Victorian Technology Makes a Comeback

The novels of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, along with relics of Victorian technology, have inspired a new cult following called “Steampunk.” The group celebrates the Victorian spirit. There is “a touch of technology with a pinch of antiquity and perhaps a dash of the macabre. There is humanity…and even a bit of social rebellion and transgression,” says one of its followers. ” Steampunk Magazine, began in 2007, says “Before the age of homogenization and micro-machinery, before the tyrannous efficiency of internal combustion and the domestication of electricity, lived beautiful, monstrous machines that lived and breathed and exploded unexpectedly at inconvenient moments.”