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momebieThe alternate title to this post being: or, How I Learned That It Was Okay To Stand Up For the Fantasy.
You know, my co-workers spent all day asking me if I had a good time on my vacation, and I spent all day nodding emphatically and saying yes, but I was a little stuck when they asked me what I did that was so fun. How do I explain my love for academic panels without putting them to sleep? Blah blahvampire emergency existentialism and self-actualization in the Whedonverse blah. Seee, I don't. So now you guys have to deal with it. Joy!
On the Friday of Dragon*Con I attended the Steampunk vs. Victorian Science Fiction panel, which was something of a discussion/debate between G.D. Falksen and Austin Sirkin. It actually turned out to be my favorite panel of the con, because the two of them couldn't seem to agree on what the actual difference between steampunk and Victorian science fiction was. (It does get boring and tiresome sometimes, watching panelists agree for an hour.) They were civil to each other in their disagreement--something people from a few of the other panels I attended could learn from--and both of them brought up interesting points throughout the panel. The ones that stuck out to me went something like this:
This picture is totally relevant to the discussion!
Some of you haven't been here for very long, but you may know that I'm working on a novel length steampunk-ish project with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theemdash. We call it 'The Steampunk' for short, and because we're shit at naming things. (I'm especially shit at naming things that haven't been worked out yet.) A few months ago I became frustrated and gave up on that project and left it to her, with the caveat that I be allowed to use my characters again if I wanted to. We talked about it then and I agreed to come back. Until this panel I was not able to really satisfactorily articulate to myself what had bothered me so much about working on the project in that way. Now I can say with absolute certainty that it's because the wonder was gone.
Em likes to plan things. (And she knows I'm planning on talking about her here, so worry not!) She's a little anal and a little OCD, and that's fine. Someone needs to be and it sure as hell isn't going to be me. She also needs to know how things work before she can move on with them. I wanted the communication between The Architects to work one way, and she went off with McKay and spent a week trying to figure out if it could. Now, this isn't inherently a bad thing. It's not something I fault her for. It's just that, to me, picking it apart like that, and like we did with every other aspect of the plot before it finally ground to a halt, killed it for me.
There was simply no wonder left. I need wonder.
In listening to the discussion between the panelists it seemed to me that the difference between Victorian science fiction and steampunk was that one of those looked forward and the other looked back. (But since we as a community are also looking back and retroactively labeling things as steampunk when they weren't thought of in that way before, it muddies the waters.)
The works of Miyazaki and other Eastern creative types was brought up as an example. In Eastern steampunk works we find contraptions that are close to those found in original Victorian science fiction. Ships that move about in the air with propellers instead of gas chambers are one specific example. To us in the Western world that sort of thing seems silly. There's no way something of that size could be kept aloft by sets of propellers, so we default to our historical scientific knowledge when we want air transportation. We are, in essence, merely being anachronistic by moving technology forward rather than letting ourselves enjoy the feelings of optimism and implied possibility of the era.
I think that in my writing I'd rather be true to the optimism and implied possibility than to mechanical accuracy. Implied possibility is something of a main stay in all science fiction works. We don't need to know how the warp drive on the Millennium Falcon works--not that I'm doubting that there are those who think they do--we just need to know that it does. And it works the same way every time, which is more important to world building than the nuts and bolts and whys. In the end the story is about the characters, that's what I want to be focusing on. I let myself be convinced to spend too much energy thinking about something else and the story suffered for it. Lesson learned.
Correlating nicely to the idea of optimism in the genre is the thought that most modern steampunk works contain a certain sense of modernism, which means they work from the belief that everything is building towards a logical conclusion. I rather like this idea, and it reminds me of how the character Jon in the project I'm working on feels about his place in the world. He thinks the monarchy is an outdated system, but he doesn't trust the bourgeois class to run things in a way he deems appropriate. Basically, he wants his cake and he wants to eat it too, and he is not going to tolerate people getting between him and his fucking cake.
