Author’s Introduction
I came of age in the ’90s, that holiday from history between the Cold War’s end, and the post-9/11/01 world’s start.
Collective memory paints that decade as halcyon days of plenty, and compared to the present era of economic stagnation and social decline, perhaps it was. Yet it didn’t seem so shining at the time.
Sad but true: for the U.S., no worthy foreign enemy also meant no purpose. And this in turn made the entire culture feel rudderless. The period’s casual nihilism was typified by the era’s grunge sound and slovenly fashion, both of which signaled, “Why even bother?”
Against this backdrop, the photos of 19th century scientists, explorers, writers, and statesmen that occasionally appeared in my high school European history textbook may as well have been examples of alien life. Their neat, formal clothing. Their serious expressions. The sharp confidence in their eyes. It was like these people had something they believed in. More than that: that they had something worth believing in.
I remember thinking that would be very nice to have. A society that hadn’t lost its way. What would that even feel like?
It was the kind of idle thought you have while daydreaming in class. Except this one would linger with me enough that I’d revisit the Victorian period in both nonfiction and prose again and again over the next decade or so. My father’s copy of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s biography here; a second-hand copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes there; Niall Ferguson’s history of the British Empire, and Mark Frost’s fantastic novel, The List of Seven , thrown in for good measure. No real agenda or reason to it, just an instinctual return to a time when the West believed in itself.
This was all somewhat of a guilty pleasure, especially since mainstream culture saw mostly horror when looking at the same era. Part of this is the era’s general attitude towards the sexes and race. Sometimes though it was more specific: King Leopold’s Ghost , a bestselling history from the late ’90s, detailed the barbarism of 1880’s Belgium imperial practices in the Congo. Closer to home, Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City masterfully used the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to show a darkness existing just below the surface of the late 19th century’s optimism and ingenuity.
For whatever reason, in today’s culture the existence of any past sin stains not just the entire era, but all of western civilization as well. Yet there developed in literature a workaround from this staining guilt when wanting to write or enjoy a Victorian era adventure.
If you’re reading this, I assume you already know what steampunk is, but the OED’s definition is nonetheless useful for our discussion: “A genre of science fiction that has a historical setting and typically features steam-powered machinery rather than advanced technology.”
Serviceable enough. Left unmentioned is that steampunk is often everything we moderns would like from the late 19th century—for me, it’s the age’s confidence, for others it’s the aesthetics or sense of decorum—without all those things we are uncomfortable with. In other words, steampunk is the 19th century set to safe mode.
And it’s fun, isn’t it? The retro tech, the civilization that believes in itself, the improbable adventures that result from mingling the two, all available in a guilt-free package. What’s not to love?
And yet . . .
I wonder if we don’t lose something doing it this way. Some unhappy but necessary bit of truth: all things have a cost.
Maybe the cost of a confident civilization on the upswing is brutality and chauvinism.
Maybe the cost of all our modern technology and convenience is weakness and decline.
That’s an idea I play with here in Steam Pointe , the series you’re about to begin. It’s a little different from the type of steampunk you may be used to. On Steam Pointe, all the steam-powered tech
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