Steampunk Festival

It is rather hard to define Steampunk. As a literary genre it has attracted enough fans to warrant a one day festival at Whitby. I attended their market. Essentially it is a subgroup of science fantasy set often in the Victorian era which imagines that electricity had not been discovered and wonderful creations are steam powered.

The name only originates from the eighties and presumably was coined by reference to the cyberpunk genre which fantasises about computers. I first met it about a decade earlier when I happened across a book called the Starlit Corridor. This was a collection of SF type work with the opening novella set in an imaginary world where electricity and anything related is banned on religious grounds. No electricity, no ignition system, no internal combustion engine so transport is by steam hauled road trains. The world of the traction engine is  recreated based on the early 20^th century Burrell , Fowler etc. engines. This was all a technological cul de sac as the petrol engine took over completely.

I forget the plot now as all I recall is the lovingly created alternative steam powered future. I was sufficiently enamoured to go to a traction engine festival at Market Bosworth. As an aside many traction engines have a large winch mounted horizontally beneath the boiler. This was used for steam ploughing. Essentially two engines stood either side of the field connected by cable to a plough which was pulled backwards and forwards by the traction engines. This must have been a cumbersome time consuming task and one can only imagine the relief which greeted the advent of the petrol tractor pulling a plough behind. Incidentally well into the fifties this would be an old fashioned plough as pulled by horses. The towbar lifted plough ( pioneered I think by Ferguson ) began to be widely used from the sixties on..

One feature of the festival ( which during the day took the form of an indoor market ) was the costume worn by many of the folks attending. These were many and various. One common theme for men was top hat styles worn with goggles pushed up over the hat while for ladies it was skirts worn long and hitched up at the side. However there were many variations such as the military redcoat uniform  worn with solar topee ( pith helmet ). Strikingly the chevrons of rank on the uniform had slogans such as “1 sugar, no milk”. The wearer also had a mask and I had to look twice to see it was a lady.

We later commented that the attendees were predominantly middle aged to elderly. We can only conclude this was type of person who had the time and money to indulge.

The “no electricity” feature didn’t seem to apply to lights where many artefacts had coloured lights. The display featured both things which could work and things which were just fantasy. The items on display varied enormously from old telephones, old cameras through to electrostatic discharge equipment which I recognised from schooldays as a lightly disguised Wimshurst machine. This was most definitely working and wowed the crowds with impressive lightning discharges. By far the most complex was a humanoid robot made of gold coloured Meccano which was a writing machine. Unfortunately when we visited it was reduced to just stabbing its pen down onto the paper. Amusingly the robot had a ( supposedly steam powered ) robot dog..

In the car park but on display was an old split screen Volkswagen camper van. This had a complex interior which reminded me of an old gypsy caravan but with everything in brass looking metal. The van also had a wood burning stove complete with chimney although I can hardly believe it could ever be working.

An interesting sub culture. Alex has enjoyed the book “Cog heart” which is firmly in the Steampunk genre