An Introduction to Interdimensional VIllainy

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Saturday Thoughts: Steampunk and Inequality

The blogging community seems to be discussing the value of the science fiction sub-genre known as steampunk- where victorian fantasies of coal powered steam driven super robots are writ large and Prussian armies battle French aristorcrats and English Mad Scientists. The charge seems to be that Victorian culture was exploitive and repressive and racist and sexist and pollutive and therefore steampunk is bad by association.

What this facile argument fails to take into account is that moden domesticated culture is far more exploitive and repressive of its underclass, and far more pollutive, while still being racist and sexist. Modern culture just hides these things better by pushing them further off shore, having better public relations, and handing over control of the exploitation to local compliant leaders who do the exploiting in our stead and alow the upper classes of the first world to wash their hands of the deed like Pontius Pilate.

The Victorians were rank amateurs next to modern culture, and attacking a literatary genre that suffers from nostalgia is nothing more than an attempt to ignore our own culpability in the matter.

Grow up.

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