This leads me to another idea brought up during the panel that I'm still chewing over, which is the question of whether or not we can have a character who has racist or sexist views because they were brought up that way and have them still be a sympathetic character. In The Steampunk in particular there's a character called Tom who is going along with Jon's plans because he approves of the possible outcome if Jon succeeds. He turns his head a lot when it comes to the way people who are 'lesser' individuals are treated. He isn't a bad person, but he was raised to believe certain things, and when those certain things are challenged he has a hard time coming to terms with the new morality that's trying to map itself over the one he already has formed. In the end he has to come to terms with the way the world is changing, but they all do, really.
When the question of whether it is possible for a modern reader to find sympathy with someone who has blatantly racist or sexist views was brought up during a later panel--one actually on inequalities in race and gender--the unanimous response was a resounding no, we cannot find them sympathetic. If we sympathize with these people it implies that we are sympathizing with their ideals, which are backward to our way of thinking. I'm not so sure that's the case, though. When we're moving Victorian tropes forward I think we have to take the good with the bad. It would take great skill, however, to pull something like that off. It's certainly not something I plan on tackling right out of the gate, but it's a theme I wouldn't mind playing with in the future.
In the end I feel that the steampunk genre isn't merely about gears and clocks and gaslight. (As one of the panelists put it, the Greeks had gears, and they weren't steampunk.) The genre, for me anyway, is about examining the Victorian tropes through the bottom of a clean glass. It's bringing the struggles of race and class and gender into a modern age and looking at how they are turned on their heads. (Class struggle and the idea of rebelling against the traditional masculine and feminine have been a big part of The Steampunk from the start.) It's an alternate history. It's the way things could have been if the world were moved 15 degrees to the left on a summer day in 1852.
For me steampunk is about a joy of science fiction and history and anachronism. It is not about technical acumen or being a part of the next big thing. Yes, I'm glad the genre is growing. I'd be a fool not to be happy about that, because it means that when this is done, whatever form it finds, it might have a broader audience, but I'm not writing this story purely for the marketing possibilities. I'm writing it because I'm interested in it. Because I think I've found a voice in it that I want to let out. Because I wonder. It's the same reason I write everything else I write, actually.
TL;DR. Uh, and if you made it through all that I'm buying you ice cream. Feel free to come in and discuss any of this, because I could seriously yammer on about it forever if anyone would sit still long enough.
And please join me tomorrow when I discuss the military and its use in science fiction, a science fiction project I'm working on, and why pacifism will only get you lost inside of the belly of a sarlacc.
You know, my co-workers spent all day asking me if I had a good time on my vacation, and I spent all day nodding emphatically and saying yes, but I was a little stuck when they asked me what I did that was so fun. How do I explain my love for academic panels without putting them to sleep? Blah blah
On the Friday of Dragon*Con I attended the Steampunk vs. Victorian Science Fiction panel, which was something of a discussion/debate between G.D. Falksen and Austin Sirkin. It actually turned out to be my favorite panel of the con, because the two of them couldn't seem to agree on what the actual difference between steampunk and Victorian science fiction was. (It does get boring and tiresome sometimes, watching panelists agree for an hour.) They were civil to each other in their disagreement--something people from a few of the other panels I attended could learn from--and both of them brought up interesting points throughout the panel. The ones that stuck out to me went something like this:
This picture is totally relevant to the discussion!
- Modern steampunk authors tend to use tech we know will work rather than explore possibilities like Victorian Scifi did.
- Very often in steampunk we’re working with technology we know isn’t possible, but we have implied possibility in history.
- This implied possibility is found throughout the science fiction genre.
