Spirit of Adventure

Seriously, coated in flowers. It used to be a sand dune,
but sand dunes aren't stable enough for memorials, so they
planted stuff to make sturdy enough to build a monument.

Spent a long weekend in the Kitty Hawk area, including a visit to the Wright Brothers National Memorial, which this time of year is coated in flowers.

The "First in Flight" monument is dedicated to the Orville brothers' first successful controlled flights. Which leads me to think about just how cool, how fascinating, how terrifying it must have been. Lots of people died trying out inventions, but so many were so dedicated to things like "humans surely can fly" that they kept trying anyway.

I think that's part of what I like about steampunk stories. It has that can-do spirit, that determination to succeed even if it involves risking your own neck, that high-stakes adventure... and also, since it's fiction, the surety that no one real gets harmed. Yeah, that last part is pretty nice.

The spirit of adventure is one of the driving forces behind my love of fiction. It's also a fundamental plot: the hero sets off in search of adventure! (and also some other driving force, like discovering herself, or finding her real parents, or saving her family from crazy magic).

Do you ever imagine yourself in a steampunk world, on the edge of some amazing discovery? What "crazy" invention would you be working on?

Steampunk

Steampunk spider
(by Daniel Proulx)

Steampunk is a cool setting. My roomie and I have a steampunk theme to our living room, with big clocks, clocks set in gears above the mantle piece, and cutout gears on the walls.

What is Steampunk? It's what would happen if in the Victorian era, steam-based technology had been the winner. It's usually Victorian-esque clothes and items laced with bronze, clockwork, and steam-powered inventions. It's fashion, it's technology, and it's creativity.

Or, to go by the Wikipedia explanation, steampunk

"is a sub-genre of science fiction that typically features steam-powered machinery, especially in a setting inspired by industrialized Western civilization during the 19th century. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the 19th century's British Victorian era or American "Wild West", in a post-apocalyptic future during which steam power has regained mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power."

Steampunk costumes
by KyleCassidy

 Most importantly, it's about fun and invention.

The steampunk you see today is a loosely defined Victorian base, with clothes that wouldn't be acceptable by Victorian tastes. The attitude is very strongly inclusive, the genre shunning the Victorian "values" of discrimination, instead embracing modern sensibilities.

It's a redo. It's all the fashion, all the fun, all that's pretty and shiny--or, in this case, greasy and machine-oily. It's the cheerful friendly rebels, the honor, and the adventure, wiped clean of the oppression, murder, and elitism of the actual Victorian age. It's the age of discovery and invention, with flying machines and airships. It's what we wished had happened.

It's idealism, in other words. And like all ideals,

Elizabeth, a character in Into the Tides, is a steampunk fan. I've toyed with the idea of writing books completely in a Steampunk setting. One of my favorite webcomics, Girl Genius, is a "gaslamp fantasy"--meaning, steampunk-flavored but not pure steampunk.


Is steampunk a genre you're interested in? What cool steampunk have you seen in the past? What do you think of the genre?