Skimming through the Steampunk article on wiki, I see that I haven't read much in the genre apart from Luther Arkwright and the Moorcock books you already mentioned, but I can make one further recommendation: Tim Powers's Anubis Gates. Haven't re-read it snce it came out in the 1980s but I remember it as being both very entertaining as a story and full of interesting ideas and characters. I think there's a lot of steampunk material to be found in there.

Of the many steampunk things I haven't read, probably the Gibson/Sterling collaboration, The Difference Engine, is the one I'm most curious about. In fact, now that i'm reminded of it I think I might move it up a little higher in my "to-read" stack. I read my first Bruce Sterling book only a few months ago and was impressed, so I'm in the mood to try more of his stuff in the near future.

Requested Anubis Gates and Steamboy form my local library, and put in an ILL request for April and the Extraordinary World.

Thanks for the recommendations.

Keep 'em coming folks.

-M

I'd also add the various Lady Mechanika comic book miniseries to my recommendations.

The Wild Wild West tv show is what you want to see, not the movie, especially any of the Dr Loveless episodes. Also worth checking out is The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, which was shown on the Sci-Fi Channel, in the late 90s/early 00s. It features Verne meeting Phileas Fogg, who was an agent of the British government and is now retired, along with Passepartout, but owns a fabulous airship, which he wins in a card game. Verne's visions of the future is being made real, by others, who seek to conquer, a group called the League of Darkness. Fogg's cousin, Rebecca Fogg, is still an agent of the government and is sort of a Victorian Emma Peel. Visuals were done with CGI, though on a small budget. Acting varies, especially the lead, playing young Jules Verne; but, Michael Praed is great, as Fogg, and Francesca Hunt, as Rebecca is terrific. Michael Courtemanche, who plays Passepartout, is a great visual comic. Recommended episodes include:

Queen Victoria and the Giant Mole (a drilling machine)
Rockets of the Dead (jetpowered Vampire/zombies)
Cardinal's Design & The Cardinal's Revenge (Alexandre Dumas, played by John Rhyss Davies, is a friend of Verne and they time travel back to the time of Louis XIII and the Museteers)
Lord of Air & Darkness, Southern Comfort, Let There Be Light, The Ballad of Steely Joe-a linked set of episodes. In the first, Verne is recruited by what turns out to be the League of Darkness, who have built a heavier-than-air flying ship. They then take it to the US to aid the Confederacy. After the end of that phase, Fogg and Verne go out West and encounter a young Tom Edison, who has made a model of the time machine, from the Cardinal story and then is conned into creating an ironclad, hovering war machine. The final part has Jesse James run across the group, while Passepartout creates a steam driven robot gunfighter.

There is an anime anthology, Robot Carnival, that has a end segment, with a steam and clockwork powered giant mecha robot and other devastating machines, in the earlier period.

When people talk Steampunk aesthetics, they generally mean the worlds of Jules Verne and HG Wells. Their forward-looking writings influenced those who then created modern, nostalgic steampunk. The early modern writing that were dubebd Steampunk, like Moorcock's Oswald Bastable stories, KW Jeter's Moorlock Night, James Blaylock's Homunculus and Tim Powers' Anubis Gates were also social and political commentary, as they present the faults of the Victorian Era, within the context of these advanced technologies. More modern writers are doing pretty much stuff like The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, where it is the romantic style of Verne, with modern sensibilities, and Wild Wild West and Verne trappings. Weird Western is also a sub-genre, with Western tropes, mixed with the supernatural, steam and clockwork devices and machines of destruction and such.

Other films:

Master of the World-with Vincent Price and Charles Bronson, mixing story elements from Verne's two Robur the Conqueror novels (Clipper of the Clouds, aka Robur The Conqueror, and Master of the World), with Price as Robur, who has a flying machine and wages war on arms manufacturers and warring countries.

Jules Verne's From The Earth to The Moon, aka Blastoff, aka Those Flying Fools-Burl Ives, Tab Hunter, Terry-Thomas, Gert Frobe and Lionel Jeffries, with Ives as PT Barnum, who helps put together backing for a moonshot, using a giant cannon, built into a mountain. Thomas and Jeffries are the baddies, trying to sabotage it.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea-the Disney version, with James Mason, Peter Lorre and Kirk Douglas
At The Earth's Core-based on the Pelucidar books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, features Doug McClure as David Innes (he's okay) and Peter Cushing as the inventor of a drilling machine. Great opening sequence, when they launch the mole; but, the acting and effects go south after that. Part of a trilogy of Burroughs, that included The Land That Time Forgot (which is very good, apart from dodgy dinosaurs) and The People That time Forgot (which isn't very good, but has moments).

