Steam Magazine

24

HOW TO MAKE

EILEEN GUNN’S

A STEAMPUNK COLLECTION MAGAZINE

INTERVIEW WITH

15CONTENTS

48

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37

13 40

“HISTORY OF STEAMPUNK”

“ZEPPELIN CITY”

EILEEN GUNN’S

BOOK REVIEW “STEAMPUNK POE”

HOW-TO MAKESPATS

STEAMPUNK POLL

INTERVIEW WITH

TOM BANWELL

INTERVIEW WITH

CORY GROSS’

NFrom the Editor:

It is with enormous pleasure and unbridled joy that I welcome you, dear reader, to the twenty-fourth issue of our magazine, STEAM. What once was a flicker of an idea has now become a reality and I am eternally grateful to the dedicated readers out there who love escaping to a world full of robots, Victorian-futurism and etc.---even if it is for a brief moment. This magazine was established in 2009 as a homeage to the genre Steampunk, while including our readers to contribute their submissions of science fiction, how-tos, artwork and much more. And, we will continue to do so as long as you keep reading and dreaming of this fantastic world.

In our issues we dedicate our magazine to one of the forefathers of Steampunk and in this particular one we are honoring the master of darkness, Edgar Allan Poe with our “Is Poe Steampunk?” and Book review feature. To keep in the spirit of celebration we also feature an interview with the master of masks, Tom Banwell. We are also featuring a short essay by, Cory Gross, with an interesting look on the “History of Steampunk”. Our How-Tos will show you how to make spats, along with beautiful artwork submitted by our fellow Steampunk artists.

“Putting the ‘STEAM’ in Steampunk!”

Sincerely,

Kelly Kates

Written by: Cory Gross

Historyof

STEAMPUNKNormally, historical essays about Steampunk tend to say the same thing, but Cory Gross, who fancies himself as a “Steampunkian” scholar has written a new take on the “History of Steampunk”.

OCT 24, 2012 STEAM-MAG.COM / 4OCT 24, 2012 STEAM-MAG.COM / 3

he origins of what we know today as “Steampunk” began, along with Science Fiction

as a whole, in the early years of the Scientific Romances, Victorian penny dreadfuls, and Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires. An increasingly

literate public took advantage of the opportunities for adventure and high romance offered them by Verne, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, George Griffith, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Garrett P. Serviss, Edgar Allan Poe,

Mark Twain and Edgar Rice Burroughs, who were themselves inspired by the likes of Charles Babbage, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and the growing age of technology, colonialism, scientfic exploration and heavy industry.

That inspiration was a varied one and not easily categorized one way or the other. On the one hand there are American dime novels which celebrated technological progress and the expansionism that it permits. On the other there are the likes of Wells, who would just as soon destroy London at every

However, for Wells and Verne, there was nothing “Retro-

Victorian” about their “Retro-Victorian Scientific Fantasies”. The Victorian Era was then and now. Scientific Romances came to an end with the great Imperial Experiment and incinerated in the conflagration of World War I, giving way to the Pulp adventurers and the superheroes of the war era: Doc Savage, Blackhawk, Superman, Batman, King Kong, Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds and later Tarzan books (an era given true homage in such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Rocketeer and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow).

While silent and early sound films did appeal to the Scientific Romances for sto-ry ideas, these were often placed well within the 1920’s and 30’s. Georges Melies’ inspired Trip to the Moon was itself a Scientific Ro-mance masterpiece, released only a year after Queen Victoria’s death. Likewise, the first film adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was released in 1916, just sneaking in under the wire. The silent adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, though writ-ten in 1912, looks to take place in the year of release, 1925. While Burroughs’ novel shares The Lost World’s publication date, the icon-ic Tarzan the Ape Man film starring Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O’Sullivan takes place conspicuously in 1932.

For the first film to purposely choose a period setting in which to unrav-el its Science Fiction, journalist and edi-tor of the defunct Wonder Magazine, Rod Bennett, cites 1929’s Mysterious Island. Of this Vernian adaptation, Bennett says: Verne’s novels had been speculative when they first appeared, and many of them re-mained so for nearly a century. They were adventure stories, yes—but built almost entirely around elaborate prophecies of future technology. When those prophe-cies were fulfilled (as they were in the case of books like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in 80 Days) Verne’s novels didn’t seem futuristic any-more, or even quaint as they do to us to-day, but simply dated… hopelessly dated, and about as dated as any book could

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sion of the Body Snatchers, Earth vs. the Fly-ing Saucers, 20 million Miles to Earth, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Attack of the 50-Ft. Woman, and The Fly as well as Crea-ture from the Black Lagoon, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and the biggest of them all, Japan’s Gojira (better known as Godzilla).

Amidst this atomic explosion of cosmic operas and prehistoric mutants, filmmakers of the

Space Age turned their attention back to the Steam Age. In 1953, George Pal recruited the Mar-tian hordes of H.G. Wells into the War of the Worlds. However, this, like the 1960 adaptation of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, was also set in the modern day, where UFOs replaced stilted tri-pods. The real gamble was taken by Walt Disney with the 1954 release of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

With 20,000 Leagues, Disney was out to prove the mettle of his studio. Despite numerous awards for his work in short and feature animation, Disney and his company was still regarded as a maker of mere cartoons... Kiddie matinées. And in a sense, the public wouldn’t have it any different. Though an artistic masterpiece, Fantasia played only to chirping crickets and wouldn’t receive its due praise until latter day critics were accus-tomed to the fact that Disney is a cultural force that is here to stay, and therefore, its time to start taking a serious look at its productions. By the time production started on 20,000 Leagues, con-struction was beginning on Disneyland U.S.A. in Anaheim, California. Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier was obligating millions of Ameri-can parents to buy their kids coonskin caps.

ever hope to be. Some of them languished in this condition for over 40 years—just old-fashioned Victorian curios, brick-a-brack on the shelves of literature’s antique store. But by the mid-1920s these books were passing into a new phase, a state of being wherein the very datedness itself had acquired a fascination. And this was the genius of the stroke: I think we can say with confidence that the producers of The Mysterious Island were the first filmmakers in history who’d ever dared,

