faustus: (Culture)
faustus ([personal profile] faustus) wrote2009-10-29 10:57 am

Terminology

Twice today I have read the term steampunk in relation to HG Wells - The First Men in the Moon as steampunk classic (to be dramatised by BBC Four and Mark Gatiss) and as a forerunner of steampunk (which feels less wrongheaded).


I'd always thought of steampunk as being dependent on a vision of a nineteenth century that might have been - or a subsequent period which has evolved form that different nineteenth century. I'm not sure that steampunk as alternate present quite cuts the definition for me - it's missing a dimension of, what, nostalgia, disappointment, etsrangement?


Am I wrong?