The Problem with Steampunk

I have always seen steampunk as a problem. I, whose mind is often overtaken with the wonder and the breadth of the universe; whose mind contemplates the diversity and gently complexity of the distant nebulae. I could never understand it.

Today, I went down to the public library and while searching through their used book store, found a copy of Bradbury's I Dream the Body Electric. There's a story there, called "Downwind of Gettysburg" and I realized something. Steampunk is an off shoot, composed of disillusionment with the future, and disgust with the present. It's reverse escapism.

Since the "Golden Age of Science Fiction" in the 20th Century, we've all been waiting around for the future to get here. Instead of every car a helicopter- or spaceship- we get another energy crisis, the snide lying that is the "Green Movement", and ecological indulgences. Our future isn't here, yet; and the one we see looks bleak- so, instead, we look back to lay blame on our forebears.

We say: "See what they could have done? See what grandness they squandered waiting for dreams that could never become reality? Those were the good ol' days, when the future wasn't an idiot in the white house, a war no one wanted, and no flying cars." I am, I'm sure, not the first one to notice this, astute navel gazing. Nor am I the first to point out that these are not new conditions; but a repeating cycle of disappointment with the present and fear of the future.

Instead of wishing we could go back to the past, not care about the tons of coal it took to run a "modern industrial city"; not understand why so many people died of the consumption; not allow the women-folk, the black-folk, or the brown, or the yellow-folk to stand up and be counted; I, still look to the future.

We may never have flying cars; but we might. We may never have faster-than-light travel, or teleporters, or huge private space stations. But we might. In the "Golden Age" of Sci-fi, no one foresaw the advent of the internet. It was not imaginable that we would be so similar, yet have the connectivity and usefulness of cell-phones. Though we were very scared of the impending ice age, no one ever thought that we would be more worried about cooking ourselves and overheating the planet around us.

The future is not here yet, and when we get there, the future will still be yet-to-come. But, the present is just fine by me. In a couple months, scientists will re-create conditions similar to those mere billionths of a second after the big bang. We may, yet, add another 7, or more ,dimensions to the space-time we experience in only 4. Other scientists are slowly understanding how proteins fold, and why we have these minds we take for granted and fill with such useless crap. It's already been a couple years since implanting electrodes into the brains of certain types of blind people has let them "see". Who knows what's yet to come? Worse- who would really want to know it all, before it happened.

Frank Herbert imagined a person who would always know what the next instant held. A person who would always see what was yet to come, doomed to relive the future, in the present; never a surprise to be had. I agree with Mr. Herbert: I think it'd be mind-numbingly boring. Yet, trying to relive a past, just seems... silly.

We already know where we've been; why re-imagine where we could have gone? It seems like crying over spilled milk, to me. But who am I to talk? I love living in my future worlds that will never be...

It's just, staring at our collective navel will never seem as, even minimally, productive as stretching towards a future, with an eye on the sky.