SPM1-web.pdf

S team P unk m agazine

Putting the Punk back into SteamPunk

[

Lifestyle, Mad Science,

Theory & Fiction ]

Michael Moorcock * Abney Park *

Darcy James Argue * Thomas Truax *

G. D. Falksen * J. T. Hand * Margaret

P. Killjoy * Cory Gross

published under Creative Commons : please reproduce,

non-commercially

printed on 95% post-consumer recycled paper

www.steampunkmagazine.com

Contrary to the honeyed words of gentlemen, this Age

of Empire is a pestilence upon every continent and

soul, through colonization manifest or implied.

Rich men from stone buildings wade blindly

through the penniless on their way to the opera, at lei-

sure after a day spent plotting wars across the seas;

and though these gentlemen are excellent at imposing

a world order, they are equally adept at colonizing the

women who maintain their homes.

All the while their attention is turned outwards,

and all the while we plot from within. Discontent with

the complex machinations of the imperialist state, we

build a system of co-operation and autonomy. Fed up

with the hunger about us, we glean and tax the rich.

Tired of playing master or servant, we work only as

friends and lovers.

And when approached by the newspapers, how

they look at us queerly when we tell them with open

hearts, “Death to the Empire! No longer will we cower;

we are all nobility! Your colonization of our bodies and

hearts is an act of war!”

— Erica A. Smith, On he

Political Situation Experienced In Our Era

SteamPunk Magazine Issue #1 - 1

issue one :

Contents

Fiction

Mother of the Dispossessed .....................................................10

by Anon

Yena of Angeline and the Tale of the Terrible Townies ......22

by Margaret P. Killjoy

An Unfortunate Engagement...................................................42

by G. D. Falksen

he Baron.....................................................................................56

Putting the Punk back into SteamPunk

It is with great pleasantries and with much joy that I welcome

you, dear reader, to the irst issue of SteamPunk Magazine. You

hold in your hands (or stare at on a screen, if you’re cheating)

the product of a near-ridiculous amount of volunteer work by a

variety of people. Our budget was literally nothing.

One of the goals of this magazine is to bring the SteamPunk

culture oline, a step we consider crucial to its vitalization. We

want SteamPunk to be more than a blog, more than a website.

Hell, we want SteamPunk to be more than a magazine; we imag-

ine it as a way of life. And while we respect that the internet—as

a tool—can be useful, we also see that it—like many tools—has

become a monster of its own.

he magazine is a dying medium, and only the massive con-

sumer magazines, driven by glossy advertisements, are surviving

without heavy attrition. And—not to hold magazines on too high

of a pedestal, mind you—along with the death of physical media

comes a lack of physical culture. No longer are we introduced to

new concepts face-to-face, no longer do we debate in person.

But it is the physical nature of SteamPunk that attracted us

to it in the irst place, however we irst heard of it. We love ma-

chines that we can see, feel, and fear. We are amazed by artifacts

but are unimpressed by “high technology.” For the most part, we

look at the modern world about us, bored to tears, and say, “no,

thank you. I’d rather have trees, birds, and monstrous mechani-

cal contraptions than an endless sprawl that is devoid of diver-

sity.”

Included in this magazine are a few pieces of radical politi-

cal thought. Most prominent among these is “he Courage to

Kill a King”, an essay which explores the period in time when

anarchists were quite prone to political assassination. We feel it

is important to disclaim, then, that this piece does not necessar-

ily represent the views of any other contributors or the editorial

staf of the magazine.

It is the “punk” side of SteamPunk that is controversial, of

course, and it is to the punk side of SteamPunk that the editorial

staf owes its loyalty. But we hope to provide a range of material

that will appeal to a reasonably wide audience. A bit of a contra-

diction, perhaps, but we believe it’s one that we’ve balanced here-

in. We are always open to correspondence, and plan to include a

letters section in the second issue. Further, we are a contributor-

run magazine: we get all of our material from submissions.

I hope you enjoy the magazine. If you don’t, contribute some-

thing you would rather have seen!

by Jimmy T. Hand

Interviews

Michael Moorcock .....................................................................20

author

Abney Park ..................................................................................32

band

homas Truax.............................................................................52

singer/songwriter

Darcy James Argue ....................................................................64

composer

Features

What hen, Is Steampunk? ........................................................ 4

colonizing the past so that

we can dream the future

he Pyrophone ............................................................................. 6

laming pipe organs

Glass Armonica ............................................................................ 8

an instrument of glass,

ingers and gears

Electrolytic Etching....................................................................36

inscribe onto brass with

permanence

he Courage to Kill a King .......................................................48

gaetano bresci & regicide

Varieties of Steampunk Experience........................................60

nostalgic versus melancholic

steampunk

Earth, Sea & Sky .........................................................................68

— Margaret P. Ratt

an excerpt from this well-

outdated natural history text

SteamPunk Magazine Issue #1 -

Authentic Steampunk is not an artistic movement

but an aesthetic technological movement. he machine must

be liberated from eiciency and designed by desire and dreams.

he sleekness of optimal engineering is to be replaced with the

necessary ornamentation of true function. Imperfection, chaos,

chance and obsolescence are not to be seen as faults, but as ways

of allowing spontaneous liberation from the predictability of

perfection.

