Over the last 40 years there have been a lot of books, foods, music and general experiences I’ve written off. Since I tend to be very…um…emphatic about my feelings it can backfire hugely. I call it the Asparagus Principle, in honour of the first time this happened.
I declared all through my childhood that asparagus was nasty, that it was evil and that it should be banned. Then I went to my mother-in-law’s farm where I was served a meal of roast beef, other stuff I can’t remember and asparagus plucked fresh from the field and dropped into the pot. From that moment on I was an avowed asparagus lover to the place where I now consider it my favourite food, outpacing former top treats like pizza, lasagna and Rolos.
With that in mind I’ve decided that there are a few things to which I should probably apply the Asparagus Principle. These are things I’ve written off and in some cases loudly decried; things I now think deserve a second glance.
(You can always tell, by the way, when my brain isn’t fully switched on by the fact that I write in list form. Lists are my brain’s way of taking a segue break.)
- Steampunk My first exposure to steampunk was in a videogame I played several years ago. I found it to be incredibly unappealing and thought it was unique to the game itself. (I’m kicking myself that I can’t remember which game it was, because now I’m in the mood to play it again. Is Rise Of Nations a game? Note to self: Google this…) Steampunk then began showing up in movies that sucked (Wild Wild West; League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; Sherlock Holmes) and countless novels that also seem as though they would suck too. Then yesterday my friend Mandi reviewed Boneshaker for our book review blog and all of a sudden I find myself inching closer to giving Steampunk another go.
- George Jones Now that he’s passed beyond the veil and everyone is recounting their George Jones Memories I feel as if perhaps I should look further into his catalog beyond He Stopped Loving Her Today. As a night owl who came up in the 80s and 90s I saw a lot of those commercials for Time Life album compilations. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, they’d have these three-minute ads on late at night for mail-order record albums (later, CDs) that had all the hits on there. The titles of the songs would scroll by in a chyron. You, the viewer, would see favourites and think “Oh, I really love that song!” Keep in mind this was well before iPods and MP3s. Music was something you had to actively seek out–either on the radio or in the record shop. Unless you made mixed tapes–one of my favourite hobbies–by hovering over the radio and collecting whatever song struck your fancy you really only heard a song when it was played by forces you couldn’t control. These record compilations were some of the most tempting fruits ever to dangle from the tree of television advertising. The worm in the apple, however, was that every third or fourth song would have just one tiny snippet played. Instant earworms were born this way. To this day there are a good thirty or forty songs to which I only know one line, thanks to these commercials. For years–until I moved to Tennessee–one of those songs was He Stopped Loving Her Today. The only part I knew was, well, “He stopped loving her today”. That stuck in my brain alongside “Daddy sang bass, Mama sang Tenor”, selections from Zamfir, Master Of The Pan Flute and the egregious Red Sovine. “Red Sovine’s as much a part of truckin’ as CB-in’ an’ hot cawfeee!” Needless to say I’ve born a grudge against George Jones for years, for something that isn’t his fault, really.
There are other things I should put on this list, especially since any bulleted list should really have at least three points. But I got so carried away thinking about those compilation ads that I’ve run out of words. Maybe I should do a whole blog series on Remembrances Of Things Past. (Or is it passed? I can never remember, ironically.)
Just Another Pretty Farce 
I am drawn by the *idea* of steampunk–the gadgets, the cool clothes–but haven’t found myself entirely sucked in the way real steampunk enthusiasts are. In some ways I kind of avoid it because I know some steampunkers who take it all very seriously and I don’t want to insult them by turning it into some little trendy thing, the way some people think if you glue gears to things it suddenly makes them steampunk. (There is a great video about that, btw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA )
And for the record, I actually love Wild Wild West, even with it’s totally stupid moments. For some reason I just can’t get over the idea that Dr. Loveless is played by Gilderoy Lockheart ;).
PS–have you read Incarceron by Catherine Fisher?
TheBoyfriends™’s masters thesis is on steampunk. One problem you might have is that since the term steampunk wasn’t coined until the late 80s, there’s not really a hard and fast definition of the genre. There’s alot of ______punk stories and a few steam______ stories that are being grouped in as “steampunk,” when they don’t fit the genre proper. And stories that carry a steampunk aesthetic but not a steampunk plot. Then there are books like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that are often classified as quintessentially “steampunk” that have little in the way of steam or punk elements (yes, it has a victorian era aesthetic but that’s because it was written in the Victorian era).
I’m OK with steampunk. It feels more derivative than cyberpunk, but then most cyberpunk feels derivative, too, and yet the best of the genre is awesome. So, you know, Perdido Street Station is also pretty fine, and I thoroughly enjoyed The Half-Made World, and there are other good steampunk novels. But I will admit that I greatly disliked Boneshaker. It would have been alright, but then there are the zombies. And I don’t care for zombies (except for real zombies, like in “Frank”), and I especially don’t care for zombie mashups. So, eh.
As for asparagus, they say that you should try any food ten times before deciding that you don’t like it. The same probably goes for singers, or for musical genres. Or literary genres, for that matter. As far as George Jones goes, he was the epitome of a honky-tonk singer, and if you don’t like honky-tonk you won’t enjoy him. But he had a bunch of good songs, and most of them were less over-the-top than “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Although “HSLHT” is a great song and you ought to at least listen to it all the way through once.
Here’s the best definition I’ve ever heard… “If Jules Verne wrote fiction for Popular Mechanics…” It’s a Victorian Aesthetic and tech expanded and modernized.
Except Jules Verne didn’t write steampunk. He wrote SciFi and he wrote in in the era he lived in (rather than re-imagining a historical era). It’s proto-steampunk at best, but since he doesn’t include many punk elements and his devices are primarily electricity-powered, Jules Verne’s writings might best be described as steam punk without the steam or the punk.
Sorry, I have to hear alot of academic talk about steampunk as TheBoyfriend™ talks through his thesis while organizing and constructing it.
So we’ve learned that reading comprehension isn’t your friend. I didn’t say Jules Verne wrote steampunk. Please read that again, and don’t argue with me until you’re actually capable of understanding what I DID say.
I don’t believe I said that you DID say Jules Verne wrote steampunk. But it’s been a delight chatting with you and hope you have a wonderful day.
And lest there being and “reading comprehension” issues, I GENUINELY am hoping you have a wonderful day.
Probably not so much, seeing as though you’re in it. Perhaps tomorrow will be more pleasant.
Well it definitely saddens me that you’re at a place in your life where a random stranger on the internet, not even really disagreeing with you (and CERTAINLY not in anyway insulting or even arguing with you), but merely discussing the difference between steampunk as an aesthetic (which is what your quote seems to be describing) and steampunk as a literary genre, can throw you into such a rage that you react the way you did and then state that you will “probably not” be able to have a good day because of it. You will be in my thoughts and you have my best wishes.
If it weren’t for respect of K, I’d tell you what I was really thinking. Tell me, what is your link to steampunk? Because I sense a total lack of involvement in it other than picking up a book once in a while.
My impression is that he doesn’t really have an interest in it but that his partner is working a sort of graduate thesis in it. If his relationship to Steampunk is anything like my relationship to The Social Adjustment Issues Of Third-Culture Children it’s tenuous at best.
Quite right. I’m always happy to discuss and learn more about most any topic, but steampunk is definitely not something I’m interested in to the point of wanting to argue over.