The Steampunk Librarian

spinning toys and dark nostalgia

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:23:49 -0800

'Tis the season for the mainstream media to discover steampunk all over again! The BBC discusses the trend, as does Time. (The BBC's version talks about the impact of Doctor Who, which is an interesting point.)

It's also the season for steampunk-themed Christmas lists and raygun calendars for 2010! The list includes a book I'm dying to see -- Eva Hagberg's Dark Nostalgia. If you're into that sort of thing as well, you will probably want to see this virtual tour of a steampunked house. The list does not include this "flapping push toy," but it should!

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Dances of Vice and more

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:47:08 -0800

Over the weekend, I will be at the third annual Dances of Vice Festival! You should be there, too. It looks like it's going to be an amazing time. (DOV is also on Facebook, where they are posting additional details.) Related to DOV is Zelda Magazine, which just came out with its premiere issue. Buy it if you can!

Steampunky designers are encouraged to participate in the “Voyage of the Chrononought” Design Contest, running through the end of the year. Have at it!

Amazing steampunk-ish metalwork is at "Sara 013's" Flickr account; check out the FreakAngels choker. Beautiful stuff.

It was once proposed, in the mid-nineteenth centry, that London be zoned into hexagonal shapes. It's true! Strange Maps describes the London that could have been, and points to a book of such things which looks really interesting.

Currently interesting in British transportation: the proposed "road train" technology, in which drivers could link up in a lane and then read, sleep, etc., until they want to get off the road. I have been dreaming about something like this for years, usually during the annual drives to New England.

And lastly, a media update: Disney seems to have put the kibosh on a remake of Captain Nemo's adventures for now.

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leviathans and glaciers and salons

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:34:34 -0800

We had some local steampunks over to our place last Friday, and it seems like a good time was had by all. There are photos over at the Steampunk Empire as tangible proof!

LA Weekly discovered Clockwork Couture and featured them, and Issue 9 of the Gatehouse Gazette has been published for your viewing pleasure. In even more literature news, Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan has also been published, and he's written a post discussing the illustrations and the book's concept in general.

New amazing steampunky weblogs keep appearing. Two I found this week: Decadent Handbook (specializing in the darker edge of Victorian/Edwardian art and literature) and the Steampunk Family (specializing in all sorts of things).

And finally...A man is building glaciers to stop global warming...and it's working! How wonderfully mad is that?

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music and anarchy and loss

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:01:32 -0800

Pressed for time today, so here are the week's steampunky bits in quick-time format!

PhonoVault -- your resource for steampunk and seriously retro music.

Machinarium looks like a very cool new game.

MSNBC discovers steampunk and provides a slideshow of the haunted house in New York City.

The Monsterologist should delight any young explorer (or those who still want to grow up to be explorers).

Might the Hadron Collider be under attack from the future? Even the New York Times is discussing the possibility!

Coming Anarchy is a lovely site - how can I resist the slogan "speak Victorian, think Pagan"? Plus, they write about things like "deviant globalization."

The man behind PostHuman Blues, a wonderful website, has died. RIP, Mac Tonnies.

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the beautiful people of steam

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:16:15 -0700

This week's steampunk entry consists mainly of steampunky people looking pretty. Enjoy and be inspired!

Exhibit 1: The tor.com meetup at Brooklyn's Way Station was well attended, from the looks of it.

Exhibit 2: The Oxford steampunk exhibition brought out the extremely well-dressed!

Exhibit 3: SteamCon in Seattle looks like a great success.

Exhibit 3.5: The poster for the new Sherlock Holmes film is out, and is not exactly steampunk but not really NOT steampunk, either. I am of two minds, obviously.

In more literary matters, a call is out for authors of steampunk romances. You have until next April to send in your masterpiece!

"Technology forecaster" Paul Saffo (who doesn't like the words futurist or futurologist) predicts an increasing divide between the rich and the poor in our technological future. Anyone who has read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age can see the Vicky culture in the making...

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Poll results (yours and mine), plus more

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:37:45 -0700

Many thanks to everyone who voted in last week's survey about the future of the Steampunk Librarian. The overwhelming majority told me to keep everything as is, and so it shall be!

--------------------------------

I took this last summer and was a Gadgeteer. Apparently my tastes have changed a bit.

Your result for The Steampunk Style Test...

The Ragamuffin

18% Elegant, 55% Technological, 13% Historical, 48% Adventurous and 60% Playful!

You are the Ragamuffin, the embodiment of steampunk playfulness. Chances are, you approach the genre from a much more casual and lighthearted standpoint than most other fans. To you, there is always an element of play inherent in the genre, and you may very well enjoy fashion as much for the opportunity to dress up as for the style itself. You probably wear goggles as an accessory, and rarely as actual eye-protection. Your outfits are likely to incorporate a lot of brown or cream, and combine large boots, Victorian corsets or vests, aviator caps or bowler hats, and gypsy skirts or slacks, simply because you like them all.

