What is Steampunk?

стимпанк スチームパンク Steampunk Steam Punk

Because of its eclectic nature Steampunk is different things to different folks, here are a few:

Over-sized rivets, aero shaped fins and elaborate exposed plumbing fixtures all covered with that "comfortably worn" patina.

:- Paul Loughridge Lock Washer Design

Steampunk simply embodies a time and a place. The time... the late 19th century. The place... a steam powered world, where air travel by fantastical dirigibles is as common as traveling by train or boat (or submarine). A place where national interests are vastly different than our own version of history. A place where the elegant and refined are as likely to get pulled into a grand adventure, as the workers, ruffians, and lower classes. A place where the idea of space travel is not so far fetched. A place where lost civilizations are found and lost again. A place where anything is possible, and science can be twisted to meet ones own ends. That to me is the essence of Steampunk. It can have political overtones and commentary, or it can be straight escapist fiction. Either way, if it meets these criteria. It is Steampunk.

:-Joshua A. Pfeiffer a.k.a. Vernian Process

Steampunk is the umbrella under which such things as Victorian science fiction, What if? Antiquity, Sailpunk and other hyper tech speculative history. Many purists would disagree with me, and have, but the the genre isn't that well fleshed out to be on it's own, and the same can be said of these subcategories two fold. In a definitive sense, the genre is technology and it's impact on a selected society.

:-Zacrey Monte Hansen a.k.a. Gearworks

The Edison in LA

To me, Steampunk is the Personal Industrial Revolution.The 19th Century was really the last era in which a high school graduate had been given the complete set of scientific and mathematical concepts to fully understand the technology of the age.

The death of Newtonian physics in the early 20th Century begun a time where we encountered concepts in our daily lives or read about things in the news that we did not have the tools to fully comprehend. Somehow, this became acceptable to most people and the trend not only continues, it accelerates.

Steampunk, I think, is a reaction to that. One can imagine the steps required to make a steam engine from iron ore, coal and fire. But a silicon chip from beach sand? Sequence DNA? The mind boggles!That's the "Steam" side of it anyway.

Now, take a look at some of the old copies of Popular Mechanics you can find on the net. You'll see that the projects within are pretty state-of-the-art for the times in which they were published. For a long time that sort of project was missing from the "Popular" mags. In fact, many of the "Popular" mags pretty much disappeared from the news stand and were replaced by computer magazines.

The "Punk" side is the refusal to be limited and is exemplified by the likes of Make: magazine,Instructables, and Hack-a-day. The Personal Industrial Revolution is when, if you don't like your cellphone, MP3 player, car, or bicycle, you make one you do like - and you get to inject it with your own sense of style because you don't have to please the masses, just yourself. It's all about the goggles and top hats.

:- Jake The Steampunk Workshop

I see it as a reaction to the utter soullessness and disposability of modern tech. There are only so many garish space-eggs and tech. bubbles you can look at before you just stop appreciating them. Steampunk harkens back to a time when technology was still novel and romantic, when the world was still marvelling at its own cleverness with childlike pride and wonder, looking hopefully toward a strange and wonderful future.

One interesting development is that slowly but surely, Steampunk seems to be evolving from an obscure and ill-defined literary/film aesthetic, into a full-blown subculture. Now we’ve got musical acts like Abney Park (who perform in full Steampunk regalia), and Vernian Process who are doing a lot of interesting things to nail down a “Steampunk sound”. Music is powerful. Once you’ve got a soundtrack, the subculture can’t be far behind. I just hope it doesn’t eventually morph into something we all regret later, like hair metal and bell bottoms.

:- Datamancer Datamancer

Robot Design from'A Gentlemen's Duel' by Blur Studios

My answer to the question is simple - “Because if steampunk didn’t already exist, we would be forced to invent a new mythology to take its place.” We live in a technologically homogonized world. Many of the devices that we all share and take for granted look the same. The trappings of the modern world all resemble each other like reflections caught in a pair of mirrors. Steampunk exists to add wonder to our common place world. By reflecting on the past and using it to add color and whimsey to our present, we share a bit of our world with our forebearers. By adapting the processes of the past to create new things from old, we share their legacy with our friends and families, perhaps even our children. The glow of brass and the warmth of wood replace antiseptic stainless steel and plastic in our homes. By our choice of clothing and style, the music we listen to or make, the stories we write and share, and by the imprint upon our tools and devices that we make, we etch something of ourselves onto the pristine surface of our lives. We make it more complex, more engaging, more baroque. Which, in the end, is what the steampunk ideal is all about. Perhaps by recasting our world in brass tubes, hissing steam and clockwork machines, we can regain a measure of joy in our surroundings that has been taken away for the sake of convenience and conformity.

:- Russ Matthews Eating My Words

The word Steampunk refers to a particular genre, aesthetic and even a reality that "might have been". For some people, it's an evolved fantasy/ reality that might have been had internal combustion engines never taken hold or even been invented. Steampunk for me is a reality that "aims to be rather than to seem". Indeed, it's an aesthetic that is heavily versed in a climate of invention and innovation. The construction and methods of operation, the kinetics of the piece are exposed and on the surface, as opposed to boxed in and hidden behind a false casing. The wonderful thing about a steam engine is that you can follow the path of power generation and function beginning with the fire box and boiler, follow the plumbing, valves, gauges, gears, d-valves, pistons, eccentric shafts, and fly-wheels all the way from the source of power to the final outcome of kinetic potential.

Within this architectural aesthetic, there are no false walls, drop ceilings, prefab decorative elements or the mundane presence of modern conveniences. Theatre is wonderful, but theatre is false in its constructions. There is nothing false or "out of the box" when talking about the Steampunk aesthetic. You'll find that there is an incredible compliment between a variety of disparate materials that can usually be found in any Steampunk conceived of device... wood, brass, rivets, gears, lenses, cast iron, etc... Steampunk is an honour to an era when people thought big, and worked hard to make things that last. It is not like the disposable culture of commodity that we have today. Care, artisanship and craftsmanship was put into everything that was created.

:-Sean Orlando Kineticsteamworks.org

For further reading... What is Steampunk Fashion?