“You can’t do that!”
I scowled. Another Lolita–I never bothered to learn her name–had joined me in the engine room. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who wanted to be the ship’s mechanic.
“I’ve done it before. If you mix the components…”
“You can’t do that!”
God, this girl would drive me to something rash, and I valued my position on the ship far too much to let that happen. No. I needed plausible deniability if anything happened to her. For now though, I needed to do my job–which meant getting rid of her, at least temporarily. I gritted my teeth into what probably didn’t look anything like a smile, but it was the best I could do. She’d been down here with me for five hours–it was about six too many.
“You know, the captain was talking about getting some new tools at our next stop. Why don’t you go make sure she knows what we need. Seems kind of pointless to spend the coin on the wrong stuff.”
She narrowed her eyes at me and pointed to the boiler. “You won’t mix the fuel while I’m gone?”
“If you’re back soon enough, I won’t need to feed the engines at all.”
Huffing a sigh, she flounced out of the engine room, taking her attitude with her. Her boots tapped an annoying rhythm on the wooden planks of the corridor as she moved toward the bridge.
I made a less-than-polite gesture toward the engine room door then picked up a piece of coal and a hunk of wood and chucked them both into the boiler.
~~*~~
I’ve read some reviews lately that complain about genre mash-ups that include steampunk. This one is too much romance, not enough steampunk (or the reverse). That one is too much paranormal, not enough steampunk (or vice versa). The list goes on and on.
Here’s the thing… I don’t understand the mentality that all forms of steampunk must be pure. It smacks a little too much of the pure-bloods only thing in Harry Potter. Maybe I’m too big a fan of genre mash-ups, but I am not a fan of only eating one thing at a meal too. I want to taste all kinds of flavors, and I want to see what happens if I mix them together. Sometimes they taste like crap, but sometimes… oh my goodness but they are yummy.
This isn’t to say that steampunk aficionados can’t dislike a given book for whatever reason their little clockwork hearts desire, but I’d really like people to stop saying something isn’t steampunk because it isn’t steampunk enough to fit their definition. Say it has steampunk elements if you prefer–I don’t think most authors would have an issue with that–and you can even say the steampunk elements fit or didn’t or… whatever.
But I’ve met a fair number of steampunks now. As a group, the people behind the genre are very friendly and welcoming. It’d be nice to see that attitude extend to how steampunks as a group react to books/movies/music/etc within the genre as well.
Ironically I was just ranting about how steampunk appears to be dominated by erotica lately. I prefer more adventure in my steampunk, being a guy and all. The beauty of steampunk is that it IS diverse. Despite my complaints about the erotica invasion, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I want the genre to continue to grow and be diverse as ever. That’s what brings readers.
I agree with both the author of this article and the first responder, Ryan King. To me steampunk is an idea or ideal and captures the imagination of what if through the varied viewpoints of its fans and their dreams of alternate histories through the lens of the Victorian England Era as its starting or focal point.
Like a good meal that is centered around a particular meat or flavoring, each chef and cook is going to make it their own by imbuing it with their desires and skills, their culture and exposure to the various spices and herbs or condiments they employ to serve it.
I love steampunk, remembering that what makes it what it steampunk is not the technology alone, but the attitude, the daring, the can-do initiative of that historical era that makes us long for it, makes us want to extend it into our own time. Punk is an attitude that flies in the face of the current societal status quo.
This is why many of the hero’s in these stories are young women and their supportive male companions. The Victorian Era supports the ideal of liberation from the rigid constructs of crab mentality societies with their caste systems. It supports the utopian ideal of total freedom.
As someone who writes–so far–steampunk romance (not erotic, but again, so far), I have to say that the idea of genre-mashing is part of the appeal. I’ve always liked my romances to be mashes: romantic suspense, fantasy, or SF. I find those plots more complex and interesting than “pure” romance. Yeah, those of us who mix our genres tend to get it from both sides. But I truly think there’s room for all of us.
Creativity comes from mashing up. Impose doctrine and destroy creativity. Interestingly, limitations also breed creativity but doctrinal walls will inevitably crush it.