Dragon*Con Bonus Feature: Steampunk!
Sep. 9th, 2009 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
momebieIt really wouldn't be a KL Dragon*Con recap without the steampunk, would it? This year I went to quite a few steampunk panels, to varying rates of success. I have two panels that I wanted to touch on more in depth for those of you who might be interested.
1.) I enjoyed the Weird West panel, because that's not a section of steampunk I usually dabble in, so it's good to get recs and see where people are going with that. I really, really disagreed with one of the panelists, though. Her basic point was this: If you're at the beginning of any given technological advancement, then everything that you create with your new found tech feels like magic. Anything is possible. Because of this, it's okay to hand wave the science in your story, because it's the story that's most important.
Now, I agree with the feeling of magic and wonder and endlessness that new tech can bring to a society. I think it's wonderful, and I love it when a steampunk (or any other scifi) author tries to capture that feeling. What I don't agree with is the idea that it's okay to hand wave the tech aspects of your story. If your story can survive without the tech aspects, why is it steampunk to begin with? If your story is independent of the feeling of wonder and possibility, of the creativity of doing something we in the present do every day in a new way, then why not just set it in already realized history?
Though, I think part of my negative gut reaction to this idea is that I worry that when we get this whole ball rolling on the novel, we'll be seen as outsiders. On the other hand, we work really hard on, and pester![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mckays_lab to help us in, making sure that the science is possible. Theoretically anyway. I'm not about to inject cobalt into my arm to find out. There's bleeding for your art, and then there's bleeding for your art. I like all my blood on the inside, thanks.
2.) The Rule, Victoria panel was the best one I sat in on all weekend. The panel included two professors (who said that they were Victorianists by trade, which I didn't know you could be, now I'm all second thinking not getting that Lit degree) and two authors currently working on steampunk projects. Now, it would take forever for me to rehash all that they said, but I'm going to leave my notes here by panelist.
Katie Crowther - Professor of Victorian Lit at Georgia Tech
* She mentioned a short story I've never read called The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. You can read the whole text here. As she explained it, it concerns a world in which everyone has pretty much given up material possessions with the exception of this machine covered in buttons which connects them with everything they need. (Their friends, their literature, their food...sound familiar?) Ad the name suggests, one day the machine stops, and humanity has to bounce back from that. It's the sort of thing I get literary boners over, so I'll probably end up reading it tonight before I pass out.
*
* I need to look and see if I can find the full text of Difference Engines and Other Infernal Devices: History According to Steampunk by Steffen Hantke online.
* She also made a note of an essay written by Bruce Sterling, A User's Guide to Steampunk. I know I've already posted a link to this on this blog, but I thought I'd reiterate this bit:
Richard Menke - Victorian Lit professor at the University of Georgia
* Richard's presentation was about retconning the Victorian era, and he discussed the way we comingle textual representation with the artifacts we have at hand. On one hand, we don't have a lot of those things left over. Like all other junk from eras past, much of it has been broken down and become detritus. On the other hand though, the Victorian literature we have is very descriptive and rich with those little pieces of every day life like the literature of other time periods is missing.
* He asked the question, if the 19th century was steampunk already, why didn't it seem like it to them? Why do we feel like we're uncovering the inherent wonder of this time, as if it was lost to the ages? He noted that a lot of the feelings in 19th century Britain (or any other part of society, really) had a lot to do with what the pundits were saying, much like it does now. The people of that time had a sort of awe and fear of this machinery and what we could use it to do.
* Charles Babbage felt that by creating and using his mathematical machines he could catch glimpses of our own inner universes.
* George Boole's mathematical logic, which is considered to be the basis of modern digital computing logic, was discovered while he was trying to understand the logic of people.
* People of the 19th century were entangled with the material and wonder of machinery, and it has been noted that women especially, at the end of the 19th century, became identified with technology for the first time. They were the ones in the offices learning to use the typewriters and hand calculators and all the little machines that were invented to make man's business go more smoothly. Women were seen as having taken their awe and expertise from the home into these offices, becoming technological mavens.
*
1.) I enjoyed the Weird West panel, because that's not a section of steampunk I usually dabble in, so it's good to get recs and see where people are going with that. I really, really disagreed with one of the panelists, though. Her basic point was this: If you're at the beginning of any given technological advancement, then everything that you create with your new found tech feels like magic. Anything is possible. Because of this, it's okay to hand wave the science in your story, because it's the story that's most important.
