The future, the past, and some naked flesh Mario here:





Spent the weekend at Starfest 2011.
Besides the usual costume zaniness and excuse to watch a lotta skin...






I put in time with my new pals at Comicfest...




and at Horrorfest presented alongside werewolf/YA/dragon author Carrie Vaughn...




and "I Love Horror" Stephen Graham Jones.









This year I noticed a dearth of pirate and Klingon costumes and an explosion of Steampunk. Three years ago at another con, several authors groaned about this thing called Steampunk and couldn't wait for it to die.
No one was sure what to make of Steampunk other than it gave costumers a chance to wear goggles and tiny hats and sew brass gears to their clothes. Here we are in 2011 and Steampunk keeps getting more omnipresent with ever more fanciful gadgets:



As an opportunity for a fantasy S&M twist:














And yet another occasion for a femme fatale, in this case Aimee Matheny of the Colorado Chrononauts, to lure the too-willing man to the shoals of self destruction. *guilty*


Catch Aimee in this 9News clip.


Steampunk has evolved into two sects, as it were: the English Victorian and the American Western, each embellished with tropes of the genre: corsets, electro-guns, robots, absinthe, and of course, airships:






While everyone seems to be in agreement about the aesthetics of Steampunk, the literature not so much. Most of the Steampunkers I talked with expressed disappointment in the state of steampunk prose--lots of gimmicks and bling but not enough substance. A few names topped our discussions as the exceptional writers in the genre: Cherie Priest, Scott Westergard, and China Mieville.

Labels: Carrie Vaughn, Starfest, Steampunk, Stephen Graham Jones

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 3:39 PM  6 comments