“ZEPPELIN CITY”

Written by:Eileen Gunn &

Michael Swanwick

Illustration by: Benjamin Carre

with a breathtaking flash of invention, NOT to update a hopelessly out-of-date book. They took Jules Verne’s daring predictions about the day-after-tomorrow and turned them into some-thing else entirely—into a huge, elaborate alter-nate universe story. They created a 19th century of the imagination, where British Imperialists reached the Moon 75 years before Neil Armstrong,

and electric submarines prowled the deep while Buffalo Bill was still prowling the West. Unfor-tunately, despite a pair of novel sound sequences, the film was a failure at the box office. It would be many years before another one of these deliberately Retro-Victorian Scientific Fantasies graced the silver screen. In the mean time, only a handful of films made any at-tempt in that direction, such as the period-set Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) with Bela Lugosi, Bride of Frankenstein (1935) with Boris Karloff and King Solomon’s Mines (1937) with Paul Robeson. The two decades following the end of the Second World War – with the advent of atomic power, the Space Race and the Cold War – was a golden age for Science Fiction. The climate of limitless possibility mixed with xeno-phobia and apocalyptic anxiety in a future that had arrived proved incredibly fertile for films like Rocketship X-M, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, Invaders from Mars, the legendary Z-grade Robot Mon-ster and Plan Nine From Outer Space, Them!, This Island Earth, The Forbidden Planet, Inva-

“Amidst this atomic explosion of cosmic operas and prehistoric mutants, filmmakers of the Space Age turned their attention back to the Steam Age.”


adio Jones came dancing down the slide-walks. She jumped from the express to a local, then spun about and raced back-wards, dumping speed so she could cut across the slower lanes two and three at a time. She hopped off at the mouth of an alley, glanced up in time to see a Zeppelin disappear behind a glass-domed skyscrap-er, and stepped through a metal door left open to vent the heat from the furnaces within.The glass-blowers looked up from their work as she entered the hot shop.

They greeted her cheerily:“Hey, Radio!”“Jonesy!”“You invented a robot girlfriend for me yet?”The shop foreman lumbered forward, smiling. “Got a box of off-spec tubes for you, under the bench there.”“Thanks, Mackie.” Radio dug through the pockets of her patched leather greatcoat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Hey, listen, I want you to do me up an estimate for these here vacuum tubes.”Mack studied the list. “Looks to be pretty straightforward. None of your usual experimental trash. How many do you need—one of each?”“I was thinking more like a hundred.”“What?” Mack’s shaggy black eyebrows met in a scowl. “You planning to win big betting on the Reds?”

“Not me, I’m a Whites fan all the way. Naw, I was kinda hoping you’d gimme credit. I came up with something real hot.”“You finally built that girlfriend for Rico?”The workmen all laughed.“No, c’mon, I’m serious here.” She lowered her voice. “I invented a universal radio receiver. Not fixed-frequency—tunable! It’ll receive any broadcast on the radio spectrum. Twist the dial, there you are. With this baby, you can listen in on every conversation in the big game, if you want.”

Mack whistled. “There might be a lot of interest in a device like that.”“Funny thing, I was thinking exactly that myself.” Radio grinned. “So waddaya say?”“I say—” Mack spun around to face the glass-blowers, who were all listening intently, and bellowed, “Get back to work!” Then, in a normal voice, “Tell you what. Set me up a demo, and if your gizmo works the way you say it does, maybe I’ll invest in it. I’ve got the materials to build it, and access to the retailers. Something like this could move twenty, maybe thirty units a day, during the games.”“Hey! Great! The game starts when? Noon, right?

I’ll bring my prototype over, and we can listen to the players talking to each other.” She darted toward the door.“Wait.” Mack ponderously made his way into his office. He extracted a five-dollar bill from the lockbox and returned, holding it extended before him. “For the option. You agree not to sell any shares in this without me seeing this doohickey first.”“Oh, Mackie, you’re the greatest!” She bounced up on her toes to kiss his cheek. Then, stuffing the bill into the hip pocket of her jeans, she bounded away.

Fat Edna’s was only three blocks distant. She was inside and on a stool before the door jangled shut behind her. “Morning, Edna!” The neon light she’d rigged up over the bar was, she noted with satisfaction, still working. Nice and

quiet, hardly any buzz to it at all. “Gimme a big plate of scrambled eggs and pastrami, with a beer on the side.”The bartender eyed her skeptically. “Let’s see your money first.”With elaborate nonchalance, Radio laid the bill flat on the counter before her. Edna picked it up, held it to the light, then slowly counted out four ones and eighty-five cents change. She put a glass under the tap and called over her shoulder, “Wreck a crowd, with sliced dick!” She pulled the beer, slid the glass across the counter, and said, “Out in a minute.”“Edna, there is nobody in the world less satisfy-ing to show off in front of than you. You still got that package I left here?”Wordlessly, Edna took a canvas-wrapped object from under the bar and set it before her.“Thanks.” Radio unwrapped her prototype. It was bench-work stuff—just tubes, resistors and capacitors in a metal frame. No housing, no cir-cuit tracer lights, and a tuner she had to turn with a pair of needle-nose pliers. But it was going to make her rich. She set about double-checking all the connectors. “Hey, plug this in for me, wil-lya?”Edna folded her arms and looked at her.

Radio sighed, dug in her pockets again, and slapped a nickel on the bar. Edna took the cord and plugged it into the outlet under the neon light.With a faint hum, the tubes came to life.“That thing’s not gonna blow up, is it?” Edna asked dubiously.

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that tiny morsel of extra lift, breaking every rule in the book and not giving a damn.The red light on Radio 2 flashed angrily. One-handed, she yanked the jacks to her headset from Radio 3, the set connecting her to the referee, and plugged into her comptroller’s set. “Yah?”