Take The Steampunk Style Test

Anyway! Steampunk Month continues over at Tor.com, with all sorts of neat posts and book excerpts. As for books, has anyone read Kage Baker's stories? They look intriguing.

Also intriguing: the web production titled Riese: The Series. The costuming alone looks awesome!

Steampunky websites with fabulous names: Strange Undisciplined Dreams of Great Things and the Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000.

The artist known as Tin does quite beautiful art with robotic overtones.

And finally, a poster that could serve as the Steampunk Manifesto!

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It's never too early to start thinking of the future

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:08:11 -0700

We interrupt our regular schedule to ask you, the reader, about...regular schedules. I recently discovered that there are more readers out there than I thought, which is thrilling and surprising and has led to me thinking about what to do in the future with this. Should I move away from Vox? Should I post more often? Should I leave well enough alone?

As a result, I post a poll, where you can weigh in with your (anonymous) opinion!

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hidden treasures and diesel dreams

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:22:56 -0700

Over the weekend, we discovered that our awful carpeting (which had covered the living room floor for who knows how long) was hiding a wood floor with a border design.

I was sort of hoping that we would uncover an intricate design in the center of the room, which would be a mysterious coded message to a secret treasure in a faraway land...but, um, there wasn't anything. Still, we are pretty excited about the corners.

Other recent discoveries include the collection of Richard Balzer, who has a treasure trove of objects made before movie cameras, such as thaumatropes, myrioramas, and other optical toys, with flash galleries and tons of information.

Disney is planning a movie titled John Carter of Mars, and the casting has begun. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. Tentatively optimistic, perhaps?

Steampunk must now be truly mainstream, as it's an actual party theme this season. (Some good ideas in there, regardless!)

More examples of the steampunk mindset infiltrating regular life: The Clockwork Man is one of those "hidden object" games that may or may not be a guilty pleasure when whiling away winter evenings. If you prefer your games to be a bit more action-packed, keep your eyes peeled for The Guns of Icarus -- it was originally scheduled to debut online yesterday, but has been pushed back a bit.

Speaking of guns...dieselpunk, a sibling of steampunk, is growing in popularity and web presence, hooray! It's darker and grittier and more mechanized in general; think 1930s rather than 1890s. The dieselpunks.org website just keeps getting better and better.

Punks and geeks of all sorts may be interested in an iPhone app called The Universe Splitter, which does just what it says. Sort of. (I am not well versed in the world of apps, as my cell phone looks like it's from 1989 and behaves accordingly, but this looks like fun.)

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the steampunk and the spooky

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:46:16 -0700

Royal De Luxe was at it again over the weekend, this time in Berlin! They never cease to amaze.

The good people at Tor.com have dedicated October to steampunk, so you should get over there and immerse yourself in some good writing. On the graphic novel side, io9 has a great article on François Schuiten -- his website, although mostly in French, is definitely worth a visit for the art of it all.

A Brooklyn bar named the Way Station is to open soon, and promises to bring steampunk to the neighborhood. They have a page on Facebook listing events and more information; I may check it out when I'm in town next!

And 'tis the season: Behold, a steampunk haunted house. Ooooh, ahhhh.

More stuff coming out that may interest steampunky types: Boilerplate in book format and Rotor'Scope, a "fiendishly difficult" computer game. And for the retro gamers, take a gander at the Frankencade Machine!

(As a postcript, I will mention that I list steampunk-type events over on the Steampunk Empire as I find them; if you have an event, please feel free to hop over there and list it as well! We're going for a comprehensive calendar!)

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art and the word which must not be said

nobody@vox.com(Steampunk Librarian) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:09:41 -0700

According to the blogosphere, I am under strict instructions not to label this panorama of Grand Central Station's largest clock as "steampunk." So I will say, instead, that if you like gears and clockwork and century-old architecture design, you may like this panorama.

Fortunately, this link sent to me by Danny has no such restrictions. Behold, the 12 coolest steampunk gadgets!

Killer Robot Design does amazing work with refurbished objects -- I love the wooden table. Meanwhile, artist Kazuhiko Nakamura has an online "Mechanical Mirage Art Gallery" that must be seen to be believed, and there are now even steampunk graphics for sale!

MAKE Magazine wants your work entered into their annual Halloween contest for tinkerers of all kinds. A recently disqualified entry (no microcontroller) is still worth a look, as it heralds the arrival of...steampunk beer goggles.

And finally, sometimes the headline says it all: "250-Foot Long Hybrid Airship Will Spy Over Afghanistan Battlefields in 2011." Airships! Over the desert! Wow!

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