Steampunk
Steampunk features anachronistic technologies or retrofuturistic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them — distinguishing it from Neo-Victorianism[4] — and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art.
[14] Steampunk is influenced by and often adopts the style of the 19th-century scientific romances of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and Edward S. Ellis's The Steam Man of the Prairies.
[34] The success of Laputa inspired Hideaki Anno and Studio Gainax to create their first hit production, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990), a steampunk anime show which loosely adapts elements from Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, with Captain Nemo making an appearance.
As scholars Rachel Bowser and Brian Croxall put it, "the tinkering and tinker-able technologies within steampunk invite us to roll up our sleeves and get to work re-shaping our contemporary world.
[44] In 1994, the Paris Metro station at Arts et Métiers was redesigned by Belgian artist Francois Schuiten in steampunk style, to honor the works of Jules Verne.
[58] In May–June 2008, multimedia artist and sculptor Paul St George exhibited outdoor interactive video installations linking London and Brooklyn, New York, in a Victorian era-styled telectroscope.
[59][60] Utilizing this device, New York promoter Evelyn Kriete organised a transatlantic wave between steampunk enthusiasts from both cities,[61] prior to White Mischief's Around the World in 80 Days steampunk-themed event.
A year later, a more permanent gallery, Steampunk HQ, was opened in the former Meeks Grain Elevator Building across the road from The Woolstore, and has since become a notable tourist attraction for Oamaru.
[75] The stills at The Oxford Artisan Distillery are nicknamed "Nautilus" and "Nemo", named after the submarine and its captain in the Jules Verne 1870 science fiction novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.
[97] In the comic book and the first (2004) film, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen is a Nazi SS scientist who has an addiction to having himself surgically altered, and who has many mechanical prostheses, including a clockwork heart.
The character Johann Krauss is featured in the comic and in the second film, Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), as an ectoplasmic medium (a gaseous form in a partly mechanical suit).
Some examples of this type include the novel The Difference Engine,[111] the comic book series League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the Disney animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire,[15] Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy,[112] and the roleplaying game Space: 1889.
He was writing songs about the first attempt at manned flight, and an Edwardian airship raid in the mid-80s long before almost anyone else ..."[128] Thomas Dolby is also considered one of the early pioneers of retro-futurist (i.e., Steampunk and Dieselpunk) music.
In addition, the album Clockwork Angels (2012) and its supporting tour by progressive rock band Rush contain lyrics, themes, and imagery based around steampunk.
Similarly, Abney Park headlined the first "Steamstock" outdoor steampunk music festival in Richmond, California, which also featured Thomas Dolby, Frenchy and the Punk, Lee Presson and the Nails, Vernian Process, and others.
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., a 1993 Fox Network TV science fiction-Western set in the 1890s, features elements of steampunk as represented by the character Professor Wickwire, whose inventions were described as "the coming thing".
[136] The short-lived 1995 TV show Legend, on UPN, set in 1876 Arizona, features such classic inventions as a steam-driven "quadrovelocipede", trigoggle and night-vision goggles (à la teslapunk), and stars John de Lancie as a thinly disguised Nikola Tesla.
[citation needed] Alan Moore's and Kevin O'Neill's 1999 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel series (and the subsequent 2003 film adaption) greatly popularised the steampunk genre.
Despite leaning more towards Gothic influences, the "parallel reality" of Meanwhile, City, within the 2009 film Franklyn contains many steampunk themes, such as costumery, architecture, minimal use of electricity (with a preference for gaslight), and absence of modern technology (such as there being no motorised vehicles or advanced weaponry, and the manual management of information without computers).
The 2009–2014 Syfy television series Warehouse 13 features many steampunk-inspired objects and artifacts, including computer designs created by steampunk artisan Richard Nagy, a.k.a.
The 2013–2014 ABC3 game show Steam Punks!, sees Paul Verhoeven playing The Inquisitor, who helps teams complete multiple challenges who have become trapped in a bizarre world controlled by an evil genius named The Machine.
Designed by Yoshinori Satake and inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's anime film Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), Steel Empire is set in an alternate timeline dominated by steam-powered technology.
The Elder Scrolls (since 1994, last release in 2014) is an action role-playing game where one can find an ancient extinct race called dwemers or dwarves, whose steampunk technology is based on steam-powered levers and gears made of copper-bronze material, which are maintained by magical techniques that have kept them in working order over the centuries.
Sakura Wars (1996), a visual novel and tactical role-playing game developed by Sega for the Saturn console, is set in a steampunk version of Japan during the Meiji and Taishō periods, and features steam-powered mecha robots.
Solatorobo (2010) is a role-playing video game developed by CyberConnect2 set in a floating island archipelago populated by anthropomorphic cats and dogs, who pilot steampunk airships and engage in combat with robots.
Dishonored is a series (2012 debut) of stealth games with role-playing elements developed by Arkane Studios and widely considered to be a spiritual successor of the original Thief trilogy.
[152] BioShock Infinite (2013) is a first-person shooter game set in 1912, in a fictional city called Columbia, which uses technology to float in the sky and has many historical and religious scenes.
While Steampunk is considered the amalgamation of Victorian aesthetic principles with modern sensibilities and technologies,[23] it can be more broadly categorised as neo-Victorianism, described by scholar Marie-Luise Kohlke as "the afterlife of the nineteenth century in the cultural imaginary".
It also featured salons led by people prominent in their respective fields, workshops and panels on steampunk, and a seance, ballroom dance instruction, and the Chrononauts' Parade.
[200] The West Yorkshire village of Haworth has held an annual Steampunk weekend since 2013,[201] on each occasion as a charity event raising funds for Sue Ryder's "Manorlands" hospice in Oxenhope.
