Where did all the airships go?
As a student I felt vaguely attracted to the goth subculture – something to do with the extravagant look and the cool accessories – but I never made the investments necessary to become one. Then I realised it was probably less about the goth phenomenon per se, and more about a general yearning for flashy costumes that could be worn on an everyday basis. I’ve also always had a general interest in history and science. But it was only recently that I connected the dots and realised 1) why I always felt at home in the universe of Jules Verne and of 19th century literature and 2) that there is a spceial subculture tailor made for people like me, and it’s called steampunk.
Being a small and fairly recent subculture, you don’t run into it by accident very often. It takes some investigation, and this is where Steampunk Month at Tor.com comes in handy. By now they’ve put together a long list of blogposts about steampunk, from book reviews and discussions of aesthetics, up to and including a review of the good (!) parts of the ridiculously bad movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. One of the highlights is the steampunk exhibition at Oxford’s Museum of the history of science. It runs until February 2010, and I just hope I can find an excuse to go there. If I can’t, all the material posted on Tor.com will probably have made up for it.
(Hm. I wonder if the are any steampunk larps planned in the foreseeable future?)
(Photo from pashasha, computer made by Jake von Slatt.)