Steampunk is dead, long live Cowpunk.

Steampunk lost its appeal for me a few years ago when it simply turned into brown goth (swap out ankhs for gears).  While I was glad to see the renewed interest in Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, dirigibles, and British Imperialism I rapidly became disgusted with this kind of mentality:

My own relationship with steampunk began in 1988 when I read about Frank Chadwick's Space: 1889 (GDW: 1988) in Dragon magazine.  Not long after I got hooked on Philip Jose Farmer's Dungeon series.  This series remains one of my favorite "fantasy" series and after rereading them a few years ago - probably not something I should have read when I read it for the first time (see also George Alec Effinger's When Gravity Fails).  I had forgotten about steampunk, for the most part, save for a manga here or there, Otomo's Steamboy (2004), and to a certain extent Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the graphic novel not the shite movie).  In the late 00s the steampunk subculture went mainstream and for a brief period of time I thought it was pretty cool.  Then the subculture seemed to blow up and you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a top hat with shit on it.  I think DragonCon 2010 was the final nail in the coffin for me (though there were some slammin hot cosplayers in steampunk gear but then again those men and women would look attractive in damn near anything).  It wasn't even a scene I was "into" or directly involved with (apart from living with a borderline steampunk-former goth-super crafter-ubergeek) so I my disinterest did not stem from my "scene" being taken over by n00bs and kindergoths.  No, I just got over-saturated and that resulted in me turning into a crankasaurus.

Recently a dear friend, fellow Havenite, and longtime fan of steampunk declared that she was done with the subculture and was ready to move on.  In the ensuing snark we batted around other ---punk genres that could be gotten into.  Personally I'm tired of 99% of (insert term)punk including but not limited to dieselpunk, atomicpunk, cuttlepunk (enough with the god damn Cthulu stuff people.  Lovecraft's best works didn't even involve Elder Gods), and coalpunk.  My money is still on the Weird Western; that brilliant genre that ranges (in my experience) from the classic show The Wild, Wild West (1965-1969), horror folk tales I grew up with (some with historical roots - the Donner Party - and a lot of Native American things that go bump in the night) to some of the works of Joe R. Lansdale to Ravenous (1999), The Missing (2003) and The Burrowers (2008) to a great deal of bizzaro sci-fi and horror that shared the same bottle as splatterpunk (I can't forget Red Dead Redemption either).  A number of excellent (now out-of-print) graphic novels appeared in the early 00s that did the Weird Western bloody justice.  Hell, I might even call Preacher a Weird Western at it's heart.  I was recently skimming through the brilliant Too Much Horror Fiction blog (seriously, if you're a horror fan you'd do well to check it out) and found a brief write-up of Razored Saddles, a Weird Western anthology edited by Joe R Lansdale and Pat Lobrutto.  I found it on amazon and bought a couple of copies (don't give me that look).  I haven't started it yet but the list of authors is fucking impressive.  Besides Lansdale, it features Robert R McCammon, Richard Matheson (yes that Richard Matheson), Richard Laymon, and F. Paul Wilson.  There are quite a few authors I don't recognize off the topic of my head but their names look familiar from other anthologies (e.g. Chet Williamson).

What brought on the whole ---punk blog was when I was shelving the extra copies I noticed that Avon had categorized the anthology as "Cowpunk/Horror".  "Cowpunk"?  Nani?  So I took a look at wikipedia and found out that a good number of bands I am very, very familiar with bore the cowpunk moniker (including The Violent Femmes, Meat Puppets, The Cramps, The Mekons, and a number of bands I just thought were psychobilly -e.g. Nashville Pussy and Reverend Horton Heat).  Well, I'll be shipped in dit.  I didn't see any authors or mention of Weird Westerns on the wiki though.  I'm kind of curious how Avon came to slap cowpunk on the book and if there are other books drifting around in the sub-subgenre.  Mr. Lansdale and Mr. LoBrutto explain in the introduction:

But, the term Cowpunk is a joke, nothing more.  It is not the beginning of a movement.  No secret handshakes or code rings here.  It is a playful poke at such "movements" as Cyberpunk and Splatterpunk as it is anything. - xii

This makes me fucking happier than listening to Deadwood dialogue.  It's been a long time since I was genuinely "fat kid dancing with cotton candy" happy to read something.  Razored Saddles is also a little nostalgic for me.  This book reminds me of anthologies and assorted horror I cut my teeth on, starting around age 12 (most of which I should not have read until I was old enough to buy smokes).