The flat, emotionless, and eerily artificial voice of Naked Brain XB-29 cut through the static. “Amelia, what are you doing?”“Just wanted to get your attention. I’m going to cut through the elbow between Ninetieth and Ninety-First Avenues. Plot me an Eszterhazy, will you?”“Computing.” Almost as an afterthought, the Naked Brain said, “You realize this is extremely dangerous.”“Nothing’s dangerous enough for me,” Amelia muttered, too quietly for the microphone to pick up. “Not by half.”The sporting rag Obey the Brain! had termed her “half in love with easeful death,” but it was not easeful death that Amelia Spindizzy sought. It was the inevitable, difficult death of an impossible skill tenaciously mastered but necessarily insufficient to the challenge—a hard-fought battle for life, lost just as the hand reached for victory and closed around empty air. A mischance that conferred deniability, like a medal of honor, on her struggle for oblivion, as she twisted and fell in gloriously tragic hero-ism.So far, she hadn’t achieved it.It wasn’t that she didn’t love being alive (at least some of the time). She loved dominating the air currents in her great titanium whirligig. She loved especially the slow turning in an ever-widening gyre, scanning for the opposition with an exquisite patience only a sigh short of boredom, and then the thrill as she spotted him, a minuscule speck in an ocean of sky. Loved the way her body flushed with adrenalin as she drove her machine up into the sun, searching for that sweet blind spot where the prey, her machine, and that great atomic fur-nace were all in a line. Loved most of all the instant of stillness before she struck.It felt like being born all over again.

For Amelia, the Game was more than a game, because necessarily there would come a time when the coordination, strength, and precision demanded by her fierce and fragile machine would prove to be more than she could provide, a day when all the sky would gather its powers to break her will and force her into the ultimate submission. It would happen. She had faith. Until then, though, she strove only to live at the outer edge of her skills, to fly and to play the Game as gloriously as any human could to the as-tonishment of the unfortunate earth-bound classes. And of the Naked Brains who could only float, ponderously, in their glass tanks, in their Zeppelins.“Calculations complete.”“You have my position?”Cameras swiveled from the tops of nearby buildings, tracking her. “Yes.”Now she’d achieved maximum height again.

“I’m going in.”Straight for the alley-mouth she flew. Sitting up-right in the thorax of her flying machine, rudder pedals at her feet, stick controls to the left and right, she let inertia push her back into the seat like a great hand. Eight-foot-long titanium blades extended in a circle, with her at the center like the heart of a flower. This was no easy machine to fly. It combined the delicacy of flight with the physical demands of operating a mechanical thresher.“Pull level on my count. Three . . . Two . . . Now.”It took all her strength to bully her machine prop-erly while the g-forces tried to shove her away from the controls. She was flying straight and true toward Dempster Alley, a street that was only feet wider than the diameter of her autogyro’s blades, so fine a margin of error that she’d be docked a month’s pay if the Naked Brains saw what she was up to.“Shift angle of blades on my mark and rudder on my second mark. Three . . . Two . . . Mark. And . . . Rudder.”Tilted forty-five degrees, she roared down the al-ley, her prop wash rattling the windows and filling them with pale, astonished faces. At the intersec-tion, she shifted pitch and kicked rudder, flipping her gyro over so that it canted forty-five degrees the other way (the engine coughed and almost stalled, then roared back to life again) and ham-mered down Bernoulli Lane (a sixty-degree turn here where the streets crossed at an odd angle) and so out onto Ninety-First. A perfect Eszterhazy! Five months ago, a hypercubed committee of half the Naked Brains in the metropolis had declared that such a maneuver couldn’t be done. But one brave pilot had proved otherwise in an aeroplane, and Amelia had determined she could do no less in a gyro.“Bank left. Stabilize. Climb for height. Remove safeties from your bombs.”Amelia Spindizzy obeyed and then, glancing back-wards, forwards, and to both sides, saw a small

“Naw.” Radio took a pair of needle-nose pliers out of her greatcoat pocket and began casting about for a strong signal. “Most it’s gonna do is electrocute you, maybe set fire to the building. But it’s not gonna explode. You been watching too many kinescopes.”Amelia Spindizzy came swooping down out of the sun like a suicidal angel, all rage and mirth. The rotor of her autogyro whined and snarled with the speed of her dive. Then she throttled up and the blades bit deep into the air and pulled her out, barely forty feet from the ground. Laughing, she lifted the nose of her bird to skim the top of one skywalk, banked left to dip under a second, and then right to hop-frog a third. Her machine shuddered and rattled as she bounced it off the compression effects of the air around the skyscrapers to steal

cruciform mote ahead and below, flying low over the avenue. Grabbing her glasses, she scanned the wing insignia. She could barely believe her luck—it was the Big E himself! And she had a clear run at him.

The autogyro hit a patch of bumpy air, and Amelia snatched up the sticks to regain con-trol. The motor changed pitch, the prop hummed, the rotor blades cut the air. Her machine was bucking now, veering into the scrap zone, and in danger of going out of control. She fought to get it back on an even keel, straightened it out, and swung into a tight arc.Man, this was the life!She wove and spun above the city streets as throngs of onlookers watched the warm-up hijinks from the tall buildings and curving skywalks. They shouted encouragement at her. “Don’t let ’er drop, Amelia!” “Take the bum down, Millie!” “Spin ’im around, Spindizzy!” Bloodthirsty bas-tards. Her public. Screaming bloody murder and perfectly capable of chucking a beer bottle at her if they thought she wasn’t performing up to par. Times like these she almost loved ’em.She hated being called Millie, though.Working the pedals, moving the sticks, dancing to the silent jazz of turbulence in the air around her, she was Josephine Baker, she was Cab Calloway, she was the epitome of grace and wit and intel-ligence in the service of entertainment. The crowd went wild as she caught a heavy gust of wind and went skidding sideways toward the city’s trea-sured Gaudi skyscraper.When she had brought everything under control and the autogyro was flying evenly again, Amelia looked down.

