h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just finished George Mann's 'The Affinity Bridge'.

I can accept a zombie like disease. I can accept healing substances from the Amazon jungle. I can even accept organic/machine interfaces.

But a self-winding mechanism? In effect perpetual motion?

H.G. Wells and Jules Verne worked within the scientific knowledge of their day. Harry Harrison was wildly imaginative but obeyed the laws of science. Most of Stirlings steam punk work was based on an actual computer designed in the Victorian era.

So which is it? Should Steam Punk be Science Fiction or Fantasy?

Ooooooo, good question, very good.

OK, I'll answer it...

Knee-jerk it's sci-fi but that tends to be about things that are not possible at all or not yet(possible hard sci-fi where the science is possibly possible or has roots in science).

However, as Steam punk happens in the past can it be sci-fi? Is there anything in Steam Punk that we could not do now...I don;t think so...generally Steam punk seems to be about stuff that is possible now...just with the majestic rock-hard design feel of Victorian times.

Oh and it's also about women dressing in really cool sexy gear...oh yeah...

And men dressing in cool gear too...but I'm not that bothered about them...although I have a couple of outfit designs I'd love to do.

ANd when there's SteamPunk there's Professor Elemental:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eELH0ivexKA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkF_XpA5P48

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iRTB-FTMdk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9IQDV5QtMY

>> H.G. Wells and Jules Verne worked within the
scientific knowledge of their day. <<

Indeed they did.

Many well meaning reviewers and literary critics
tried to compare Wells to Jules Verne but he would
always resist the comparison, claiming that what he
was writing was Fantasy and not SF. He said that
he was forced to use sci-fi possibilities because
of the waning beliefs in magic and the supernatural
in the late Victorian era.

As Science discovered and explained the whirled it
drove the fairies deeper into the woods. Fantasy and
fairy tales had fallen from public favour in the light of
electric light, the telephone, telegraph and highspeed
steam railroads. Wells said he only used basic SF
explanations because magic had become unbelievable
and he was genuinely embarrassed by any comparison
to Verne whom he considered the true Sci-Fi genius.

I was recently surprised while reading Mark Twain's
'Life On The Mississippi' to learn that by 1882, the year
he wrote it, steamboats had new electric search-lights,
New Orleans had electric streetlighting four blocks deep,
and a refrigeration process using ammonia made ice
available at many towns along the river.


~jwf~

It depends on the steam punk, surely.

The only steam punk I know is Girl Genius, and the authors of that don't call it steam punk: they call it gaslamp fantasy. I think it straddles the borders between sci fi and fantasy quite well. It I had to chose a bucket to put it in, it would be fantasy. But, frankly, I'm never that interested in genre, really. For example, I read Kit Whitfield's Bareback, which is a a fantasy/thriller/romance/detective/urban novel, but I was more interested in the plot and the characters than in the genre aspects. (So's she, which is why it's not a knowing "crossover" book, borrowing genre tropes with a nudge and a wink, but an independent standalone novel. And an excellent one.)

TRiG.

I mentioned the most recent Three Muskateers film to a friend and said Mark Kermode didn;t like it that much - Kermode felt it was riffing off Pirates of the Carribean too much with pirate airships etc and with Orlando Bloom being in it.

My mate said think of it as a steam-punk Three Muskateers...which I did while watching the film at the weekend and it worked very nicely in that mode. It certainly wasn't Piratey...

>So which is it? Should Steam Punk be Science Fiction or Fantasy?

I see steampunk as more of an esthetic than a genre, so wether or not a work is steampunk is orthogonal to wether its science fiction, fantasy, or something else. In terms of were the steampunk esthetic works best, I lean towards saying science fiction rather than fantasy, but I've seen plenty of things that I simultaneously consider fantasy, steampunk and good (e.g. Stephen Hunt's Jackelian series).

It's not all an aesthetic though is it? It is what modern technology can do now as it would have been in Victorian or similar times made with the materials available back then.

In the real world when people dress Steampunk style it is an aesthetic I agree.

So you're saying based on this one particular story, you want to decide what steampunk is? Star Trek also got some things entirely wrong, just look at the holodeck.

The simple description would be that steampunk is the bastard lovechild of science fiction and alternate history.

If you want to be a purist about genres, then magic belongs in fantasy, and technology belongs in science fiction. There are some who maintain that one should not mix technology and magic. I note, however, that even Harry Potter could not ignore the inroads made by technology on society. The Hogwarts train, for instance. Trains are technology, right?

Frankly, I would be happy with a good story and characters that I can care about. If they mix magic and technology in an imaginative way, that's fine with me.

A blend of science fiction and fantasy could be called Speculative Fiction.

Isn't all fiction speculative to begin with?

"Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature"
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction

You probably have a point about all fiction being speculative, but no one was having a problem believing that the two genres were discussing were fiction. I just wanted to suggest an umbrella term that would include science fiction and fantasy. Speculative fiction seemed to do the trick.

I've heard the term used before, I just find it rather silly. Also regarding the self-winding clock, I would say there's a difference between fantasy and technology that just wouldn't work.

To try to define Art as any one thing is vain.
To put too narrow a box around Steampunk is also vain.
Some say it started in the 1980s.
Many preceding works also capture the spirit of the genre.
H. G. Wells published “The Time Machine” in 1895
Much as Rock was “punked” to express social alienation from “Rock,” Steampunk is a rebellion from the main path of History starting with the steam age.
What if History had not killed Steam?
What would that alternative History feel like?

At the height of Steam, it was common to believe Steam could be made to fix anything.
Could we have the aesthetics of the Victorian Age extend into History?
To flirt with the golden values of the past and mix them with some fantasy from that future is a common prescription for artists.

As to a self-winding clock, this is fantasy!
In 1895 the operation of an Atomic Power Plant would have looked like it violated the laws of Physics!
Today we would have no problem IMAGINING a clock that is wound by sunlight each day [all by itself].

"To try to define Art as any one thing is vain.
To put too narrow a box around Steampunk is also vain" [A E Hill]

I'm with you in spirit on that. Creative people tend to be rather restless. Nothing inspires them to crash through barriers like being told they mustn't. Technology and magic in the same story? There's an opportunity not to be missed!

Librarians have to make decisions about genres all the time. Is this book science fiction or fantasy or general fiction? Does some character have to get murdered in order to call a book a mystery? Can a book about ranch work be called a Western even though it's set in the 1950s? Or, should all the fiction be intershelved, with the public making the decisions based on who the author was?

Tech and magic... hmmm.

I am recalling a show (Babylon 5 perhaps)
in which there was a class of tech-savvy
wizards called the 'maj'; presumably this
was a contraction of magic or the Magi.


~jwf~

Imagining a self-winding watch is no problem, I own one. The problem is imagining a mechanism that winds itself by it's own movement, movement which is produced by the wound mechanism.

If the rest of the story has plot points that can be logically assumed reasonable because they rest in the realm of the possible or and extension of physical laws as we know them or as were known in the time phase, then perpetual motion should not be included.

That was a hell of a sentence, does it make sense?

"...realm of the possible or THE extension..."

I think that works.

I can think of other reasons for not using perpetual motion as a story theme. One reason might be that it doesn't seem all that interesting.

I'm working on a story about a family curse that turns members of the Royal Family into appliances, most notably Queen Victrola. Curses are magic, and appliances are technology. All the ducks are lined up, for sure.

jwf



They were called Technomages...they used technology 'disguised' as magic...but that pretty much what is magic anyway in some types of magic.