Thank you. It's possible that we will eventually just have to agree not to discuss steampunk, which I'm willing to do, because I do quite enjoy reading you on other topics.
I agree that your objections are well-raised, too. The manifestations of steampunk that specifically call on steam while ignoring the implications of coal make me very uncomfortable, not least because one side of my family came from mining and there are family stories about the human cost. My own project solution to this is to assume that, yes, there is a period where coal is one primary energy source, and it has all its historical gruesomeness. But it doesn't last quite as long, and the global economy makes available a number of alternatives, such as hydro power and oil; none of these are without their own cost, to be sure, and I expect environmental degradation to be a higher profile issue sooner in this universe because of increased communication over such impact. And then, of course, there's the places where propulsion really is by magic.
Of course, I'm also tweaking things to let more of the 1848 revolutions succeed. This is an exercise in optimism, among other things. I'm trying to make it an exercise in conscious re-writing, though, rather than either myopic re-enactment or ignorant erasure.
You're right that there are significant portions, possibly even the majority, of steampunk fans who don't want to consider this, who want to treat steam as handwavium rather than as steam, who don't know or don't care about the history they're implicitly erasing. But there are also people, and I like to think I'm one of them, who are pulling in a different direction, trying to address and wrestle with the scary parts. There also seem to be those who leave off steam and go with wind-power or positrons or straight-up handwavium, all in a brass case (like the Foglios), or who want to talk about what might happen when gears and macro mechanics exist side by side with fission (okay, that's me again). And we are just as steampunk as anyone else.
If you don't want to wade through the former to find the latter, I don't blame you! And if you just plain don't like the historical revision at the heart of pretty much any steampunk project, whether clueless or not, that's fine too. If this is a topic we can't see eye to eye on, well, that happens sometimes. What I'm trying to do is come up with a plausible way for all this technology to happen earlier and more mixed up, and to take advantage of the social upsets that implies for every purpose from anti-colonialism to fashion remixes that maybe make people think; and that's steampunk too. If that still punches your buttons, well... hopefully we can agree to disagree.
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I agree that your objections are well-raised, too. The manifestations of steampunk that specifically call on steam while ignoring the implications of coal make me very uncomfortable, not least because one side of my family came from mining and there are family stories about the human cost. My own project solution to this is to assume that, yes, there is a period where coal is one primary energy source, and it has all its historical gruesomeness. But it doesn't last quite as long, and the global economy makes available a number of alternatives, such as hydro power and oil; none of these are without their own cost, to be sure, and I expect environmental degradation to be a higher profile issue sooner in this universe because of increased communication over such impact. And then, of course, there's the places where propulsion really is by magic.
Of course, I'm also tweaking things to let more of the 1848 revolutions succeed. This is an exercise in optimism, among other things. I'm trying to make it an exercise in conscious re-writing, though, rather than either myopic re-enactment or ignorant erasure.
You're right that there are significant portions, possibly even the majority, of steampunk fans who don't want to consider this, who want to treat steam as handwavium rather than as steam, who don't know or don't care about the history they're implicitly erasing. But there are also people, and I like to think I'm one of them, who are pulling in a different direction, trying to address and wrestle with the scary parts. There also seem to be those who leave off steam and go with wind-power or positrons or straight-up handwavium, all in a brass case (like the Foglios), or who want to talk about what might happen when gears and macro mechanics exist side by side with fission (okay, that's me again). And we are just as steampunk as anyone else.
If you don't want to wade through the former to find the latter, I don't blame you! And if you just plain don't like the historical revision at the heart of pretty much any steampunk project, whether clueless or not, that's fine too. If this is a topic we can't see eye to eye on, well, that happens sometimes. What I'm trying to do is come up with a plausible way for all this technology to happen earlier and more mixed up, and to take advantage of the social upsets that implies for every purpose from anti-colonialism to fashion remixes that maybe make people think; and that's steampunk too. If that still punches your buttons, well... hopefully we can agree to disagree.