Up, Up and Away!
The term aviation was coined in 1863 by French aeronautic engineer Guillaume Joseph Gabriel de La Landelle. The term comes from “avis,” which is bird in Latin and embodies our desire to drift through the sky like our winged friends. Steampunk literature, movies and art are full of hot air balloons, dirigibles (which are filled with gas rather than air) and all manners of flying machines and after writing my Wheels Whir and Away You Go! post I decided I couldn’t stop at just Steampunk vehicles that were subject to the laws of gravity. So check out my gallery and let me know which one is your favorite by leaving a comment below.
Click on the thumbnails for larger images.
Steampunk Book Review: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1
Vol 1 Cover art
Steampunk is all about literature, and nowhere else will you find so many Victorian-era characters rubbing elbows as in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen from Vertigo. The creator, Alan Moore (whose brilliant mind also brought us The Watchmen) and illustrator Kevin O’Neill take their audience on a wild ride which spans several classic works of science fiction and creates a way for them to occupy the same universe.
The story opens with the corpulent Campion Bond (an ancestor of James Bond) who convinces Mina Murray (aka Wilhemina Harker’s maiden name in Dracula, 1897) to go on a recruitment mission on behalf of the British government. She picks up the opium-besotted ex-adventurer Alan Quartermain (King Solomon’s Mine, 1885) with the help of Captain Nemo and his submarine the Nautilus (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1870). After a jaunt into The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) for the title character and a school run by notorious fictional dominatrix Rosa Coote to pick up The Invisible Man (1897), the league is ready for action.
They head next to London’s East End, where the nefarious Fu Manchu (referred to only as “The Doctor” for copyright reasons) has stolen a valuable mineral that allows heavier than air flight. He is at war with another crime lord on the West End (none other than Professor Moriarty of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894), and the conflict is on the verge of costing countless lives. Can the heroes beat the bad guys, and the clock, to save the day?
This is a really fun book and I definitely recommend it for fans of Victorian-era fiction. Over the many iterations of the series literally hundreds of literary figures and places grace the pages, so it is kind of like a who’s who of Victoriana. I occasionally have issues with some of the liberties Moore takes with core character traits, but otherwise it is a great display of imagination. As a bonus, if you get the first volume you also get 30 pages of cover art, games, stories and fake historical factoids in the spirit of the Victorian era.
Alan and Sundered Veil
Fair warning, Volume 2 goes darker, dirtier and deadlier, and you can read all about it next week when I review it!
Have you read this book? What did you think?
The Lady ParaNorma By My Pet Skeleton
The Lady ParaNorma by My Pet Skeleton (Vincent Marcone)
Mechanical Menagerie: Under the Sea
Automatons need not be confined to human-shaped robots when the whole animal kingdom is out there for mad scientists to toy with! I absolutely love the combination of the organic with the constructed so I am always collecting cool images of “mechanimals.” If you have an image to share or you see something that has been mis-attributed please let me know by leaving a comment below.
Click on any thumbnail to open a gallery of larger images. You can also see lots of Steampunk octopus and squid in my Steampunk Sourcebook: Cephlapods post.
Check out this amazing video by Pes Film, whose 2013 “Fresh Guacamole” was nominated for an oscar. .
Some Steamy Offerings From Lost Bohemian
I was visiting a friend over the holidays and told her about this blog and what Steampunk is all about. Her reaction?
“All of that stuff that I really like, it has a name! And that name is Steampunk.”
Welcome to the fold, sister.
She was so inspired after our little chat that she created a beautiful, hand painted decorative plate, which is available for $250. You can reach her through her Lost Bohemian Facebook page.
And in addition to drawing and painting, she is also a world-class crocheter. I found this adorable scarflet for $40 just today on her website. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.
Be Still My Clockwork Heart
For the most part, I find the valentine heart shape to be overused and cliche in the same way putting the word “dream” on everything is super lame. But, I had faith that there were Steampunk artists out there that would give me some interesting, evocative and beautiful heart-themed art and jewelry to enjoy so in honor of the impending feast of St. Valentine I created this gallery of Steampunk hearts. Most of these lovelies are available for purchase. Click on the thumbnails to open a larger gallery or hover over the them to get the artists’ names (most are from Etsy).
Steampunk Sourcebook: Cephlapods
What is it about our many legged friends that makes them a popular trope in Steampunk?
۞ Monster Cephlapods have been the major focus of several classic works of Science Fiction and Fantasy such as H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulu, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the 1830 Tennyson poem The Kraken. There is also a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story called Horror of the Heights that features a flying tentacled monster. In more recent times both the Kraken and Cthulu-like monsters have made appearances in Hollywood blockbusters like Hellboy and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (though you also get a good look at the Kraken after it is death in Pirates of the Caribbean: World’s End).
۞ Their bodies are also reminiscent of complex machines. The long skinny tentacles are like wires or tubes and their movement is powered by water, not unlike steam vehicles. As a bonus their bodies kind of look like they are wearing a helmet and goggles all the time, and if Steampunk had an official symbol I’m pretty sure it would be a pair of goggles (or maybe a gear).
۞ Brian Kesinger, the talented artist behind Otto and Victoria and the book Walking Your Octopus: Your Guidebook to the Domesticated Cephlapod, did an interview for ComicMix.com, and when asked about his choice to draw an octopus as a couture pet he answered:
“I find octopuses extremely fun to draw. It is a real challenge inventing eight different things for them to do in every image. They are nature’s original multi-tasker and they certainly have captured the imagination of a lot of people. Along with the squid and other Cephalopods, octopuses seem to be a sort of theme animal for steampunk so when I set forth trying to render an image of a high class Victorian lady and her boutique pet the choice was obvious. What was not obvious was how popular Otto has become since I first drew him a year ago. He has inspired fan art, tattoos and I’ve even seen girls cosplay Victoria and conventions around the country! And for that I am so grateful and it keeps me drawing octopus.”
Cephlapods are fascinating creatures that are about as far away from human as you can get.
۞ I used to work at an aquarium so I got a chance to spend lots of time observing octopus and my personal favorite cuttlefish. These invertebrates can move in three dimensions, jetting around the water column and feeding on smaller animals.
They are also totally visually stunning. Undulating tentacles aside, many of them can change color and shape at will, which makes them masters of disguise. Want to have your mind blown? Check out the PBS documentary below for more information about cuttlefish camouflage.
I’ve collected just a sampling of the Steampunk art featuring our many-legged friends out there on the interwebs. In most cases you can get the artist’s name by simply hovering over each image and you can open a gallery of larger images by clicking on any thumbnail. If you see something that is mislabeled or you know who is behind one of my unlabeled entries please let me know so I can give the artist the credit s/he deserves.
Click on any thumbnail to open the gallery of larger images.
For Whom the Gear Turns 