Review: Why is Steampunk so Terrible?

This is a topic that comes up a lot. Steampunk is the growth of mechanical technology around and after the American Civil War, the time when we decided to invent cartridge guns for rifles and revolvers (allowing rapid and accurate fire), steam engines became useful and common, and we haven't yet learned how to do things with electricity. This period of time, considered "gaslamp" in some areas, is also the time of airships and biplanes. Technology was ornate, and since plastic hasn't been discovered yet, so brass fulfills the same purpose for far greater weight. Leather and canvas and lots of buttons are also a big deal, since there is no zipper invented yet. Ornate handmade workmanship is common, which in the modern times of bland ugly functional technology of today explains their appeal. Clothes fitted then, and took a lot of labor to make, also making them expensive.

There have been some successes with steampunk, like the Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey Junior. They're sort of steampunk. They have the technology and the punk, with Downey snarking his way through Holmes' lines. The Lost World (same author: Arthur Conan Doyle) had a TV series about a mesa in South America with living dinosaurs, victorians with rifles and tea sets,

The cause of steampunk's failure is similar to what happened to Cyberpunk when the Hollywood scumbags tried to abuse it and turn it into marketing. The punk side isn't represented when corporate interests take over. And the punk side is important.

The other problem with Steampunk is that its originally based on Wild Wild West, a very corny 1960's TV show with a similar appeal to original TV batman. And the same sort of audience. The most serious approach to the topic was called The Difference Engine (by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling), and later followed up by Diamond Age (by Neal Stephenson), which was nearly serious. The problem with both books is the Difference Engine wasn't very interesting, and Diamond Age required a lot of technology that is improbable ever existing, as well as takes place in a strange future. Diamond Age is worth reading, Difference Engine is not. Sorry, Bill. It is not your best work. Stephenson liked the topic and switched to historical fiction from the Enlightenment, which is tragically long and dull so it doesn't have a lot of fan. He's famous enough he can publish as-is, but if it had been edited it probably would have been more readable.

So what happened to the genre after these two breakthroughs? Well, the YA writers, who write Mary Sue tramps that are universally described thus:

She's super popular and not fat and everybody likes her and she gets the boy cuz he's SUPER romantic and mysterious and she beats all the bad girls and always has the snarky comeback, because boys are simple and only girls are smart, and .... 

Stephanie Meyer and Gail Carriger are big in this problem, and their work is honestly terrible. And it sells, to girls with terrible self esteem problems and probably doomed to be social rejects and either welfare moms or cat ladies. YA for girls is an atrocity against fiction. It's a reminder that girls are vain and creepy and fans of these books would probably not reproduce in a world without Democrat social services that exploit our taxes. Most YA steampunk is Jane Austen rewritten with gears and coal.

The YA writers took the Steampunk themes, ruined them with Mary Sues, and then dominated all teen publishing. And all of it sucks. I'm not aware of a single example in the modern version that is worth reading. Gail Carrigers's Waistcoats and Weaponry makes you want to vomit. Clockwork Girl was straight communism. Meyers' Cities of Glass reviews as more "victimhood tears" remake of Twilight. I did not bother reading either series since they're clearly for welfare moms. I tried Jim Butcher's Aeronaut's Windlass and did not like it. Read the whole thing... but it wasn't good. Sorry Jim. Any setting with floating islands could be written MUCH lighter and WAY more interesting. The need for fog-monsters and this silly magical system does not appeal to me. I think I would write a more interesting setting with better exploration themes rather than monster-wars.

This reminds me that while there aren't good BOOKS for Steampunk, there's a number of good comics and anime which use the themes well. Fullmetal Alchemist, Heat Guy J, Big O, plus some space based versions like Last Exile all use steampunk and dieselpunk themes and visuals and they do them well. Even Avatar Korra uses a kind of steampunk. Steampunk CAN be done right, and I'll write a separate post about that.