Anyone have any book suggestions regarding steampunk? i've never read a single book nor watched a single movie, set in a steam punk setting. So i kinda wanted to know more about it >.>.... However i am very familiar with 40k lore, dishounered, and almost every steampunk game, just not a book itself.
I would recommend Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. It's not 'normal' steampunk, perhaps, but it's awesome.
i was also recommended the anime film steam boy Is it a good movie? ... and alright i will definitely check it out!
Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer It's a future/steampunk/victorian retelling/homage to Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, and it's really fantastic. One of my favourite books, and I'm not particularily keen on the steampunk thing. Boneshaker by Cherie Preist is one that has a lot of fans. I couldn't get much into it, but ymmv. It's very steampunk, complete with dirigibles and zombies.
I've never understood why some people consider The Diamond Age to be steam punk. That's the second time I've seen it referred to as such. To me, it's closer to cyber punk than steam punk -- it's set in a possible future, the technology is way out there (nanotechnology so advanced that it seems almost magical), advanced computers and technology in general, in the hands of 'punks' (ie. the common man). It has all the earmarks of Cyberpunk. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent book, probably Stephenson's best. It just doesn't fit my impression of steam punk (not that I'm very familiar with steam punk really, or I might be making my own suggestions).
It was the flagship title in a steampunk English class I took in undergrad. The idea (according to my prof in that course) is that Steampunk is, at it's most basic, Victorian science fiction (which Diamond Age def, is). As an aesthetic/cultural thing, Steampunk is focused on singular made objects, and is basically anti-Ikea. People create and modify things with their hands, and each object is unique. When everyone owns the same mass-produced chair, the object is worthless and the culture in general loses worth. Diamond Age on a musty intellectual level is about the value of objects (and, by extension, the people who make and use those objects). Like I said before, steampunk's not really a genre I grok. Airships and goggles and clockwork automatons are sort of neat, and I love 18th century anything, but it's all so brown and dirty and usually classist and there are much preferable genres. (ps Anathem is Stephenson's best, imo, followed by Snow Crash).
The animation and art of Steam Boy are spectacular, but I thought the story was pretty incomprehensible and driven entirely by a dumb magic MacGuffin. Still, worth watching. I'm reminded of the utterly classic steampunk novel: The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. Which you have to read. It's been a long time since I read it, but Anti-Ice by Stephen Baxter was fun.
I would disagree with your professor. Generally speaking, steam punk features technology composed of anachronistic parts (usually, but not always, steam-powered) to pefrom more modern tasks (eg. computing, air travel, combat). Steam Punk is often set in Victorian times, but that in itself is not what makes it steam punk. So, if the story features steam-powered tanks, and steam-powered computational machines, and so on, it is steam punk, regardless of whether the setting is Victorian England or Ancient Japan or an alien world. The key is the anachronistic nature of the technology. If your SF world has nanotechnology, it's not steam punk.
Quoted for truth. Perdido Street Station (and it's sequels) is some of the best I've read. Doul's Possible sword because much more awesome once I read The Scar and got the reference.
[Warning! Warning! Shameless self-promotion ahead!] If you don't mind reading a forum-based short-story, you might enjoy The Old Codger, by yours truly.
