Celebrating Ten Years Online

While it is true that the present form of the Voyages Extraordinaires: Scientific Romances in a Bygone Age weblog is only in the midst of its second year, July 13th, 2009 marks a broader and more significant anniversary. It was ten years ago that day that we first entered the online world as a resource for fans of Victorian-Edwardian Scientific Romances and their modern homages.

1999 was an important year for aficionados of what was then a genre of Science Fiction called "Steampunk". Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill had just published the first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen miniseries, to which a bevy of keen reviewers affixed a label that had previously been limited to a handful of novels by K.W. Jeter, James Blaylock, Tim Powers, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. That same year saw the release of Wild Wild West, which whether loved or hated is still the dominant spokesmovie of the genre, and Disney's Tarzan. The following year saw publication of GURPS Steampunk, Heliograph's reprints of Space: 1889, the Secret Adventures of Jules Verne and Jack of All Trades programmes and the comic entitled Steampunk.

For myself, this new name was like a bolt from the proverbial blue. For several years, I had been developing an interest in archaic Science Fiction, beginning with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. As a Goth with a love of both Science Fiction and the science of palaeontology, The Lost World in literary and silent film forms seemed like the perfect confluence. That interest transformed into a website in 1997, which is still operating to this day. It also opened me up to this whole magnificent genre - past and present - that melded science, Science Fiction and Victorian-Edwardian aesthetics. Robots of the Victorian Era, the Gay Nineties with spaceships.

In fact, I said as much in a 2005 interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune,

"Steampunk is where my being a Goth, a silent-movie fan and a sci-fi geek meet," says Cory Gross...

"People like steampunk for the same reasons people like Westerns, Jane Austen, Jack the Ripper and the Royal Family, only applied to science fiction," Gross says, adding that fans "also enjoy the heightened absurdity of Victorian social mores and technological quackery."

There was no label for it that I was aware of, however, until reviews for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen used the magic word "steampunk". The name was perfect as a teasing and pleasingly edgy-sounding play on Cyberpunk. Better yet, it provided a search term that connected me with the small pockets of fandom that existed at that time. As there was already an e-mail group devoted more to the technical, role-playing game aspects of genre found in colonial era wargamming and Forgotten Futures, I took advantage of Yahoo's Clubs system - an early form of social networking - to create Yahoo! Clubs Steampunk. It went on to become Steampunk: Victorian Adventurers in a Past that Wasn't.


Variation on logo c.1999-2001

Our first post was understated to say the least. It was a humble automated message stating "Welcome, This is the Yahoo! Message Board for Steampunk community." My own first post was a simple question:

I don't know what the general thought on the subject is, but would a Steampunk game using White Wolf's Storyteller system be a keen idea?

We did grow quickly. One of the earliest members of the group was Joshua Pfeiffer, currently of the "Steamwave" band Vernian Process (which he first started talking about in September 1999!).

Recalling the time for our tenth anniversary, he says:

It's hard to believe it has been 10 years. When I met Cory it was through a bunch of mutual interests, those being classic Goth music, Christian Theology, and Steampunk, or "Romantic Science Fiction". At the time we met there was literally like 5 websites that had any kind of coverage of Steampunk, and those were almost all just lists of books and movies. But Cory's was the only mailing list where we could all get together and talk about our obscure interests.

I remember we had "maybe" a few hundred members at one point (of course even fewer of those posted regularly), but this was years before the whole Steampunk boom took place. It was just so refreshing to find out I wasn't the only weirdo absolutely obsessed with a 19th Century that could have been...

I do miss those days when in order to be considered a "Steampunk", all that was required was that you enjoy the various forms of Steampunk fiction. Not having to swear to some manifesto of DIY, or trying to rewrite what has been established for the past 30 years or so just so that you feel more comfortable labelling yourself something.

I'm glad Cory's still doing his thing, and I hope he keeps it going for another 10 years or more.

Some of our favorite highlights through the years include:

• Hollow Earth by j_genest, part 1 and part 2.
  
• Rod Bennett getting us rolling on trying to define Steampunk, introducing his own term, Fireside Science Fiction, and suggesting that Disney really started it all.
  
• The beginning of a discourse on Steampunk vs. Pulp courtesy of sarahlegend.
  
• Populating our own Steampunk Themepark.
  
• Chris asks about Organic Steampunk.
  
• Ronald Dwyer also got us going on The Social Backdrop of Steampunk Fiction some 5 years after Rod Bennett did, demonstrating that self-definition was a perennial issue.
  
• Around the same time, Dave Woods ushered in an interesting discussion on the actual mechanics of air ships.
  
• As a harbinger of things to come, a discussion at the end of 2006 and beginning of 2007 in which I wondered what this whole business about a "Steampunk movement" was.
  

Logo c.2001-2007

For fans of the genre Steampunk, it was a time like no other. The fantasy anime series Escaflowne debuted on Fox Kids in 2000. From the same year, few forget PVP's famous assessment of the video game Arcanum. In 2001 the big news was Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The comic Girl Genius joined it. Come 2002, Disney's Treasure Planet, the Escaflowne feature film and a dreadful remake of The Time Machine hit theatres. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen returned to comic shelves in 2002, to be followed by its infamous movie adaptation a year later. Mike Mignola's The Amazing Screw-On Head also arrived in 2002, to be adapted into an animated pilot in 2006 after the success of his Hellboy franchise. Disney's distribution deal with Studio Ghibli finally bore the home video release of Castle in the Sky in 2003. In short and in terms of actual media, the early years of Steampunk: Victorian Adventurers in a Past that Wasn't oversaw a veritable golden age. Could it be that we're getting nostalgic for Steampunk?

The website began soon after the club as a resource for members, listing the known books, comics, films, role-playing games and other media that would be of interest to fans of the genre. The project continued to expand into encyclopedic reams of reviews that, infamously, crashed the site whenever there was an update. Though an important part of my life during those years, the site was never a high enough priority to actually pay Geocities for sufficient bandwidth.

Once Yahoo! acquired an e-group server in 2002, it dissolved the Yahoo! Clubs brand and Steampunk was folded into Yahoo! Groups. That was not the only change to come, for as Steampunk culture changed so too did we. In June of 2007, both the group and the website were rechristened Voyages Extraordinaires: Scientific Romances in a Bygone Age.


Logo c.2007-2008

Since there seems to be some curiousity over the reasons, the first was that the sudden influx of DIY, Punk types who redefined Steampunk as a synonym for their hobby created an unhealthy, unwholesome and unfun atmosphere of elitism and smug "contempt for the common man". Sadly, as time has gone on, this jockeying for position has only continued and seems to be an indellible part of the culture.

The second reason is that up to that point, I was already beginning to chafe under the limitations that the genre imposed. The website began to feature an increasing number of articles and reviews that could not, even by the most strained definitions, be reasonably included under the heading of Steampunk. The situation only became worse when that definition was further constrained by the DIY, Punk ethos reducing it to mere fashion. Evolving into a site that was fully and openly about not only the genre of Scientific Romances but also the history and science behind them was a necessity of personal growth.


Logo c.2008

The last change came in November 2007 when the 1990's called and wanted their websites back. We joined the rising tide of Web 2.0 and began the VEx weblog. For a full two years this November, we have been providing a steady diet of articles and reviews every Tuesday and Thursday with the occassional special on the weekends. Our Voyages Extraordinaires Anthology companion weblog, posting excerpts from the best of the original Scientific Romances, is still going strong until the end of the year.

No one can say how much more we have in us as we move along at such a steady clip. However, the original Yahoo! Group remains and we cordially encourage you to join in the decade-long discussion! To the next ten!