Steampunk books

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 14 May 2008, 16:06 · from 2008-May.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 09:06:41 -0700
Subject: (urth) Steampunk books
In-Reply-To: <482AE6A3.6030406 at comcast.net>
References: <C44FB166.6DAF%ishmael at drizzle.com> <482AE6A3.6030406 at comcast.net>
Message-ID: <1f7617370805140906v7e08b4c2v129beaf387065c53 at mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 6:18 AM, Steven Hall <sghall at comcast.net> wrote:
> To add to this, science fiction is well understood to be about the present
> in which it was written, not the future.

I quibble: this is only true for some values of the words "about," "science
fiction," and even "is."

I.e., there is no doubt that in some important sense _The Space Merchants_
"is about" the advertising/marketing industry of the 1950s. But there is
another sense in which one can meaningfully say it is about a future
extrapolated from that time.

I would take a much more nuanced approach and say:

Science fiction of any ambition comments deliberately on the world of
the present in which it is written, by setting up a contrafactual world
in dialogue with that world.

Science fiction lacking in ambition comments inadvertently on the world
of the present in which it is written, by setting up a world that, failing
to differentiate significantly from that world, depicts its commonplaces
as if they were inevitable.

> Steampunk, then, is a combination of alternate history and science fiction.
>  It is what we imagine the science fiction of the Victoria era might have
> been.

Put the word "some" before that sentence and I will have far less
trouble with it. But, some of the best steampunk (I think for example of
Alan Moore's _League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_ -- not to be
confused with the grossly inferior movie based very loosely upon it)
can meet that description only by an inversion, because it uses our
current view backwards of the Victorian era in an ironic pose that would
literally not be possible to one living in that era. (Not that irony would not
be possible to a Victorian, you understand; only that this particular form
of irony, based on a historical view of Victoriana, would not be possible
without that perspective.)

Of course, "the science fiction of the Victorian era" existed, in the work
of Verne and others; it merely did not yet have a name, or an ironic
view. That was introduced very specifically by Wells, whose early
SF was very much "about" the world in which he wrote it (e.g., _The
War of the Worlds_ as commentary on colonialism, or _The Island of
Doctor Moreau_ as commentary on "vivisection").

> Or to put it another way: in the present, we go back to the past to
> re-imagine the future.

Rather: in the present, we go back to an imagined (and usually
explicitly fictional) past to imagine its possible futures.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com

I once absend-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a
restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand
Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce. -- T. Pratchett

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