Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [2]
And who’s to say they didn’t get it right. It was the Victorians who more or less invented science fiction. Oh yes, sure, there were plenty of earlier stories about trips to the Moon or about island utopias or lost races, but they were simply getting the seating arranged for the big feature. Mary Shelley really got things going by showing what the wonders of electricity might bring with the possibility of recreating man in Frankenstein in 1818 and then things really began gathering pace. As new scientific and technological marvels came along, so writers pounced on them to see what else the future might bring.
It is perhaps a bit bizarre, then, that the genre should be called “steampunk” and not “electricpunk” but there is no doubt that it was the opening up of the world through steam trains and the opportunities that steampower introduced that ushered in the Industrial Revolution and began the true scientific revolution that allowed science fiction to prosper. It doesn’t really matter that electricity superseded steam as the main power source, because by then the legacy of steampower was so great that it personified the marvels of technology.
If steampowered science fiction started anywhere it was probably in the dime novels, and in particular with The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis, first published in 1868. I decided to spare readers the full text of this story which is perhaps a little unsophisticated for modern tastes, but as it is the true progenitor of all steampunk, I thought it might be interesting to reproduce here the original description of the Steam Man which was built like a steam engine to pull carriages across the plains. It was created by the deformed teenage genius inventor Jack Brainerd.
It was about ten feet in hight, measuring to the top of the ‘stove-pipe hat,’ which was fashioned after the common order of felt coverings, with a broad brim, all painted a shiny black. The face was made of iron, painted a black color, with a pair of fearful eyes, and a tremendous grinning mouth. A whistle-like contrivance was made to answer for the nose. The steam chest proper and boiler were where the chest in a human being is generally supposed to be, extending also into a large knapsack arrangement over the shoulders and back. A pair of arms, like projections, held the shafts, and the broad flat feet were covered with sharp spikes, as though he were the monarch of base-ball players. The legs were quite long, and the step was natural, except when running, at which time, the bolt uprightness in the figure showed different from a human being.
In the knapsack were the valves, by which the steam or water was examined. In front was a painted imitation of a vest, in which a door opened to receive the fuel, which, together with the water, was carried in the wagon, a pipe running along the shaft and connecting with the boiler.
The legs of this extraordinary mechanism were fully a yard apart, so as to avoid the danger of its upsetting, and at the same time, there was given more room for the play of the delicate machinery within. Long, sharp, spike-like projections adorned those toes of the immense feet, so that there was little danger of its slipping, while the length of the legs showed that, under favorable circumstances, the steam man must be capable of very great speed.
The door being opened in front, showed a mass of glowing coals lying in the capacious abdomen of the giant; the hissing valves in the knapsack made themselves apparent, and the top of the hat or smoke-stack had a sieve-like arrangement, such as is frequently seen on the locomotive.
The steam man was a frightful looking object, being painted of a glossy black, with a pair of white stripes down its legs, and with a face which was intended to be of a flesh color, but, which was really a fearful red.
With that “steampunk” was born. The dime novels were full of steam