Balticon 46 Wrap-Up – Part 2, Steam Powered: The Rage of the New Victorians

OK, I’m back with Part 2 of the Balticon 46 Wrap-up, and for some reason it is not June anymore. How did that happen?

Well, things are a few weeks late, but now I’ve worked out enough to get them moving forward. So here we have the first audio from Balticon 46 panels. This audio is from a Reader’s Track panel on Friday night at 5 PM. The Panel was called Steam Powered: The Rage of the New Victorians. On the panel were Phillippa Ballantine, Tee Morris, and myself. Tee ended up subbing for our missing moderator, and even let Pip and me talk from time to time.

Show notes below the cut.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:27 — 52.6MB)

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Show notes:

• Who’s the Moderator?
• The New Media Cookout
• Introductions
  • Tee, your moderator
  • Pip, the author
  • Doc, the new guy.
• Ten years of Tee at Balticon
• What is Steampunk?
  • Victorian Science Fiction
  • “What he said.”
    • Goggles and Corsets
    • Retro-futurism
    • Doctor Grordbort
    • Fun and Adventure, with a dark underbelly.
  • K. W. Jeter and the coining of the term “Steampunk”
• What puts the punk in Steampunk?
  • Steampunk vs Gaslight Fantasy
  • The DIY movement and unconventional behavior
    • Eliza is the punk in Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences
    • Except when Wellington is the punk
    • They’re a couple of punks.
    • Tee plugs “Sins of the Father (Tale from the Archives)“
  • Going against the grain
  • The originals in Victorian Society
    • The proper facade
      • Private lice
    • The improper private lives
    • Being your own person in a conformative society
• Can you take the punk out of Steampunk?
  • You can take the steam out of steampunk, but you can’t take the punk out.
  • The Wright Brothers
• Fracturing the punks
  • Dieselpunk?
  • Ricepunk?
  • Bustlepunk?
• What gives? Does it help or hurt Steampunk trying to have a niche for everything?
  • It’s counterproductive to subdivide.
  • Tee tells a story about his dad and the Steampunk Bible.
    • The Wild Wild West is Steampunk!
    • There’s a good way to do it, and a bad way to do it, and the Wild Wild West is both examples.
    • Mis-casting in the Wild Wild West movie.
    • Was there a question?
• The fashion of Steampunk
  • Which one is really Steampunk?
    • It’s splitting hairs.
      • It’s not just literature.
    • The Frenemy thing.
• The New Media Cookout, reprise
• What would you recommend for a starter Steampunk experience?
  • Phil and Kaja Folio’s Girl Genius graphic novels.
  • Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series.
  • Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century series.
  • The Prestige
    • David Bowie is Tesla!
  • Time After Time
  • Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• Questions and Comments from the audience
  • The Wright Brothers revisited
    • Flight will never be commercially viable
    • Great day to be a geek
    • The Hugo Awards
      • Neil Gaiman’s Famous Hugo Acceptance Speech (NSFW)
  • Steampunk Month in Massachusetts. (and New Zealand)
  • Steampunk Town in New Zealand
  • Beyond Victoriana
  • Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Steampunk Contest
    • “We gotta pick two winners.”
  • “There were lots of things going on in the rest of the planet”
    • You can go anywhere in the world and throw a stone and hit an Englishman.
  • The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne
  • The Airship Goliath
  • Brute Force Studios
    • Castle Steampunk episode
  • Brazil
    • Doctor Parnassas
• Do you like your Steampunk Light or Dark?
  • Light, adventurous and fun, with just a touch of dark.
  • Light smudged with soot and grease.
    • “You just like it dirty!”
    • Hold onto high ideas, but don’t lose touch with reality.
    • Need some kind of bad to fight
    • Characters need their own foibles.
    • The contrast makes it interesting.
• Why is Steampunk popular now?
  • We are in the future.
    • Nostalgia
    • Yearning for the frontiers
  • Finding ways to survive in a rigid and constraining society.
    • Expressing individuality without being crushed by society.
    • The individual can make a difference in the world.
  • DIY, the maker movement, and the trend to physicality
    • We want to see the gears
• The pimpage!
  • Doc Coleman.com
    • The Nifty Tech Blog
    • The Shrinking Man Project
    • Swimming Cat Studios
      • Treasure Island
      • Taming of the Shrew
  • Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences
  • PJBallantine.com
  • The Shared Desk Live and Janus Affair Trailer release, Sunday 4PM
  • New Media Picnic reprise, part two
  • Val Ford is pushing me to do an anthology of Steampunk Fairy tales.
  • Aladdin and His Wonderfully Infernal Device
• Close

Tagged as: Balticon 46, Panels, Philippa Ballantine, Podcast, Steampunk, Tee Morris