Comments on: Steampunk as Far Future Science Fiction

By: Waterbug

Waterbug — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:44:22 +0000

I think you are dead on. For my first year as a steampunk I actually thought steampunk was the Victorian aesthetic carried into the present because the keyboard mod was my touchstone. I was so excited I didn’t research the history of steampunk. Only recently did I find out it is suppose to be set in the past.

The ship concept is perfect. Like the Nautilus, only without the baggage. Also works as example of our planet. We are already on a generational ship. It’s just really big and well stocked.

I thought of a story line using the tired time machine to travel through space using both gravity and time as controls. But I’m no writer. I just craved such a story. I hope this idea gels further for you.

By: David Cornelson

David Cornelson — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 05:24:04 +0000

Hey Paul,

You might want to check out The Shadow in the Cathedral, a new commercial Interactive Fiction game by my company, Textfyre. It has a lot of Steampunk elements and follows the historical angle. The central theme is clockwork, hence the series name Klockwerk.

David Cornelson
Textfyre.Com

By: admin

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:31:20 +0000

first sunryse-
Not so sure about that. Steampunk is based on Victorian era stuff, which is the birthplace of disposable tech, factories and other crap that is destroying the world. A return to that period would make it worse.

And I’m not talking about that right now anyway. This isn’t post apocalyptic- a generational ship has different needs, needs that are quite unlike anything we’ve used so far.

Adam-
Ethics wouldn’t matter. The resources would be limited, period. No way to control. The first crew would know this and act accordingly. We’re talking severely limited.

By: Adam Weber

Adam Weber — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:25:41 +0000

Perhaps on a Generation ship if the right ethics were drilled into peoples heads. Unfortunately I think most people would just continue with wastefulness until there was nothing left to waste. Society (at large) would then just spiral into a barbaric semi-primitive state. This is just conjecture of course, and I do have a pretty bleak opinion of the rapaciousness of the human animal.

By: sunryse

sunryse — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:19:29 +0000

The future is where I always want to place the steampunk timeline. A “what if” our culture broke down either through war or economical malfunction causing society to be thrown into an era of resourcefulness and reuse. There would be no or minimal resources causing people to fall back on the power of old such as steam, wood, coal and wind. Goodbye abundance, hello steampunk.