Greetings from the other side of the Apocalypse! My name is Lia Habel, and I’m an upcoming young adult author with Del Rey. I specialize in flesh-eating dead people – or, as I chose to phrase it last weekend, zombie anthropology and civil rights.
(Gasp! Prejudice! Calumny! At my convention? No gentleman should have it within him to discriminate!)
(No.)
I attended The Steampunk World’s Fair in Somerset, New Jersey, where almost everyone has an obscure, yet intriguing pet subject of scientific study. Suvudu asked me to blog about it, and so here I am, slightly behind schedule. (The hotel wi-fi was a bit spotty – seeing as the entire convention was dedicated to the beauty of analog technologies, I’m afraid that I found this more amusing than irritating.)
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going in. SPWF was my first full-on steampunk con, although I’ve been interested in the subculture (and affiliated with virtual steampunk worlds) for a number of years. I have to admit that at first, I was a trifle nervous. “What if I should say the wrong thing?” I fretted. “Address someone by the wrong title? Wear something terribly improper?” I’m that sort of neo-Victorian, you see.
Ultimately, I needn’t have worried.
My people can party hard.
The weekend turned out to be a mad, glorious rush. If you’ve ever longed to know what a young, untried man must have felt upon stumbling into a large city’s red-light district for the first time, or wandering through carnival geek show – you know, if that’s your sort of “once upon a time” – I highly recommend attending a steamcon. Everywhere I turned, there was some gorgeous, grotesque, or baffling thing on display.
(Meatless Tuesday, does this gent EVER stay in one place for longer than an hour?)
(I’m not actually certain what this does or who put it there, but it makes me wonder if the entire hotel is not also, somehow, a TARDIS. In which case, I will eat my hat.)
Of course the work that the attendees put into their costumes is astounding, the end results phenomenal, but it runs deeper than that. What I love most about the steampunk community is that one is utterly free to be oneself – even if that means becoming someone else. There’s a sense of imagination, of play, that the “real world” is sorely lacking.
(Emperor Justinian of the Red Fork Empire, who has devoted years of his life to promoting that very concept.)
SPWF was also a fantastic opportunity to discuss and debate larger issues within the genre. I was able to attend a few of the many panels, and I wasn’t disappointed. Artistic, literary, and musical contributions are so incredibly valued within the steampunk world, and there’s such a spirit of collaboration and shared joy – it really was refreshing.
(A panel of steampunk authors discussing genre and subgenre, featuring PJ Schnyder, Stella Price, OM Grey, Clay and Susan Griffith, and CJ Henderson.)
(Gentlemen’s bartitsu, taught by Professor Mark Donnelly.)
(Croquet! With tea in actual china cups!)
And the music! I sincerely would have attended this event had it been billed solely as a music festival. I don’t think the bands slept the entire weekend, and they seemed to flow into and around one another, in endless combinations. At one point, I was told, they commandeered the elevators and performed there.
(The utterly amazing What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?)
(Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band.)
(Eliza Rickman makes me want to find my own toy piano.)
(The one, the only, the endlessly energetic Professor Elemental. Oh, and me.)
I’m looking forward to going back next year. I’d love the opportunity to hold a pro-zombie rally, perhaps, or pass around a petition according the dead their voting rights back. It’d be marvelous.
