I think Steampunk denigrates cyberpunk merely by it's association with it. Cyberpunk is at the hard end of science fiction, realistic depictions and intense focus on future technology. Steampunk is so much at the soft end it's falling out of the science fiction genre altogether leaking into fantasy.
Much literature of the genre - like the acclaimed Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council by China Miéville or the anti-C.S. Lewis His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman - explored the frontiers of "Fantasy Steampunk" in the late 1990's and early 21st century. Joining them was painter James Gurney and his Dinotopia saga, including Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time and Dinotopia: The World Beneath.
Softer yet was another strand of Retro-Victorian Science Fantasy found in the role-playing game (or RPG) circuit. In 1988, Paul Chadwick created Space: 1889, an RPG scenario in which Thomas Edison ventured to Mars on an ether-flyer and opened the inner solar system to colonial exploration. The main pretense of the game - which expanded into several supplements, board games and a computer game - was that Victorian theories about the cosmos in general and the solar system in particular were correct, so that explorers could fly on ether currents between the primitive world of Venus or the dying world of Mars, sandwiched between the newly-formed Mercury and the disintegrated planet of the Asteroid Belt. Space: 1889 ceased publication in 1991, but the mantle was picked up by the fantasy game Castle Falkenstein (named for King Ludwig II of Bavaria's unbuilt castle). Taking place in the Steam Age of the alternate world of New Europa, Falkenstein mixed fairies, magic and mythical creatures in with its steam-powered insanity. Heliograph Inc. obtained the rights to republish the Space: 1889 RPG, as well as its newsletter Transactions of the Royal Martian Geographical Society, the Journal of Victorian Era Role Playing and Marcus Roland's shareware Forgotten Futures. Steve Jackson Games obtained the license to republish Castle Falkenstein as a supplement to their GURPS RPG system, and joined that with their sourcebook Steampunk. GURPS Steampunk won the Origins Award for Best RPG Supplement in 2000, sold out and was followed up by their Steam-Tech book of weird inventions and weapons and a horror-Steampunk supplement called Screampunk.
This nostalgia and "soft end" of Science Fiction found an even greater flowering in the far more public trickling of Retro-Victorian Scientific Fantasies back into movie theatres. These films were completely unconnected to the parallel development of Steampunk in Sci-Fi literature, and unapologetically looked back to Jules Verne rather than Charles Dickens. A 1972 film entitled The Asphyx had the death-spirit of each person trapped in a strange Victorian contraption. This was followed by Disney's return with 1974's commercial failure Island at the Top of the World. Despite questionable dinosaur effects, 1975’s adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s The Land that Time Forgot was a surprise hit that inspired the same company to produce At the Earth’s Core in 1976 and The People that Time Forgot in 1977. In the same year that Morlock Night was published, H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper visited swinging 70's San Francisco in Time After Time. Wil Vinton's Claymation technique was applied to the brilliant, beautiful, melancholy and moving children's film The Adventures of Mark Twain in 1986. Stephen Spielberg played with it in 1985's Young Sherlock Holmes and Terry Gilliam followed in the footsteps of Karel Zeman with 1988's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Michael J. Fox's Marty McFly and Chrisopher Lloyd's Doc Brown returned to the Old West in Back to the Future Part III (1990), with a time traveling steam train and plenty of overt homages to Jules Verne in tow.
Ironically, this second wave of Retro-Victorian cinema peaked at the turn of the millennium, beginning with a film that was generally panned by critics and fans alike, but which became the most well-known public face of the genre for some time. By 1999, Will Smith - former rapper and star of Fresh Prince of Bel Air - had become a hot commodity for summer action movies, importing his street-savy "Fresh Prince" persona to police action movies (Bad Boys), alien action movies (Independence Day, Men in Black) and political action movies (Enemy of the State). Warner Bros. were looking for another big money summer vehicle for Smith, and it came in the form of an adaptation of the 60's TV series Wild, Wild West.
Unfortunately, while Smith was big, adaptations of 60's TV shows were bigger and the budget was Warner's biggest of all time, Wild Wild West itself was a critical flop. Critic Roger Ebert stated that it was "a comedy dead zone. You stare in disbelief as scenes flop and die. The movie is all concept and no content; the elaborate special effects are like watching money burn on the screen." Despite the best efforts of Smith, the cheesecake factor of female interest Salma Hayek, and the capable acting of Kevin Kline and Kenneth Brannagh, this brainless summer blockbuster was carried entirely by the concept.
