Notable New Steampunk

Looking for a new entré into steampunk? Enough new artifacts have come to our attention in the past month or so that I list them here for newbies looking for a first read, or died-in-the-wool steampunkers looking to broaden their horizons.

1. Rush's new album Clockwork Angels. I admit I haven't followed Rush's career that closely, but this one brings them solidly back into my attention. It's an incredible prog album. To illustrate it's significance for steampunk theology, I offer the lyrics to the second track, BU2B:

I was brought up to believe

The universe has a plan

We are only human

It's not ours to understand

The universe has a plan

All is for the best

Some will be rewarded

And the devil take the rest

All is for the best

Believe in what we're told

Blind men in the market

Buying what we're sold

Believe in what we're told

Until our final breath

While our loving Watchmaker

Loves us all to death

In a world of cut and thrust

I was always taught to trust

In a world where all must fail

Heaven's justice will prevail

The joy and pain that we receive

Each comes with its own cost

The price of what we're winning

Is the same as what we've lost

Until our final breath

The joy and pain that we receive

Must be what we deserve

I was brought up to believe

The entire album is framed with an "epic" narrative--this is the voice of one character within the larger narrative. Depending on availability of time and level of nerd-iness on a given evening, I may offer further reflections on the content.

2. Scott Westerfield's YA Leviathan trilogy. I'm intrigued by how much of great new steampunk is for the YA crowd. Scott's isn't the only new steampunk trilogy out there. Browse that section of the bookstore and you'll come across quite a lot. The Alpinist turned me on to this trilogy, however, so I'm giving it a read. Rather than proceed historically straight from the Victorian period, however, this one launches from the start of WWI.

3. Christopher Moore's Sacre Bleu: A Comedy D'Art. Perhaps some people will take issue with my claim that a novel about Vincent van Gogh and the Impressionist period in France is "steampunk," but if so, then I point you to...

4. Beyond Victoriana: A Multicultural Perspective on Steampunk. It's a web site and blog, not a book. It does illustrate how heavy the punk side of steampunk really can be, and illustrates to a great degree why I think the steampunk movement is fruitful for theological discourse. 

5. A Contemporary In Dissent: Johann Georg Hamann as a Radical Enlightener, by Oswald Bayer. What if there was an alternative to the direction things went in German philosophy and theology, influenced as it has been by Hegel, Kant, and others? The answer may be Hamann, and it is intriguing to imagine a world that proceeds from Hamann forward.

That should be enough to keep everyone busy for a while. And please offer your suggestions back at us.