| Author | : Julie Anne Taddeo |
| Publisher | : Scarecrow Press |
| Total Pages | : 361 |
| Release | : 2013 |
| Genre | : Literary Criticism |
| ISBN | : 0810885867 |
This collection of essays explores the social and cultural aspects of steampunk, examining the various manifestations of this multi-faceted genre, in order to better understand the steampunk sub-culture and its effect on--and interrelationship with--popular culture and the wider society.
| Author | : Simon Webb |
| Publisher | : Pen and Sword |
| Total Pages | : 212 |
| Release | : 2019-02-28 |
| Genre | : Technology & Engineering |
| ISBN | : 1526732866 |
A look at the surprising nineteenth-century technology that inspires this literary and cultural movement: “I was very impressed by this book.” —SF Crowsnest In recent decades, steampunk has grown from a rather obscure subgenre of science fiction into a striking and distinctive style of fashion, art, design, and even music. It is in the written word, however, that steampunk has its roots—and in this book Simon Webb explores and examines the real inventions that underpin the fantasy. In doing so, he reveals a world unknown to most people today. Webb reveals the Victorian era as a surprising place: one of steam-powered airplanes, fax machines linking Moscow and St Petersburg, steam cars traveling at over 100 mph, electric taxis, and wireless telephones. It is, in short, the nineteenth century as you’ve never before seen it—a steampunk extravaganza of anachronistic technology and unfamiliar gadgets. Imagine Europe spanned by a mechanical internet, a telecommunication system of clattering semaphore towers capable of transmitting information across the continent in a matter of minutes. Consider too, the fact that a steam plane the size of a modern airliner took off in England in 1894. Drawing entirely on contemporary sources, we see how little-known developments in technology have been used as the basis for so many steampunk narratives. From seminal novels such as The Difference Engine to the steampunk fantasy of Terry Pratchett’s later works, this book shows that steampunk is at least as much solid fact as it is whimsical fiction.
| Author | : Susana Loza |
| Publisher | : Lexington Books |
| Total Pages | : 205 |
| Release | : 2017-12-27 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1498507972 |
Speculative Imperialisms: Monstrosity and Masquerade in Postracial Times explores the(settler) colonial ideologies underpinning the monstrous imaginings of contemporary popular culture in the Britain and the US. Through a close examination of District 9, Avatar, Doctor Who, Planet of the Apes, and steampunk culture, Susana Loza illuminates the durability of (settler) colonialism and how it operates through two linked yet distinct forms of racial mimicry: monsterization and minstrelsy. Speculative Imperialisms contemplates the fundamental, albeit changing, role that such racial simulations play in a putatively postracial and post-colonial era. It brings together the work on gender masquerade, racial minstrelsy, and postcolonial mimicry and puts it in dialogue with film, media, and cultural studies. This project draws upon the theoretical insights of Stuart Hall, Homi K. Bhabha, Edward Said, Philip Deloria, Michael Rogin, Eric Lott, Charles Mills, Falguni Sheth, Lorenzo Veracini, Adilifu Nama, Isiah Lavender III, Gwendolyn Foster, Marianna Torgovnick, Ann Laura Stoler, Anne McClintock, Eric Greene, Richard Dyer, and Ed Guerrero.
| Author | : Robbie McAllister |
| Publisher | : Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
| Total Pages | : 267 |
| Release | : 2019-03-07 |
| Genre | : Performing Arts |
| ISBN | : 150133123X |
Steampunk Film: A Critical Introduction is a concise and accessible overview of steampunk's indelible impact within film, and acts as a case study for examining the ways with which genres hybridize and coalesce into new forms. Since the beginning of the 21st century, a series of high-profile and big-budget films have adopted steampunk identities to re-imagine periods of industrial development into fantastical histories where future meets past. By calling this growing mass-cultural fetishism for anachronistic machines into question, this book examines how a retro-futuristic romanticism for technology powered by cogs, pistons and steam-engines has taken center stage in blockbuster cinema. As the first monograph to consider cinema's unique relationship with steampunk, it places this burgeoning genre in the context of ongoing debates within film theory: each of which reflecting the movement's remarkable interest in reengineering historical technologies. Rather than acting as a niche subculture, Robbie McAllister argues that steampunk's proliferation in mainstream filmmaking reflects a desire to reassess contemporary relationships with technology and navigate the intense changes that the medium itself is experiencing in the 21st century.
| Author | : Andrew Mayer |
| Publisher | : Pyr |
| Total Pages | : 397 |
| Release | : 2011-11-15 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 161614534X |
Superheroes and steampunk come together in 19th century New York. Sir Dennis Darby has been murdered, the Automaton has been destroyed, and Sarah Stanton has turned her back on a life of privilege and comfort to try and find her way in the unforgiving streets of New York. But Lord Eschaton, the villain behind all these events, isn't finished with her yet. His plans to bring his apocalyptic vision of the future to the world are moving forward, but to complete his scheme he needs the clockwork heart that Sarah still holds. But she has her own plans for the Automaton's clockwork heart--Sarah is trying to rebuild her mechanical friend, and when she is attacked by the Children of Eschaton, the man who comes to her rescue may be the one to make her dreams come true. Emelio Armando is a genius inventor who had hoped to leave his troubles behind when he and his sister left Italy for a life of anonymity in the New World. Now he finds himself falling in love with the fallen society girl, but he is rapidly discovering just how powerful the forces of villainy aligned against her are, and that fulfilling her desires means opening the door to a world of danger that could destroy everything he has built. The Society of Steam takes place in a Victorian New York powered by the discovery of Fortified Steam, a substance that allows ordinary men to wield extraordinary abilities and grants powers that can corrupt gentlemen of great moral strength. The secret behind this amazing substance is something that wicked brutes will gladly kill for, and one that Sarah must try and protect, no matter what the cost. From the Trade Paperback edition.
