Steampunk: Why Gluing Gears on Your Book Isn’t Enough by Delilah S. Dawson

Is steampunk the new vampire? When it comes to literature—maybe.

Steampunk is enjoying a rise in popularity right now, and it can be quite tempting to ride that wave. Heck, I did, and it’s a great reason to buy corsets and fabulous hats. Due to the very nature of steampunk, it's hard to pin down an exact definition, and therefore, everyone has an opinion. Most people agree that steampunk plays on alternative histories with technology based on steam, clockworks, and other unique energy sources. Personally, I feel that steampunk is in the eye of the beholder, and much like beauty or pornography, you know it when you see it.

But in the literary world, the lines are a little less clear. After all, if someone wants to wear suspenders or use goggles as a headband and consider their style steampunk, who’s to argue? However, when you buy a book that’s advertised as steampunk and find that it actually isn’t, there’s a good chance you’ll feel betrayed by the author, the publisher, or the person who recommended it to you.

As with any trend, there can be a sudden rush among hopeful authors wanting to hop on the bandwagon and benefit from the buzz. And just as some steampunks don’t consider gears glued onto a modern object to be steampunk, so should a storyteller avoid metaphorically gluing some gears onto their book just to cash in on the current popularity of steampunk.

For me, the rule of thumb is quite similar to the one for paranormal: can the story work without the steampunk? Just as making Lestat a regular person without vampire powers would render Anne Rice’s books nonsensical, so should the removal of steampunk from your steampunk story leave you with a complete mess.

For example:

1. Remove steampunk from Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan series and you have a world taken over by the obviously overwhelming might of the Darwinists. Only through the Clankers’ cunning and masterly use of metal, clockwork, and steam could they have any hope of fighting the giant mutated weapon-vessels of their enemies.

2. Remove steampunk from Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker books, and you have a people with no hope of facing down the rotters. The dirigibles that allow them to fly high above the flesh-eating dead, the machines that help scrub the air, the weapons they use to fight—without them, her characters would have been zombie fodder long ago.

3. Remove steampunk from my own Blud series, and you leave the humans with unbreathable air, no way to travel, and very few pets to keep them company. In a world filled with bloodthirsty animals and Bludmen, steampunk technology can feel like the Pinkies’ only source of hope. Of course, it can be argued that their machinery caused the pollution in the first place, but that only serves to prove the point. Pollution and misery are a big part of the flavor of life in the cities, which is what makes the gypsy life of the caravan more attractive. And without clockwork pets, the plot wouldn’t advance at all.

How can this help you when writing a steampunk story? From the very beginning, you have to make the steampunk elements absolutely essential. If the people wear goggles, why do they need them? To keep dust out of their eyes, or to use specialized lenses to see differently? If you have weapons that would be considered steampunk, is it because gunpowder doesn’t exist in that world or because the characters are up against villains that can’t be stopped by regular guns? If you have dirigibles, is it because some of the people don’t travel well over water or perhaps because sea monsters lie in wait?

In short, as with any choice as a storyteller, you have to make it matter.

As a writer, steampunk isn’t just an accessory you slap on. To create a truly memorable story that will be embraced by the steampunk community and the reading world at large, you have to craft a world in which steampunk is completely essential. Only when the reader accepts steampunk as the only answer will the book come alive.