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Podcast 31 recommends the
use of two 'Steampunk' texts for lower secondary classes: World Shaker
by Richard Harland (2009) and Steamboy, directed by Otomo. There are
also a few glances at associated Steampunk texts
Dr Grordbort Presents Victory
(2009), and China Mieville's Perdido Street Station (2000), though
this association is more tenuous. The two main texts here, Steamboy (Otomo,
2004) and Harland's World Shaker (2009) fall into the muddled
'Visions of the Future' theme area of the mySF Project, due to their
alternate history settings.
Harland's World Shaker (2009) was given to me by the manager at
Gaslight Books
the wonderful Gail, who thought it might suit the younger high school
audience, and she was quite right. Gail mentioned that it was 'Steampunk',
mostly because she knew I followed the Cyberpunk authors and the most famous
of these, William Gibson, wrote a defining Steampunk novel with Bruce
Sterling, The Difference Engine (Gibson & Sterling, 1990).
I took World Shaker
(Harland, 2009) into a class and a student sitting close by said he had read
it, even though it was a very new release, and that it was tops. The Year
Eight student did not mention that World Shaker (Harland, 2009) was a
Steampunk novel. He was more interested in its heady effect. He did say that
it was a longer novel but it ‘kept the reader going’.
Before looking at World Shaker (Harland, 2009) it is necessary to say why the novel is covered here in the mySF Project. It rests here because it is certainly designed as a Steampunk novel and Steampunk is seen as a subgenre of Science Fiction.
There is much written
about Steampunk online with vast Wikis and databases of enthusiast material,
but much less critical discussion of Steampunk within Science Fiction
literature and film. You can find Steampunk jewellery, graphics, music,
theatrical events and gatherings by the score, but literary criticism, even
in Science Fiction Studies
is harder to find.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction says that 'Steampunk' is a direct bastardisation of 'Cyberpunk',
a subgenre that boasts volumes of commentaries. It is a relatively modern
subgenre that "places technological developments within an historical
framework and attempts to assess their impact on the progress of past
events". Moorcock's Oswald Bastable trilogy is seen as foundational to
Steampunk while The Difference Engine (1990)
is "perhaps the most important Steampunk novel yet to be produced,
and sees a nineteenth-century London pulled kicking and screaming into an
industrial future when Charles Babbage's early mechanical computer is
successfully built." (Mann, 2001, p513).
Luckhurst, in Science Fiction (2005) calls Steampunk a curious
pastiche Victorian SF and again cites The Difference Engine (1990) as
a seminal, though later, text. Luckhurst bores down a little further with
the, "predominant focus, though, is on Victorian London: its violent,
polluted, laissez-faire anarchy works as a precursor of the
post-industrial near-future ecological wastelands of cyberpunk" (Luckhurst,
2005, p213).
Much more is made of Steampunk by the zealous enthusiasts of Wikipedia who add that the subgenre features elements of fantasy, that it came into prominence in the 1980s and 90s and the term denotes works set in an era or world where the main energy source is steam: usually the nineteenth century and often the world of Victorian England. Added to this world are the technological inventions of HG Wells and Jules Verne. The result can be men in frock coats steering vast machines driven by coking coal, or dirigibles powering through fog and steam, or analogue computers used to make primitive cannon into Smart Weapons using accurate trajectory computations.
Many Steampunk examples
use alternate history stories - the path not taken - to run 'what if'
scenarios where a steam-driven technology becomes a device upon which a
narrative turns. This is the case with World Shaker (Harland, 2009).
We learn from a lonely
World Shaker scholar that history changed during the extended war between
England and France under Napolean. We learn from Professor Twillip that one
hundred and fifty years have passed from the first Queen Victoria after
which came the 'Imperial era and the modern Paternalists.' (Harland, 2009,
p39). The change was centred on the drilling of a tunnel by one of
Napolean's engineers, Albert Mathieu-Favier, allowing French troops to
invade England from underground, at Dover.
Many of the working class
in England sided with Napolean, perhaps because the Napoleonic War was
extended and brutal, leaving much of Europe a wasteland. The French promised
freedom to Britain's working class and they were believed. The Duke Of
Wellington put down rebellions amongst British workers first, placing
thousands into concentration camps, then defeated the French, eventually
(Harland, 2009, p206-9). The workers imprisoned in camps became the 'Filthies'
and after the Peace of Brussels they were used as the labour force in the
gigantic juggernauts, created as a sort of
steam-powered arms race after the Peace.