| Author | : Helena Esser |
| Publisher | : Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 249 |
| Release | : 2024-07-25 |
| Genre | : Literary Criticism |
| ISBN | : 1350433918 |
Tracing the genre through fiction, visual art, film and videogames from the 1980s to the present, this book offers a comprehensive exploration of the intersection between neo-Victorianism, urban spaces and Steampunk. Characterised by its interplay between past and present and its anachronistic retro-speculation, Neo-Victorian-infused Steampunk remixes modern collective memory to produce a re-imagined vision of Victorian London. Investigating how Steampunk's re-calibrated Londons both source from and subvert Victorian discourse about the city, Steampunk London offers a deeper understanding of how a popular cultural memory of the Victorian past is shaped and transmitted in light of present-day identity politics. Covering key themes including retrofuturism, gender and sexuality, colonialism and postcolonialism, it considers such ideas as how early Steampunk synthesizes Victorian urban ethnography; how Victorian urban Gothic shapes shared transmedia memory to challenge reactionary, nostalgic meta-narratives; how Steampunk video games mobilize urban space as an immersive storytelling device with cities open to play; and how Steampunk interprets the modern metropolis as an opportunity for feminist and queer agency. Through examination of Victorian-era writers from Charles Dickens to Arthur Conan Doyle, the book digs into works of fiction and media alike, looking at The Difference Engine, Soulless, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell, Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, cyberpunk classic Blade Runner, and Assassin's Creed: Syndicate and The Order 1886. An important intervention in the study of steampunk, Helena Esser demonstrates how the works explored invite participatory consumption and considers the genre's potential- and failures- to interrogate and challenge our relationship with the Victorian past.
| Author | : Karl Fugelso |
| Publisher | : Boydell & Brewer Ltd |
| Total Pages | : 260 |
| Release | : 2015 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1843844060 |
Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the middle ages.
| Author | : Mary Griffith |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 52 |
| Release | : 2020-02-10 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : |
It is seldom that men begin to muse and sit alone in the twilight until they arrive at the age of fifty, for until that period the cares of the world and the education of their young children engross all their thoughts. Edgar Hastings, our hero, at thirty years of age, was still unmarried, but he had gone through a vast deal of excitement, and the age of musing had been anticipated by twenty years. He was left an orphan at fourteen, with a large income, and the gentleman who had the management of his estates proved faithful, so that when a person of talents and character was wanted to travel with the young man, a liberal recompense was at hand to secure his services. From the age of fourteen to twenty-one he was therefore travelling over Europe; but his education, instead of receiving a check, went on much more advantageously than if he had remained at home, and he became master of all the modern languages in the very countries where they were spoken. The last twelve months of his seven years' tour was spent in England, being stationary in London only during the sitting of Parliament. His talents thus cultivated, and his mind enlarged by liberal travel, he returned to America well worthy the friendship and attention of those who admire and appreciate a character of his stamp. He had not therefore been back more than a year, before his society was courted by some of the best men in the country; but previous to his settling himself into a home, he thought it but proper to travel through his own country also. His old friend, still at his elbow, accompanied him; but at the close of the excursion, which lasted nearly two years, he was taken ill of a fever caught from an exposure near the Lakes, and died after a few days' illness.
| Author | : Iwan Rhys Morus |
| Publisher | : Icon Books |
| Total Pages | : 254 |
| Release | : 2022-11-03 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 1785789295 |
'[An] insightful analysis of 19th-century futurism ... Morus's account is as much a cautionary tale as a flag-waving celebration.' - DUNCAN BELL, NEW STATESMAN '[ How the Victorians Took Us to the Moon] rattles thrillingly through such developments as the Transatlantic telegraph cable, the steam locomotive and electric power and recalls the excitable predictions of the fiction of the time.' KATY GUEST, THE GUARDIAN 'Excellent ... A terrific insight into why the Victorian era was a golden age of engineering.' - NICK SMITH, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE By the end of the Victorian era, the world had changed irrevocably. The speed of the technological development brought about between 1800 and 1900 was completely unprecedented in human history. And as the Victorians looked to the skies and beyond as the next frontier to be explored and conquered, they were inventing, shaping and moulding the very idea of the future. To get us to this future, the Victorians created a new way of ordering and transforming nature, built on grand designs and the mass-mobilisation of the resources of Empire - and they revolutionised science in the process. In this rich and absorbing book, distinguished historian of science Iwan Rhys Morus tells the story of how this future was made. From Charles Babbage's dream of mechanising mathematics to Isambard Kingdom Brunel's tunnel beneath the Thames, from George Cayley's fantasies of powered flight to Nikola Tesla's visions of an electrical world, this is a story of towering personalities, clashing ambitions, furious rivalries and conflicting cultures - a vibrant tapestry of remarkable lives that transformed the world and ultimately took us to the Moon.
