The defining space opera works are Star Trek and Star Wars. The defining cyberpunk works are Neuromancer, Blade Runner...

Arcanum

>"Do Androids dream of electric sheep
Except he's not talking about the book.

>Jules Verne
>"retrofuturism"

What the fuck are you hollering about? His works are set in the time they were written, based on contemporary scientific knowledge. If Verne is "retrofuturism" then so is Jurassic fucking Park.

Mortal Engines is a popular steampunk setting being made into a movie by Peter Jackson. In it, somebody decided to put WHEELS on LONDON during it's imperial heyday. The mobile city now roams around eating other smaller mobile cities and villages for their resources in a predatory cycle called Municipal Darwinism.

This fag reads

fpbp.

Wild Wild West = Genre definer.

>A boring poorly-written mess people only remember because of the steam powered giant robot spider

Actually that does kinda describe steampunk

To be fair, that giant robo-spider was pretty legit. Rest of the movie was a waste of time, but robo-spider was most excellent.

I remember the fake boobs as well. Nothing else.

Right now I would say there isn't really a "defining" steampunk work where everyone takes the inspiration from it in terms of aesthetics, theme, and messaging. It's something that's bothered me for a long time whenever people talk about "steampunk" as a genre, and I speak as someone who does love steampunk. I really hate how it is mostly a fashion statement these days, or how most writers just use it as a way to critique modern society for not being sufficiently anti-Victorian.

Hayao Miyazaki's works, especially Laputa and Porco Rosso, contribute to the visual/societal settings of the steampunk series that we see, especially if the creators aren't that worried about being alt-history and more just looking cool.

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, especially in its portrayal of steampunk as a tool to make new discoveries and bring conflict, as well as applying the cutting edge of Victorian science to fantastic or futuristic concepts, is closer to a defining steampunk work. But ultimately Nemo and Aronnax as characters aren't reflected in modern steampunk literature, and 20K was more of an adventure novel than an epic as so many modern stories are.

I would argue Mortal Engines, though I love it dearly despite being a hardcore Thatcherite, isn't steampunk in any sense. It's Fallout, down to the power sources which make everything possible. The stalkers, the Traction Cities, the airships, have the crude and clunky aesthetics of classic steampunk works, but at their heart and in the story they are more like the retro-future devices of the modern Fallout games. And the ultimate conflict is too modern, too rooted in the petty righteousness that permeates most modern pop culture, for me to consider it a steampunk work in line with 20K.

Wild Wild West is way more steampunk in technology and aesthetics and setting. It's just a shame it was all treated as a joke. But in terms of capturing the spirit of the age, it really fails.

I 100% agree with you on "A Canticle For Leibowitz" I love that book. But "Blade Runner" I see as a completely seperate entity from "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" as the latter has a post-apocalyptic low-tech aesthetic. Blade Runner takes place in a highly advanved city, whereas Androids takes place in the dead dust-covered suburbs. Blade runner has holograms, Androids has normal TVs. The most technologically advanced objects in Androids would be the drug dispenser and the machine that connects you to the religious leader as he struggles up the mountain.

Blade Runner is Cyberpunk but Androids isn't, to summarise all that.

Oh man, I loved Liebowitz. Great answer.

The racism jokes Will Smith and the legless confederate dude were pretty good.

Also, latterly there was a trend in American steampunk to set stories in a mythical Wild West, particularly as the Grand Trunk lines were being founded across the wild expanses of Indian territory. They're much more fantasy-steampunk than scifi-steampunk, featuring zombies and spirits and shit like that, but that might be where steampunk as a genre is heading.

Or we could look at the success of games like Warmahordes. In some respects, the Warjacks and the technology built around them is very steampunk. Cygnar and Khador are especially good representations of two of the more popular flavors of steampunk fashion. As a whole, Warmahordes is sort of what steampunk has been it's entire life: a visual look that operates on the rule of cool, and nothing more. There isn't a genre; there's just a bunch of neat drawings and animations.

>space opera
>no dune
user pls

Hrm. Tough CFL is honestly an awe-inspiring book, I don't think good equals defining here. For example the definint example of mahou shoujo is still Sailor Moon and while it's probably more than decent it's hardly the best out there.
In sum, I'd still point out to Road Warrior for post-apo as a genre (and not simply a narrative device). Not necessarily 'cause it's the best, but because it has it all, especially the western-derived themes.