We join our protagonist,
Col, in the juggernaut World Shaker, an absolutely static society living in
a vast steam-powered tank that can cross ocean and mountain range alike. The
juggernaut is still (one hundred
and fifty years after the Peace of Brussels) the largest human construction
in the world. It is two and a half miles long, three quarters of a mile
wide, and its bridge is thirteen hundred feet above ground. It uses metal
rollers to drive at the pace of a galloping horse across the landscape - any
landscape - including villages, rivers, people, everything (Harland, 2009,
p20 & 27). There are twelve thousand on board the World Shaker, ten thousand
above the engines and two thousand amongst the fiery pits, the Filthies
(Harland, 2009, p28).
The world of the Upper
Decks to which Col was born is a stultified Victorian world, caught in aspic
since the first Queen Victoria. Col is a Porpentine, the ruling family on
the World Shaker, and his grandfather is the commanding officer, Sir Mormus.
His is a powerful, elite family and when Col is chosen to inherit his
Grandfather's rule he is let into a secret.
"Sir Mormus lowered his
voice to a resonant whisper. 'We don't say this in front of women and
children. No need for them to know the world isn't all sugar and spice. It's
about obeying or being obeyed. Power isn't a gift, my boy, it has to be
earned." (Harland, 2009, p93).
Col's school bears the
motto Loyalty, Integrity, Self-Discipline (Harland, 2009, p51) and
there are many more reminders of Fascist regimes than this inscription in
metal on the iron arch before Col's absurd school with its one intention to
reinforce the class divisions and to keep this glass-bottle juggernaut
unchanging.
In this claustrophobic,
metal world there are constant reminders of hierarchies, power and division.
The elite have menials who do all their work, slaves who cannot talk and
cannot act independently. We learn later in the novel that these slaves have
been engineered into servility through crude surgery. And below them all are
the Filthies, the original rebellious workers who are now used to stoke the
vast engines of the juggernaut.
But this is not an overtly
political novel, even though the Menials are given names from the time of
slavery in the American Deep South. From the glowing, steamy bowels of the
World Shaker comes Riff, a young
Filthy who hides from capture in Col's cabin. This relationship develops
predictably until World Shaker becomes almost a 'gaslight romance', with the
brave Col eventually abandoning his class and privilege to join a very real
and bloody revolution to topple Sir Mormus and Col's own family.
There is a good deal of
comedy in World Shaker (2009) generated by the absurd hypocrisy of
this bubble of Victoriana one hundred and fifty linen-and-starch years
later. The characters have delightful names and are almost William Hogarth
caricatures, more grotesque than sublime.
One character perhaps
given a little too much bandwidth in the novel is Mr Gibber, Col's school
teacher. Victorian prudery and snobbery fairly oozes out of his teaching.
From page ninety-seven of the Australian edition we learn that,
"Mr Gibber's geography was as
moral as all his other lessons. He divided the world into good coastlines
and bad coastlines. Good coastlines like Florida and Cape York were firm and
proud and pushed forward into the ocean. Bad coastlines like the Gulf of
Mexico and the Great Australian Bight bent weakly inwards." (Harland, 2009,
p97).
Numbers can be weak or
pure, Gibber's geometry praises the right angle and condemns obtuse angles,
and so on. The school and its teachers are a fine source of comic relief,
even while we follow Col and see his world change before his eyes, due to
the influence of the mercurial and fascinating Filthy, Riff.
Some characters remain
shallow. The motives of Gillabeth, Col's sister, in betraying her brother
are merely sketched in and Queen Victoria III, the Head of the Imperial
Church, is a mere sketch, as are many of the more ridiculous elite and some
of the brutish and short-lived Filthies.
World Shaker
(Harland, 2009) is over three-hundred and fifty pages long. It has
complexities seen when some few of the characters change through confronting
the reality of their tin world. The constant danger to which Col is exposed
because he has sheltered Riff keeps the narrative jogging along with only a
few languid pauses (perhaps for cucumber sandwiches), leading up to a fight
at Col's school and then the actual revolution of the Filthies.
Harland handles the action
well with Col battling a gang of boys who accuse him of being a
'Filthy-lover'. The blows seem real and Col's victory is explained by
improvements to both his fighting technique and his attitudes, wrought by
Riff.
The revolution itself is
surprisingly bloody and some students in lower years may be distressed
briefly. An example of this taut and effective description occurs after one
of the Filthies saves others by solving a problem with the rifles, and is
then fatally wounded,
"The lower half of her face was a gaping mess and blood pumped out from her
neck. ... There was a guggling, bubbling sound in her throat. The red of the
blood matched the red of her headband. ... The look in her eyes went out
altogether. Something had departed, something had left." (Harland, 2009,
p333).
The light tone created by
comic characters and early interplay between Col and Riff is counter-poised
by the brutality and reality of both the Filthy revolution and the procedure
to create Menials through surgery, all occurring after the climactic fight
at the school. The author reminds us that, though there are redeeming
characters here and there amongst the Upper Decks, the World Shaker system
is systemic and calculated evil.
