How Punk is Your Candle?
By James Calbraith
From its origin, the term ‘steampunk’ was tongue-in-cheek. A play on ‘cyberpunk’ invented only because cyberpunk was a popular genre at the time (early 1980s), it was always more about the ‘steam’ component – the aesthetics and fashions of Victorian industrial era, the steam engines, the top hats, the airships, the pipes, valves and pulleys, the brass, leather and glass – than the actual ‘punk’.
The ‘punk’ of cyberpunk had a clear meaning: anarchy, evil corporations, dystopian collapse, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll amid a cyber future. Not so much steampunk: moral dilemmas and philosophical musings often give way to simply looking cool and having romping adventures in a steam-powered mechas, or fighting gothic monsters in a moody mansion. The importance of aesthetics over story could be the reason why steampunk, unlike cyberpunk, is better represented in visual media – animation, graphic novels, video and tabletop games – than literature.
That’s not to say there’s nothing important that steampunk can tell us as a genre. The Victorian era was the time when our modern world was being forged; women fought for their rights, as did the working classes; slavery was finally abolished in the West, but exploitative colonial empires thrived; the entire world became truly interconnected for the first time, with steamers plying the oceans from Tokyo to San Francisco and from Cape Town to Vladivostok; revolutions were slowly brewing that would soon bring the downfall of empires that had lasted for centuries. These are all themes that a good steampunk story should, and will, explore, in all its top-hatted, be-goggled glory.
And then there are all the other ‘-punks’. Like the Watergate building giving a part of its name to all the political scandals since, so did Steampunk help to define all the genres that emphasised retrofuturistic aesthetics. Clockpunk for Renaissance and Da Vinci-inspired mechanisms. Dieselpunk for the 1940s era, with combustion engines replacing steam and black leather trenchcoats instead of frocks. Decopunk for Art Deco. Atompunk for the 1950s – think Fallout, Bioshock. For the age before Clockpunk, the High Middle Ages – in which my new book, “The Flying Barons of Negriponte” is set – no single good term has yet been invented. There’s Candlepunk, which I prefer to use myself, but I’ve heard of Castlepunk, Monkpunk and even Dungeonpunk. Once again, all these terms focus on the aesthetics of the setting: the source of power is alchemy and primitive clockwork; the fighting is done with swords, crossbows and, depending on the fictional century, early gunpowder; the mood is dark, foggy and brooding, all hooded monks in candle-lit rooms and armoured knights sinking in the bogs. But if you can’t find enough of the ‘punk’ element – dystopian social commentary – in the era of crusades, heresies, plagues, robber knights and peasant revolts, are you even trying?
Growing up in communist Poland on a diet of powdered milk, “Lord of the Rings” and soviet science-fiction, he had his first story published at the ripe age of eight. After years of bouncing around Polish universities, he moved to London in 2007 and started writing in English. Now lives in Edinburgh, hoping for an independent Scotland.
His debut historical fantasy novel, “The Shadow of Black Wings“, has reached Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semi-finals in 2012. “The Year of the Dragon” saga sold over 30,000 copies worldwide.
His new historical fiction saga, “The Song of Ash” has been on top of Amazon’s Bestseller lists in UK for months.
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