Thread: Steampunk
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Old 01.04.2012, 08:21 AM   #22
demonrail666
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Yeah, I much prefer the comic of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, too. I'm not sure what the film was that turned Alan Moore against Hollywood. I think it was V for Vendetta. It's a shame because while the films generally aren't as good as his original comics they generally aren't bad - League being probably the worst of a fairly OK bunch. V may not be as good as the comic but it's a decent enough film in his own right and I thought the film version of From Hell was very good. He took his name off the credits for Watchmen despite it being a fairly close reading of his comic. But then Moore seems to pick feuds with everyone/thing. He's currently having a bit of an online spat with the comic writer Frank Miller.

Returning to Floatingslowly's earlier point, I tend to agree that Steampunk (at least as an official genre) works better visually than it does in literary form, and that in its written form, it's not as good as the precursors who set out the imagery (Wells and Verne and even Gibson himself, with the Gernsback Continuum).

Here's a good little article by Bruce Sterling, trying to define Steampunk as distinct - but clearly related - to Cyberpunk.

There might also be a musical equivalent. The 'genre'(?) called Hauntology, comprising stuff coming out on the margins of Electronica from groups like Mount Vernon Arts Lab, The Focus Group and much of the output from the Ghostbox label in general, seems to have a quite steampunk inspired approach to by-now obsolete technology, like old analogue computers. A lot of it seems to be paying homage to the old BBC Radiophonic Workshop which, at its time (like the Verne and Wells books) was dealing with quite cutting edge technology and ideas.

Even more tangential, I remember seeing a documentary about the rise and fall of Detroit, a city that grew with advances in technology (associated with its motor trade) and died when that technology and the industry it was tied to collapsed. The upshot was that Detroit has been left as a kind of relic of a bygone, future focused technology that now only evokes a kind of past future vision. If Tokyo and LA are the quintessential cyberpunk cities, then Detroit may be the ultimate Steampunk one (along with Victorian London and Paris, obviously).
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