STEAMPUNK AND THE VICTORIAN CONNECTION
What is this strange fascination of Victorian meets future invention? How did it find its way into our modern fashion and artistic expressions? Oddly enough, while the term “steam punk” did not appear until 1980 in Locus Magazine by science fiction writer K. W. Jeter, it was a characteristic of invention and industrial visions born due in part by influences of Victorian authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. In the 1980’s, a new fascination with steampunk had begun when those admirers of 19 th century literature took a fancy to imagining the machine quality of our modern day inventions and imagined them functioning as a machine instead of digitally. In the Victorian era it was merely science-fiction. Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea , Around the World in 80 Days, A Journey to the Center of the Earth , Master of the World , In the Year 2889 and From the Earth to the Moon , presented an aesthetic look at an imaginary future that at tha...