Medieval Steampunk?

[icerose05]

I told my brother of a medieval story I was writing, and him being a science fiction kind of guy, gave me the idea to steampunk it. And I thought, "I've never heard of any middle-aged steampunk!" and thought it was kind of a good idea, despite steampunk revolves around the 1900s, and steampunking the middle ages would skip quite a few steps in the technology department. Anyone got any ideas how I might be able to pull this off?

 

[Jabrosky]

The question I have is, what would the point of steampunk be in this type of setting? Isn't steampunk supposed to draw heavily on 19th century tropes?

 

[icerose05]

Exactly, Jabrosky. I do think that it would be interesting to have a medieval steampunk, to have swords and armor, and aircrafts and guns a blazing, but honestly I can't see how I could write it. Hoping someone else might?

 

[Trick]

You need an explosion of technology; growth that outpaces culture. I'm doing something similar in my WIP. Say Nikola Tesla is born in Medieval times and he discovers the lost technology of Egypt or Atlantis or whatever. Since he's Tesla and understands it automatically, technology skyrockets and the lords and ladies at court can barely keep up. Knights go from swords and shields to ballistic lances and pneumatic armor. Trebuchets are replaced with steam powered tanks and so on... It's totally doable and makes character development quite interesting.

I'd add that you need to take into account the weakness of materials, metals being foremost. The development of metallurgy between 1200 and 1900 was pretty intense. This, along with other things, would have to be worked out through research and creativity if you want to suspend disbelief.

 

[Ruby]

Hi icerose05,

I'm writing a Victorian steampunk story with Time Travel. You could have a time traveller who goes back to medieval times. Btw I'm not saying that writing a time travel story is easy but if you can avoid plot holes and paradoxes it might suit your purpose.

 

[CupofJoe]

If you use an alternative technological approach, it might work especially if you are nimble with the fudges...
Bamboo that is as hard as iron can be made to make low pressure steam pipes and rudimentary gun barrels...
Plant fibres that can be woven in to a thread as strong as piano wire...
A mixture of rocks that when you drip acid on to them so they shine bright with a cold eerie light that can bee seen for miles...
It wouldn't be directly steampunk but it might allow some interesting alternatives.
I've always wanted to put a clock-work tank in to one of my stories but not found one where it fits...

 

[chrispenycate]

If you want it realistic, you can't. While the development in science is quite possible, developing machining techniques to make the cylinders, the valves, even pressure tubing won't take place before early modern – say seventeenth century.

Strange thing is, late roman empire, Byzantium, the artisans could have done it. But if the empire hadn't collapsed, there wouldn't have been a mediaeval period. Perhaps if the fall of Constantinople had brought technology distribution rather than the flood of Greek philosophy that launched the renaissance … but the brutality of the crusades rendered this unworkable.

 

[Trick]

If you want it realistic, you can't. While the development in science is quite possible, developing machining techniques to make the cylinders, the valves, even pressure tubing won't take place before early modern – say seventeenth century.

Strange thing is, late roman empire, Byzantium, the artisans could have done it. But if the empire hadn't collapsed, there wouldn't have been a mediaeval period. Perhaps if the fall of Constantinople had brought technology distribution rather than the flood of Greek philosophy that launched the renaissance … but the brutality of the crusades rendered this unworkable.

If this is an alternate history or another world, that's exactly what the OP could do. There's no reason that discoveries made about technology could not include the techniques you speak of. It's more a matter of people adapting to the knowledge, I think.

 

[Steerpike]

I've seen some steampunkish stuff done in more of a middle ages society. I'll see if I can find a reference. No reason you can't do it in a world that is not our own.

 

[Ophiucha]

Well, one could get past the lack of appropriate metal working and artisan skills with a little something called magic. Get yourself some mithril and some aether and you can work it out. There is an anime I used to love called Escaflowne which had giant robots that were powered by dragon hearts.

You could also cut back heavily on the actual technology and just go heavy with an aesthetic - instead of steampunk, perhaps ironpunk. Have giant 'robotic' men who are in fact more like puppets who are controlled by men pulling chains through pulleys from behind. Instead of airships, build a world where the Silk Road caravans became massive and city-like on their own, with people from all around Eurasia and Africa moving together instead of passing goods on from one city to the next. Perhaps a castle that is just sort of... built upon, unendingly. It started as a normal castle, but people keep spreading out. So you have this entire town that is just indoors, surrounded by uneven stone walls made by peasants and courtiers alike.