Using World Shaker in the classroom
There are many ways the
novel World Shaker (Harland, 2009) could be used as a class set for
Years Seven and Eight English classes studying Science Fiction. After all,
the novel turns on the idea of a vast technological device that is a
character in itself. Its place within Science Fiction could be argued and
many readers will notice the similarities to stories depicting the
Generation Starships created to travel for thousands of years between stars.
The same social tensions, decadence and rebellious uprisings can be seen in
many Space Opera texts, though in World Shaker (Harland, 2009) there
are lashings of irony on the parfait in its crystal glass.
Obvious approaches to the
novel are seen in the development of the characters of Col and Riff as well
as some subsidiary characters who learn more about or are forced to confront
the truth of the World Shaker's sordid history. Many opportunities exist
with this novel (priced at under twenty dollars in Australia) to draw
narrative paths, brainstorm causes for the apparent stability of the World
Shaker world, and to discuss what should have been done to make this sardine
world more equitable.
Leaving aside these uses
of the Harland novel in the classroom, it is advised to pair this text with
Steamboy, conceived and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo. This anime film
is rated PG in Australia and is widely available on DVD for showing to a
class. It is a neat 120 minutes long so suits two classes admirably, with a
worksheet of focus questions or pre-discussion and a follow-up discussion on
its themes.
Steamboy
(Otomo, 2004) is
recommended to be viewed with the class before reading World Shaker
(Harland, 2009) and it is also recommended that some discussion of modern
history is included before viewing the DVD, perhaps for only one class of an
hour, drawing out ideas on the Industrial Revolution and its impact on
Western society, perhaps through the use of potent images and texts on an
Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB), such as 'The
Time Traveller's Guide to Victorian Britain' published by the Open
University, with images from Flickr
for 'Victorian steam power' and 'Victorian child labour'.
Steamboy
(Otomo, 2004)
includes references to actual characters and events from Victorian England,
including the leading families of northern English steam engineers who
changed their world so radically. But at the heart of Steamboy (Otomo,
2004) is a Science Fiction device - the discovery and harnessing of water so
distilled that the steam produced by even a small amount can be compressed
enough to create a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
The protagonist of the
story is a north English boy, Ray, whose father and grandfather are
brilliant engineers, the Steam family. They have found and captured this
extraordinary new energy, trapping this super-pressurised steam in little
round canisters that are meant to remind older viewers of early Anarchist
bombs, and of Fat Boy Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
There is division between
the Steam father, the grandfather and the youngest male, himself a brilliant
inventor of strange and compelling steam-powered devices. The boy is
required to take sides. Parallel with the division between father and
grandfather are competing American and English companies all wanting to
harness energy to create new weapons. These new weapons are to be showcased
at the Crystal Palace with Queen Victoria opening the Great Exhibition of
1851 in London.
As with many anime films
there is some complexity and ambiguity apparent. Anime grew from more
sophisticated narratives than found in most Western animations. Characters
seem to change sides during titanic battles and it is often difficult for
the viewer to work out exactly who Ray should be supporting or opposing.
Steamboy
(Otomo, 2004) has
many Steampunk tropes: the high Victorian fashions; marvellous steam-driven
machines; hierachies of power and caste; and technological marvels straight
from Jules Verne. It also shows in stark relief many of the elements
students will need to consider: child labour; terrible living conditions
under constant palls of smog; the dwarfing of man by the machine; and a
lively discussion of the possible uses of science in society.
The pace of Steamboy
(Otomo, 2004) can run at the rate of a locomotive but occasionally stops
to throw in some trite Victorian caricatures with some annoying dialogue.
Students enjoy the movie and can relate to the themes readily. There is a
lame romance between a spoilt American rich girl, Scarlett O'Hara and the
very down-to-earth Ray Steam but this is sidelined enough that the
extraordinary action always takes centre stage.
Ray Steam is the only
moral guardian of the steam ball. While initially he trusts his own family
and other factional steam inventors siding with his family, he soon learns
that all of them want the power for their own ends.
As might be expected,
Steamboy (Otomo, 2004) deals with the use and abuse of scientific
knowledge as societal power, making a clear analogy of the rise of steam
power with current nuclear power debates. There are several environmental
themes that will be picked up by the age range as well as speculations on
what might have happened, if great destructive power fell into the hands of
competing Imperial powers - but perhaps we already know the answer to that
scenario as the First World War.
Steampunk visual imagery
and fashion
For those teachers who
wish to direct students further into Steampunk texts, attention should be
drawn to the many images of cogs, wheels, pistons, polished brass and steel
armour. Ray's father also uses a bronze mask covering a scarred head from a
steam scald. The glass eye-pieces here and elsewhere in the movie
demonstrate better than any description the strange allure of Steampunk
fashion.