Now, I agree with the feeling of magic and wonder and endlessness that new tech can bring to a society. I think it's wonderful, and I love it when a steampunk (or any other scifi) author tries to capture that feeling. What I don't agree with is the idea that it's okay to hand wave the tech aspects of your story. If your story can survive without the tech aspects, why is it steampunk to begin with? If your story is independent of the feeling of wonder and possibility, of the creativity of doing something we in the present do every day in a new way, then why not just set it in already realized history?
Though, I think part of my negative gut reaction to this idea is that I worry that when we get this whole ball rolling on the novel, we'll be seen as outsiders. On the other hand, we work really hard on, and pester
mckays_lab to help us in, making sure that the science is possible. Theoretically anyway. I'm not about to inject cobalt into my arm to find out. There's bleeding for your art, and then there's bleeding for your art. I like all my blood on the inside, thanks. 2.) The Rule, Victoria panel was the best one I sat in on all weekend. The panel included two professors (who said that they were Victorianists by trade, which I didn't know you could be, now I'm all second thinking not getting that Lit degree) and two authors currently working on steampunk projects. Now, it would take forever for me to rehash all that they said, but I'm going to leave my notes here by panelist.
Katie Crowther - Professor of Victorian Lit at Georgia Tech
* She mentioned a short story I've never read called The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. You can read the whole text here. As she explained it, it concerns a world in which everyone has pretty much given up material possessions with the exception of this machine covered in buttons which connects them with everything they need. (Their friends, their literature, their food...sound familiar?) Ad the name suggests, one day the machine stops, and humanity has to bounce back from that. It's the sort of thing I get literary boners over, so I'll probably end up reading it tonight before I pass out.
*
"Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like "steampunks," perhaps ..."
--K.W. Jeter in a letter to Locus Magazine, March 1987
* I need to look and see if I can find the full text of Difference Engines and Other Infernal Devices: History According to Steampunk by Steffen Hantke online.
* She also made a note of an essay written by Bruce Sterling, A User's Guide to Steampunk. I know I've already posted a link to this on this blog, but I thought I'd reiterate this bit:
There's not a lot we can do about the past; but we should never despair of it, because, as Czeslaw Milosz wisely said, the past takes its meaning from whatever we do right now. The past has a way of sticking to us, of sticking around, of just plain sticking.Even if we wrap the past around us like a snow-globe, so as to obscure our many discontents with our dangerous present, that willful act will change our future.Because that's already been tried. It was tried repeatedly. Look deep enough, try not to flinch, and it's all in the record. So: never mock those who went before you unless you have the courage to confront your own illusions.
The past is a kind of future that has already happened.
Richard Menke - Victorian Lit professor at the University of Georgia
* Richard's presentation was about retconning the Victorian era, and he discussed the way we comingle textual representation with the artifacts we have at hand. On one hand, we don't have a lot of those things left over. Like all other junk from eras past, much of it has been broken down and become detritus. On the other hand though, the Victorian literature we have is very descriptive and rich with those little pieces of every day life like the literature of other time periods is missing.
* He asked the question, if the 19th century was steampunk already, why didn't it seem like it to them? Why do we feel like we're uncovering the inherent wonder of this time, as if it was lost to the ages? He noted that a lot of the feelings in 19th century Britain (or any other part of society, really) had a lot to do with what the pundits were saying, much like it does now. The people of that time had a sort of awe and fear of this machinery and what we could use it to do.
* Charles Babbage felt that by creating and using his mathematical machines he could catch glimpses of our own inner universes.
* George Boole's mathematical logic, which is considered to be the basis of modern digital computing logic, was discovered while he was trying to understand the logic of people.
* People of the 19th century were entangled with the material and wonder of machinery, and it has been noted that women especially, at the end of the 19th century, became identified with technology for the first time. They were the ones in the offices learning to use the typewriters and hand calculators and all the little machines that were invented to make man's business go more smoothly. Women were seen as having taken their awe and expertise from the home into these offices, becoming technological mavens.
*
"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one."
--John Ruskin
Recs from the writers
-Rebels and Priestesses by Mary Greer
-Leviathan by Scott Westerfield
-The Witch's Alphabet - Katelyn Kitteridge
-The Unaturalists - Tiffany Trent (panelist)
-Dragons of Mars
-Under Two Flags
-The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-10 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-10 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-10 11:30 am (UTC)He's finished writing a steampunk novel and he and his wife are really into steampunk fashion (she's an actual designer but mostly seems to do EGL).
You should add them :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-10 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-10 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-10 03:23 pm (UTC)And it was very interesting. It's all the kind of stuff I nerd-gasm out on anyway, so it's nice to be around other people doing the same thing.