Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2016
Abstract
“First and foremost, steampunk is about things — especially technological things — and our relationship to them. As a sub-genre of science fiction, it explores the difference an object can make,” says Stefania Forlini in “Technology and Morality: The Stuff of Steampunk” (72). While steampunk literature, and its scholars, focuses heavily upon the anachronistic objects, gadgets, and machines embedded in steampunk narratives, both seem to forget about time itself. Just as Forlini indicates that humans form various relationships to their objects, building identity from and with them, humans must also form a relationship with time. In steampunk, time itself becomes an object that is embedded in narrative. As an object, similar to a machine or a gadget, time can be manipulated and reconstructed. Therefore, steampunk is primarily “about things,” but its primary “object” is time.
Recommended Citation
Lamb, Heather, "The Shadow is Revived: Constructing Narratives in Victorian Literature and Science Fiction with Non-Euclidean Mathematics" (2016). 2016 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents. 1.
https://thekeep.eiu.edu/lib_awards_2016_docs/1
