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nebris"I agree that the dividing line between Steampunk and Dieselpunk is more one of World View than Technology per se, though obviously the latter is The Key Element.
The first decade or so of the 20th Century is really an overlap of the two. Steampunk slowing fading out and Dieselpunk rapidly moving in. But I would go so far as to submit there is a dividing line that is very clear.
Geographically it can be placed at The Latin Bridge in Sarajevo. Temporally it can be placed at around 11am local time on June 28th, 1914. That is of course the time and location of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by Gavrilo Princip, the event that sparked the First World War.
In some ways we of the present cannot understand how WWI totally changed the psycho-emotional landscape of Europe. We have grown up in a world where Technological Total War is a 'fact of life', where Area Bombing and Death Camps are simply What Men Do In War. Our collective awareness is steeped in these things.
But WWI created such a profound change as to reach Metaphysical dimensions. Note that Carl Jung thought he was going mad in 1913/14 because he was being tormented by 'apocalyptic nightmares' that suddenly made sense when the war broke out.
The Great War utterly destroyed the somewhat naïve Victorian/Edwardian belief in the unalloyed benefits of Progress and in its aftermath Europeans – and to a lesser extent Americans – split up into the Cynical, the Opportunistic and the Fanatic, all marching on the road toward the greatest Dieselpunk Event in history; the Second World War.
And that War, in which all sides behaved monstrously out of the sheer necessity of survival, is the one shaped our modern world view and therefore created a psycho-cultural distance from the Pre-WWI mindset that is almost unbridgeable.
It does however, as I proposed above, give us a very clear dividing line between the two genres. I firmly believe that any discussion of the relative outlooks of Steampunk and Dieselpunk one must, at the very least, pay attention to which side of the Latin Bridge ones outlook actually originates." ..comment on Steampunk and Dieselpunk: A Comparison – Part 2
The first decade or so of the 20th Century is really an overlap of the two. Steampunk slowing fading out and Dieselpunk rapidly moving in. But I would go so far as to submit there is a dividing line that is very clear.
Geographically it can be placed at The Latin Bridge in Sarajevo. Temporally it can be placed at around 11am local time on June 28th, 1914. That is of course the time and location of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by Gavrilo Princip, the event that sparked the First World War.
In some ways we of the present cannot understand how WWI totally changed the psycho-emotional landscape of Europe. We have grown up in a world where Technological Total War is a 'fact of life', where Area Bombing and Death Camps are simply What Men Do In War. Our collective awareness is steeped in these things.
But WWI created such a profound change as to reach Metaphysical dimensions. Note that Carl Jung thought he was going mad in 1913/14 because he was being tormented by 'apocalyptic nightmares' that suddenly made sense when the war broke out.
The Great War utterly destroyed the somewhat naïve Victorian/Edwardian belief in the unalloyed benefits of Progress and in its aftermath Europeans – and to a lesser extent Americans – split up into the Cynical, the Opportunistic and the Fanatic, all marching on the road toward the greatest Dieselpunk Event in history; the Second World War.
And that War, in which all sides behaved monstrously out of the sheer necessity of survival, is the one shaped our modern world view and therefore created a psycho-cultural distance from the Pre-WWI mindset that is almost unbridgeable.
It does however, as I proposed above, give us a very clear dividing line between the two genres. I firmly believe that any discussion of the relative outlooks of Steampunk and Dieselpunk one must, at the very least, pay attention to which side of the Latin Bridge ones outlook actually originates." ..comment on Steampunk and Dieselpunk: A Comparison – Part 2
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-11 03:08 am (UTC)And the psychological trauma factor proved immensely greater for everyone involved in WWII.
BTW
Date: 2012-06-11 04:06 am (UTC)