Welcome to the STEAMPUNK section of The Gatehouse. Here you have arrived at the heart of steampunk, for it is in all their brass magnificence that steam-powered machines fuel the imagination about a place and time that never really were.

It is an extraordinary world in which technology challenges nature; in which airships hundreds of feet tall and able to carry over one-hundred passengers in outright luxury seem to defy all logic as they float on their moorings like impossible balloons; in which mechanical men exhaling steam and stoicism serve Scotch in upper class mansions and gentlemen’s clubs—but it is also a world of Hazards & Horror, in which the Mysteries of the Orient are still unrevealed to Englishmen; in which the Dark Continent harbours the unknown ruins of Realms long gone; yet in which the Moon seems not so distant from the advance of Human progress.

Steampunk lives in the reincarnated past of shadows and the forgotten. We behold the mystery of possibility; We seek reminiscence about a more elegant Age of Adventure that never really was; We liberate the machine from technocracy and re-create her from Desire and Dreams. Steampunk “overthrows the factory of consciousness by beautiful entropy”; the living dream of progress that guides Us in the exploration of otherwise unknowable territories.

Please select one of the titles listed below to proceed to your article of choice.

• “The origins of steampunk, Part I,” by N. Ottens (2008)
In which we trace of the origins of steampunk as a literary genre. This first part discusses the principal works of proto-steampunk. (1962-72)

• “The punk-ness of steampunk,” by N. Ottens (2008)
In which we consider the meaning of punk to steampunk and the relevance of its rebellious spirit to the political philosophy of the movement.