Cameras swiveled from the tops of nearby build-ings, tracking her. “Yes.”Now she’d achieved maximum height again.“I’m going in.”Straight for the alley-mouth she flew. Sitting up-right in the thorax of her flying machine, rudder pedals at her feet, stick controls to the left and right, she let inertia push her back into the seat like a great hand. Eight-foot-long titanium blades extended in a circle, with her at the center like the heart of a flower. This was no easy machine to fly. It combined the delicacy of flight with the physical demands of operating a mechanical thresher.“Pull level on my count. Three . . . Two . . . Now.”

It took all her strength to bully her machine properly while the g-forces tried to shove her away from the controls. She was flying straight and true toward Dempster Alley, a street that was only feet wider than the diameter of her auto-gyro’s blades, so fine a margin of error that she’d be docked a month’s pay if the Naked Brains saw what she was up to.“Shift angle of blades on my mark and rudder on my second mark. Three . . . Two . . . Mark. And . . . Rudder.”Tilted forty-five degrees, she roared down the alley, her prop wash rattling the windows and filling them with pale, astonished faces. At the intersection, she shifted pitch and kicked rudder, flipping her gyro over so that it canted forty-five degrees the other way (the engine coughed and almost stalled, then roared back to life again) and hammered down Bernoulli Lane (a sixty-degree turn here where the streets crossed at an odd angle) and so out onto Ninety-First. A perfect Eszterhazy! Five months ago, a hypercubed com-mittee of half the Naked Brains in the metropolis


had declared that such a maneuver couldn’t be done. But one brave pilot had proved otherwise in an aeroplane, and Amelia had determined she could do no less in a gyro.“Bank left. Stabilize. Climb for height. Re-move safeties from your bombs.”

Amelia Spindizzy obeyed and then, glancing backwards, forwards, and to both sides, saw a small cruciform mote ahead and below, flying low over the avenue. Grabbing her glasses, she scanned the wing insignia. She could barely believe her luck—it was the Big E himself! And she had a clear run at him.The autogyro hit a patch of bumpy air, and Amelia snatched up the sticks to regain control. The motor changed pitch, the prop hummed, the rotor blades cut the air. Her machine was bucking now, veering into the scrap zone, and in danger of going out of control. She fought to get it back on an even keel, straightened it out, and swung into a tight arc.Man, this was the life!She wove and spun above the city streets as throngs of onlookers watched the warm-up hi-jinks from the tall buildings and curving sky-walks. They shouted encouragement at her. “Don’t let ’er drop, Amelia!” “Take the bum down, Millie!” “Spin ’im around, Spindizzy!” Bloodthirsty bastards. Her public. Scream-ing bloody murder and perfectly capable of chucking a beer bottle at her if they thought she wasn’t performing up to par. Times like these she almost loved ’em.She hated being called Millie, though.Working the pedals, moving the sticks, danc-ing to the silent jazz of turbulence in the air around her, she was Josephine Baker, she was Cab Calloway, she was the epitome of grace and wit and intelligence in the service of enter-tainment. The crowd went wild as she caught a heavy gust of wind and went skidding side-ways toward the city’s treasured Gaudi sky-scraper.

For a miracle, he was still there, still unaware of her, flying low in a warm-up run and placing flour bombs with fastidious precision, one by one.She throttled up and focused all her attention on her foe, the greatest flyer of his generation and her own, patently at her mercy if she could first rid her-self of the payload. Her engine screamed in fury, and she screamed with it. “XB! Next five intersec-tions! Gimme the count.”“At your height, there is a risk of hitting specta-tors.”“I’m too good for that and you know it! Gimme the count.”“Three . . . two . . . now. Six . . . five . . .”Each of the intersections had been roped off and painted blue with a white circle in its center and a red star at the sweet spot. Amelia worked the bombsight, calculated the windage (Naked Brains couldn’t do that; you had to be present; you had to feel the air as a physical thing), and released the bombs one after the other. Frantically, then, she yanked the jacks and slammed them into Radio 3. “How’d we do?” she yelled. She was sure she’d hit them all on the square and she had hopes of at least one star.“Square. Circle. Circle. Star.” The referee—Naked Brain QW-14, though the voice was identical to her own comptroller’s—said. A pause. “Star.”Yes!She was coming up on Eszterhazy himself now, high and fast. He had all the disadvantages of po-sition. She positioned her craft so that the very tip of its shadow kissed the tail of his bright red ’plane. He was still acting as if he didn’t know she was there. Which was impossible. She could see three of his team’s Zeppelins high above, and if she could see them, they sure as hell could see her. So why was he playing stupid?Obviously he was hoping to lure her in.

or most folks, the names of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne are frequently referenced when it comes to the steampunk genre. And while I certainly appreciate their contributions to science fiction, I must admit to a complete and utter fascination with Edgar Allan Poe, the American writer who is most often thought of as a mystery detective writer or a horror writer. But for me, he’s high on the list of examples of writers who fit easily into the steampunk style and voice.For an advanced writing class I took in college, I remember writing an extensive paper on Poe that required me to read just about every story and poem

In honor of celebrating one of Steampunk’s forefathers, Edgar Allan Poe, STEAM took a look at Edgar Allan Poe’s Steampunk Poe illustrated by Zdenko Basic and Manuel Sumberac.

STEAMPUNK POE

he’d ever written. It’s dark stuff… and very good. Poe died at age 40, and much of his life reads like a tragedy with the early loss of his mother, being abandoned by his father, and his wife dying at a very young age. It should come as no surprise that much of his writing leans toward macabre story lines with death being the central subject.I chose mid- to late-1800s fiction as a focus for much of my studies and papers for my English degree, and while I often wandered from Wells to Verne to Doyle for my subject matter, I often returned to Poe whenever I needed to compare and contrast one or more authors (such as comparing Doyle’s Sherlock


BOOK REVIEW

I first heard rumblings about the book, I had very little information on what exactly the book was going to be about. Would it be stories inspired by Poe that contained steampunk themes? Or would it be some

of Poe’s stories altered slightly to incorporate steampunk elements such as the overly-used goggles, dirigibles, and automatons? Thankfully, once more information was made available, I realized that the publisher had made the right choice and not attempted to modify or create new content. Instead, Steampunk Poe simply provides some of Poe’s best works, both short story and poetry, along with some beautiful custom artwork created just for the book by illustrators Zdenko Basic and Manuel Sumberac.The book is broken into two sections — short stories first followed by poems.

