Oh, the things I do to ingratiate myself to you, dear readers! When planning this week’s column based around ‘Steampunk,’ it hit me that I could not, if asked, describe what it is. So, with my hard earned, I purchased a book on the topic and will now be sending it back to Amazon as I am still none the wiser.

The closest I can get to the meaning is a formula: Mad scientist behaviour x Victorian setting + reactionary politics x adventure plot = Steampunk.

In effect, it is a style, nay, ‘movement’ frequented by eccentrics who wear 19th century dress fuelled with aviator goggles, velvet frills and metal lined hats, all with a view to taking something from yesteryear and making it sustainable, i.e. covering it in metal and ultimately creating theatre through elaboration, be it by breathing new life into dandified dress or items that are soon to become relics of the past, if they can’t be punked.

My personal obsession with Steampunk ends just there: much like comics, I like them, and the look, and the style, but I know little if nothing about either and I certainly won’t be partaking as I watch admiringly from afar. You would never catch me in a top hat frequented with feathers, fingerless gloves (although to my shame I did own a pair around the time of Rocky III (the one with Mr ‘I aint getting on no plane’ T)). Thankfully, my mother did not submit to my wishes to buy a bullmastiff and name him Butkus, but I digress…

Steampunks also enjoy carrying weapons or tools, which is exactly what some of them look like, as well as spats and pocket watches as they dandy about town as one of the four distinct styles of street urchin, the tinker, the explorer, or the aesthete.

And with products, the emphasis is on ‘steam’ where steam doesn’t necessary mean steam, but more so lack of electrical power and hence, there is a real emphasis on mechanisation and an obsession with Zeppelin airships and the use of clockwork as, if the Victorians liked it so, it must have some merit, right?

So, once we have the steam, what of the punk? Well punk stood for, before it got all over commercialised, rage against ‘the machine’ or the man, and that is the essence of steampunk: Taking something, maybe fashion or other items, and raging against it whilst morphing into an improved, clockwork or mechanical powered new age version of what the Victorians managed to come up, before the scurvy came to take them to their makers.

And so, with little intention of joining in, I aim to take my first tentative steps into the world of steampunk in August next year. The world's largest, and longest running, steampunk festival on planet earth is the Asylum festival in Lincoln. The festival features ‘classes,’ workshops and the grand ball, as well as the ‘tea duelling championship’ which sounds like a blast! Facing your opponent across a table, you must dunk your biscuit and then hold the said item as long as you can before placing it into your oral orifice. If any of the biscuit drops, you lose and it sounds like a splendid non-contact sport which, at my age, even I can’t do myself a mischief at, can I?

So, it may not be around for long, but I find the whole spectacle fascinating and I wonder if future inhabitants of this mortal coil may do similar in the year 3000 when they dress up in shell suits and attempt to bring back the VHS video recorder as the fashion of yesteryear comes full circle once more…

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher