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Steampunk and the Supernatural
The classical Steampunk era, i.e. when the grand old masters were still around (the lifetimes of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells etc.), also featured a lot of then-contemporary authors who wrote about supernatural occurences. Dracula and Frankenstein comes to mind. Now, what I have found so far, although most Steampuks would not deny the influence of the likes of Bram Stoker and the later pulp authors like Lovecraft on the genre, the Paranormal Investigator seems to be rather underrepresented in the scene. Most people I have met in real life or online seem to be of the Airship/Zeppelin Crew (various ranks), Airship Pirate crew, adventurer or mad scientist/tinkerer persuasion.
Has the paranormal fallen out of fashion or is this a facette so well represented in the “common goth scene” that it never really took root in the Steampunk scene? Any oppinions on the matter?
It may also well be that I am simply hanging out with the wrong sample crowd and you get a lot of paranormally inclined Steampunk characters in other places…
6 Antworten auf “Steampunk and the Supernatural”
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30.1.2010 bei 21:52
What is “classical steampunk era”?
30.1.2010 bei 23:00
Hi Piechur, I added it to the post. Thanks for pointing that out.
31.1.2010 bei 14:01
What you call “classical steampunk era” wasn’t steampunk. Verne and Wells were writing scientific romances - kind of Victoarian futuristic fiction, as opposed to steampunk which is a contemporary retro-futuristic fiction.
31.1.2010 bei 14:29
Well, yes, you’ve got a point there. My neologism “classical steampunk era” isn’t a scientific term in any case.
If you want to be really exact about it, now would be the “classical steampunk era” provided there will one day be a second wave or a rennaissance of steampunk.
In any case, I see that the words I chose may be a bit unfortunate but I am not going to alter them in this post, otherwise later readers will be confused about this discussion here.
31.1.2010 bei 22:13
Cory Gross covers this problem in “A History of Steampunk”:
http://voyagesextraordinaires.blogspot.com/2008/08/history-of-steampunk.html
1.2.2010 bei 00:23
Great stuff, thanks for pointing that one out to me.