Culture

"As a subculture, we are not the spawn of Satan"

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The New York Times profiles the weird world of steampunk,

a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines.

Whole thing here.

Though the article does refer to the great William Gibson, whose short story "The Gernsback Continuum" is a bona fide steampunk classic, it somehow fails to mention Bruce Sterling, whose own contributions to the genre are far from negligible. Contributing Editor Mike Godwin sat down with Sterling back in 2004 for a freewheeling interview that touched on everything from "Google blindness" to Islamic terrorism. Read it all here.