Just a few ideas, anyway. You could always just say 'to heck with realism' and put steampunk tropes in a world with knights and monarchies, there's definitely no harm in that.

 

[Hainted]

For an actual "Punk" setting it's called Castlepunk, but you could just go ahead a few decades and make it all clockwork, and wind up and go Clockpunk.

 

[Grandeur]

I agree with Ophiucha on the use of magic intertwined with the discovery/advent of steam technologies and the like. Escaflowne is indeed a great example of this, using the ethereal properties of a mythical creature's remnants to power an otherwise powerless technology.

I will add on to this by saying I also am using the concept of steampunk (or steam-based technology) in my WIP, which I do slightly validate with the presence of aether. In my work, I leaned on the idea of the Ley Lines (a geometrically-plotted network of underground energy tracks that permeate the biosphere). At the sites of their intersection, there would be a compounding of spiritual/magical/ethereal energy in the surrounding matter (rocks, water, plants, jewels), which are identified by their signature glow/shimmer. Now if an otherwise ignorant society were to stumble upon these sites and their materials, how would they apply them to their current culture and enterprise? Having a Tesla figure is a good way to bring this potential to public interest, BUT! this also begs a bigger question: Why didn't we have a Tesla in OUR middle ages? My guess is we probably did and they probably would have accelerated society and technology if not for the stigmatizing effect of the Catholic/Anglican church.

Always consider that with the level of technology you introduce/build upon/create for your WIP, you must also balance it with a consistent societal worldview, which will very often include religion. For instance, in my WIP, use of this ethereal matter as a power source is called Arcanum, which one of my countries' religions considers to be an affront to their deity and thus has made research/practice illegal in its borders.

Hope this helps.

 

[chrispenycate]

Well, one could get past the lack of appropriate metal working and artisan skills with a little something called magic. Get yourself some mithril and some aether and you can work it out. There is an anime I used to love called Escaflowne which had giant robots that were powered by dragon hearts.

You could also cut back heavily on the actual technology and just go heavy with an aesthetic - instead of steampunk, perhaps ironpunk. Have giant 'robotic' men who are in fact more like puppets who are controlled by men pulling chains through pulleys from behind. Instead of airships, build a world where the Silk Road caravans became massive and city-like on their own, with people from all around Eurasia and Africa moving together instead of passing goods on from one city to the next. Perhaps a castle that is just sort of... built upon, unendingly. It started as a normal castle, but people keep spreading out. So you have this entire town that is just indoors, surrounded by uneven stone walls made by peasants and courtiers alike.

Just a few ideas, anyway. You could always just say 'to heck with realism' and put steampunk tropes in a world with knights and monarchies, there's definitely no harm in that.

Oh, but that's cheating. You can have your golems, animated by the divine words on their foreheads (and your antigolem paladins with sponges on long poles to wipe the words off battle golems). You can have your bronze colossi, with fires in their belly, smiting ships. But the pumps preventing dwarven mines from flooding, and the giant bellows forcing the ventilation, are powered by windmills or overshot waterwheels, with moving belts or spinning rods carrying the power into the depths. You're never shown them, but you can feel them

Has anyone read Cherryh's "Sword of knowledge" trilogy? That's the sort of organisation that could have kept the standards of artisannery through the dark ages, and built you a steam engine in the XIIth century. Indeed, they did build some in the first book, though those were more the Hero of Alexandria aelopiles than the modern pressure cylinders.