Some of you haven't been here for very long, but you may know that I'm working on a novel length steampunk-ish project with
theemdash. We call it 'The Steampunk' for short, and because we're shit at naming things. (I'm especially shit at naming things that haven't been worked out yet.) A few months ago I became frustrated and gave up on that project and left it to her, with the caveat that I be allowed to use my characters again if I wanted to. We talked about it then and I agreed to come back. Until this panel I was not able to really satisfactorily articulate to myself what had bothered me so much about working on the project in that way. Now I can say with absolute certainty that it's because the wonder was gone. Em likes to plan things. (And she knows I'm planning on talking about her here, so worry not!) She's a little anal and a little OCD, and that's fine. Someone needs to be and it sure as hell isn't going to be me. She also needs to know how things work before she can move on with them. I wanted the communication between The Architects to work one way, and she went off with McKay and spent a week trying to figure out if it could. Now, this isn't inherently a bad thing. It's not something I fault her for. It's just that, to me, picking it apart like that, and like we did with every other aspect of the plot before it finally ground to a halt, killed it for me.
There was simply no wonder left. I need wonder.
In listening to the discussion between the panelists it seemed to me that the difference between Victorian science fiction and steampunk was that one of those looked forward and the other looked back. (But since we as a community are also looking back and retroactively labeling things as steampunk when they weren't thought of in that way before, it muddies the waters.)
The works of Miyazaki and other Eastern creative types was brought up as an example. In Eastern steampunk works we find contraptions that are close to those found in original Victorian science fiction. Ships that move about in the air with propellers instead of gas chambers are one specific example. To us in the Western world that sort of thing seems silly. There's no way something of that size could be kept aloft by sets of propellers, so we default to our historical scientific knowledge when we want air transportation. We are, in essence, merely being anachronistic by moving technology forward rather than letting ourselves enjoy the feelings of optimism and implied possibility of the era.
I think that in my writing I'd rather be true to the optimism and implied possibility than to mechanical accuracy. Implied possibility is something of a main stay in all science fiction works. We don't need to know how the warp drive on the Millennium Falcon works--not that I'm doubting that there are those who think they do--we just need to know that it does. And it works the same way every time, which is more important to world building than the nuts and bolts and whys. In the end the story is about the characters, that's what I want to be focusing on. I let myself be convinced to spend too much energy thinking about something else and the story suffered for it. Lesson learned.
Correlating nicely to the idea of optimism in the genre is the thought that most modern steampunk works contain a certain sense of modernism, which means they work from the belief that everything is building towards a logical conclusion. I rather like this idea, and it reminds me of how the character Jon in the project I'm working on feels about his place in the world. He thinks the monarchy is an outdated system, but he doesn't trust the bourgeois class to run things in a way he deems appropriate. Basically, he wants his cake and he wants to eat it too, and he is not going to tolerate people getting between him and his fucking cake.
This leads me to another idea brought up during the panel that I'm still chewing over, which is the question of whether or not we can have a character who has racist or sexist views because they were brought up that way and have them still be a sympathetic character. In The Steampunk in particular there's a character called Tom who is going along with Jon's plans because he approves of the possible outcome if Jon succeeds. He turns his head a lot when it comes to the way people who are 'lesser' individuals are treated. He isn't a bad person, but he was raised to believe certain things, and when those certain things are challenged he has a hard time coming to terms with the new morality that's trying to map itself over the one he already has formed. In the end he has to come to terms with the way the world is changing, but they all do, really.
When the question of whether it is possible for a modern reader to find sympathy with someone who has blatantly racist or sexist views was brought up during a later panel--one actually on inequalities in race and gender--the unanimous response was a resounding no, we cannot find them sympathetic. If we sympathize with these people it implies that we are sympathizing with their ideals, which are backward to our way of thinking. I'm not so sure that's the case, though. When we're moving Victorian tropes forward I think we have to take the good with the bad. It would take great skill, however, to pull something like that off. It's certainly not something I plan on tackling right out of the gate, but it's a theme I wouldn't mind playing with in the future.
In the end I feel that the steampunk genre isn't merely about gears and clocks and gaslight. (As one of the panelists put it, the Greeks had gears, and they weren't steampunk.) The genre, for me anyway, is about examining the Victorian tropes through the bottom of a clean glass. It's bringing the struggles of race and class and gender into a modern age and looking at how they are turned on their heads. (Class struggle and the idea of rebelling against the traditional masculine and feminine have been a big part of The Steampunk from the start.) It's an alternate history. It's the way things could have been if the world were moved 15 degrees to the left on a summer day in 1852.
