A History of Steampunk: Part I - From Scientific Romances to Silent Films

The origins of what we know today as "Steampunk" began, along with Science Fiction as a whole, in the early years of the Scientific Romances, Victorian penny dreadfuls, and Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires. An increasingly literate public took advantage of the opportunities for adventure and high romance offered them by Verne, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, George Griffith, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Garrett P. Serviss, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain and Edgar Rice Burroughs, who were themselves inspired by the likes of Charles Babbage, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and the growing age of technology, colonialism, scientfic exploration and heavy industry.

That inspiration was a varied one and not easily categorized one way or the other. On the one hand there are American dime novels which celebrated technological progress and the expansionism that it permits. On the other there are the likes of Wells, who would just as soon destroy London at every opportunity. Consider Wells' War of the Worlds, in which martians successfully decimate the capital of the British Empire until they are themselves destroyed by bacteria, against Garrett P. Serviss' unofficial sequel Edison's Conquest of Mars, the title of which speaks for itself. Verne's first novel, Paris in the 20th Century, went unpublished until the 1990's because his publisher felt that it was too pessimistic, yet Verne never shied away from the dangers of technology is the hands of the misguided, the misanthropic and the foolish. Half a century later, Joseph Conrad responded to Haggard by exclaiming "the horror" of imperialism. The values and arguments were as diverse in Scientific Romances as they are in Science Fiction today.

However, for Wells and Verne, there was nothing "Retro-Victorian" about their "Retro-Victorian Scientific Fantasies". The Victorian Era was then and now. Scientific Romances came to an end with the great Imperial Experiment and incinerated in the conflagration of World War I, giving way to the Pulp adventurers and the superheroes of the war era: Doc Savage, Blackhawk, Superman, Batman, King Kong, Orson Welles' War of the Worlds and later Tarzan books (an era given true homage in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Rocketeer and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow).

While silent and early sound films did appeal to the Scientific Romances for story ideas, these were often placed well within the 1920's and 30's. Georges Melies’ inspired Trip to the Moon was itself a Scientific Romance masterpiece, released only a year after Queen Victoria's death. Likewise, the first film adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was released in 1916, just sneaking in under the wire. The silent adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, though written in 1912, looks to take place in the year of release, 1925. While Burroughs' novel shares The Lost World's publication date, the iconic Tarzan the Ape Man film starring Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan takes place conspicuously in 1932.

For the first film to purposely choose a period setting in which to unravel its Science Fiction, journalist and editor of the defunct Wonder Magazine, Rod Bennett, cites 1929's Mysterious Island. Of this Vernian adaptation, Bennett says:

Verne’s novels had been speculative when they first appeared, and many of them remained so for nearly a century. They were adventure stories, yes—but built almost entirely around elaborate prophecies of future technology. When those prophecies were fulfilled (as they were in the case of books like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in 80 Days) Verne’s novels didn’t seem futuristic anymore, or even quaint as they do to us today, but simply dated… hopelessly dated, and about as dated as any book could ever hope to be. Some of them languished in this condition for over 40 years—just old-fashioned Victorian curios, brick-a-brack on the shelves of literature’s antique store. But by the mid-1920s these books were passing into a new phase, a state of being wherein the very datedness itself had acquired a fascination. And this was the genius of the stroke: I think we can say with confidence that the producers of The Mysterious Island were the first filmmakers in history who’d ever dared, with a breathtaking flash of invention, NOT to update a hopelessly out-of-date book. They took Jules Verne’s daring predictions about the day-after-tomorrow and turned them into something else entirely—into a huge, elaborate alternate universe story. They created a 19th century of the imagination, where British Imperialists reached the Moon 75 years before Neil Armstrong, and electric submarines prowled the deep while Buffalo Bill was still prowling the West.

Unfortunately, despite a pair of novel sound sequences, the film was a failure at the box office. It would be many years before another one of these deliberately Retro-Victorian Scientific Fantasies graced the silver screen. In the mean time, only a handful of films made any attempt in that direction, such as the period-set Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) with Bela Lugosi, Bride of Frankenstein (1935) with Boris Karloff and King Solomon’s Mines (1937) with Paul Robeson.

Selected Bibliography:

Bennett, Rod. VOYAGES EXTRAORDINAIRES ON FILM: A Survey of Fireside Science Fiction, Part One – to 1965. http://www.cornerstonemag.com/imaginarium/fest/2004/firesidesf/index.htm.

Nevins, Jess. "Introduction: The 19th-Century Roots of Steampunk," Steampunk. Tachyon Publications 2008.