Steampunk Analysis

In the field of Science fiction, there is a novel called The Difference Engine, which is regarded as a classic by many science fiction fans. This novel based on the historical background of Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer (Gibson and Sterling). In that period, the industrial revolution and the revolution of information technology had changed the entire world political, economic and military situation. This novel is regarded as the “Bible” of steampunk. So a question has been raised up: what is steampunk? According to Oxford Living Dictionaries, steampunk is defined as “A genre of science fiction

Vol. 20 no. 4). Steampunk in today's more similar to a set of world view. In the steampunk world, people assume that in a specific world, the steam engine did not be replaced by the internal-combustion engine, so the steam technology has been greatly developed. As a result of this, the historical backgrounds of the works of steampunk are always be the Victoria era and the period that the American West pioneer movement was occurred (Patric 47). Another significant element of the concept steampunk is the coexistence of advanced and backward. Some people are riding cars while others are in carriages. In the steampunk world, magic and science exist simultaneously. On the one hand, in steampunk, technology becomes magic; on the other hand, the magic seems to be a high-tech. Steampunk even exists only as an independent aesthetic style.

The steampunk aesthetic has been widely used in the fictions, films, and practices of vernacular craft, all of which shape our understandings of what it means to be “steampunk” (Onion 139). The most basically field of steampunk is the literature. The Difference Engine is the most famous one, however, there are still many great works about steampunk, such as the Perdido Street Station written by China Miéville (Ferguson 47). Although this book has been placed into the New Wired fiction, the novel also combines Victorian technology, industrial capitalist urbanism which are closely related to steampunk. The time period of this novel is also close to the classical setting of steampunk novels: the Victorian era. There is a character in Perdido Street Station called “armed Mantis hand Jack", which is apparently originated from "Jack the Ripper", a famous killer in the Victorian