Poe’s poetry was easy to read and decipher and made for excellent subjects for short papers on the period’s interest in things dark and disturbing.I tell you all this so you’ll understand just how happy I was to receive a review copy of Steampunk Poe. When

Spats are shoe accessories that wrap around the ankle and under the instep of the foot. They were popular in the late 19th and early 20th centu-ries, and are still used in marching bands and infantry. Today, they’re gaining popularity as part of the gothic lolita subculture. Following this in-depth tutorial, you can create and add this elegant, distinctive item to your repertoire .

1STEPS

Find a shoe that you’d like the pattern to be made for. Drape the cloth pattern over the shoe and use the binding clip to attach it to the top of the shoe. The cloth pattern used should be slightly longer and slightly taller than the shoe.

HOW TO MAKESPATS!

ScissorsRulerA small roller or hammerScotch tapeA small buckle10 buttons

A number 2 pencilWoven scrap fabricPattern paperA shoe (the one that the spat will

be made for)Leather used should be a texture that will drape nicely (such as vegan leatherRubber cementIndex card

THINGS YOU’LL NEED:


2 Use the scotch tape to attach the cloth to the back of the shoe and draw a vertical line indi-cating where the pattern will end.

3 Do the same to the front. The seam should run down the middle of the laces. Cut off any excess fabric out-side the line, and tape the cloth pat-tern to the shoe. Run your hands along the fabric to take any bumps out of the pattern and ensure the cloth is tight enough to cre-ate a good cover.

Tips: Decide how low you want to top of the spat to go from the top of the shoe. In this model, the top of the spat will hang slightly lower than the top of the shoe.

4 Do the same for the bottom of the shoe. Remember that the pattern should follow the organic shape of the shoe.

Decide where you want the buttons to go. Draw another line indicating this.

5


6 Trace the pattern directly onto the pattern paper. Cut off the excess cloth and draw the pat-tern on the paper. Weights can be helpful in keeping the pattern com-pletely still to en-sure a steady hand and correctly di-mensional pattern.

Tips: Because the lines drawn on the pattern will likely be shaky and not visible in certain areas, go back through and darken the lines to strengthen the pattern outline.

Cut the same cloth in half and trace the two pieces onto another section of tracing pattern paper. This will create the other side of the spat.

7

8 Add this half-inch to the pattern paper where the original pattern was traced.

Add an inch and a half to the original pattern to create leeway where the button seam is.

9

The pattern is ready to be cut out after one final adjustment. The triangle represents the excess seam a l l o w a n c e .

10


12 Fold the pattern along the button and button hole line.

Cut off the excess along the bottom of the seam allowance.

13

11 Add an inch and a half to the original pattern to create leeway where the button seam is.

14 The leather is ready to be traced and cut out based on the patterns. You should have three pieces of the patterns now. Weigh the patterns down on the leather and trace them with a ball-point pen. Because you’re creating two different spats for two different feet, make sure you flip

Cut the leather using your s c i s s o r s . You should have three different pieces prepared to sew together. Use a 2.5 to 4 stitch length on your sewing m a c h i n e

15

All three pieces should now be sewn together.16


18 Rub some of the rubber cement onto the corner of the index card. Make a thin layer of rubber cement on both sides of the seam.

Wait until both sides of the seam are sticky and semi-dry then push the sides down using your fingers in the middle of the seam so that it lies flat.

19

17 Take the front seam and back seam (both of which are curved) and make small cuts to make the seam lie flat. This way, when the spat is folded over it looks nice from

20 Use a small roller to press the seams down and make sure that the bond is especially strong (optional). for the opposite foot.

Rub some of the rubber cement along the edges of the spat and then fold it on itself to create a reinforced area for the buttons.

21

Fold the seam onto itself one inch. Use the roller to press it down and ensure a strong bond. Basic construction is finished and now the buttons are ready to be attached.

22


24 Make a button hole. To make a button hole, a simple one can be made with an exactoknife, or, for a sturdier one, the button hole attach-ment on the sewing machine can be used. If you use the machine, you’ll want to cut them open with a seam ripper.

After making the button holes, poke through the holes with a pen to mark the spot that the button will be attached to. Then sew the buttons on via machine or by hand if you’d prefer.

25

23 Find the center of the seam and make a mark with the pen. Make two additional marks, one to the left of the center and one to the right, about a quarter of an inch

26 Attach the buckle as the last step, or a piece of elastic if you’d like. Button up the spat, put it on the shoe, then use the pen to mark the place on the spat that you’d like the button to go. Sew either loose end of the buckle onto the inside of the bottom of the spat. You’re done!

From H.G. Well’s to Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe is believed to be one of Steampunk’s influential and inspirational fathers of the Victorian futuristic age. However, some question whether Poe is Steampunk enough.


Was

wonders of the great Steampunk icon: the balloon/zeppelin.

There is also the fact that Steampunk’s pater familias Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were heavily influenced by Poe. David Standish writes in his Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth’s Surface that “[Jules Verne] read Baudelaire’s translations of Poe

in various journals and newspapers…and…Verne responded chiefly to the cleverness, ratiocination, and up-to-date scientific trappings Poe wrapped his strange stories in.”

ell, if you stop to think about it, yes. In the Vander Meers’ Steampunkanthology, Jess Nivins credits Poe as one of the mainstream writers who created “The American cult of the scientist and the lone inventor.” But Poe’s contribution to science fiction is vaster than a lone inventor character; he contributed authenticity and realism, and used his sci fi pieces as thought experiments. He is also among the first to focus upon the

Poe Steampunk? Written by S.J. CHAMBERS

“The fundamental principles of construction that underlie such stories as Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ . . . are precisely those that should guide a

scientific writer.”

