its antique tones, its steampunk…

I won’t compete here with other sources of general info about Steampunk. In brief, it is a sub-genre within science fiction, one that finds expression not only in literature, film and art, but also in a subculture and lifestyle. Its hallmark is the combination of futuristic and vintage elements: airships are a frequent reference.

You can follow the link above to learn more, which I recommend in the sense that the labyrinthine tracery of Steampunk’s many tendrils is part of what makes it a mot juste for me quite apart from the specifics of its style.

The term “steampunk” has a canonical moment of origin. Search and you’ll find it credited repeatedly to novelist K.W. Jeter, one of whose novels features H. G. Well’s Morlocks using his famous time machine to terrorize Victorian London.

Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like ‘steam-punks’, perhaps.

—K.W. Jeter in a letter published in the April 1987 issue of Locus, a science fiction magazine

In 1995, I flipped through a remainder bin at an art bookstore, a heap of handomely produced German pocket editions, picking out a selection of Albert Robida‘s illustrations. The picture at the beginning of this post is his. Robida meant nothing to me at the time except that I liked his work. Now it turns out he’s a touchstone for Steampunk. Affection for Robida takes right back to Jules Verne. (A more mainstream example of the same effect: Scorsese’s film Hugo, which has a Steampunk feel in the context of taking us right back to the reality of Melies’ time and of his inventions.)

When Heinrich Schliemann found the site of Troy, object of his lifelong quest, he immediately blasted to the bottom of the site through multiple layers of settlement, convinced that the earliest, deepest layer must be true. On a surface level, there’s much nostalgia in Zeppelin, in the introductory poem and throughout. And Steampunk is, in part, a nostalgic style. Going deeper, Steampunk seems to me to be one expression of a recurrent impulse, characteristic of many of my poems and characteristic of our time: the impulse to use our awareness of history to trace back to a place where we might find a lost turn toward a better, or at least more interesting, present.