
Whatever Happened to Steampunk? - sp332
https://modus.medium.com/what-ever-happened-to-steampunk-4ac936905165
======
mattnewton
As a San Francisco denizen, I can assure you reports of Steam Punk's death are
greatly exaggerated.

In my circles at least, some people are annoyed at how much steam punk has
infiltrated their other costume niches, like the Edwardian Ball.

As other people have said, the link to the iPhone announcement seems super
tenuous given the prevelance of steam punk costumes on Halloween. But also,
it's possible that the term needs less definition, and that ideas from the
steampunk aesthetic have already permeated other art. For example, there is a
lot of steam punk looking machinery and decorations at this new minigolf place
in SF, but it's not being advertised as such:
[https://www.urbanputt.com/](https://www.urbanputt.com/)

~~~
personjerry
> new minigolf place

Urban Putt has been around for at least 6 years

~~~
mattnewton
Fair to not call it new, they apparently opened in 2014. But that is still two
years after the article dates the steam punk period as ending, and it is still
very popular.

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ozborn
The article asserts, but provides no real evidence that steampunk has "died".

I wanted to refute the author's claim by looking at google n-grams, but the
viewer cuts off in 2008 with the steampunk n-gram still going strong...

Instead I present anecdotal evidence that steampunk is not dead:

1\. The presence of an steampunk section in my local Spirit of Halloween
store.

2\. The release of Carnival Row this year by Amazon, which I believe fits the
bill close enough.

3\. A continuing new release of steampunk novels
([https://www.goodreads.com/genres/steampunk](https://www.goodreads.com/genres/steampunk))

Flimsy evidence, but perhaps enough to refute the death of steampunk, which is
a strong claim.

~~~
greggman2
Not sure it counts but there are a few anime and video games that some people
call steampunk. Sakura Taisen/Sakura Wars, the latest version for PS4 was just
announced at Tokyo Game Show a few weeks ago.

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kls
To me Steampunk was an artistic movement and as such it is not dead. Sure
there where some pretty cool things that actually worked well that came out of
it, but it always seemed like that was the secondary purpose to the art.

I believe some people got so wound up in it that they basically became
steampunk LARP'ers, but for the most part it was an art period and one that
really for some reason catches my fancy. Maybe it's art for tinkerers or
something like that, but as a child I really liked the wounder of 1000 Leagues
and novels like that, and some steampunk pieces evoke that youthful wonderlust
in me.

It's an art form that encompasses a lot of skills that I personally enjoy
doing as a hobby. e.g Welding, Metal Crafting, Pneumatic, Hydraulics,
Mechanics. Funny enough even though there was a time that I pursued artistic
endeavors and was a pretty avid sketch artist and fairly good CG 3D artist. I
have never endeavored to design a steampunk piece. Just too busy for art now
days.

The question is, who will arise as the Picasso or Dali of the Stempunk period?
I would love to know their name and pick up a few pieces now.

~~~
sp332
If it's not dead, what's some recent steampunk art you've seen?

~~~
l_t
Seems a bit narrowminded to assume it's dead because you haven't personally
seen any art in a while.

Steampunk is alive, but more niche. See
[https://www.brassscrew.org/](https://www.brassscrew.org/) for instance.

~~~
davnicwil
A bit off on a tangent, but I love the 90s design aesthetic of this website.
Is it purposeful or somehow linked to steampunk?

I can actually see old school web design becoming an art movement in its own
right at some point in the future. Imagining what current and future tech
companies would look like built on 90s style web technology is pretty fun.

~~~
reificator
> _A bit off on a tangent, but I love the 90s design aesthetic of this
> website._

I think you and I experienced different 90s design aesthetics if a bootstrap
looking site with a big hero image at the top evokes the 90s for you.

~~~
davnicwil
Ah, you're right - actually I just realised I clicked through to some of the
links which have a completely different design - 2015 link for instance. Main
site isn't 90s at all. Actually the design aesthetic I'm talking about might
be more early 00s anyway as in the sibling comment.

~~~
reificator
Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah that link is maybe late 90s, but early 2000s is
probably closer.

I hadn't clicked through to that year to see.

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wbratches
Author doesn't mention it, but the demise of skeuomorphism and slow death of
late 00's hipsterism (in the sense of fetishizing historical aesthetics in a
modern context) goes hand-in-hand with the disappearance of steampunk.

