Old West Steampunk--an Interesting Fusion of Genres

Last fall, while doing a book signing at an Old West festival in Glendale, (Arizona), I was approached by a couple of men who invited me to their upcoming Wild Western Festival at the Old Tucson Studios.  It sounded intriguing, and certainly a change of pace from all the other western events I've attended over the years.

Steampunk is an interesting concept.  It's the fusion of two entirely different genres--historical fiction--specifically western and Victorian romance, and science fiction.  Steampunk pays homage to Jules Verne, and the modern interpretation has actually been around for sometime.  The earliest examples that I can think of would be the book and movie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and the television series, The Wild Wild West.  Both came out of the 1960s, and, interestingly enough, Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame, was also the author of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

As I talked to some of the people I met at this event I came to the conclusion that steampunk is big with science "nerds" and "geeks," meaning its followers are well-educated.  It also appears to a big hit with the Goth community.  Definitely not the traditional followers of western books and movies, but nonetheless, many of them seemed to have a genuine interest in the history.

I spent a great deal of time talking to one of the event organizers at a promotional book signing the week before their convention.  It seems I share a common goal with many in the steampunk crowd, and that is using historical fiction as a vehicle to teach young people.  They use it to teach science and engineering, while I wrote my Luke and Jenny books to teach history.  And even though this steampunk convention didn't appeal to the true Old West followers, I found it to be a fantastic venue for introducing the real Old West to a whole new audience.  And that's a good thing.

GM