For me steampunk is about a joy of science fiction and history and anachronism. It is not about technical acumen or being a part of the next big thing. Yes, I'm glad the genre is growing. I'd be a fool not to be happy about that, because it means that when this is done, whatever form it finds, it might have a broader audience, but I'm not writing this story purely for the marketing possibilities. I'm writing it because I'm interested in it. Because I think I've found a voice in it that I want to let out. Because I wonder. It's the same reason I write everything else I write, actually.
TL;DR. Uh, and if you made it through all that I'm buying you ice cream. Feel free to come in and discuss any of this, because I could seriously yammer on about it forever if anyone would sit still long enough.
And please join me tomorrow when I discuss the military and its use in science fiction, a science fiction project I'm working on, and why pacifism will only get you lost inside of the belly of a sarlacc.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 03:54 pm (UTC)In a genre like steampunk, I think that our method can be both beneficial and detrimental. Detrimental in the way that we may wind up writing something that doesn't work in the storyline because it doesn't do what we thought it did (I'm referring specifically to mechanical gadgets, here; plot bits may be summarily ignored, though this also applies here). At the same time, whatever we dream up may wind up being this incredibly amazing thing that we are astonished to learn has this special thing about it that allows it to get our characters out of a jam, even though we had no idea it existed.
Realizing that I tend to add a flavor of magic to my stories as much as the whimsical side of what I perceive to be steampunk, I don't know as it applies in the same way, but I think what I'm trying to verbalize (and....well, failing. Or at least mutilating) is that I agree with you. It's about the joy, the history, the anachronism, not the technical bits and bobs or the fact that it's up and coming. I'm writing it because it makes me gleeface to have Bitsey romping around, shedding cogs and Zacharias turning a teakettle into a cash register and Felicity facepalming at Henry and Jim as they ineptly bumble through something and come out the other side victorious and completely baffled as to how.
Also, thank you for sharing this. because you've totally shaken me loose on Move the Mountain. :D
ETA: I'll be in Orlando this weekend. I have books for your roommate! And hugs for you both!
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 04:50 pm (UTC)I stay away from magic, but I can see how magical elements might fall into that attitude. In one of the discussions I sat in someone mentioned that some of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels could be counted toward the steampunk feeling, and I agree with that. I also can't wait to read more about this cog shedding dragon. Thinking about it makes me kind of happy.
*pokes your motivation with a stick*
YAY. When are you going to be in town? We're going to the roller derby Sunday, and probably see Easy A on Saturday night, if you want to come to any of that!
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 04:59 pm (UTC)Zomg, have you not been introduced to Bitsey? How have I failed in this very important thing?? Bitsey is awesome. Probably my favorite character of all (even if she wasn't supposed to be a character, per se. hee!)
~watches motivation twitch and wiggle like jello~
The plan is to arrive Friday evening (well. night. probably around 9pm) at my friend's place. Animal Kingdom is the tentative plan for Saturday, as I have not yet taken TLE, and dude! Zoo! (well. sorta.) Since they have such an early closing time, Saturday night is still empty, but I doubt there is concerting, as I shall have the aforementioned spawn in tow. Sunday has lunch with the brother creature penciled in, and my return home at some point in the afternoon, but beyond that, I have no idea what we're doing. XD
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 05:04 pm (UTC)Oh! Easy A is a movie, not a concert. It's kind of this ridiculous teen retelling of The Scarlet Letter, and you know how Lisa and I love ridic teenage retellings. If you want to come to that Saturday night you're more than welcome to. I won't pester you about the concert on Friday night, since you'll be wiped and have an early day. :p Anyway, trailer!
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 05:20 pm (UTC)Oh! I have not heard of it. OH YES I HAVE. I thought it looked utterly ridiculous. Still, can't really stick my friend with TLE, as much fun as it would be to go mock a movie like that with y'all. And..yeah, no. so not gonna happen. I am going to collapse and make my friend wait on me. XD
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 05:40 pm (UTC)will do, dearheart