~~~
egypturnash
Man I fucking miss skeuomorphism these days. I'm so damn tired of everything
being text floating on bright white backgrounds. I live in a white apartment
that I can't paint, at least put some texture and color in my virtual spaces
where it's just about free.

~~~
theandrewbailey
I never liked the in-your-face skeuomorphism that Apple did. I would like
modern UIs with subtle 3D cues, like Windows 95 had. I don't think that's a
huge ask.

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pram
Success did it in. The Zybourne Clock was the ultimate implementation and
perfection of the genre. Steampunk disappeared shortly after because there was
nothing more left to achieve.

~~~
12elephant
What is the Zybourne Clock? A quick google shows that it is a defunct game?

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Lammy
It was an idea for a community-designed video game on the Something Awful
forums. This is a much better summary:
[https://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Zybourne_Clock.html](https://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Zybourne_Clock.html)

References to Zybourne Clock made it into some pretty high-profile places
thanks to former goons becoming adults and working their way into various
industries:
[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Johnny](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Johnny)

~~~
NikkiA
I think "Community designed ChronoTrigger rip-off" would be more apt

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0xDEEPFAC
The author suggests the correlation between searches for "steampunk" happening
around Sept and Oct are due to iPhone sales which is interesting.

Here is an alternative theory though - what if its more related to Halloween?

~~~
Finnucane
In the 1990s steampunk was just what we called whatever it was that Tim
Powers, James Blaylock, and KW Jeter were writing, and now it is costume
goggles you can get at the Party City at the local mall.

~~~
grahamburger
I thought the steampunk genre was born with Wild Wild West - that awful Will
Smith movie from '99\. That's what I remember from living through it. I would
actually have a bit more respect for steampunk as a subculture if it's genesis
resided elsewhere - that movie was so ridiculously stupid that steampunk has
been tainted for me by association.

Edit to add: apologies all around, dear steampunk enthusiasts! Fwiw Steampunk
really didn't enter anything close to the mainstream in my corner of the U.S.
until that movie came out, and afterwards seemed to be everywhere I looked, so
I don't think it was a totally unreasonable assumption. (And yes, I knew the
movie was based on older material, but didn't know to what extent the visual
aesthetic had already been defined.) As penance I will purchase one Steampunk
item from my local costume store and wear it to my next all-hands work
meeting.

~~~
krapp
No, steampunk as an aesthetic goes at least as far back as Jules Verne and
H.G. Wells, and the term comes from the 1980s.

~~~
Finnucane
Steampunk is a modern retro movement. It is not Verne and Wells, but modern
writers writing in a Wellsian mode. Why this should have come formed around a
group of writers who, perhaps not coincidentally, had in their younger days
been friends with Philip Dick, is unknown.

Gibson and Sterling were actually somewhat late to the game.

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spbyrne
I really don't think Steampunk is tied to the iPhone in any way. "steampunk
was a cultural response to the ultimate technological zeitgeist, the iPhone"
is a pretty bold claim.

~~~
toxican
It's like someone picked two topics out of a hat (iPhone, Steampunk) and was
tasked with writing an article about them. iPhones (and smartphones in
general) were definitely a cultural phenomenon, but there's literally nothing
tangible connecting them to Steampunk aside from the author's shallow, fluffed
up wordsmithing.

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thrower123
You can't swing a dead cat through the Steam game listings without hitting
something Steampunk inspired. They aren't brand new, but Frostpunk, Forgotten
Anne, and They Are Billions are all since the article claims Steampunk peaked,
and they have done quite well.

It's possible that the aesthetic has just become so ubiquitous that it doesn't
bear noticing anymore in that context.

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bregma
Steampunk not dead. It's just that we discovered retrofuturism instead and
graduated from the Victorian age that never was into the space age that never
will be.

~~~
taneq
I like the way you say "discovered" as if raygun gothic was always there just
waiting for someone to stumble onto it. :)

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mattkevan
It became too cliche. As soon as it became associated with glueing a few cogs
to a top hat it had to die.

