My stuff isn't steampunk, but it has the same problem of good-parts history. You can't write in an recognisable alternate history 1930s without the Nazis, and the Rape of Nanking, and the colonialism, and lynch-mobs in the USA. You have a period of change and uncertainty, and looming war, and there's a lot you can do with that, as well as the new technologies.
And you can put characters into those settings who can really be heroic, trying to do the right thing, because we know that so many of the bad things were defeated, if not quite destroyed.
It's sometimes difficult trying to depict the 1930s USA, because so much of what was there is so wrong. We were lucky that the other side won that battle, even if they weren't always clearly the good guys. There's a movie coming about the Tuskogee Airmen, and the way it seems to mess with the reality is worrying, but they were a sign that the USA was moving away from the lurking evils.
But I am biased. I'm not an American. I'm not one to panic over the word "socialist". I'm not viewing that history through a lens warped by current American media.
Colonialism? Just which colonial country's Indians are the ones with nuclear weapons and a space programme? History is complicated.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-09-02 10:14 am (UTC)And you can put characters into those settings who can really be heroic, trying to do the right thing, because we know that so many of the bad things were defeated, if not quite destroyed.
It's sometimes difficult trying to depict the 1930s USA, because so much of what was there is so wrong. We were lucky that the other side won that battle, even if they weren't always clearly the good guys. There's a movie coming about the Tuskogee Airmen, and the way it seems to mess with the reality is worrying, but they were a sign that the USA was moving away from the lurking evils.
But I am biased. I'm not an American. I'm not one to panic over the word "socialist". I'm not viewing that history through a lens warped by current American media.
Colonialism? Just which colonial country's Indians are the ones with nuclear weapons and a space programme? History is complicated.