“Imprisoned for life aboard a zeppelin that floats high above a fantastic metropolis, the greeting-card writer Harold Winslow pens his memoirs. His only companions are the disembodied voice of Miranda Taligent, the only woman he has ever loved, and the cryogenically frozen body of her father Prospero, the genius and industrial magnate who drove her insane.

The tale of Harold’s life is also one of an alternate reality, a lucid waking dream in which the well-heeled have mechanical men for servants, where the realms of fairy tales can be built from scratch, where replicas of deserted islands exist within skyscrapers.. As Harold’s childhood infatuation with Miranda changes over twenty years to love and then to obsession, the visionary inventions of her father also change Harold’s entire world, transforming it from a place of music and miracles to one of machines and noise. And as Harold heads toward a last desperate confrontation with Prospero to save Miranda’s life, he finds himself an unwitting participant in the creation of the greatest invention of them all: the perpetual motion machine.

Beautifully written, stunningly imagined, and wickedly funny, The Dream of Perpetual Motion is a heartfelt meditation on the place of love in a world dominated by technology”

In addition, check out their Steampunk  Art Gallery and download their Free Screensaver.

The release of issue #11 of the Gatehouse Gazette earlier this month brought forth quite a floodwave of indignation. The magazine was dedicated to “Victorientalism”, a portmanteau of “Victorian” and “Orientalism” that is used to refer to modern day reimaginations of nineteenth century depictions of Asia.

In its editorial, the Gatehouse Gazette assessed that Victorientalism allows those “incorrigible aficionados of Oriental romance [...] to reject the chains of reality and all the racism and guilt” associated with the imperial experience. “Isn’t this, after all, steampunk’s very premise? To delve into a past that never really was.”

This claim draw some fierce reactions, from Jaymee Goh for instance who opined that the very term Victorientalism is a racist one that “maintains the East-West dichotomous construct that Others cultures.” Dru Pagliassotti agreed and added that Victorientalism should only be used in a “pejorative sense”.

Both authors cited Edward Said who in 1978 published Orientalism: a passionate charge against those nineteenth century artists, historians and novelists who engendered Asia as the unequivocal representation of otherness. Goh made a good point when she reiterated Said by stating that, “Orientalism as an idea is really about what Europe thinks about the East, which really means, it’s all about Europe, not about Asia.”

Said however went a little further than that and claimed that every Westerner, “in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” Unsurprisingly, those who accept this premise are quick to blame the Gatehouse Gazette for reviving racist ideas.

In defense of Victorientalism, I stressed the many shortcomings of Said’s argument. Orientalism, I wrote, “is not steeped in bigotry, nor was its purpose ever to facilitate the colonial subjugation of non-Western peoples.”

Craig B. Daniel, a Gazette columnist, added that although there “is something wrong with exoticising the other,” one cannot fully comprehend European nor colonial history without addressing Orientalism. In Daniel’s own words: “you can’t understand Europe without understanding how it reacts to the rest of the world.” Marcus Rauchfuß, who also contributes to the magazine, noted that, “To say that focusing on the glorious parts of the the Victorian Age means forgetting the plight of the common people is plain hypocritical.” There will always be nostalgia and Victorientalism is no exception: it doesn’t deny the horrors of imperialism; it does ignore them, for the sake of fiction.

This sort of reminiscence is, of course, what constitutes steampunk altogether. Not so much the implications of Victorientalism then, rather its very name have offended people. Ay-leen, for one, believes that we could romanticize the East, “if the political and social effects of Orientalism were dead and gone. However, because it is very much alive today—causing damaging stereotypes and promoting racist mindsets—then perpetuating the glorified stereotypes of the Orient only serves to hurt the people of color they were based on.”

The term “Asian-inspired steampunk” has been suggested at several points as an alternative. This would be less upsetting, its promoters argue, and less marginalizing of non-Western steampunk enthusiasts.

The debate on the whole is most welcome in today’s steampunk discourse. With the genre so rooted in colonial era literature and heavily borrowing from Victorian era sentiments, it is healthy to discuss the perhaps inherently tainted perceptions that make up the steampunk mindset. We might have to accept, as Piechur suggested, that “steampunk is a politically incorrect genre.”

The Fowler Plant:

The Boiler Shop:

The Large Tool Shop:

The “Smalls” Shop (where such things as pistons, slides, eccentrics, crossheads and the like were made):

The Erecting shop, where it all came together:

and an example of what the end result was – a K5 ploughing engine.

“Fool’s Gold”

The Parasol Protectorate Series books are comedies of manners set in Victorian London: full of vampires, dirigibles, and tea. If you have yet to pick up the first book in the set “Soulless“, now is the time to do so before you fall so far behind.

It also should be noted that Soulless can be nominated for a Hugo Award .

Queen Street Mill 500Hp tandem steam engine

Milton Rally – 2004

Found over at Smee’s Stuff

“What you get when you mix an 1875 Eastlake Victorian platform rocking chair with a Permobil C300 Power wheelchair and a few trips to an antique store. Toss in screaming digital amped sound system, an event triggered sound processor, oh and a portable smoke machine!”

Well Done, That Man!

“The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist. If you’re looking for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them.”

“Join us March 20th, 2010 in celebrating wondrous and curious places all over the world. RSVP for expeditions and tours at obscuraday.com.”

Some events already scheduled: (see the website for details)

“In San Francisco we’re descending en masse to the Musee Mecanique and then going to visit the clock and orrerys at the Long Now Foundation.
At Stanford University they’re showing us around the pneumatic dispatch system.In Mountain View, CA they’re holding a demonstration of the Difference Engine for us.
In New York, there’s a private tour of the Radio guy’s collection of science and tech oddities.
In Serbia we’re going to the world’s only Tesla Museum .
In Colorado Springs, the Steampunk Cowboys are leading a tour of a Wild West museum.

These events are all filling up fast (and some are booked solid) – but there’s still room in some and there are more events coming online almost everyday.”

It can be downloaded in several formats from Project Gutenberg

“PWF is the first East Coast event to welcome Steampunks, Neo-Victorians, Retro-futurists, Gas Lamp Fantasists, and any and all others who consider themselves part of steampunk into a weekend long festival celebrating all things steamy!

An interactive and social event for people of all levels of steampunk know-how (yes, even you sitting in the corner of the internet, not sure you know what steampunk is or if you even like it) to communicate, dance, exchange, and explore. Here, you will find representation of the art, culture, fashion, technology, history, gaming, and music of this fascinating and scintillating subculture and genre.

Say you enjoy the post-enlightenment of the Industrial Revolution, or Victorian Era upper-class sensibilities, or the mutated past merged with modern mentalities and counter-culture ethos. Maybe you like the skewed science of “What if?” and the historical settings, or you simply like to look dapper in your top hat. There is something here at the Steampunk World’s Fair for you!”