Category: Steampunk Guest Posts

Year of the Weird West?

July 27, 2011

A guest post by David Mark Brown

I, like many of us, have fond memories of lying around in my tighty-whities and watching Westerns with my equally unclad father and brother (we lived in the country). But since becoming a writer, multiple sources have cautioned me that being labeled “Western” is the kiss of death. It’s like the Black Spot with mange, or the dude with herpes playing spin the bottle. But maybe not for much longer.

(more…)

Going Mainsteam: A Three Step Plan in Taking Steampunk to the Masses

June 28, 2011

A guest post by Tee Morris

Steampunk, a recent trend in literature, fashion, and music… that’s been “a fad” since the Seventies. 1979, to be exact.

People tend to gloss over that little fact, and while some sneer at it as publishing’s “current flavor of the month” the term “steampunk” was originally coined by K. W. Jeter in a correspondence to Locus Magazine:

“Enclosed is a copy of my 1979 novel Morlock Night … a prime piece of evidence in the great debate as to who in “the Powers/Blaylock/Jeter fantasy triumvirate” was writing in the ‘gonzo-historical manner’ first…

Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like ‘steampunks’, perhaps…”

Here we are, 32 years later, and still as Pip and I were writing Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel, we were asked again and again:

“Steampunk? What’s that?”

(more…)