I'll be making a follow-up/review post soon but in the meantime I'm gonna crack open a Lone Star and fresh pack of Pall Malls and get to reading.    

Franklyn (2008) Dir Gerald McMorrow

Had this on the Netflix queue and watched it last night with the missus. i hadn't heard anything about it but the premise sounded interesting and Eva Green is in it so, why not? The premise is thus: In the futuristic Meanwhile City, a masked vigilante (Ryan Phillippe) seeks out his nemesis while in contemporary London, an art student (Eva Green) attempts to kill herself, a heartbroken lover (Sam Riley) looks for someone new and a father (Bernard Hill) searches for his son. Writer-director Gerald McMorrow's sci-fi drama follows these desperate individuals as their lives become intertwined by fate. Franklyn is a split reality movie that reminded me of Clive Barker's Quiddity mixed with Steampunk mixed with boring British lines of fate movie.  Perhaps it decided to do one thing or another I might have enjoyed it much more than I did. The Meanwhile City sequences were awesome and if the movie had spent more time in that world I would have enjoyed the movie a great deal more.  Perhaps if the other characters had shifted over to Meanwhile City... The Meanwhile City sequences are neat, rich with detail, and I honestly want to know more about this world.  Franklyn is worth watching for Meanwhile City alone.  Otherwise it's just meh, British people being gloomy.

"I say Waddington, those rogues are absconding with our dirigible!"

So we saw a new show on G4TV this evening hosted by Morgan Webb Underground.  Apparently the show features documentaries about fringe culture a la current.com, only on a smaller level. The first segment focused on "urban spelunking" - a.k.a. wandering around urban environments and the second focused on Steampunk and featured the band Abney Park. Steampunk is a subculture based on a "vision of a future that never was": where dirigibles sail through skyscrapers, Victorian style abounds, and the imaginations of Wells, Burroughs, and Haggard have become flesh. 

I have to admit I was a bit confused.  I had noticed some stuff on the Internet - Macs modded into typerwriter cases, steam engine contraptions, and assorted weirdness - over the last year or so.  Bart's passed a lot of this information along.  Thanks Bart!  However, I didn't think a subculture was building.

The first time I heard of Steampunk it was in regards to manga - Kia Asamiya's Steam Detectives comes to mind.  In 2004, Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy came out.  It wasn't bad but really didn't do much for me.  A new Vampire Hunter D movie came out around that same time.

Side note:  I remember a sci-fi/fantasy/Victorian series of books back in the late 80s/early 90s (19 not 18)   called Philip Jose Farmer's The Dungeon.  The books featured British guys with mustaches commiting acts of derring-do.  Actually the books were awesome and I'd like to reread them.

I suppose in the early/mid-00's there were several other pop culture releases: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, del Toro's Hellboy, Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Firefly, the reprinting of Robert E. Howard novels, and some other items that escape my memory.

Oh yeah and there was the absinthe craze too.  

I kind of dig the current style of Steampunk but I don't know what exactly to think.  A snarky part of me scoffs and thinks that it's a sepia-toned neo-Goth/Victorian shake & bake movement that's a knock-off of Harajuku fashion.  Maybe it's just an excuse to wear Abe Sapien goggles. The not so snarky part of me thinks Steampunk fashion and it's brass gewgaws are pretty fucking darn cool.  I have to admit that if I could get away with dressing like an aeronaut and waving around a steam-powered repeating firearm I would be pretty happy.

There's definitely more to Steampunk and I'm going to look into it.  There's a sensibility beyond the fashion that is appealing that I can't quite put my finger on yet.