I agree. Sometimes I sort of hold it in my mind as an alternate future in a parallel universe that slowly diverged from our current one long about the late 1800's to the early 20th century.ilmarinen wrote:See, I always think of Steampunk as a time that never was but should have been. So I don't think it's reasonable to limit it to set historic periods.
Yep... as in the old Victorian houses that still reside so well kept on the west coast. And yet, even though that definition spans boundaries, when referencing Steampunk it almost always conjures up images of turn of the century London or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, even in my mind. This may well be old news and only now dawning on me personally, but my thought was that I'm seeing a growing emergence of a odd American (maybe even North American?) facet of Steampunk.True, but in the case of Steampunk I find that the term Victorian is often used as shorthand for the time period...
I think its probably been coming on for some time (As Dusza Beben mentioned, Jim West and Artemis Gordon), but even that was sort of focus primarily on the American West.
Hmmmm… Maybe the part that is currently most interesting to me is the recognizing of something that is reflecting some Midwest and Southern aspects into the mix.