First Men in the Moon-Lionel Jeffries again, as Professor Cavor launches his expedition to the moon, using an anti-gravity mineral that he discovered.
The Time Machine-the George Pal film, with Rod Taylor as the Traveler.

The Assassination Bureau-Oliver Reed, Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas, based on the Jack London novel of a group that carries out moralistic assassination. Turn of the century stuff, but includes an airship for the finale.
Island At The Top of the World-Disney film that is a pseudo Verne voyage, via airship, to the Arctic circle, where there is a volcanic island, with a Viking enclave, hidden from the world. Features a semi-rigid airship, The Hyperion, inspired by Lebaudy Freres' Patrie and Republique semi-rigid airships.

For literary works, Verne's 20,000 Leagues, Clipper of the Clouds (aka Robur The Conqueror), Master of the World, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in 80s Days. For Wells: The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr Moreau, First Men in the Moon, War of the Worlds, and Shape of Things to Come, for a transition from the Victorian, WW1 aesthetic to the more modern. Also, War in the Air, for an idea of a war with airships. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the James Wale film, with Boris Karloff (and Bride of Frankenstein).

People through out Terry Gilliam's Brazil; but, that is too modern a sensibility for Steampunk. It's closer to what they call Dieselpunk, which is what used to be called pulp fiction.

In comics: Batman: Gotham By Gaslight, where a Victorian Batman chases after Jack the Ripper, in Gotham. Even more appropriate is Brian Augustyn's sequel, Master of the Future, where Batman takes on a Verne-esque science villain, with a fantastic airship and clockwork weaponry.

Aside from Luther Arkwright, Bryan Talbot's Grandville books have a similar aesthetic, but with anthropomorphic animal characters.

There is a book, The Steampunk Bible, by Jeff Vandermeer, that has a nice survey of Steampunk literature and film, plus cosplay costumers and works of steampunk crafting (people making pseudo-rayguns, or optical devices, clockwork devices, etc). He has another, The Steampunk User's manual.

I would also add Kenenth Oppel's YA series of books, with the character, Matt Cruse, a young man who starts out as a cabin boy, on an airship, which is the chief mode of transoceanic travel. They include:

Airborn
Skybreaker
Starclimber

They have a mix of the Steampunk style and the more pulp/dieselpunk.

Also recommended is Scott Westerfield's Leviathan series:

Leviathan
Behemoth
Goliath

It is an alternate world World War 1, but with land leviathans and massive aerial beasts. Kind of past the Steampunk eras, but kind of the cusp between the Victorian pulp material and the 1930s pulp of the Doc Savage variety.

I remembered you mentioning a like of steampunk previously, so I was hoping you would chime in, and that was one of the reasons I posted the request on these forums.


-M

See, that's kind of the thing, with a lot of what passes itself as "steampunk."  A lot is pretty much the usual story, in Victorian trappings and could have been set in any time period or world.  The visual stuff, especially, seems to be more the look, than the aesthetics.


The original steampunk was similar to the core cyberpunk, where there is a strong element of social commentary in the work and not just an adventure story with airships and people wearing aviator helmets with 14 lenses attached.  Moorcock used Oswald Bastable to comment on Empire and the European colonial powers and their subjugation of non-white people.  Jeter and Blaylock were doing similar things.  Others just seemed to want to replicate Verne's science romances or the Edisonades, of the Turn of the Century (19th to 20th....who thought you'd be old enough to have to specify?).  A lot of writers within the genre are more "steam" than "punk."

I see the same with so-called Dieselpunk, which is pretty much just old fashioned pulp fiction, in a 1930s/40s setting, but written decades later.

I like a thoughtful tale, but also enjoy a good yarn, and there are some of both, in steampunk; but, like any other genre, there is also a lot of mediocre to average.

Vandermeer is better as an editor/compiler of material, than as a writer of fiction.  Not a criticism of him, just an observation.  Harlan Ellison was a brilliant writer; but, novels weren't his forte.