The ending moment when the
Steam Castle wrenches itself free from the banks of the Thames River and
hovers over the Tower Bridge is a wonderful Steampunk image - frozen
curlicues of steam below an iron castle floating in air: alterity and wonder
in Victorian England. For this scene and many others an Interactive
WhiteBoard and projector is suggested to highlight the visual richness of
the Steampunk subgenre, perhaps jumping from these to clothing, jewellery,
laptops and guitars in the Steampunk style, as found at the
Steampunk Resource.
At the beginning of this
podcast two other texts were noted for consideration by teachers. The first
is a splendid looking picture book by Greg Broadmore, Dr Grordbort
presents Victory: Scientific Adventure Violence (2009). This tome is
designed to look like an Victorian boys' manual. It contains full colour
comic panels of Lord Cockswain's murderous adventures on Venus and the Moon,
as well as glorious images of Venusian Bestiary or highly polished brass
weaponry for despatching harmless herbivores to make trophies for the Manor
House.
Needless to say, this is a
Steampunk satire of Victorian expansionism, drawing on the same rich sources
as seen in both Steamboy (Otomo, 2004) and World Shaker
(Harland, 2009). The pages are thick and lustrous and the illustrations will
be enjoyed by many students. There are only thirty-two pages in the book and
it costs twenty-four dollars in Australia, so only one copy, for the
Library, would be possible. If left in a classroom it will certainly be used
and enjoyed but as the title suggests, the violence is ludicrous and
graphic. Lord Cockswain decapitates Venusian temple lizards with a Ray
Blunderbuss and no morsel of flesh is left uncoloured. Within the book is a
little page to order full-sized or miniature copies of the Steampunk weapons
from www.wetaNZ.com, including even the
Goliathon 83 Infinity Beam Projector. For teachers interested in students
creating Steampunk paraphenalia as part of their studies, the Weta site will
be a useful aid.
While Steampunk texts have
not attracted a great deal of critical attention, China Mieville's
Perdido Street Station (2000) has been a focus for many studies.
on a blurb for the novel cover prominent Science Fiction
critic John Clute called Perdido Street Station (2000)
"the best steampunk novel since Gibson and Sterling's [The Difference
Engine]". As was noted in Podcast 30 when discussing The
Science Fiction Handbook (Booker & Thomas, 2009), Mieville's
Perdido Street Station
(2000) creates a cityscape with links to Steampunk. Handbook authors
Booker and Thomas argue that while this novel "shares much with the subgenre
of steampunk" (Booker and Thomas, 2009, p311), the technology of the city
goes well beyond the Industrial Revolution, involving 'thaumaturgy', a
branch of magic concerned with producing practical effects in the material
world. This novel has visual elements found in the Steampunk texts discussed
here, but it can not really be called either Steampunk or perhaps even
Science Fiction. It is an exciting, genre-blurring novel with a polemic bent
viewed through nightmare visions.
Perdido Street Station
(2000) is not suited to a younger secondary school audience but has been
taught successfully in many tertiary SF studies, including by Booker and
Thomas. For teachers who find Steampunk successful with younger secondary
students, Mieville's novel is worth consideration for the more adventurous
of the upper secondary students, again after some preliminary discussion of
Steampunk, and warnings about the fever-dream world of Perdido Street
Station (Mieville, 2000).
Blanco, J. (Director). (2009). Planet 51. Ilion Animation Studios.
Sony, Tristar DVD Version.
Booker, MK & Thomas A-M.
(2009). >The Science Fiction Handbook. . West Sussex, UK:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Bowers, D. (Director). (2009). >Astro Boy. . Sony. Summit Entertainment
DVD.
Bradmore, G. (2009) Dr ordbort Presents Victory: Scientific adventure
violence. MiMilwaukie, USA:
Dark Horse Books.
Gibson, W. & Sterling, B. (1990). >The Difference Engine. . Victor
Gollancz: London.
Harland, R. (2009). >World Shaker. . Crows Nest, Australia: Allen &
Unwin.
Letterman, R. & Vernon, C. (Directors). (2009). >Monsters vs Aliens. .
Dreamworks Home Entertainment, DVD Version.
Luckhurst, R. (2005). Science Fiction. >CamCambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Mann, G. (Editor). (2001). The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
NewNew York: Carroll & Graf Publishers.
Mieville, C. (2000). Perdido Street Station. New York: Ballantine
Books.
Otomo, K. (Director). (1988). Akira>. D. DVD Version, Sony Pictures Home
Entertainment.
Otomo, K. (Director). (2004). Steamboy. Screenplay by Sadayuki Murai.
DVD Version, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Wood, G. (2002). Edison's Eve: a magical history of the quest for mechanical life. New York: Alfred A Knopf.
ends
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