Ctss:Inspiration

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Revision as of 21:57, 21 January 2009

This is a list of works that help define "steampunk" and "space opera". Presumably most people know what space opera is so I'll keep that list short, but I've been getting a few questions as to what constitutes steampunk so I'll try to conjure up every example I can think of. Feel free to add to the list.

I also mention in the descriptions of a few of these the idea of "Weird West", so I suppose I ought to explain what that is. Weird West is the combination of the western genre with another genre. One good example of this is Firefly, mentioned below, because it combines western with scifi. The term was coined (and trademarked) to describe the Deadlands [1] western-horror roleplaying game.

Steam Punk

Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used--usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England--but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles or analog computers; these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or a presumption of functionality.

Film & TV

• Wild Wild West - The movie may have been pure cheese, but I personally found it entertaining. It also contains numerous examples of steampunk, especially the giant mechanical spider, but also the steam tank and numerous other things throughout. The TV show also occasionally had elements of steampunk. This is an example of Weird West.
• Howl's Moving Castle - An anime by Hayao Miyazaki, prominently featuring a castle that moves about the countryside on steam powered legs. Also present are steam powered flying devices.
• Steamboy - Another anime, this one by Katsuhiro Otomo, the guy who did Akira. It features many examples of steampunk, including a steam powered monowheel, a steam propelled jetpack device, steam powered tanks, and a gigantic flying fortress.
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army - Contains a few examples of steampunk, such as Klaus' containment suit, but especially with the eponymous golden army, composed of hundreds of clockwork soldiers. Hellboy also has a few steampunk elements, as does an unrelated Ron Perlman film, The City of Lost Children.

Literature & Comics

• The works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells form the basis on which steampunk was formed.
• Iron West by Doug TenNapel - A comic book about cowboys vs. robots, and a great example of Weird West. Cover picture. I have this available if anyone is interested in reading it.
• Scarlet Traces by Ian Edington - The unofficial comic book sequel to Wells' War of the Worlds, it hypothesizes what England would be like if they found the secrets of their captured Martian technology one decade after the botched invasion. Cover picture. I also have a copy of this for people to borrow.

Games

Real People

• James Watt (1736 - 1819) - Inventor of the steam engine. (Technically, there is some debate whether he actually invented the steam engine or if he merely improved the invention of another. Either way, he's the one with a scientific unit named after him and he was a genius in other respects, so let's just go with it.) He also invented the centrifugal governor (a critical piece in many mechanical devices, including the early brakes that prevent elevators from falling to their doom), the sun and planet gear, and a couple new types of mechanical linkages.
• Robert Stirling (1790 - 1878) - Invented a mechanical engine that can run on nothing more than hot air, and held a few other patents. His invention, the stirling engine has since been refined so that small versions can work off the warmth of the palm of your hand, and versions that work in reverse can cool things down to cryogenic temperatures.
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806 - 1859) - A brilliant English engineer who, along with building a number of bridges and tunnels, designed and built a series of three successively larger "largest steamships in the world". He also tried (and failed) to make use of a then-recently invented new type of train locomotive relying on vacuum pumps to move the car.
• Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871) - Mathematician, inventor, and mechanical engineer who first invented the difference engine, and then gave us the concept of a programmable computer with the analytical engine. The guy is so cool (and crazy) that I'm giving him an additional little section here:
  • A quote: "On two occasions I have been asked,--'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
  • He disliked commoners and considered street people to be "nuisances". He especially hated street music such as organ grinders, enough to write "It is difficult to estimate the misery inflicted upon thousands of persons, and the absolute pecuniary penalty imposed upon multitudes of intellectual workers by the loss of their time, destroyed by organ-grinders and other similar nuisances."
  • The software store Babbage's was named after him. It has since become GameStop after a series of mergers.
• Ada Lovelace (1815 - 1852) - I gotta have a lady on the list. She was a contemporary of Babbage's who corresponded with him frequently about his difference engine and analytical engine. She composed some detailed notes on the analytical engine, including an algorithm for the engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. As the algorithm is considered to be the first computer program, Ada Lovelace is often considered to be the first computer programmer. And how many female computer science majors do you know these days, huh?
• Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867) - An experimenter who studied electricity and magnetism, he was the first to recognize that magnets can create electric current, and thus was a predecessor to Maxwell and the originator of modern field theory. He invented the homopolar electric motor and the dynamo, an ancestor to the modern generator.
• Thomas Alva Edison (1847 - 1931) - The Wizard of Menlo Park, he was the inventor of and held patents on numerous things including the phonograph and several telegraph apparati, as well as one of the inventors of the electric lightbulb. In addition, he was also a tremendous dick to...
• Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943) - A former employee of Edison's who resigned when he was not adequately compensated, he went on to invent AC power for Westinghouse, discovered radio before Marconi, and came up with a bladeless turbine, among many other inventions. He laid the groundwork for robotics and remote control devices, and developed a means of wireless energy transfer. Towards the end of his career, he began making claims that seemed outlandish at the time and may still be today, such as a projected energy weapon (or "death ray") and an earthquake machine, as well as theorizing about using electricity and magnetism for antigravity, teleportation, or time travel. His odd mannerisms and fanciful claims made him the prototypical "mad scientist".

Space Opera

Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing powerful (and sometimes quite fanciful) technologies and abilities. Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale.

(I'm also using the term more loosely to encompass a broader range of science fiction.)

Film & TV

• Star Wars - Obvious.
• Battlestar Galactica - Equally obvious.
• The 5th Element - Fraking awesome.
• Star Trek - From this source, I feel like I will derive most of my inspiration from the latent ideas of colonialism, the idea from some parts of the franchise of humanity seeking to find its place in the stars, and the occasional glimpse of "maybe the Federation isn't as altruistic as it appears".
• Firefly and Serenity - Excellent example(s) of Weird West.

Literature & Comics

Games