But steampunk is more than just the existence of engines, the dark satanic mills and the cold steel rail cutting the leylines and migration of populations. It is the industrial revolution, the smog and acid rain, the moneyed class squeezing into the niche previously held by the landed aristocracy. The religion has changed from that of the mediaeval serfs of the feudal system, at least in centres of manufactury and mining. During this period in Britain, there was plenty of planet that was still rural, agricultural, essentially unchanged since the dark ages, the "Shires" to Isengard's "Progress", and all the countries yet to be adequately "civilised" and brought into the Empire, but they don't give rise to steampunk. Neither can an isolated monastery with a steam engine pumping and heating their water (not that monasteries had much use for bathing – nasty heathen pastime) generate a steampunk environment. For steampunk is an environment more than an invention, and needs a sooty, ill-sewered city to support it; one of the reasons there is so little good steampunk fantasy. The magic clogs and tarnishes, faery retreats underhill, the glitter is replaced by soot-caked gas mantles, grimy and far more inhuman that the monsters of yore had ever been.

 

[icerose05]

I've seen some steampunkish stuff done in more of a middle ages society. I'll see if I can find a reference. No reason you can't do it in a world that is not our own.

Steerpike, if you could find some I'd be so grateful!

Well, one could get past the lack of appropriate metal working and artisan skills with a little something called magic. Get yourself some mithril and some aether and you can work it out. There is an anime I used to love called Escaflowne which had giant robots that were powered by dragon hearts.

You could also cut back heavily on the actual technology and just go heavy with an aesthetic - instead of steampunk, perhaps ironpunk. Have giant 'robotic' men who are in fact more like puppets who are controlled by men pulling chains through pulleys from behind. Instead of airships, build a world where the Silk Road caravans became massive and city-like on their own, with people from all around Eurasia and Africa moving together instead of passing goods on from one city to the next. Perhaps a castle that is just sort of... built upon, unendingly. It started as a normal castle, but people keep spreading out. So you have this entire town that is just indoors, surrounded by uneven stone walls made by peasants and courtiers alike.

Just a few ideas, anyway. You could always just say 'to heck with realism' and put steampunk tropes in a world with knights and monarchies, there's definitely no harm in that.

Ophiucha, you gave me the greatest idea with the magic, the castle and the indoor city, thank you!

 

[Mythopoet]

I think the Discworld books have something like this. They are in many ways a classic fantasy setting, but with interesting bits of more modern type technology like the "clacks" telegraph system, the cameras and pocket organizers that use imps to work, the devices that Leonard of Quirm builds like the submarine and a sort of spaceship, etc.

 

[eliec]

I'm not sure about sticking to purely technological steampunk there.
However, I see no problem if you introduce mystical power sources such as in Visions of Escaflowne. That's an anime series with sword-fighting mechas powered by dragon hearts (and yes, it's as awesome as it sounds). You could have armor suits that basically turn into power armor, spear-drills, explosive crossbow bolts and chain-gauntlets quite easily.

 

[gowph3ar]

World of Warcraft is Medieval Steampunk in a fantasy setting no?

 

[skip.knox]

I never could figure out what the "punk" part of steampunk was anyway. At least, not in the same punk sense as cyberpunk. Maybe it's why steampunk doesn't attract me (plus, I find the Victorian era pretty much unbearable anyway).

I do love the term "ironpunk" though. Now to consider what would be the punk aspects of the Middle Ages. Heretics, maybe?

 

[Gryphos]

I never could figure out what the "punk" part of steampunk was anyway. At least, not in the same punk sense as cyberpunk. Maybe it's why steampunk doesn't attract me (plus, I find the Victorian era pretty much unbearable anyway).

I do love the term "ironpunk" though. Now to consider what would be the punk aspects of the Middle Ages. Heretics, maybe?

I don't think the 'punk' part in steampunk actually means anything. I believe the term steampunk actually originated as a joke variation of cyberpunk. The punk in cyberpunk is born from the genre tendency toward the kind of formulaic dark brooding protagonist.

 

[Queshire]

To me it's the feel, it's the pounding pistons and churning gears, the whistle of steam. It's progress. Not clean, not good, but progress wrought by sweat and blood, oil and will! Take a look at steam punk clothing, the aesthetic of Victorian elegance mixed with the gritty, industrial images of gears and the like. To me, steampunk emphasizes the beauty in brutality and the brutality in beauty, two normally contradictory ideas but instead of fighting each other they push each other up and up, to reach for more. I think this resonates with the inherent contrariness of the human condition. Mind you, that's just my reading when I think of "Steampunk."

For the rest of you, you might find this useful; Main/Punk Punk - Television Tropes & Idioms