”), Davin Maliki! (“Wondermark”), Mike Perschon (The Steampunk Scholar), Scott Westerfeld (“Leviathan”), China Miéville (“Perdido Street Station”), Jaymee Goh (Silver Goggles), Dexter Palmer (“The Dream of Perpetual Motion”), Mark Thompson (“Henry Hoke’s Guide to the Misguided”), Jake von Slatt (The Steampunk Workshop), William Gibson and an assotrment of others that I apologize for not mentioning. Additionally, there was a spectacular dinner conversation with Marshall Hunter, Claire Hummel, Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan (“Boilerplate”), Jordan Bodewell (SepiaChord), Thom Becker (Lastwear), Kevin Steil (The Airship Ambassador), Phil and Kaja Foglio (“Girl Genius”), Diana Vick and Martin Armstrong (Steamcon).
I am pleased to say that I know nearly all of those names, am familiar with works by most of them, have met few and have actually had some conversations with a couple.
If I can offer up one criticism about the interview “narrative” and a drawback of having so many people interviewed it is that midway through the book, the thesis was pretty much supported and the why questions had been answered. Towards the end the chapters and the interviews got shorter and tended towards the “Yes, you are absolutely right” answer. I think this weakened the conclusion chapters.
Not too long before reading “Vintage Tomorrows”, I had read “Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature” by Emelyne Godfrey. At $80 list price for only 200 pages, it was clearly an academic book with a pricing range that reminded me of buying college textbooks. It had a similarly weak ending in that I turned the page thinking I was going to get a concluding chapter and found myself in the appendices. This wasn’t quite as bad as that but I think the ending could have been tightened up a bit.
But that is about my only criticism. The interviews and the people interviewed make the rest a joy to read. Most especially the dinner conversation. It really spelled out the whys.
So, what are those whys. Why steampunk and why now? Now is the point where I will spell out the authors’ thesis. Well, in short form. You’will want to read the book for the full details.
Steampunk was born as a science fiction sub-genre in the 1980s but it wasn’t until around 2005 that anyone outside of the SF world paid any attention. Even with “Wild Wild West” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” it didn’t click until mid decade. Why?
Smartphones.
OK, not really smartphones, but the advent of that technology seemed to be something of a tipping point when we all finally realized that were were merely consumers of technology and information, got fed up with it, and looked back to a time when we actually understood what was going on inside of our machines.
And, yet. It’s not really that, either. As with any change in culture, or sub-culture, there are millions of things that feed into the change. Steampunk is merely the latest wave in a cycle of society trying to come to terms with the changes it’s undergoing. And this change is driven by technology. We want our devices to be more human so we cover the impersonal plastic with hand carved wood. We want to understand what’s going on inside so we slap some gears on it to at least give the illusion of parts we can understand. We want our devices to have a history and, not liking the Silicon Valley history they actually come with, we make up our own.
I could go on and on but to get it all correct in this review I’d probably have to read the book again. I will probably do just that but I have some people who want to borrow it in the meantime. Open “Vintage Tomorrows” to a random page and you’re likely to read some completely different element of steampunk that you hadn’t thought of before. It’s all steampunk. It’s all culture. And we are in the wonderful, chaotic center of it.
And while I said this was the first book I had read about steampunk and that it was a good first choice, this book is not an introduction. If you are somewhat new to steampunk and have questions about it, you should probably start with something like “The Steampunk Bible” or “The Steampunk Gazette”. “Vintage Tomorrows” is for those who are already engaged and want to look a bit beyond the waistcoats and corsetry and understand what it is that brings us all together. The psychology that drives culture.
That having been said, I realized that I was never actually in the wonderful, chaotic center of it. “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” was one of the first novels I ever read and, when the science fiction genre known as steampunk came along, I saw it only as a continuation of stuff I had been reading all along. When the smartphones came along, I stuck it out with a simple flip phone because I worked with enough tech during the day that I didn’t get overwhelmed with just a smaller version of what I already had. And, in the meantime, I had always appreciated the older things, the older architecture, the older technology.
As to the costuming and conventions and all the things we think of as the “scene”, I had been going to conventions for decades, had been costuming for nearly as long, when I got involved in a “Deadlands” RPG in 2007, it seemed only natural to costume and go to a con. I was the only steampunk there and I didn’t even realize that outside of the hinterlands that is Pittsburgh there was already a full blown cultural movement underway. I was just doing what I had already been doing, merely with a Victorian theme. I was steampunk before I realized steampunk was a “next big thing.”
