English Russia says:
"Some say that Russian Post Office is considering on using special Postal Dirigibles on the distant Siberian parts of Russia and those are leaked project drawings for this project."
The designers seem to have taken the whole steampunk aesthetic to heart, as these pictures indicate.
Steampunk is a retrospective futurism: stories featuring technology as it might have developed with airships rather than airplanes, in a world that hadn't yet gotten to the First World War, or never did. The movie The Wild, Wild West is a good example; League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a not so good one.
Note in this picture the Golden Compass in front of the building?
That movie, too, has steampunk elements.Homage, I believe that's called.
Update: Eventually steampunk turned into this. Ah, nostalgia.
can't believe i had not looked you up before this in the blogworld.
ReplyDeleteAnother major example is the animated Japanese feature, Steamboy, directed by the same fellow that did Akira.
It's very visually interesting stuff; the old technology still exerts a fascination. I am a little bothered by the term; when did the punkers co opt the world of Jules Verne and HG Wells? If they actually used a steam engine they would see it in a different light. the guys who actually do know about steam ( the guys who play with the large scale railroad locomotives, etc.) are generally written off as goofs, but they know how the things work, hence have a healthy respect for it.
Anyway, hope all is well.
We continue to thrive and survive in Brampton; not doing much reeenactment these days, though.
Will attempt to maintain occasional contact!
sc
Scott - don't be too bothered by the term. It dates at least from the publication of the novel _The Difference Engine_ by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson - http://www.amazon.com/Difference-Engine-Spectra-Special-Editions/dp/055329461X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215526285&sr=8-1 - which presented an alternate history in which Babbage's early designs for mechanical computers actually got implemented. Since Gibson and Sterling were major *cyberpunk* authors, the new genre by extension got labeled steampunk. Of course, there was a lot of Wobbly-type labor unrest in the setting as well, which may have been seen as parallell in some way to the original punk movement.
ReplyDeleteThere was also a comic book called Baker Street around the same time or a little earlier which presented an alternate, female Sherlock Holmes in a world that was kind of steampunky and *did* have people with explicitly punk fashion sense...