Steampunk and the Death of the Future
Nov. 8th, 2010 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
michaeldthomasInternet kerfuffles sometimes meld with other ideas in my brain. I really don’t have much of an opinion about Steampunk as a sub-genre of literary SF/F. I haven’t read enough Steampunk lit in order to make any sweeping statements. Based on spending a few minutes at TeslaCon this weekend and last year’s WindyCon, I know lots of people are enjoying it. One question raised during the whole discussion, though, stuck with me. Why do people passionately embrace Steampunk in 2010?
The more I pondered it, the more I thought about my family’s trip to Epcot a few weeks ago. My last visit had been in 1989. Back then, the front half of Epcot was designed to act like a never-ending World’s Fair called Future World. Corporate sponsors helped create pavilions that showcased future possibilities, usually with films and audio-animatronic characters. By 2010, most of those optimistic ventures have been replaced with typical Disney theme rides. What happened?
The future died.
Lost Horizons
Back in 1983, GE and Disney opened the Horizons pavilion. Some of you might remember this attraction. You rode through a series of vignettes starting with wacky ideas about the future from the 19th Century (totally Steampunk). After some enormous films, the attraction moved through the lives of people in the 21st Century. This audio-animatronic family lived in futuristic places like under the ocean, cultivated deserts, and space. These things seemed reasonable in 1983. It had only been 14 years since we sent men to the moon. The Space Shuttle program was a bright and shiny new thing full of promise. The idea that 20 years later people would live in space station cities seemed like a natural progression. I know I believed it in 1983. Actually, I alternated between that and a dystopia caused by the massive nuclear war with the USSR and China (like you did).
What happened since 1983 at Epcot? Horizons started falling into a sinkhole (no, really). They replaced it in 2003 with Mission: Space, a ride that simulates a mission to Mars. With each passing year, Mission: Space seems less like an optimistic vision and more like just another ride no different than Star Tours. The Space Shuttle program is about to be mothballed. At the moment, there’s nothing to replace it and nobody seems to care. After the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, Americans lost their taste for expensive space exploration. There is an International Space Station, but it’s hardly the space colony Horizons envisioned.
The Death of the Future
I’m not sure if the pioneer spirit is dead, but it’s certainly in a coma. Even though the Cold War ended, the visions of dystopia won. Where are the optimistic Science Fiction books and films that people believe will come true? Realism crushed future fantasies. Instead of reaching for the stars, our innovations are now focused on finding more ingenious ways to entertain ourselves in our downtime from our jobs. For future space travel to become plausible, authors have to set it farther and farther into the future. We’ve come to terms with the fact that we’re not going to get our flying cars and robot butlers in the next century.
Enter Steampunk
This finally brings me to Steampunk. Retro-futurism makes sense in a world where we’ve given up on major technological changes in our lifetimes. The Victorians emulated by the Steampunk fans believed that the will of humanity could overcame any obstacle. All you needed was an idea and the gumption (and some impoverished people to exploit, but that’s another topic for another time). To them, exploration was vital to the development of humanity. If we can no longer have fancy, credible dreams of the future, we can at least embrace the fake ones of the Victorians.
Almost nobody believes in the world presented at old World’s Fairs and discontinued Epcot attractions anymore, but we still have a need to believe in a better and more interesting tomorrow beyond just getting more powerful Wi-Fi. Hope and the need for growth are major components of the human condition. If constant reports of global warming, terrorism, and economic collapse make it impossible to imagine a believable Jetson’s future, we can always retreat to the wood and brass of Verne and Wells. That fictional future remains alive and well.
The more I pondered it, the more I thought about my family’s trip to Epcot a few weeks ago. My last visit had been in 1989. Back then, the front half of Epcot was designed to act like a never-ending World’s Fair called Future World. Corporate sponsors helped create pavilions that showcased future possibilities, usually with films and audio-animatronic characters. By 2010, most of those optimistic ventures have been replaced with typical Disney theme rides. What happened?
The future died.
Lost Horizons
Back in 1983, GE and Disney opened the Horizons pavilion. Some of you might remember this attraction. You rode through a series of vignettes starting with wacky ideas about the future from the 19th Century (totally Steampunk). After some enormous films, the attraction moved through the lives of people in the 21st Century. This audio-animatronic family lived in futuristic places like under the ocean, cultivated deserts, and space. These things seemed reasonable in 1983. It had only been 14 years since we sent men to the moon. The Space Shuttle program was a bright and shiny new thing full of promise. The idea that 20 years later people would live in space station cities seemed like a natural progression. I know I believed it in 1983. Actually, I alternated between that and a dystopia caused by the massive nuclear war with the USSR and China (like you did).
What happened since 1983 at Epcot? Horizons started falling into a sinkhole (no, really). They replaced it in 2003 with Mission: Space, a ride that simulates a mission to Mars. With each passing year, Mission: Space seems less like an optimistic vision and more like just another ride no different than Star Tours. The Space Shuttle program is about to be mothballed. At the moment, there’s nothing to replace it and nobody seems to care. After the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, Americans lost their taste for expensive space exploration. There is an International Space Station, but it’s hardly the space colony Horizons envisioned.
The Death of the Future
I’m not sure if the pioneer spirit is dead, but it’s certainly in a coma. Even though the Cold War ended, the visions of dystopia won. Where are the optimistic Science Fiction books and films that people believe will come true? Realism crushed future fantasies. Instead of reaching for the stars, our innovations are now focused on finding more ingenious ways to entertain ourselves in our downtime from our jobs. For future space travel to become plausible, authors have to set it farther and farther into the future. We’ve come to terms with the fact that we’re not going to get our flying cars and robot butlers in the next century.
Enter Steampunk
This finally brings me to Steampunk. Retro-futurism makes sense in a world where we’ve given up on major technological changes in our lifetimes. The Victorians emulated by the Steampunk fans believed that the will of humanity could overcame any obstacle. All you needed was an idea and the gumption (and some impoverished people to exploit, but that’s another topic for another time). To them, exploration was vital to the development of humanity. If we can no longer have fancy, credible dreams of the future, we can at least embrace the fake ones of the Victorians.
Almost nobody believes in the world presented at old World’s Fairs and discontinued Epcot attractions anymore, but we still have a need to believe in a better and more interesting tomorrow beyond just getting more powerful Wi-Fi. Hope and the need for growth are major components of the human condition. If constant reports of global warming, terrorism, and economic collapse make it impossible to imagine a believable Jetson’s future, we can always retreat to the wood and brass of Verne and Wells. That fictional future remains alive and well.
