The Guts of the Machine: A Steampunk Primer
Roger Whitson, Managing Editor
In 1987, K.W. Jeter became more fascinated with writing in the “gonzo-historical manner,” particularly as it is associated with nineteenth-century Victorian fantasies: “I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective for [Tim] Powers, [James] Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of that era; like ‘steampunks,’ perhaps.”
The more noir- and hacker-inspired cyberpunk genre had been popular for years when Jeter wrote these lines in a letter to the science fiction magazine Locus. As it emerged in novels, video games, and films, steampunk turned its attention instead to maker culture. Maker culture features projects that are often computationally-enhanced using microcontrollers such as the Arduino to create spectacular effects. Gatherings such as maker faires often include projects with giant cogs, elaborate and eloquent design, and quirky yet functional gadgetry. While they incorporate contemporary engineering or computational control, maker culture projects are also built with the historical spirit of Victorian art-and-crafts movement founder William Morris. Writing in 1877 of the connection between making and art , Morris said that “[t]o give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it.”
Ultima, one of the progenitors of steampunk in video games.
The early years of steampunk included novels such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine, in which Charles Babbage successfully created his mechanical computer and inaugurated the information age in the Victorian period; and Michael Moorcock’s The Warlord of the Air, in which World War I never happened and Britain expanded its colonial rule over the world. While the maker-culture ethos existed in steampunk from the beginning, steampunk was also decidedly less “punk” than its cyberpunk cousin. Instead, these novels explore the connection between technology and history. The Difference Engine, in particular, is an experiment in “what-if,” depicting a John Keats who is not a Romantic poet but a kinotrope operator. Kinotropes are screens comprised of several spinning, colored wooden blocks that create images in much the same way as pixels create computer images. By tinkering with history much like engineers tinker with technology, Gibson and Sterling show us how slight changes in technology can completely transform our historical experience. All-too-often steampunk has been synonymous with nostalgia for colonialism, slavery, and some of the worst aspects of white supremacy. Even so, its dedication to understanding the “guts of the machine” singled steampunk out as a particularly useful sub-genre for a variety of alternate histories.
Steampunk emerged in computer and role-playing games in the 1980s. Mike Mahady claims that The Eidolon, a computer game released in 1985 by LucasFilm, was the first to incorporate “the steampunk aesthetic.” The Eidolon is a fantasy game, featuring dragons and other fantasy races in a maze-like dungeon adventure. Brass gauges appear at the bottom of the screen, representing the character’s health. A more fleshed out steampunk experience appeared in 1990’s Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire. The Savage Empire reproduces the white-savior narratives that dominated Victorian and early American adventure fiction. In a plot lifted from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars, your character is transported to the “primitive and savage world of Eodon.” You’re tasked with uniting the tribes and their “exotic princesses” to battle the threat of the gigantic-ant Empire of the Mirmidex. Ultima created several games with plot points taken from Victorian fiction. 1991’s Martian Dreams features a “bullet ship” shot from a canon on Earth to land on Mars, an idea first explored in Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon. The majority of the game involves trying to survive on the harsh conditions of Mars. Ultima, like many pen-and-paper role playing games in the 1980s and 90s, created several scenerios involving steampunk ideas and Victorian adventures. Many of these were quickly ported into computer games. Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, released a Spelljammer adventure in 1993 called Pirates of Realmspace, in which magical crystal spheres enabled sailing ships to travel between planets.
Sunless Sea (2015)
More recent steampunk games emphasize the tactile quality of technology and the gonzo-adventures of Victorian fiction. JRPGs such as Chronotrigger (1995) and the Final Fantasy series (1987-present) feature Victorian technologies existing seamlessly with magic, showing how steampunk continues to have a lasting influence on role-playing games. Platformers like Teslagrad (2013) and the Steamworld series of games (2010-present) feature worlds filled with electrical and magnetic gizmos, illustrating that such technologies help provide fascinating environments as players jump and climb. Interactive narratives and rogue-likes such as Fallen London (2009), and its sequels Sunless Sea (2015) and Sunless Skies (2019), along with 80 Days (2014), suggest that the alternate history framework of steampunk provides a useful blueprint for procedurally-generated worlds and branching storylines. Steampunk even influenced the development of Souls-like games, such as Bloodborne (2009) and Code Vein (2019); and city-building games like Frostpunk (2018).
Bioshock Infinite, or the difficulty of representing revolution and women of color.
Yet it is in two of the more popular games from recent years that we find the most compelling connection between technology and history. The Bioshock series (2007-2013) challenges the more regressive elements of steampunk by satirizing the ideas of Ayn Rand and white supremacist nativists and taking them to their logical conclusion. The series has received justified criticism for its depiction of social revolution and race. For instance, Bioshock Infinite (2013) draws a false equivalency between the revolutionary violence of black workers and the systemic violence of white supremacy. Even so, its transformation of Randian ideas into the underwater city of Rapture in Bioshock (2007) and Bioshock 2 (2010), in which elitists enhance their bodies by injecting genetic material, shows how steampunk can disrupt the nostalgic dreams of libertarians and white supremacists. The Dishonored series (2012-2017) takes place in a fictional plague-infested city but gameifies alternate history by tracking the amount of “chaos” the player creates when killing people or destroying parts of the city. “Chaos” impacts the amount of plague present in the city, the NPCs that help you on your journey, and even the ending of the game. The fantastic technology of the game is made from whale oil, which powers everything from walls of lights that disintegrate your character to steam-enhanced robotic soliders, while also creating corruption in the government and fueling the plague.
Dishonored series (2012-2017): Steampunk as immersive sim.
While many of these games explore alternate histories and “gonzo” Victorian concepts, it’s notable how little video games have explored the “multicultural steampunk” settings featured in several novels. One of many such examples is Nisi Shawl’s Everfair (2016), which takes place in alternate history Belgian Congo that was never colonized by European powers. Shawl turns the Congo into an imaginary utopia for escaped slaves. Such a concept shows the power of alternate history in steampunk, yet also underscores the power dynamics of the gaming industry. Multicultural steampunk novels and short stories are relatively new. Given the waning in popularity if steampunk settings and ideas in recent years, it’s doubtful video games will see the sheer diversity of settings and authors that flourished in multicultural steampunk. Yet, more recent games like Frostpunk show that perhaps people aren’t done with Victorian alternate histories. Let’s hope that future designers operationalize the potential of steampunk alternate history by adding non-European settings and decolonizing the subgenre.
