STEAMPUNK

   Item of sf TERMINOLOGY coined in the late 1980s, on the analogy of CYBERPUNK, to describe the modern subgenre whose sf events take place against a 19th-century background. It is a subgenre to which some distinguished work attaches, though in no great quantity. There are a number of works of proto-Steampunk, some by UK writers, such as Christopher PRIEST's The Space Machine (1976), in which H.G. WELLS himselfplays a RECURSIVE role, and Michael MOORCOCK's Oswald Bastable books, beginning with The Warlord of the Air (1971 US), which are at once a critique and a nostalgic expression of the technological optimism of the Edwardian era. Oddly, though, books like these do not sort well with thekind of book later described as Steampunk, perhaps because in essence Steampunk is a US phenomenon, often set in a London, England, which isenvisaged as at once deeply alien and intimately familiar, a kind of foreign body encysted in the US subconscious. Three more works of proto-Steampunk, only borderline sf FABULATIONS, were by US writers: William KOTZWINKLE's Fata Morgana (1977), set in 1871 Paris,Transformations (fixup 1975) by John MELLA, and "Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole" (1977) by Steven UTLEY and Howard WALDROP, in which latter the FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER descends into a SYMMES-style HOLLOW EARTH. These recall not so much the actual 19th-century as a 19th century seen through the creatively distorting lens of Charles DICKENS, whose congested, pullulating 19th-century landscapes-mostly of London, though the industrial Midlands nightmare exposed in Hard Times (1854) is also germane - were the foul rag-and-bone shop of history from which the technologicalworld, and hence the world of sf, originally sprang. Somewhere behind most steampunk visions are filthy coal heaps or driving pistons. It was a vision that also entered the CINEMA, especially through David Lynch, first in Eraserhead (1976) and then in The Elephant Man (1980), and even - inappropriately enough - in much of the mise-en-scene of his sf movie DUNE (1984). Another, rather frivolous Steampunk movie is Young Sherlock Holmes(1985; vt Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Fear), prod Steven SPIELBERG. Steampunk has entered sf ILLUSTRATION through the work of UK artist Ian MILLER. Macabre sf adventures in a Dickensian London have even entered tv: Steampunk was anticipated several times in the UK tv series DR WHO, notably in The Talons of Weng Chiang (1977). There was also a muchearlier proto-Steampunk sf tv series set in a 19th-century USA, the eccentric The WILD, WILD WEST (1965-9).In sf books it was at first largely in the work of 3 Californian friends, James P. BLAYLOCK, K.W. JETER and Tim POWERS, that the Steampunk vision became obvious, the first beingJeter with Morlock Night (1979), in which H.G. Wells's Morlocks travel back in time and invade the sewers of 19th-century London. Powers followed with a historically earlier and even more malign MAGIC-REALIST London in THE ANUBIS GATES (1983; rev 1984 UK), and then Blaylock with HOMUNCULUS(1986). In each of these romances a Dickensian London itself is a major character. All three have written at least one more novel along similar lines: Jeter's Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy (1987), Blaylock's Lord Kelvin's Machine (1992) and - not precisely Steampunk, butevoking some of the same alchemical madness - Powers's On Stranger Tides (1987) and The Stress of her Regard (1989). In most of these works thevision is GOTHIC and the city, despite its horrors, a kind of seedbed where mutant life stirs even in the oldest and deepest parts, the cellars and sewers.Other writers have worked in similar vein, perhaps closer to rationalized fantasy than to sf proper, such as Barbara HAMBLY with her alienated race of vampires co-existing with humans in Those who Hunt the Night (1988; vt Immortal Blood UK) and Brian STABLEFORD with hisrationalized werewolves in The Werewolves of London (1990). It is an irony, however, that one of the strongest Steampunk works to date should actually have been written by the prophets of Cyberpunk, William GIBSON and Bruce STERLING, in THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE (1990 UK), set in an alternate 19th-century London even more dystopian than Dickens's (though clearly modelled on it), the imminent collapse of which under the weight of POLLUTION (and reason) is watched and perhaps controlled by an AI evolved from Charles BABBAGE's calculator.It is as if, for a handful of sf writers, Victorian London has come to stand for one of those turning points in history where things can go one way or the other, a turning point peculiarly relevant to sf itself. It was a city of industry, science, technology, commerce and above all, finance (thoughthere was actually more industry in the midlands and the north) where the modern world was being born, and a claustrophobic city of nightmare where the cost of this growth was registered in filth and squalor. Dickens - the great original Steampunk writer who, though he did not write sf himself, stands at the head of several sf traditions - knew all this.

   PN

   See also: RECURSIVE SF.