Steampunk Magazine #7
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STEAMPUNK MAGAZINE New and Future worlds Lifestyle Mad Science theory fiction #7 The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. - Rita Mae Brown Sudden Death “Calm down, Maston,” said Mr. Barbicane. “I merely said it was im- possible. I never said we wouldn’t find a way to do it.” - Molly Brown The Selene Gardening Society The cover, ‘Kids These Days’, was illustrated by Paul Ballard My dear punks of steam, Lords and ladies, doxies and dandies, workers, where are we going? The only way we can lead is by rakes and fakes. Have I insulted everyone? Let me example: By getting out of our houses, by recycling, know if I’ve missed you and I shall correct the error upcycling and reimagining; by supporting the live at my earliest convenience. artistic performances of musicians, actors, danc- I think we have all felt that persistent itch under ers, all of the above or something else entirely; and our skin. The feeling that things here, the world by knowing our own flaws and breaking through that we live in ... somehow isn’t right. The feeling, them. in fact, that something is wrong. But no matter how So think of this issue not as a map, but as a set broken or tarnished you feel our society is, you’d be of tools. We have lessons of cultural domination a damned fool to throw it away. As foolish as you from the past, both through politics and war, and would be to discard a broken chest of drawers, or through the far more insidious medium of popular a pocket watch with a smashed face. These things fiction. We have some lessons from the present, aren’t suddenly devoid of function, rather their too, suggesting we might not be as clever and class- function has changed. A broken watch becomes less and free was we like to think we are. And, of jewellery and a broken chest of drawers becomes course, we have plenty of suggestions about what a writing desk. We’re Steampunks: Putting things to do with the future: From dancing the night to good use that others have discarded as broken is away to literally raising your own country from the what we do. deathless oceans. At the moment, the path of least resistance The simple truth of human nature is that you for Steampunk is for it to become an aesthetic: A can not bully or coerce people to change, that is, if meme devoid of meaning. It’s a path that leads to you do not want to stoke their fears and their prej- buying Steampunk Halloween outfits in Wal*Mart udices. The only thing you can do is inspire them. and Tesco in five years time, and yet another song If we inspire you, then go out there and infect oth- about Victoria’s glorious Empire conquering Mars ers. You know the great thing about inspiration? playing on MTV. Individuality in Steampunk is It’s a system driven by positive feedback: The more paramount. We’re not insisting everyone obey our of it there is, the more of it there is! ‘vision’ of Steampunk, but if I ever see anyone in So tell me: What have you done to change the a ‘sexy clockwork automaton’ costume they picked world today? up off a supermarket shelf I’m going to beat them to death with their plastic cog mini-skirt. I digress —Dylan Fox ... The future isn’t some kind of diffuse thing that will happen the day after tomorrow. The revolution started yesterday. We have to scratch that itch, but what kind of society do we want to live in? What kind of society do we want to create for our Steam- punk community? Do we want a vital, sustainable community or do we want a group of usernames on a message board? Who are we, where are we, Contents narrative features The Mary Golden . 22 You Can’t Stay Neutral on a by Lance Hall Moving Train . 4 by Margaret Killjoy Liberty . 62 by C. Allegra Hawksmoor Towards a Brave New Land . 8 by Professor Offlogic interviews On Race and Steampunk . 16 by Jaymee Goh The Brady Bunch of Calcutta 1910 . 54 an interview with Sunday Driver The Future of Steampunk Fashion . 32 Less Brass Goggles, by Libby Bulloff More Brass Knuckles . 72 an interview with TMTWNBBFN The Man Who Ate Germany . 36 by Dylan Fox poetry Shimmies and Sprockets . 48 by Ay-leen the Peacemaker Museum . 30 by Brenda Hammack All Fashions of Lovliness . 58 by Allie Kerr Alice’s Tumble . .44 by Katie Casey Hartmann the Anarchist . 80 The White Rabbit’s Other Story . 46 Reviews . 82 by Dylan Fox Comic . 