Simanaitis Says
On cars, old, new and future; science & technology; vintage airplanes, computer flight simulation of them; Sherlockiana; our English language; travel; and other stuff
STEAMPUNK—PASTS AND FUTURES
WAY BACK IN THE LATE AUGHTS, Robert Wright defined Steampunk as “a subculture that encapsulates the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines of the 19th century.”
“Having first emerged in the late 1980s and early ‘90s,” Wright continued, “steampunk has picked up momentum in recent months, making a transition from what used to be mainly a literary taste to a Web-propagated way of life.” Wright accompanied this definition with a slide show in The New York Times, May 8, 2008.
Above, a familiar steampunk device. Below, a scene from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a 2003 steampunk superhero flick. Images from Wright’s article, The New York Times.
Origin. I was already captured by the steampunk genre after reading The Difference Engine, 1990. Wikipedia describes it as “regarded as having helped to establish that genre’s conventions.”
The Difference Engine, 20th Anniversary Edition, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Spectra, 2011.
It’s telling that a fad persisted for a two-decade anniversary—and then some.
See also “The Difference Engine—Fact and Fiction,” here at SimanaitisSays less than two months after the website’s August 13, 2012 debut.
Your SimanaitisSays Proprietor.
Other Sources. Since that time, I’ve accumulated several other books on the genre, particularly The Steampunk Bible, 2011; and Clockwork Futures, 2017.
Above, The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets, and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature, by Jeff VanderMeer and S.J. Chambers, Harry N. Abrams, 2011. Below, Clockwork Futures: The Science of Steampunk and the Reinvention of the Modern World, by Brandy Schillace, Pegasus Books, 2018.
Here are tidbits gleaned from these and other sources.
Wild Wild West TV. “In television,” The Steampunk Bible recounts, “the unique and exciting Wild Wild West (1965-1969) was the best Steampunk series ever to air, even if it appeared well before the development of the literature or subculture. The premise paired up secret service agents James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) as they traveled aboard their train The Wanderer, foiling plots against the government and their direct boss, President Ulysses S. Grant.”
The Wild Wild West’s Robert Conrad holds a gizmo; Ross Martin stands to his right. Image from The Steampunk Bible.
West and Gordon “form one of the more original ‘odd couples’ in television history,” The Steampunk Bible observes, “West was a gunslinger, and Gordon an eccentric inventor. Episodes also typically featured strange inventions, including sleeve guns, a cane that could send telegraphs, a stagecoach with an ejection seat, and a rod winch for raising or lowering a man up a wall.”
Bad guys had “their own even more exotic gadgets, like life-size steam-powered puppets, a steam-driven tank, a tsunami creator, half-man/half-robot servants and a giant tuning fork.”
All in good steampunk fun.
The TV Show and Daughter Suz’s Birth. I was hooked on Wild Wild West, to the point of generating a family tale: Daughter Suz’s mother, rest her soul, recalled that I objected to her labor interfering with my viewing a Wild Wild West episode. (Indeed, I chose the hospital over the episode, only to have Suz’s birth come the following morning.)
Alice’s One-Way Memory. In Clockwork Futures, Brandy Schillace praises steampunk, “We are hunting the future, but the past offers a warning and maybe, just maybe, a chance to redirect. What we need, as the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass suggests, is a memory that works both ways. We want to look backward and forward at once, and this is precisely what steampunk fiction attempts to do.… Steampunk exists at the intersection of past and present, a playground where steam still powers civilization, but without dampening technological progress.”
Alice and the Red Queen. Image by Hector Bergandi from “Say Again in ‘Alice.“
“Living backwards!” Alice repeated in great astonishment. “I never heard of such a thing!”
“—but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.”
“I’m sure mine only works one way,” Alice remarked. “I can’t remember things before they happen.”
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.”
Schillace suggests, “It’s no surprise, perhaps, that Alice in Wonderland has been so thoroughly ‘steampunked.’ ” ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025
Simanaitis Says 
I loved The Wild Wild West back in the day .
During the steampunk fad I was entranced by many modern items modified to looks steampunk .
-Nate
Long before it became a fave, recall Stan Mott and Robert Cumberford’s variety of Cyclops … obviously leading into Chitty, Chitty, Bang Bang and The Great Race.
Doc Brown can’t take credit … he just couldn’t find an 1803 London Steam Carriage, and had to make do with a DeLorean.
Wonderful that so many brighter, artistic young folk drawn to steampunk. Yet those of us with auld automobiles from the first half of the 20th century note the proclivity of ignorant, low-horizon sorts replacing the drivetrains in such cars with Chevy V-8s and Turbo Hydramatics, festooning them with huge, tasteless wheels, ridiculously low profile tires.
I was an avid Wild Wild West viewer as well, finding it great fun, though as a devoted high school science student I often scoffed at the fantastical nature of the gadgets in most of the episodes. I think I was primed for it, though, being a science fiction buff of not only folks like Robert Heinlein but H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Wild Wild West was of that genre, but also a direct takeoff on the James Bond spy craze that had also spawned shows like Secret Agent Man, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. and even Get Smart. Series creator Michael Garrison just decided to combine the spy craze with Vernean technology!
More recently, here in Phoenix, a few years ago a local artist and college instructor, Steve Gompf, created a series of “Televisors,” essentially steampunk TV sets with invented backstories and dated to the 1930s and stretching several decades previous. They were “working models” by way of computer tablets mounted internally behind large magnifying lens viewing screens. They were so realistically constructed using scavenged parts and pieces of other antique objects that when they were on exhibit, visitors often believed the museum-like labels describing the unique history and provenance of each one!