Does anyone else out there feel that the room to explore within the steampunk genre is as broad and as deep as it was for high fantasy around the time Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings?
Essentially the limitations which place a work within the genre of high fantasy are as broad as those that define steampunk. They have magic, we have technology and pseudoscience, they have dragons and mythical monsters, we have airships, steam-men and all the fantastic creations derived from them. Ancient myths and the Arthurian legends act as a distant backdrop, a source of ideas and inspiration which parallel the works of Jules Verne and HG Wells for steampunk.
All of which leads me to conclude that there are vast worlds out there yet to be created. There's room for the Terry Pratchets and the Raymond E Feists of steampunk. Every corner you turn there's a wide open universe, just waiting for the right person to come along and breathe life.
So, get out there and create! When you do, drop me a line, I love to see what's happening out there.
2 comments:
If I do write a steampunk novel, I'm setting it in Australia. Melbourne apparently had a Great Exhibition of its own in 1880! And of course the entire nation is (er. . . was) populated by convicts and/or bushrangers.
Louise Curtis
That's true, it would make a good contrast to the Weird West sub-genre of American steampunk.
I'm from B.C. Canada and, doing research on various flying vehicles I found that the very first helicopter was built and flown in Rossland B.C. (unmanned).
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