“Vintage Tomorrows” has given me an appreciation for this movement that sprung up around me, seemingly out of nowhere. It helped me to understand why it was that so many different kinds of people, all on different vectors, came to this same place.
Where is steampunk going? What is the future of this movement? Well, if history tells us anything, it tells us that we are doomed. Just as the beatnicks and hippies rebelled against the established culture and then ultimately became part of the mainstream for the next cultural movement to rebel against, so too will steampunk become a relic of the previous generation. If we are lucky, steampunk will have become in the meantime an actual counter-culture that transforms the world, changing how humans relate to technology, society and even change itself. If we are very lucky, that change will be for the better.
And then our grandkids will call us sellouts and create something we never saw coming.
Comment
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Comment by Prof. Sebastian Fate on April 7, 2013 at 10:57pm -
My copy has just arrived .
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Comment by Zebulon Vitruvius Pike on March 20, 2013 at 11:23am -
I don't know where you get social engineering from. These subcultures are responses to and representative of changes in culture. Madison Avenue isn't creating steampunk, they are responding to it. Steampunk isn't a branded movement any more than the beats or the hippies were branded movements. Even you. This isn't your steampunk. You are just a part of it, responding to it, carving out a little corner that you want to define as something more meaningful then that fad you deride the rest of it as.
The authors of "Vintage Tomorrows" do not treat steampunk "as a single entity moving in a single direction and with single origin." But society, culture and subculture have currents and, when you look at those currents, many of their origins are the same. These common influences guide myriad tributaries towards a single flow that we call "culture" or, in this specific case, something we call "steampunk." And just as when an artist releases his art out into the wild he no longer has control over how his art is interpreted, so to is this subculture called steampunk. There is no definition. There are only approximative descriptions. There is no outside. There are only near or distant relationships to the center of the flow.
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Comment by CoastConFan on March 20, 2013 at 7:45am -
The real question is, “which steampunk are you referring to”? Steampunk gets treated as a single entity moving in a single direction and with single origin, but it isn’t in the least. Steampunk is a lot more complex as to origin and direction than people think. Steampunk as a branded movement is doomed of course, simply because that steampunk incarnation is a faddish construct imposed from the outside.
You make a good point about cyberpunks, but in a way that alternate reality exists. Consider George Alec Effinger’s take on cyberpunk, (When Gravity Failes, et al) with plug in personalities with their inherent information set overlays. To an extend the present internet acts as an instant information farm, the only difference is that there is a poorer interface than postulated by Effinger. As far as AI’s and other such transhumans … not yet by a long shot (Max Headroom, move over).
I hate the word “post-modern” as well, but it is a term that was invented by sociologists of a particular type, to describe not only a period and mindset, but to describe themselves as well. It smacks of a lack of imagination.
Mainstream steampunk ironically reflects the Victorian’s own fantasy view of the period. There are dystopian elements in steampunk, notably the novel Boneshaker. Steampunk novels showing disenchantment with the effects of industrialization and its byproducts, socially and environmentally are out there as well as criticisms about war and imperialism. The 19th century was utopian in outlook and the 20th century became slowly dystopian and critical of the previous century, until by the mid 20th century the modernist ideal was ridiculed and all belief in the movements discredited by the intelligentsia. This leaves us looking for a new paradigm and new icons for the new mindset.
Only Madison Avenue thinks that steampunk (their steampunk) is a engine of change and fashion. The steampunk I know (and love) is a subculture steeped in an understanding, but not buying into the fantasy, of the Victorian Era melded with SF. For me steampunk is not about driving cultures or social change at all, but an enjoyment of a historical and social period not too long gone from our present culture that it is inaccessible. I’ll leave social engineering to those deluded enough to think they have the perfect solution to impose their self-created paradigm template over the present mess of historical residue to make another failed fad to add to the scrap heap.
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Comment by Zebulon Vitruvius Pike on March 20, 2013 at 6:08am
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"I do wonder if today's Steampunks regard themselves as being in revolt against anything except bad manners and contemporary clothing styles"
Some do and others don't. "Vintage Tomorrows" tends towards the "sub-culture but not yet counter-culture" conclusion. Steampunk may be headed that way as more people vector in from other disciplines but I don't think were are there quite yet. A critical mass of both numbers and disenfranchisement hasn't happened yet.