~~~
tinus_hn
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA)

Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)

------
toxican
What's more likely? The iPhone has some hidden, subtle responsibility for the
death of Steampunk -or- something niche like Steampunk found mainstream
success, over saturated the pop culture market, then fizzled away back to
something niche again?

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daveslash
Off topic from the Article, but I like contrast between Steampunk and
Dieselpunk. I find Steampunk optimistic about technology and Dieselpunk
pessimistic. A motif in steampunk is that technology is here to enlighten and
save us -- it's something to be welcomed with open arms. Diselpunk treats
technology as something of we aught to be cautious. In that way, I think the
2000's, into the early 2010's were optomistic. In general, I'd assert that we
are collectively much more cautious about technology today than we were then.

 _" I like the word "dieselpunk" if you are doing something like 'Weird World
War II'. I think that makes perfect sense. But to me, World War I is the
dividing point where modernity goes from being optimistic to being
pessimistic. Because when you put the words "machine" and "gun" together, they
both change. At that point, war is no longer about a sense of adventure and
chivalry and a way of testing your nation's level of manhood; it's become
industrial, and horrible. So playing around with that border between
optimistic steampunk and a much more pessimistic dieselpunk, which is more
about Nazis, was kind of interesting to me because early in the war we were
definitely kind of on the steampunk side of that._" ~ Scott Westerfeld, via
Wikipedia.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieselpunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieselpunk)

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Animats
Huh? I was active in steampunk events from 2010 to 2018 [1][2], and never
heard anyone even _mention_ an "iPhone".

[1] [https://vimeo.com/124065314](https://vimeo.com/124065314) [2]
[http://www.aetherltd.com](http://www.aetherltd.com)

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coldtea
> _How the iPhone popularized steampunk… and how the iPhone killed it off_

The iPhone had very little to do with either popularizing or killing
steampunk... Its moment come and went (as far as a little more mass appeal
goes) before the iPhone...

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ape4
Still alive in Coldwater, Ontario.
[https://www.steampunkfestivalcoldwater.com/](https://www.steampunkfestivalcoldwater.com/)

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busterarm
Personally, I could never stand the Steampunk aesthetic -- probably because of
the people adorning it -- and I'm glad the world has moved on.

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blendo
Steampunk helps me come to grips with the industrial revolution, 150 years on.
In an age of gigahertz radio waves and nanosecond computer speeds, I like
thinking about 1 Hertz, 1 Volt, 1 Ohm, and 1 Farad (!) alt-histories.

As the story said,

> It’s about using design to make the working of technology scrutable through
> an object’s aesthetic.

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jimbob45
If one takes Steampunk to be technological advancements beyond (but inspired
by) the era coupled with an intense devotion to the style of the era, then
Stranger Things could be considered the spiritual successor to Steampunk.

~~~
dragonwriter
But Steampunk is just the Age of Steam version; the prototypical version is
Cyberpunk. Which is actually inspired by roughly the same era as ST, but
focussing on different elements of the era (and usual set farther forward from
the inspiring era.)

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SolaceQuantum
Steampunk hasn't really died, but more evolved- see branching movements like
new weird, silkpunk, slipstream, cli-fi, hyperreallism etc.

~~~
uncletaco
Is silkpunk even a thing outside of Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty (which is
amazing btw)?

~~~
pmoriarty
I've never heard of that, but the steampunk aesthetic is present in
Dishonored, for example, and many other computer games.

Steampunk is alive and well, and (arguably) more alive than ever. There are
steampunk conventions, steampunk meetups, steampunk games, steampunk magicians
even. This didn't used to be the case. It started as an obscure literary
subgenre that few people had heard of. Asking on HN about steampunk 10 years
ago would have probably drawn mostly blank looks. Now many people actually
know what it is, and even participate.

~~~
sp332
Of the top 20 most popular HN submissions with "steampunk" in the title,
including this one, 6 were 9 or more years ago.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=steampunk](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=steampunk)

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gameswithgo
I'm planning to do a steampunky pc build soon! steampunk lives!

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Porthos9K
I hate upvoting articles posted on Medium, but this one deserves it.