Being ignorant of the genre (always wanted to but never got into) this is kinda puzzling to me. You guys really talk of Verne as steampunk? It... sounds like calling The Lord of the Rings and the chansons de geste the same term, for a lack of better comparision. Verne was not "steampunkish" in his time, at least not anymore than the Martian is... what the fuck, "probepunk" for us - it simply was hard scifi with an adventure bent.
(yeah, I do realize Verne wasn't that hard even for his time, but I think you get my point)

In general terms, what would you say the themes are?

Even if we can't find the defining steampunk work, I wonder if it's possible to chart out the evolution of the cosplay look.

I'd hazard a guess to say that they originally started with small mechanical embellishments to normal Victorian attire and then just kept going farther and farther in an attempt to stand out. Then artists started to incorporate this look into their works and created a feedback loop of cogs.

The thing is that the science fiction and fantasy genres are a lot more rigid now than they were in the past. Both have been in bed with each other for decades and the flow of ideas and inspiration is chaotic at best. Only now in an age where autism reigns supreme do we need to categorize and chart the literary genealogy of everything, which means we have to do things like shove Verne into steampunk since a lot of the groundwork comes from him.

> Verne was not "steampunkish" in his time
The problem with your statement is that we don't have a good definition for what steampunk is. That's why we can call 20K and Journey to the Moon "steampunk."

Aesthetically, 20k checks all the boxes. It's got Victorian superscience acting as the motive force for the story's central conflict. The characters use tools and machinery recognizably based on the Victorian understanding of science and Victorian inventions. And they all walk around in Victorian-era clothing.

The caveat, of course, is that was just normal for Jules Verne's day. But we don't say that Blade Runner isn't cyberpunk because Harrison Ford wears a trenchcoat and drinks whiskey.

Thematically, 20K doesn't really match up to modern steampunk works. Like I said, most modern steampunk is obsessed with holding a mirror up to life and going
>Look! We're still as prejudiced and racist and misogynist as the Victorians!
or
>Look! We're still greedy, grasping Westerners who take what we don't deserve, like the Victorians!

Yo just check out "A boy and his dog" instead

Weird West is its own genre that long predates steampunk as a concept and in many ways is distinct from steampunk while still falling under the banner of Victorian retrofuturism.

This.

Yeah but the batch of steampunk Wild West stuff I'm referring to combines Weird West with steampunk aesthetics and technology, like cyborg zombies reanimated by Tesla and gatling guns on armored trains and shit.

I’d argue the dishonored games came close. At least in gaming spheres. Unfortunately those games didn’t go the full monty when it came to story and atmosphere, and the steampunk part was just a nice skin on decent gameplay. Compare to the fallout games which do a great job of marketing the fifties retro futurism, and uses it to distinguish itself (power armor, having the president be a robot, etc.)

I'm iffy on Star Wars as space opera. Some of the extended universe stuff absolutely, but the original films did not focus much on the space aspect.

What about AssCreed?

>having the president be a robot
Do you mean Eden? He's the newest President of the Enclave on the Bethesda timeline, and he is a supercomputer not a robot, supercomputers in the Fallout universe have transistors and are sentient, examples include Zax and the Shi Emperor, whereas robots do not, e.g. Mr Handy models. But going by the classic timeline the final official President of the Enclave is Dick Richardson, and he definitely isn't a robot. The final official pre-war US President is never mentioned by name in the lore, but he was certainly a human.

Maybe. I guess with way more products we do need more labels.

I guess. But as I said, I'm ignorant to the genre.

And if anything I don't think the "people were fightingin some bullshit we still have to fight" is a bad idea, but I digress. We dropped colonialism, tough.

I'll just point out that BR had the film noire thing going on, tough, about trenchcoats and whiskey.
>and it was actually an interesting idea. He's kinda like a ghost of the old soul of the city. One would wonder what another city would use.

Kinda splitting hairs there. The point being that President Eden was a good and memorable use of Fallouts Fifties retro futurism.

Cyborg zombies is a little new, but everything else has appeared before. Wild Wild West, the tv show, featured Bond-esque spy fiction and mad scientists, Telsa has popped up frequently in Weird West works, and the Deadlands RPG actually features zombie cyborgs.

>The defining cyberpunk works are ... and The Matrix
U wot m8?

>The defining space opera works are Star Trek and Star Wars.
Yeah it's not like Foundation exists or anything

The Matrix pretty much did define the look of modern cyberpunk with it's retro throwbacks, cues from conspiracy theories, and overall sleek and stylized depiction of the protagonists within the Matrix.