At the core of many Verne works are Poe prototypes. “Five Weeks in a Balloon” was influenced by “The Balloon Hoax” and “The Unparalleled Adventures of

Hans Pfaall”; “The Sphinx of the Snows” is like a sequel to The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and is dedicated to Poe; Around the World in Eighty Days uses the main concept from “Three Sundays in a Week.”1

V erne’s most popular work, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, may be the most subtly and heavily Poe-esque in its tone and

character. Nemo’s silent suffering, his deprivation of human convenience paired with immaculate taste, and his blatant disdain for society all conjure Hans Pfaall, Roderick Usher, and Monsieur Dupin. Poe is so ubiquitous throughout 20,000 Leagues that at the journey’s end, the dazed Professor Aronnax describes his adventures as “being drawn into that strange region where the foundered imagination of Edgar Poe roamed at will. Like the fabulous Gordon Pym, at every moment I expected to see ‘that veiled human figure, of larger proportions than those of any inhabitant of the earth, thrown across the cataract which defends the approach to the pole.’”

H. G. Wells was heavily influenced by Poe’s mathematical descriptions of machines in such stories as “Maezel’s Chess-Player” and “The Pit and the

Pendulum,”2 and acknowledged that “the fundamental principles of construction that underlie such stories as Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ . . . are precisely those that should guide a scientific writer.”

While I am by no means arguing that Poe’s Steampunk contribution is vast, his pioneering science fiction stories as

well as his resonant influence in Verne and Wells warrants him a bit of steam-cred.

In “Hans Pfaall,” all of Rotterdam is in disorder when a balloon made

of dirty newspapers descends to town square and throws a scroll to the mayor. The scroll is Hans Pfaall’s confession, a citizen who, with three companions, disappeared five years ago. While in Rotterdam, he escaped creditors and a nagging wife by reading scientific books, leading him to discover a lighter

gas that would propel him to the moon. He murders his creditors and alights to space with three other ruffians, landing finally on the moon. Poe incorporates meticulous scientific detail, such as Pfaall’s expostulations on how to reduce hydrogen, calculations of the distance between earth and moon, and how gravity would affect the balloon’s levity.

“The Balloon Hoax” chronicles a balloon voyage across the Atlantic, completed within 75 hours. Told through dispatches by Monck Mason, he describes atmospheric changes and geographical descriptions. Mason’s dispatches were factually saturated with speculations so accurate that “the first transatlantic balloon voyage, exactly.

W


Like Sir George Cayley’s balloon, his own was an ellipsoid. Its length was thirteen feet six inches—height, six feet eight inches. It contained about three hundred and twenty cubic feet of gas, which, if pure hydrogen would support twenty-one pounds upon its first inflation, before the gas has time to deteriorate or escape. The weight of the whole machine and apparatus was seventeen pounds—leaving about four pounds to spare. Beneath the centre of the balloon, was a frame of light wood, about nine feet long, and rigged on to the balloon itself with a network in the customary manner. From this framework was suspended a wicker basket or car…. The rudder was a light frame of cane covered with silk, shaped somewhat like a battledoor, and was about three feet long, and at the widest, one foot. Its weight was about two ounces. It could be turned flat, and directed upwards or downwards, as well as to the right or left; and thus enabled the æronaut to transfer the resistance of the air which in an inclined position it must generate in its passage, to any side upon which he might desire to act; thus determining the balloon in the opposite direction.

“Mellonta Tauta” may be the most Steampunk among these stories based upon its futuristic world and aesthetic (as the left Fritz Eichenberg’s 1943 illustration shows). It features a female character, Pundita, who writes to a friend about her ballooning cruise on April 1, 2848. Poe wrote this as a satire of not only American politics, but Western tradition, but also used it as a vehicle to espouse a water downed version of his scientific treatise Eureka. Pundita describes the sky as filled with balloon vessels not used for scientific exploration, but simply as a mode of pleasurable transportation.

“Like Sir George Cayley’s balloon, his own was an

ellipsoid.”

Do you remember our flight on the railroad across the Kanadaw continent?—fully three hundred miles the hour—that was

travelling. Nothing to be seen, though—nothing to be done but flirt, feast and dance in the magnificent saloons. Do you remember what an odd sensation was experienced when, by chance, we caught a glimpse of external objects while the cars were in full flight? Everything seemed

TEMPLECONPROVIDENCE, RIFounded in 2006, TempleCon is a celebration all things with a retro-futurist theme, right next door to one of the coolest cities in the world, Providence, Rhode Island. While we suppose you could call Temple-Con a convention, as many are quick to do, it’s a bit more than that. It’s really a three day festival of modern hobby gaming and retro-futurist fandom, including events, performances and activities from all the genres out there that you can think of, and probably some that you can’t. It’s also a social event, which means that while we’re all about the entertainment, we’re even more about the people who love it. We started TempleCon for a lot of reasons, but one of them is because we think that things gaming and fandom need to finally be dragged out of the basement and into the ballroom. TempleCon breaks a lot of the long-standing rules of “geek” conventions, and offers up a diverse event full of wild parties, great games, live music, crazy performances, guests, workshops, vendors, and a ton more stuff that we think you’ll like.Trust us. You want to be here.