Steampunk overthrows the factory of consciousness by

means of beautiful entropy, creating a seamless paradox between

the practical and the fanciful. his living dream of technology

is neither slave nor master, but partner in the exploration of

otherwise unknowable territories of both art and science.

What then, is Steampunk?

Colonizing the Past so we can Dream the Future

by the Catastrophone Orchestra and Arts Collective (NYC)

Steampunk is a re-envisioning of the

past with the hypertechnological perceptions of the present.

Unfortunately, most so-called “steampunk” is simply dressed-

up, recreationary nostalgia: the stiling tea-rooms of Victorian

imperialists and faded maps of colonial hubris. his kind of sepia-

toned yesteryear is more appropriate for Disney and suburban

grandparents than it is for a vibrant and viable philosophy or

culture.

First and foremost, steampunk is a non-luddite critique of

technology. It rejects the ultra-hip dystopia of the cyberpunks—

black rain and nihilistic posturing—while simultaneously

forfeiting the “noble savage” fantasy of the pre-technological era.

It revels in the concrete reality of technology instead of the over-

analytical abstractness of cybernetics. Steam technology is the

diference between the nerd and the mad scientist; steampunk

machines are real, breathing, coughing, struggling and rumbling

parts of the world. hey are not the airy intellectual fairies of

algorithmic mathematics but the hulking manifestations of

muscle and mind, the progeny of sweat, blood, tears and

delusions. he technology of steampunk is natural; it moves,

lives, ages and even dies.

Steampunk, that mad scientist, refuses to be fenced in by the

ever-growing cages of specialization. Leonardo DaVinci is the

steampunker touchstone; a blurring of lines between engineering

and art, rendering fashion and function mutually dependent.

Authentic steampunk seeks to take the levers of technology

from those technocrats who drain it of both its artistic and real

qualities, who turn the living monsters of technology into the

simpering servants of meaningless commodity.

Steampunk rejects the myopic, nostalgia-drenched

politics so common among “alternative” cultures. Ours is not

the culture of Neo-Victorianism and stupefying etiquette, not

remotely an escape to gentleman’s clubs and classist rhetoric.

It is the green fairy of delusion and passion unleashed from her

bottle, stretched across the glimmering gears of rage.

We seek inspiration in the smog-choked alleys of Victoria’s

duskless Empire. We ind solidarity and inspiration in the mad

bombers with ink stained cufs, in whip-wielding women that

yield to none, in coughing chimney sweeps who have escaped

the rooftops and joined the circus, and in mutineers who have

gone native and have handed the tools of the masters to those

most ready to use them.

We are inlamed by the dockworkers of the Doglands as

they set Prince Albert’s Hall ablaze and impassioned by the dark

rituals of the Ordo Templi Orientis. We stand with the traitors

of the past as we hatch impossible treasons against our present.

We stand with the

traitors of the past

as we hatch impossible

treasons against our

present.

Too much of what passes as steampunk denies the punk,

in all of its guises. Punk—the fuse used for lighting cannons.

Punk—the downtrodden and dirty. Punk—the aggressive, do-

it-yourself ethic. We stand on the shaky shoulders of opium-

addicts, aesthete dandies, inventors of perpetual motion

machines, mutineers, hucksters, gamblers, explorers, madmen

and bluestockings. We laugh at experts and consult moth-

eaten tomes of forgotten possibilities. We sneer at utopias

while awaiting the new ruins to reveal themselves. We are a

community of mechanical magicians enchanted by the real

world and beholden to the mystery of possibility. We do not

have the luxury of niceties or the possession of politeness; we are

rebuilding yesterday to ensure our tomorrow. Our corsets are

stitched with safety pins and our top hats hide vicious mohawks.

We are fashion’s jackals running wild in the tailor shop.

It lives! Steampunk lives in the reincarnated

collective past of shadows and ignored alleys. It is a historical

wunderkabinet, which promises, like Dr. Caligari’s, to wake the

somnambulist of the present to the dream-reality of the future.

We are archeologists of the present, reanimating a hallucinatory

history.

SteamPunk Magazine Issue #1 -

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