Science Fiction Book Club discussion

What's up with all this steampunk? Three years ago, everyone was hanging out, eating corn chips, watching Brittany Spears get divorced and then...BAM! Everybody's got goggles and pipes. What can account for the sudden transformation?

Haha! That's great. I was wondering myself what it was. Very random.

Yeah I think Becky gave a good description of why steam punk is back in fashion. It's quite a loose genre at the moment. No one seems to be able to agree on whether it's an offshoot of sci-fi, of fantasy, or whether it fits somewhere in between the two genres.

I think you're probably right, Becky. There's something fantastical about it.

I've have a toe in the water for a while, dipping into steampunk-style tv shows and movies like Full Metal Alchemist and Howl's Moving Castle (I don't know why, but anime tends to use the theme more), but I've recently taken the plunge, having written my first novel as a steampunk-styled fantasy.

To me it seems to fit somewhere between sci fi and fantasy, maybe in the sub genre science fantasy?

Thanks Becky!

It's been published as an ebook for the moment (maybe one day a publishing house will pick it up ... one day). It's called Liberator's Ruin.

I agree about the Final Fantasy games, especially number 12. Have you played Skies of Arcadia? It was a game on the Dreamcast and later the Gamecube. Also perfect Steampunk!

Same here!

I think that, seeing as how Amazon are supporting me by publishing my book, I should support their ebook service in turn.

Steampunk seems to be pure escapism to me: It contains modern technology, but in simplified forms; and the culture embodies what was often called "a simpler era."

Never mind that the Victorian Era was only good for the Victorians (women and minorities were still second-class citizens, there were no working protections outside of a few elite guilds, medicine and hygiene was atrocious, etc), and actual steampunk technology is simply incapable of doing the things it does (Victorian metallurgy and mechanics couldn't handle the levels of energy or sophistication required to equal today's technology). In that light, I tend to think of it as pure fantasy.

I discovered steampunk by reading a webcomic called "Girl Genius" and fell in love with it ... though I haven't gone as far as riding around on a penny farthing yet :)
I've heard it described as alternate history,

Stephanie- Thanks for chiming in on this conversation. We stopped talking over a year and a half ago, but sense then I've gained an appreciation for steampunk (even wrote a steampunk novel). Alternate history is a fair assessment. Also, Verne-Sci-Fi.

You're welcome!
I also have heard Jules Verne described as steampunk--probably one of the first steampunk authors out there!

(Make that 3 years old.) Why do you find it amusing? Did you think it would fade out for some reason? Steampunk is huge and getting ... huger.

I was recently asked to write a guest blog about it on a major screenwriting site (since I'm also a screenwriter):

http://scriptangel.wordpress.com/2014...

Steam Punk will never die...there is something a little nostalgic about working with a big spanner and an oily rag