Steampunk Cylons

Two of my favorite things come together in this competition hosted by DVICE...Steampunk and Battlestar Galactica.

Check out the Steampunk Cylons drawn, rendered and sculpted for the competition here.

I think this is the one I like best:

LX2009: paper abstract

I've been invited by the good folks at the SF & fantasy convention LX2009 to present a paper on the Sunday the 12th April, the Steampunk day of the convention.

In the spirit of laying it all out there, I'm posting the abstract and title I have provided them with. After the convention, I'll post up the full text of the paper and some photos of the day if I can settle my nerves long enough to take any. I've posted the abstract here - despite the fact that it may get rejected or need altering - because I'm keen to document my progress over the course of these 3 years and this seems a fitting venue. You might want to consider anything put up here as elements of a continuing work in progress.

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Mutation and innovation: the trans-media proliferation of Steampunk fiction and the presence of the Gothic

Abstract:


As the popularity and proliferation of Steampunk fiction and practice increases, so too has the desire to define and demarcate it, to explain away its constitutive parts and to delineate its still forming canon. This paper will focus on how the very practice of extracting a Steampunk identity from a disparate set of texts and traditions has consequently led to an interrogation of the generic orthodoxy of texts such as Bioshock (videogame 2007) or Casshern (film 2004). I will argue that these texts function as necessary generic exceptions, counterbalancing Steampunk archetypes and enabling the production of consistently productive and original work within the genre. Furthermore, I will claim that texts such as these are as important for the perception and persistence of the genre as Gibson & Sterling’s The Difference Engine (novel 1990).

While it is accepted that steam powered technologies and specific geographical and temporal locations are indeed fundamental to the fiction of Steampunk, an analysis of the apparent appropriation of Gothic preoccupations, locales, and characteristics within Steampunk allows for more open definitions to become available. I will propose that such definitions rely upon and demonstrate the vital impulse and permeability of Steampunk as a genre whilst uncovering a Gothic genealogy behind Steampunk fiction running alongside and enhancing its commonly accepted SF ancestry. Finally, this paper will consider the timely convergence of Steampunk in its multiple outlets from literature to videogame as an expression of the increasingly self-conscious necessity to rethink our individual and collective experiences of and relationships towards history, technology, and culture.

Is Bioshock Steampunk?

It's taken me a long time to get my hands on a copy of Bioshock (2007, 2K Games), mainly because I knew that as soon as I started playing it, I wouldn't want to stop. It is with some surprise then, that I find myself in the office on a Monday morning rather than at home, 360 controller glued to my hand.

First off, it's a fantastic game and deserves all the credit and acclaim it has garnered since its release. I don't need to devote a post telling the world how great it is since it has done very well without my interjection thus far. I will say that I have so far experienced the narrative and gameplay as being seamlessly integrated, on a whole. The opening sequence is excellent and, like any well-paced story, you learn the details and backstory on the fly. Delivering narrative content through audio tapes and radio transmissions can - in another titles - seem contrived but in Bioshock it comes across as both authentic and fitting.

Ok, is it Steampunk? Arguable not. Then why bother posting on it at all? One thing I'm currently thinking about is that there are certain people researching Steampunk fictions and subculture at the moment - myself included - who are grappling with the definition of Steampunk. It strikes me that this process of imposing a definition on to a body of art and fiction that is constantly mutating and evolving is very problematic in itself. When we designate, or attempt to designate, this or that as Gaslamp, Steampunk, Biopunk etc, I wonder how much the people producing and/or consuming what they happily accept as Steampunk are affected by these restrictive definitions. Generic works are, by their very nature, both archetypal and atypical.

Which leads me back to Bioshock. Steampunk has not yet, I would argue, consolidated its canon. I positive thing, I feel. Part of the early stage of my PhD has neccessitated a gathering together of works that have been labelled Steampunk and a critical assessment of that status. Bioshock is a game that people have consistently talked about when referring to Steampunk works, even if it is just to highlight the uncertainty of its status. Therefore, when considering Steampunk, I would include a text like Bioshock because the general conception that the game has a place of some kind in the body of Steampunk fictions evidently exists and the importance of this conception for the future development of the genre cannot be overestimated . More importantly, and this is where my research interests lie specifically, while lacking some of the more overt Steampunk tropes and indentifiers - namely a19th Century locale and contemporary/futuristic steam driven technologies - Bioshock demonstrates Steampunk preoccupations that are, ordinarily, overlooked. These are the generic markers, tropes, and structures that unearth Steampunk's emergence from and continuously fruitful relationship with the Gothic.

Bioshock is a first-person shooter set in 1960. You play the role of Jack, a passenger of a plane that crash lands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean at the start of the game. Jack appears to be the only survivor and, as the wreckage burns on the ocean around him, he makes his way to a structure protruding from the water. He has found an entrance to Rapture, a failed utopia built under the sea. The city was envisioned as a breeding ground for the arts and science but the leaking, dark, and dilapidated environ Jack finds himself in and the immediate attack on his person by an obviously crazed and mutated human attest to an ambitious project gone terribly wrong.

A Big Daddy & Little Sister
Psycopathic surgeons, murderous and autonomous defense systems, a liberal coating of gore, and the presence of sinister, seemingly cannibalistic, girls called Little Sisters protected by groaning pieces of mecha known as 'Big Daddies' all lead to the exquisitely constructed sense of pervading horror and doom that qualifies Bioshock as an exemplary work of contemporary Gothic. These are also features that could be mapped out onto any number of Steampunk fictions, from China Mieville's Bas-Lag trilogy with its bio/mechanical Remade, to Ian R. Macleod's The Light Ages, replete with aether mutated Changelings. It is the anachronistic use of high concept steam technology that proves to be the sticking point for any unequivocal categorisation of Bioshock as Steampunk. Bioshock's narrative is set in the 1960s, after all, and the main technological advancement - and the reason behind the unravelling of the denizens of Rapture - has been the breakthroughs in genetic engineering and biotechnology.



Does this mean then that the Steampunk tag needs to be jettisoned entirely in favour of Biopunk or, to use Di Fillipo's term Ribofunk? I wouldn't like to be so hasty, although there is a good case to argue the alternate. Rather than inventing a different '-punk' for every type of fiction that deviates from the archetype, I am more interested in tracing the similarities and noting the mutations. In this way, the genre stays open and the possibilities for new experiments in Steampunk is vastly increased.

So, in answer to the question 'is Bioshock Steampunk?', I categorically affirm the following:

Yes
No
Maybe

Discuss...