February 25-27

CONVENTIONLIST2013


AnachroCon is the place in the South for Steampunk, History, Alternate His-tory, Sciences, Music, Classic Sci-Fi Literature and the most amazing costum-ing you’ve ever seen!AnachroCon is a celebration of history both real and imagined. It is a place where those who have a love for yesterday’s future mix and mingle with those who chronicle the past and present.AnachroCon is a home for Steampunks, Neo-Victorians, Retro-Futurists, His-torical Re-enactors, Time Travelers, and general students of history, as well as those wishing to explore these areas.We are dedicated to the principle of providing a safe social environment for the free exchange of ideas. We gather to interact, share, dance, and explore the possibilities of all things historical, alternately historical and fictional. We also strive to hold ourselves to the highest standards of decorum and education.AnachroCon is, and shall remain, a convention at which the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.Guests include:• EmilieP.Bush• G.D.Falksen• NickValentino• GypsyNomads

SHEVACONATLANTA, GASheVaCon is celebrating it’s 19th year as the largest Multi-Media Science Fic-tion & Fantasy convention in Southwestern Virginia.We offer many fun events and great programming focusing on sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Workshops, panel-discussions, art show & artist alley, dealer’s room, costumed fandom groups, auctions, computer and console gaming, RPG/LARP gaming, Video and Anime screenings…. and so much more!New for this year… SheVaCon is being held in the first weekend of March (4th – 6th 2011), so be sure to mark your calendars!• MediaGuestofHonor:VirginiaHey• ArtistGuestofHonor:MattBusch• WriterGuestofHonor:PeterS.Beagle

March 4-6

WILD WILD WEST CONTUCSON, AZWild Wild West Con is Arizona’s first and only steampunk convention and festival. This is a revolutionary re-invention of the standard hotel-based con-vention. The core of our event is within Old Tucson Studios, a famous movie studio and amusement park built in 1939. For this weekend only, Old Tucson is transforming into the town of Rusted Gear.The year is 1896 and it is Rusted Gear’s centennial celebration. The town is hosting an amazing number of events and an active story line during this celebration including: music concerts, a dinner theater, a tea party with a published author, a charity fashion show, a freak show art show, a mercantile pavilion, a street parade, street performers, a high noon dual competition, a fast draw competition, a gaming parlor, live action stunt shows, cabaret saloon shows, ghost tours, a masquerade ball, a mad scientist lab, costume contests, courtroom discussion panels, how to workshops and much more.• AuthorGuests:O.M.Grey&NickValentino• SpecialGuests:LeagueofS.T.E.A.M.,Bruce&MelanieRosenbaum,Victoria Moore & Thomas King

March 4-6


May 20-22

Welcome to a three-day expedition into yesterday’s future! (And no, that doesn’t mean the present!) SPWF was the first East Coast event to welcome Steampunks, Neo-Victorians, Retro-futurists, Gas Lamp Fantasists, and any and all others who consider themselves part of steampunk into a weekend long festival celebrating all things steamy!An interactive and social event for people of all levels of steampunk know-how to communicate, dance, exchange, and explore. Here, you will find repre-sentation of the art, culture, fashion, technology, history, gaming, and music of this fascinating and scintillating subculture and genre.Say you enjoy the post-enlightenment of the Industrial Revolution, or Victo-rian Era upper-class sensibilities, or the mutated past merged with modern mentalities and counter-culture ethos. Maybe you like the skewed science of “What if?” and the historical settings, or you simply like to look dapper in

September 16-18

FITCHBURG, MAHere are the specifics:• Where:CourtyardFitchburg150RoyalPlazaDrive•Fitchburg,Massachusetts 01420 USA• Guests:AbneyPark,JakevonSlatt,PhilandKajaFoglioRegistration: Pre-Registration (3-day passes only):December6,2010–January31,2011—$45.February1–March31,2011—$55.April1–May31,2011–$65.June1–Endofregistration–$75.

Gaitors:

These are real vintage gaitors so have some beautiful wear and distressing, so each pair may vary in it’s own unique marks and scuffs.

Price: $39.00

STEAM “PUNK” IT UP!

From spats to top hats, we, the avid steampunkians must have the latest and finest accessory which will amplify our frock coat or corset. Great finds can be found at www.steampunkcouture.com!

Embellished Contact Lense Case:Hand-made embelshished contact lens case for your regular lenses or circle lenses.Sterile, secure and ready to use.

Price: $6.00


Gentlemen’s MonocleMr. Peanut wore one...and you can, too! What steampunk costume is complete without this dashing monocle.

Price: $20.00

Nomaly’s crochet cream stretch knickersAdorable hand-made, softly-lined stetch knickers with elastic waist band.Limited amount available.Waist band stretches from 22” up to 36”Will fit up to a 38” hip and 20.5” thighWashing machine safe. Turn inside out before washing to protect crochet lace.

Price: $39.00

Jailer’s Key NecklaceLock em’ up and throw away the key with this awesome jailer key necklace!

Price: $18.98

Darl Brown Leather KnucklesHand-made brown leather knuckle gloves. Made from recycled leather scrap.One size fits most.

Price: $29.00

Sea Captains Mens BootsHandsomely crafted for adventure and danger, these man-made material boots look great pulled over cargo style pants.

Price $79.95

Octo-buckles add a decorative touch to these rugged boots, for all your swashbuckling needs.


The Formal Victorian Silver Tapestry TailcoatA formal victorian coat with tails. Great for special occasions, formal events, or when you want to stand out from the crowd. Beautiful silver and black tapestry fabric with luxurious black velvet lapels. Fully lined in rich black satin. Six ornate metal buttons decorate the front and two at the waist in back. Three smaller metal buttons are at each cuff. Two special inside pockets at the chest. Comes in sizes small-xxxl.

Price $324.95

Black and white thin stripe skinny fit pantsSuper soft, stretch, hand-made pants with elastic waist band.Only a few available. Will fit Small-Large.Waistband stretches up to 36”Hip up to: 40”Thigh: Up to 28”

Price: $60.00

We wanted to see what accessory our fellow “Steampunkians” wear while attending fancy conventions and we were very surprised with the end result.

99% of the Steampunk community preferred to wear tophats to complete their steampunk outfit. Surprise. Surprise.

(One would assume that it would have been goggles.)

Coming in a close second were corsets (testified by the futuristic, victorian women-folk), while 64% would rather have their laser guns on hand. 59% said they liked wearing spats. The shocking result were goggles, which came in last with 18%. It just goes to show you that not every “steampunker” wear goggles.

Tophats

Corsets

Laser Guns

Spats

Goggles


STEAMPUNK POLL

Hate it!

What punk?

It’s overrated.

I am steampunk!

I love it!

It’s ok.

