Saturday night a few of us headed out to some sketchy 80's club night in the hippy part of town. It was a little grim at first but at 11:30 the place filled with goths. I haven't seen goths like that since the mid-nineties or something. One of the gentleman who was with the goth crew (but looked more like a turn of the century guy) befriended us and tried to recruit us to his dark gothy world- inviting us to "Champagne & Croquet" in the park and a Moulin Rouge night coming up. My friend and I entertained the idea of showing up at the following week's Vampire Party dressed as goths and say we were from LA if anyone wondered why the hadn't met us before. So, the most exciting part of the night was we learned about "Steampunk". No one else I told about this has heard of this movement but now you can call me an expert becasue I googled it all day. So fascinating, just as soon as you think you know all the weird subcultures of this country....
Here's the wikipedia definition:
Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction which came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles or analog computers; these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or a presumption of functionality.
Steampunk is often associated with cyberpunk and shares a similar fanbase and theme of rebellion, but developed as a separate movement (though both have considerable influence on each other). Apart from time period and level of technological development, the main difference between cyberpunk and steampunk is that steampunk settings usually tend to be less obviously dystopian than cyberpunk, or lack dystopian elements entirely.
