Steamboys and Steampunk in SL

Recently, at the virtual Varnish party, the trailer for the film Steamboy was shown streaming several (well, more than several...) times. In addition to provoking a memepropped crowd reaction, this got me considering ideas from the main thoughtline to a more tangential approach: SL as it currently stands has quite a cyberpunk heritage (obvious historical roots like Tyrell Corporation and Celina come to mind).

Info about Steamboy is here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348121/

and info about Steampunk is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

I have seen a number of fantastic Steampunk creations in SL, although in my experience, they are on the whole relatively rare. A good example would be the avs I've recently seen Zebulon Starseeker and Marcos Fonzarelli wear (that I presume they made as well), which are representative of "iron giant"-type automatons although not in the same physical class in terms of sheer size. Some vehicles I'd also see as being influenced in this way.

The Diamond Age, one of my favorite "postcyberpunk" (gah, words!) books also has a clear neoVictorian plot element and characters involved with a lot of depth. There are fascinating devices like mechanical horses, and the whole angled storytelling approach to the Primer (gotta read it to get it!).

Feel free to discuss Steamstuff and how it relates to SL in here! After all, it ain't just hot air!

It's funny you should mention Diamond Age with steampunk... the irony is that the newest computer technology that Stephenson described as the basic for nanotech was in fact rod logic.

The book is hyper-geeky, even for Stephenson's standards, though it widely varies to the opposite extreme (see: bizarre psychadelic Drummers scene in between the book's two acts)

As for SL - consider we run on a physics engine. I remember a town hall last fall when Philip was talking about how prim limits will go up as tech does - envisioning technology to do things like bring vehicles from the clunky things they are now, to where wheels are really rotating and gripping, to where the engine actually pumps particles to generate power.

/johnnycarsonvoice Wild stuff.

Trutru, Hiro!

What appealed to me so much about that book was how polar yet cohesive it was for me: there was tons of technical terms to go around and obscure references to developments in nanotech research, yet CHILDREN'S TALES too. And that rocked my world. Too often I find I can't relate to stuff 'cuz it's too polar in a single direction, but The Diamond Age was quite diverse yet focused at the same time. Okay, that really blew me away.

I'm really interested in fiction that deals with different developments in alternative timelines, those "What if?" scenarios.

When I first came to SL, I went to Ace and Lecktor's Tribal Drumming events. One of the early times I was there, and it was just Ace setting up in the morning and me on the dock, I was like "WHOA... THIS REMINDS ME OF..." and I immediately thought of the Drummers. Now, what amazes me even more is how those scenes in the book are situated in Vancouver, British Columbia -- there's that bit with Stanley Park and the totems. Now, when Waterhead opened and I think it was Cubey who shared that some of the design there was also Vancouverite (and likely from Stanley?), I went WHOAWHOAWHOA. I don't know if these were deliberate connections, but in any case, wayyyyyy cool.

Still waiting to see Finkle-McGraw as a last name in SL tho.

Can I dream? Yes.

Protagonist was retired and my namesake already taken and account expired.

Torley, we gotta start a Matrix philosophy discussion thread, sometime

OMG I'm no good at that. I mean, I enjoy it, reading what other people have said, but my own thoughts relate mainly to how cool the action was! Really.

whoa.

pretty much sums it up i think.

Okay, I'm starting it in offtopic

now, you readers, feel free to resume talking about Steam & SL

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Alright, Torley, IT'S ON!

The best bit of steam punk I've seen in SL is Cubey Terra's Ornithopter. It's at his little store in the Abbotts Aerodrome, next to mine.

Fantastic little aircraft that flaps it's wings like a bird and shoots tons of steam out the back. XD

Alright! I've loved Steampunk ever since... ummm... steam was invented. Yeah.

Anyway, I'm all about the steam power. Check out these shots:

Me with a few things I've made, a working iris door, some moving starfield windows, and of course, my steam-powered puddle jumper.


Here's a closeup of both my steam-powered computational apparatus, and my steam-powered mechanical arm. Sadly, you can't see the animated textures on all of the stuff. I'm a big fan of Cubey's stuff, too. If you look close, you can tell I'm wearing an Abbott's Tshirt under my jacket.

Yesh!

And for those of you who have no idea wtf all this is about (as I did) :

steampunk (STEEM.punk) n. A literary genre that applies science fiction or fantasy elements to historical settings and that features steam-powered, mechanical machines rather than electronic devices. Also: steam-punk.


