More Faux-Nostalgia

It is very fit­ting that I saw an arti­cle on Boing Boing about a new issue of Steam­punk Mag­a­zine being released after my last post on the work of Bruce McCall. Noth­ing says Faux-Nostalgia like Steam Punk; that is the achingly sen­ti­men­tal yearn­ing for a future that never hap­pened. In case you don’t know Steam­punk is a genre where mod­ern inven­tions like com­put­ers and the infor­ma­tion age hap­pened in the age of Steam, dur­ing the height of the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion. Check it out, it’s a really great magazine.

Lon­don Rooftops, by Raphael-Lacoste

This is a genre that I have liked, mainly because Vic­to­rian Lon­don is such a rich place for the mod­ern imag­i­na­tion to play. From Marry Pop­pins to From Hell the place is a fas­ci­nat­ing place. Coal dark­ened skies cast long shad­ows on cob­ble stone streets lit by flick­er­ing gaslight. Every twist in the street could lead to a knife wield­ing bar­ber or into the com­fort­ing embrace of  the Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs, Fidelity Fidu­ciary Bank, only Tup­pence required as entry.

In my imag­i­na­tion Vic­to­rian Lon­don is a place of squalor on one side and great wealth and absurd tra­di­tion on the other. A place on the cusp of moder­nity, where aris­to­crats and plu­to­crats ruled over squalid slums. Not in exces­sive greed, more with exces­sive pomp and a cer­ti­tude of their own right­eous­ness. A time that seemed the sun would never set on the British Empire, then the trenches, artillery and machine guns of Ver­dun wiped that world away in one fell swoop. It was a tragic period in many ways, as the immor­tal works of Dick­ens and Shaw remind us, the dis­tance between us and then is long enough for a bit of roman­ti­cism to flour­ish. And you can read more of that in Steampunk.

• Steam Punk Mag­a­zine Link
• More infor­ma­tion on Steam­punk Link