"Clearly there is a strong streak of dystopianism that runs throughout steampunk,"
Something that the authors noted is that steampunk is not dystopian. Steampunk and the Victorian era from which it draws inspiration have positive views of the future. Science and technology is going to change the world for the better as opposed to the dystopian view that technology will destroy us all. We like our computers. We like our smart phones. We like being connected to the world. It's just that we don't like the gray box it comes in. We don't like having the exact same phone that a million other people have. We want this to be not merely a thing but OUR thing. We mod our computers. Changes the skins on our smartphones. We change them to make them more relevant to our experience.
"Steampunk only recently got a name for a genre that had been around for three decades"
Actually, Steampunk has been a genre for almost three decades but has only recently become popular in the past 5 to 7 years. K.W. Jeter coined the term in a letter to Locus Magazine in 1987. He was talking about the gonzo historical sci-fi that he and a few others had written and was fishing about for a name. He chose steampunk because of the already established cyberpunk. There had been proto-steampunk if you will even before that (Harry Harrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah" from 1972) but the genre got its name in the 80s.
You are correct, though. Whether steampunk as a cultural movement survives or not, steampunk as a science fiction genre will continue. To again mention cyberpunk, it was posited at the time that cyberpunk was going to be the next big thing. That not only was this dystopian view of the future going to come to pass but the physically wired, transhumanist society was just around the corner. Johnny Mnemonic. Ghost in the Shell. This was the future we were going to actually be living in. That never happened. Steampunk seems to be following the same path. Not as a predictive future, though. The next decade or two is not going to find us all wearing top hats and taking a break in the afternoon for high tea. But it does seem to be predictive of our reactions to the technology and the "post-modernist" (man, I hate that word) world we live in and "the mainstream" that you don't worry about is representative of that. Steampunk may be a fad but many of the things that seem to be driving people to steampunk are also affecting other people. I notice that people are designing interesting buildings again instead of just glass boxes. People are designing downtown streets with trees and brickwork and benches and things that make it a nice place to be rather than just sidewalks and roads there to get you from one place to another. Cell phones still ship all the same but there are a gazillion after-market ways to personalize them. The people doing that may never have even heard of steampunk but they are reacting in much the same way.
I think this is why the authors find steampunk to be sub-culture rather than counter-culture. It is a reaction to changes but not quite powerful enough to actually drive those changes.
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Comment by Sepiachord on March 20, 2013 at 12:25am -
Nice.
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Comment by Prof. Sebastian Fate on March 19, 2013 at 5:55pm
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Interesting and thoughtful review , Mr. Pike .
I will order a copy .
Your concluding remarks highlight the phenomena of one generation of rebels becoming the gatekeepers of the next establishment . I do wonder if todays Steampunks ( and I use the term in its widest sense ) regard themselves as being in revolt against anything except bad manners and contemporary clothing styles .
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Comment by CoastConFan on March 19, 2013 at 5:28pm
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Post Script -- just turned up another review: http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/ebook-review-vintage...
Also three reviews on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Tomorrows-Historian-Steampunk-Technol...
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Comment by CoastConFan on March 19, 2013 at 5:23pm
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Vintage Tomorrows sounds like a provocative book and I hope to pick up a copy. Your thoughtful review was indeed helpful to differentiate it from the mass of “what is steampunk” books out there. You seem to have done a good job in assessing the scope of the work and it does pique my interest. I really can’t comment directly on a book I haven’t read, but I can make a few general observations.
An important thing to note is that the present definition of what we now call steampunk seems to have a sort of built in “consumerism” concept and a “social trend” function as well. I don’t read SF for its consumer function nor do I follow social trends, so if this portion of steampunk dies off, no great loss in my book. The revolutionary aspect of steampunk, which seems to be typically post-modernism at its finest is also interesting. Clearly there is a strong streak of dystopianism that runs throughout steampunk, but often without much of a historical grounding much deeper than found in a sophomore class or an episode aired on the History Channel.
I’m glad there are some serious works such as Vintage Tomorrows available, which seems to have a serious sociological interest in steampunk and the steampunk culture. I may not always agree, but I do respect a legitimate attempt to explain the phenomena. Steampunk only recently got a name for a genre that had been around for three decades and will be around longer as a SF genre, give or take a few appendences. To be a little ugly perhaps, I really don’t worry much about the mainstream or their fads. As to where steampunk is going? Anywhere the fans want it to go. Again, thank you Master Pike for an excellent review.
© 2013 Created by Hephzibah Marsh.
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