As a concept however... a special effects laden adventure in Wild West-themed mad science gone awry... it perfectly encapsulated the aesthetic of the genre. Many a Steampunk fan swallowed their pride and, with a wince, forced themselves to tell people who asked that Wild Wild West was a bad example, but an example nonethelss. At the same time, Disney jumped back into the arena with a 1999 take on Tarzan, the 2001 Edwardian adventure Atlantis: The Lost Empire and an inventive 2002 fusion of Robert Louis Stevenson's 18th century seafaring with high end Sci-Fi in Treasure Planet. The way for these films was paved by the retro-futuristic remodelling of Disneyland's Tomorrowland in 1998, moving from the stark white of NASA into the gold and copper motifs of Verne and Da Vinci, taking a page from Disneyland Paris' Discoveryland, opened in 1992.
On the TV screen, cheap, hour-long Sci-Fi and Fantasy shows were springing up from the seed planted by Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its spin-off Xena: Warrior Princess. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World was given the treatment in a WWI-era show while B-movie maestro Bruce Campbell lent himself to both he Napoleonic Jack of All Trades and the Wild West Adventures of Brisco County Jr.. Usually these shows weren't very good, and the best of them was the Canadian production The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne. Doctor Who was given a 1996 trial-run on American television in a made-for-TV movie that fulfilled Tat Wood's objection by making the good Doctor and his time traveling TARDIS a thuroughly Victorian creation.
Wild Wild West was the public face of what was coming to be known as Steampunk. Within the fandom, however, the most significant work of Steampunk fiction became the comic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Nothing before had created as much buzz or interest in the genre as this creation of writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O'Neil. League featured a pastiche of various Victorian characters drawn together by the British government to defeat all threats against her. Mina Murray (of Dracula fame), Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, under the tutelage of Campion Bond and the mysterious "M" (in a typically richly veiled James Bond reference) first rescued the anti-gravity metal "Cavorite" (familiar from H.G.Wells' First Men in the Moon) from Fu-Manchu. The second series, which ended this initial Victorian cycle (Moore promises further adventures with the Leagues of different eras) pitted the Extraordinary Gentlemen against the Martian invaders of War of the Worlds with a little help from Dr. Moreau.
Moore's name - already legendary amongst comic book fans - ensured that League would be a success. But few guessed that it would be one of the biggest successes of his career and catapult the genre that reviewers attached to the work - Steampunk - from a sideshow to the feature presentation. The series itself was a remarkable feat: between the comic stories themselves and the prose supplementary features (a pulp starring Alan Quatermain, H.P. Lovecraft's Randolph Carter, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Carter of Mars, and Wells' Time Traveler for the first and a global gazetteer for the second), the exhaustive encyclopedic references to British fiction made it a veritable Steampunk bible. While there was a certain sarcasm to the comics, it still wove a high-tempo story that brought together the strains of British and American Retro-Victorian Scientific Fantasy.
League also came at the exact right time... This critical mass of Retro-Victorianism coincided with the real emergence of the Internet into the popular consciousness. The Internet, with its plethora of message boards, websites and e-mail groups, enabled Steampunk to coalesce from its varied strands by allowing individuals from all walks of life and fandom to find common ground in what was ultimately a shared love of Retro-Victorian Scientific Fantasies, whatever their form. Cyberpunks were already considering Steampunk to be a dead genre so far as their literary interests were concerned, but the name itself served as an elegantly simple (and pleasingly edgy and alternative-sounding) name for what Clute described as "any sf... set in any version of the previous century from which entropy has been banned as a metaphorical governor of the alternate industrial revolution of choice." The increasing popularity and availability of anime brought in the "Otaku" who were enthralled with Japan's many and varied Steampunk franchises like Castle in the Sky, Howl's Moving Castle, Robot Carnival, Steamboy, Sakura Wars, Last Exile, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water and Escaflowne, as well as Japan's Elegant Gothic Lolita and Elegant Gothic Aristocrat fashion. Lingering admirers of true Cyberpunkian Steampunk met with the die-hard gamers of Space: 1889, who shared ideas with Boomer fans of the old Atomic Age films and the young arrivals drawn in by Wild Wild West and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Selected Bibliography:
CyberpunkReview.com. "Steampunk?" http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21&highlight=steampunk.
Posts
1 replies:
I would have said the best of the TV ones was Legend starring Richard Dean Anderson and John de Lancie. Brilliant series but as usual, cut short.
Post a Comment