Example Citation:


Arcanum is a prime example of steampunk, a subgenre of science fiction that explores the displacement of ancient ways by modern technology. Like Thief, with its steam-powered mechanical robot guards, Arcanum reconfigures the fantasy genre by imagining a past of magic and sorcery clashing with a present distinguished by advanced mechanical technology.
—Charles Herold, "Yielding (or Not) to the Magic of Exotica," The New York Times, October 4, 2001


Notes:
Although there are antecedents, William Gibson's 1982 novel Neuromancer is generally considered to be the first example of a literary form called cyberpunk. This science fiction subgenre places computers, networks, and electronics (the cyber- part) inside a future that is anarchic and often dystopian (the punk part; from the anarchic, dystopian punk rock music of the mid- to late-70s). Move the setting to the past, especially the Victorian age, take out the electronics and replace them with mechanical devices, especially elaborate, steam-powered contraptions, and you have a new genre: steampunk.

Steampunk often imagines what the past would have been like if the future hadn't happened so quickly. It imagines, in other words, what engineers and inventors might have come up with if they'd had another, say, one hundred years to tinker with mechanical and steam-powered machines. (Some examples: a steam-powered flamethrower; a spaceship made of steel and wood.) In other cases, steampunk envisions a historical world that has modern elements. For example, in The Difference Engine, Gibson and coauthor Bruce Sterling imagine a late 19th century world in which Charles Babbage was able to build his "difference engine" — the first computer — and so the computer and communications revolution occurred one hundred years earlier than it did.

I should note, as well, that people are also describing other media as steampunk, especially video games and movies. For the latter, the steampunk label has been applied to films such as Wild, Wild West, Brazil, and even Edward Scissorhands.


Guess I need to brush up on my sci-fi.

Someone build me a Van Ship!

cool stuff! i think i got a new project.

Relee: I remember Kim Anubis once took me for quite a ride in Cubey's Orinthopter, I like the flapping motions of the wings and the puffs of -- well, it seems like steam. It's a great invention.

Hastur: OMG, crossing Stargateish stuffs with steampunk -- that's pretty cool! I remember that ep of SG-1 showing one of the early (black-and-white) expeditions and Ernest going through the gate in like a heavy diving suit or something.

Marcos: That's a cool av, still featured on the front page of secondlife.com with you building it, eh?

Actually it's Bub "building" it in the photo.

When I built that model, I just made my own avatar really skinny and set the hair to 0. Then I just copied the shape file into the folder with everything else.

Bub wanted to make it look like someone was building a robot suit so he pulled the head off and it just happens to still look like me underneath

I just started in SL as William Withnail.

I've acquired as much steampunk stuff as I can find.
My avatar is a Victorian Gentleman.

I'd like to establish roots in a steampunk community. Have any been established?

Is anyone else interested in forming neo-victorian enclave like the one from Diamond Age?

BTW: Cubey's Ornithopter is awesome, but I always crash it. I guess unusual flight mechanics and lag don't mix.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh! Okay sign me up to do the jumpsuits! And the goat... must have the goat! ^_^

Steampunk rocks, I've seen some stuff here and there and its always very cool to see.

I love it when old tech styles are mixed in with high-tech.

I think it was Wednesday Grimm who had his shop in Midnight City that had all sorts of cool old-time looking high tech gadgets and vendor that folded out really awsomely.

Arcanum was a bad-ass game.

Anyone who hasn't seen it who's reading this thread - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was a cool quasi-steam movie - it had enough zepplin / airship retro stuff to quench steam thirst.

err, guys - sorry to post to a (semi) dead thread, but.. I've had a Steampunk group in Second Life for quite a while - with hardly any activity. that having been said, you're all welcome to join it.

Heh, seconded.

Shame troika never made a sequel.

-Adam

ack! shut up all of yoU! Stop telling everyone its cool, or then everyone will know and it wont be cool anymore!

Ill make a few observations from my perspective.

I think the fascination with steampunk is just another flavor and stage of the overall industrial/cyberpunk "thing". As we grow into our day and age of machines becoming increasingly organic, and organics becoming more mechanized and manufactured, a genre that slaps us with the glaring distinction between creator and created is kind of refreshing. It takes us back to an almost innocent period of our technological development when machines and industrialization were intimidating and brutish, but seemd capable of limitless potential. In a time where a vast majority of goods were created by hand there was a sense of scary wonder about a building that automatically assembled things. Nowadays, machines are ergonmic and sleek and smooth intentionally blending into life to the point that we barely notice them as being "aritifcial". At some point people began to take for granted the mechanical nature of our society and began to pursue technology for technologies sake. There is something very esoteric and utterly sexy about the "machine behind the machines" and thats what I think steampunk is about.

On a small aside, the comic book "Steampunk", (DC, Cliffhanger) was pretty good. Although a fairly obvious explotiation of the emerging genre it was done relatively well if a bit over the top.However it has a horible release schedule and may now be hard to get ahold of, (I *believe* there's a trade paperback out of the first series, no I'm not going to google for it Ill leave that to you )
If you can get ahold of it though its some pretty good reading if youre into comics or steampunk.