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The author suggests the correlation between searches for "steampunk" happening around Sept and Oct are due to iPhone sales which is interesting. Here is an alt

The author suggests the correlation between searches for "steampunk" happening around Sept and Oct are due to iPhone sales which is interesting. Here is an alternative theory though - what if its more related to Halloween?

mayank 7y ago
Or Burning Man...
- noodle 7y ago
  Or the fact that a lot of larger steampunk-related conventions are in the fall.
Finnucane 7y ago
In the 1990s steampunk was just what we called whatever it was that Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and KW Jeter were writing, and now it is costume goggles you can get at the Party City at the local mall.
- paggle 7y ago
  Can you try to give me a sense of what "steampunk" means in a literary sense? When I think of "steampunk" I think of brass machinery, tubes and pipes, oversized hardware, needle pressure gauges, etc... and I struggle to see how that kind of aesthetic would be captured in a literary genre. I would love to know.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    For an HN reader, I'd just suggest picking up a copy of the 1990 William Gibson/Bruce Sterling collaboration The Difference Engine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine). It's hit or miss from a literary perspective, but it'll get you aimed in the general direction you're asking about.
    - mordant 7y ago
      It is not 'hit or miss'. It is the first, and still the best, steampunk novel. It defined the genre.
      - aaaaa 7y ago
        agree with you
      - Finnucane 7y ago
        That is not correct. Blaylock's the Digging Leviathan predates it by several years.
  - nick_ 7y ago
    I usually see it in a retro-futurist parallel universe. Depending on the definition of "literature", Wild Wild West was a movie set in The Old West, but exhibits technologies that definitely didn't exist at the time. Those technologies seem to aesthetically fit in the movie's semi-fictional era.
- grahamburger 7y ago
  I thought the steampunk genre was born with Wild Wild West - that awful Will Smith movie from '99. That's what I remember from living through it. I would actually have a bit more respect for steampunk as a subculture if it's genesis resided elsewhere - that movie was so ridiculously stupid that steampunk has been tainted for me by association. Edit to add: apologies all around, dear steampunk enthusiasts! Fwiw Steampunk really didn't enter anything close to the mainstream in my corner of the U.S. until that movie came out, and afterwards seemed to be everywhere I looked, so I don't think it was a totally unreasonable assumption. (And yes, I knew the movie was based on older material, but didn't know to what extent the visual aesthetic had already been defined.) As penance I will purchase one Steampunk item from my local costume store and wear it to my next all-hands work meeting.
  - krapp 7y ago
    No, steampunk as an aesthetic goes at least as far back as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and the term comes from the 1980s.
    - vo2maxer 7y ago
      For me there is no better example of that aesthetic harking back to Verne and Wells than the 1902 Georges Méliès film, Le Voyage dans la Lune.
    - Finnucane 7y ago
      Steampunk is a modern retro movement. It is not Verne and Wells, but modern writers writing in a Wellsian mode. Why this should have come formed around a group of writers who, perhaps not coincidentally, had in their younger days been friends with Philip Dick, is unknown. Gibson and Sterling were actually somewhat late to the game.
  - delinka 7y ago
    Steampunk was most assuredly not born out of the 1999 movie. If some ridiculous movie tainted your view of the genre, I think that's more a reflection of you than the genre or the terrible movie. That said, the movie was supposedly inspired by a series from the 1960s by a nearly identical name ("The Wild Wild West".) The genre, however, has been around for much longer, and the name 'steampunk' seems to have its creation in the 1980s.
paggle 7y ago
The Halloween theory isn't an "alternative" one, it's the sensible one, and tying it to iPhone launches is the wackadoodle one.
lilyball 7y ago
Halloween makes a lot more sense. Steampunk searches don't spike in september/october; they begin in june/july and trend upwards, reaching a peak in october before abruptly dying. This is very clearly a halloween trend.

mayank 7y ago

Or Burning Man...

noodle 7y ago
Or the fact that a lot of larger steampunk-related conventions are in the fall.

Finnucane 7y ago

In the 1990s steampunk was just what we called whatever it was that Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and KW Jeter were writing, and now it is costume goggles you can get at the Party City at the local mall.

paggle 7y ago
Can you try to give me a sense of what "steampunk" means in a literary sense? When I think of "steampunk" I think of brass machinery, tubes and pipes, oversized hardware, needle pressure gauges, etc... and I struggle to see how that kind of aesthetic would be captured in a literary genre. I would love to know.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  For an HN reader, I'd just suggest picking up a copy of the 1990 William Gibson/Bruce Sterling collaboration The Difference Engine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine). It's hit or miss from a literary perspective, but it'll get you aimed in the general direction you're asking about.
  - mordant 7y ago
    It is not 'hit or miss'. It is the first, and still the best, steampunk novel. It defined the genre.
    - aaaaa 7y ago
      agree with you
    - Finnucane 7y ago
      That is not correct. Blaylock's the Digging Leviathan predates it by several years.
- nick_ 7y ago
  I usually see it in a retro-futurist parallel universe. Depending on the definition of "literature", Wild Wild West was a movie set in The Old West, but exhibits technologies that definitely didn't exist at the time. Those technologies seem to aesthetically fit in the movie's semi-fictional era.
grahamburger 7y ago
I thought the steampunk genre was born with Wild Wild West - that awful Will Smith movie from '99. That's what I remember from living through it. I would actually have a bit more respect for steampunk as a subculture if it's genesis resided elsewhere - that movie was so ridiculously stupid that steampunk has been tainted for me by association. Edit to add: apologies all around, dear steampunk enthusiasts! Fwiw Steampunk really didn't enter anything close to the mainstream in my corner of the U.S. until that movie came out, and afterwards seemed to be everywhere I looked, so I don't think it was a totally unreasonable assumption. (And yes, I knew the movie was based on older material, but didn't know to what extent the visual aesthetic had already been defined.) As penance I will purchase one Steampunk item from my local costume store and wear it to my next all-hands work meeting.
- krapp 7y ago
  No, steampunk as an aesthetic goes at least as far back as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and the term comes from the 1980s.
  - vo2maxer 7y ago
    For me there is no better example of that aesthetic harking back to Verne and Wells than the 1902 Georges Méliès film, Le Voyage dans la Lune.
  - Finnucane 7y ago
    Steampunk is a modern retro movement. It is not Verne and Wells, but modern writers writing in a Wellsian mode. Why this should have come formed around a group of writers who, perhaps not coincidentally, had in their younger days been friends with Philip Dick, is unknown. Gibson and Sterling were actually somewhat late to the game.
- delinka 7y ago
  Steampunk was most assuredly not born out of the 1999 movie. If some ridiculous movie tainted your view of the genre, I think that's more a reflection of you than the genre or the terrible movie. That said, the movie was supposedly inspired by a series from the 1960s by a nearly identical name ("The Wild Wild West".) The genre, however, has been around for much longer, and the name 'steampunk' seems to have its creation in the 1980s.

paggle 7y ago

The Halloween theory isn't an "alternative" one, it's the sensible one, and tying it to iPhone launches is the wackadoodle one.

lilyball 7y ago

Halloween makes a lot more sense. Steampunk searches don't spike in september/october; they begin in june/july and trend upwards, reaching a peak in october before abruptly dying. This is very clearly a halloween trend.