“Ummmmmmmmmm…” yeah, that’s exactly what I thought when looking at this photo. I was like “who?.. what?.. but.. why???” This photo looks like something right out of a book, but that’s because it kind of is. So there’s this thing called Steampunk. As Wikipedia explains it ‘Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.’ It’s basically what the world would be like if technology took a turn. It includes a many open gears and amazing steam powered machinery. Why am I talking about this Steampunk? Currently we are undergoing a project that involves Scimatix and Humanities. I will make a whole post about that when we are finished, but for now I’ll give you a little overview so you get what’s up. We are creating a metaphor machine that is created using the Steampunk genre. The machine is created of many metaphors that explain an revolution (my group has the French Revolution). We have to also include a light circuit (science) and diagram that shows the whole machine scaled down (math). As you can see many different things are happening in this project. On the steampunk side we are reading a book called ‘Leviathan’ which is a steampunk era book. We have been learning about what steampunk is, but now it’s time to dig deeper. Everyone has created there own inquiry question about steampunk and do research to find a good answer. Thus is the reason for this post.

How has the idea of steampunk evolved?

Above is my inquiry question. I have done lots of research (all links at bottom of post) on how the idea of Steampunk has evolved. To find out how steampunk has evolved I had to first find out what the first ideas of steampunk were. Steampunk has taken on the style of the 19th century romances of of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and Edward S. Ellis’s The Steam Man of the Prairies. I decided to do a bit of research on The Steam Man Of The Prairies and what I found out was pretty interesting. It was the first U.S science fiction dime novel and was apparently inspired by the steam powered invention of Zadoc Dederik.

 

Above is a photo of Zadoc’s invention. Edward’s book takes on an amazing fictional world where a boy finds a steam powered man and it carries him on amazing adventures. This sparked the idea of a steam powered reality. More authors started to use this style of book. Many people found these books so interesting because they seem so realistic and it could have easily been the way the world works.

Now there are many more books following this Steampunk style, but steampunk has ventured further than books. There are festivals where people dress up with brass and exposed gear. Many cool machines are shown during these that are steam powered. Many inventions have been influenced by steampunk.

Now back to the question. The steampunk genre now is much more ambitious now. There are books like the Leviathan, which have many crazy steampunk machines including a giant whale with gears and machinery. I feel the biggest way steampunk has evolved is the ambition. In the beginning of the steampunk genre, authors wrote about little steampunk machine that could seem quite possible to create. Like steam powered robots and different little tools. Now almost everything steampunk style is just getting crazier and crazier. Like a giant robot/whale that flies in the air. Steampunk has still kept its old steam powered vibe though and it will always have the brass, silver, and exposed gears. I really enjoyed doing some deep research on how steampunk has evolved and here are some of the links I used for research.

Wiki steampunk

Wiki steam man book

Wiki Zadoc Dederick

6 steampunk inventions

 

Until next time… Aedan Loughran