Don’t know

So awesome

fter sending one of our “Steampunkians” out on a daily walk, we asked them to find out from local passerbys what did they thought of Steampunk or if they knew it exsisted. According to the polls, there are people who think Steampunk is awesome with 30% while 24% hate it (hate is such a strong word!). Others thought Steampunk was overrrated. What was interesting is the tie between people who didn’t know it exsisted and the people who thought it was okay. There’s just a portion where Steampunk is debatable and sad-to-say despised. Hopefully, Steampunk will win them over.

Nikola Tesla

H.G. Wells

Edgar Allan Poe

Jules Verne

We wanted to know who is the true forefather of Steampunk and after asking you, our fellow “Steampunkians” we have found thatH.G.Wellsisthetrueforefatherwith58%.JulesVerne came in second with 44% votes, following Edgar Allan Poe with 34%, and Nikola Tesla in fourth with 29% votes.


If you thought you only had a suddenly limited time left to live, which of your goals and passions would you pursue? Artist Tom Banwell asked himself this question a few years ago and realised making these kinds of awesome masks had to be it. Inspired by a gas mask he stumbled across at a car boot sale, he started meticulously handcrafting the masks and helmets you’ll see below, going through several stages from sketch to re-alisation. We chat to him about the online steampunk community that motivated him to keep creating, his childhood sculptures and what’s next on the cards for his work.)

AnInterview with

TOM BANWELL

Top: Tom Banwell posing in one of his fantastic masks.


When did you first get into making steampunk masks and helmets?

T.B.: Five years ago when I was 57 years-old I was seriously ill and was hospitalised for three weeks, and that forced me to re-evaluate what I was doing with my life. I realized that I shouldn’t put off doing the things that I wanted to do before I died. Happily there wasn’t much on that list.

Creating art has always been a passion and brought great me personal satisfaction, and I recognized that I wanted to once

again work in leather as I had decades earlier. And so I made several Viking hel-mets and other fantasy headwear just for fun. I searched online for others with the same interest, and found a Yahoo group for leatherworkers. It wasn’t particular-ly active, but it did lead me to another online group at Leatherworker.net.

While perusing this forum I came across leatherworkers making masks, and was intrigued. I had made two leather masks years earlier, and they — along with hel-mets — fascinated me. The maskmaking worked well for me and looking into sell-

ing them I discovered the handmade goods selling site Etsy from a post on Leatherworker.net.

Shortly thereafter I opened a shop on Etsy (April 2008) and began selling leather masks, which with my wife and I continue to do today. While looking around the site I came across the term “steampunk” and had no idea what it was, but again was intrigued. As I ex-plored steampunk online I realized I had stumbled onto a world in which my creativity would fit perfectly. I knew that I could create helmets and masks

in the steampunk genre, and around Au-gust 2008 I found an old rubber gas mask at a yard sale and recreated it in leather and resin: my first steampunk item.

When I posted a photo of it online I got immediate positive responses to it, which encouraged me to continue making leather and resin steampunk pieces.

Where do you think your interest in the steampunk era and style comes from?


T.B.: Growing up I felt somewhat lost in a complicated, confusing world. Pre-industrial life appealed to me because it was easier to understand than the modern world. Even though I work with modern tools (a laser cutter) and modern materials (plastics) I still relate to 19th century and earlier cultures.

What’s your creative back-ground like? We notice you say you’re self-taught: what was your first foray into 3D sculpting and carving?

T.B.: I made a lot of art as a child and I suppose that sculpting in clay was my first 3D experience. I still have a bust of Abraham Lincoln that I made in grade (primary) school.

What do you think gives your steampunk creations their aesthetic appeal?

T.B.: I suppose it is combining elements that are familiar yet startling with beautiful forms

and lines. On top of that I try to use the best of leatherworking techniques, with hand-stitching that is perfectly even and uniform for example.

Once you get inspired to start a piece, where does your creative process go to from there? Are you a sketch-based man? Or do you start cutting the leather straight away?

I always sketch out my ideas, then usually I sculpt the form in clay in order to draught the patterns. Then I cut out the pieces in cardstock to see how it all goes together. Only after that has been worked out (and reworked) do I commit it to leather. Oftentimes I will still want to make changes, and so will modify

the patterns and cut it out all over again.

How often do you get buyers sending in images of themselves in your creations? And favourites if so?

Mostly I get photos from professional photographers who have shot models wearing my masks. Many of those are drop dead gorgeous photos, and I have used many of them on my Etsy site to help sell them.

What do you think it is about steampunk that still intrigues so

many people?

I think it is a fun escape from the pressures of real life, and steampunk is a genre which encourage participants to be creative and to make their own clothing and props.

What do you hope people take away from viewing and owning your work?

I’m just happy when people enjoy what I do. If someone enjoys it enough to plunk down cold hard cash for it all the better.

“Growing up I felt somewhat lost in a complicated, confusing world.” -Tom Banwell


Which of your own pieces are you the most proud of? Why?

That is hard to say, as I like most of the pieces I have made the last few years, but typically I am most taken with my most recent work, in this case Ichabod the steampunk plague doctor’s mask (above, with hood).

Finally, what are you working on at the moment?

And what are your future plans for the helmet/mask world?I have sketches and ideas for

scores of projects. I am in between projects

right now, having just completed Ichabod, but I am considering for my next piece either an elaborate 3D lion’s mask, or a squid helmet and mask combination, with a bit of a Cthulu influence...

For more information follow Tom Banwell and his amazing masks at:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/TomBanwell

“I think it is a fun escape from the pressures of real life,” -Tom Banwell


There are some amazing Steampunk artists out there and some of them our are fantastic readers. Before each issue we encourage our readers and fellow “Steampunkians” to submit their artwork through our website: Steam-Mag.com.

Here is just a taste of what is on our website.

Enjoy!

MARVELOUS STEAMPUNK

ARTWORK

Submitted by Omara Rayan

OCT 24, 2012 STEAM-MAG.COM / 49

Submitted by Yllek Setak

Submitted by Yllek Setak


Steam Magazine

Documents

poe steampunk

genre steampunk

forefathers of steampunk

fellow steampunk artists

victorian era

edgar allan poe

war era

scientific romances