88 by Doctor Geof You Can’t Stay neutral on a moving train (Even if it’s Steam-Powered) by Margaret Killjoy Illustration by K. W. Moore uch has been said in the past few years about steampunk and politics. Is steampunk political? Is it radical? If it’s political, isM it anarchist or socialist or democratic or techno-utopian or neo- luddite? Yes. On all counts. Since day one of SteamPunk Magazine, months before the first issue saw the light of day, we’ve been under attack for our explicitly political position. “We have no interest in publishing pro-colonial, racist, homophobic, sexist, or otherwise useless work,” has been in our submission guidelines since SteamPunk Magazine was a static webpage and a fantasy. “How can you be against colonialism and be steampunk?” asked the comments in one particularly vitriolic LiveJournal thread. How indeed? Well, for one: by being steampunk, not neo-colonial or neo-Victorian. As the former editor of SPM, I can say assuredly that I didn’t set out to subvert steampunk towards politics: I was sim- ply responding to what steampunk was (and, I would like to argue, should be again). Steampunk began as a radical strain of fiction (al- beit a somewhat satiric one), and it truly breaks my heart to see what it has become. This is not to say that steampunk is or should be about politics. Steampunk is not a party platform, and SteamPunk Magazine has never intended to be a propaganda tool for any position (aside the steampunk one). I believe that this is partly what people are confused about. Apolitical is a Political Position Howard Zinn died a few weeks ago. He doesn’t really have anything to do with steampunk (aside from learning his politics as a poor kid in early twentieth century New York, which is pretty steampunk if you ask me). But he wrote a book called You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train, the title of which you’ve no doubt noticed that I’ve ap- propriated for this article. Apolitical is a political position. Apolitical is a vote for the status quo. The status quo, you might have noticed, is doing a fine job of destroying the earth (and with it, all of us). I think people get confused by this because when they hear, “You should be political,” they think they’re being told to (in the USA, at least) be active as a democrat or a republican. Or if you’re really out there: A libertarian or a green. That isn’t politics, that’s a puppet show, a bread and circus. It’s the difference between watching the superbowl and playing a game of football with your friends. If we can dream up alternate worlds full of scheming scientists and smoking machines, are we really so bereft of imagination that we You Can't Stay Neutral on a Moving Train | 5 can only imagine politics on the convenient “liberal And then there’s steampunk proper: The first vs. conservative” axis that’s been provided for us? generation that consisted primarily of K.W. Jeter, When we talk about politics, we talk about be- James Blaylock, and Tim Powers. In the article The ing concerned with the over-arching systems of Nineteenth Century Roots of Steampunk that serves control. About the ways that we organize society. as an introduction to the 2008 anthology Steam- punk, (edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer), Jess Nev- Our Political Roots ins writes, “Steampunk, like all good punk, rebels To be blunt, steampunk has always been political. against the system it portrays (Victorian London The finest and most important works of steam- or something quite like it), critiquing its treatment punk have been, perhaps without exception, influ- of the underclass, its validation of the privileged at enced by anti-authoritarian or anti-colonial trends the cost of everyone else, its lack of mercy, its cut- in society. throat capitalism.” Jules Verne wrote his breakthrough novel Into more contemporary steampunk, look at Around the World in Eighty Days about his friend Alan Moore, author of The League of Extraordi- Nadar—a radical Parisian socialite who pioneered nary Gentleman, which is by far one of the most hot air balloons and put them to use during the influential steampunk works. Alan Moore is also Paris Commune (and took the first aerial photo- an anarchist (which, by the way, is no more real- graphs, and many of the radical milleu of his time, istically represented by bearded men with bombs such as Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin). than “communism” is by the Soviet Union). I asked Verne wrote Nemo, an anti-civilization touch- him about the central question of this article, about stone. And he wrote a sympathetic, explicitly an- how politics are a part of everything we choose to archist protagonist in his book The Survivors of the do.