Steampunk movies, series and anime

Rukatin

Malfunctioning NPC at Best.
I'll toss my rec into the hat. A finished web-novel.

The Flying Cloud

While not quite overtly steampunk, it's a 1920's-30's Alternate history where WW1 ended in a stalemate with America taking no sides. Thus, without the conflict to drive the progress of heavier-than-air flight, Airships and Zeppelins become quite prevalent in the ensuing cold war that follows.

The story has a lovely sense of humor, full of tropes and nothing too crass. But it's also very well researched, as technical operation of an airship is something that comes up a lot.
 

f1onagher

Well-known member
Bit of an odd offering, but one of the scenarios in Civilization 5 is called Empires of the Smoky Skies and explicitly revolves around a steampunk setting including logic machines, perpetual motion engines, galvanic tesla coils, and of course giant steam tanks and airships. The combat is busted as the steampunk units have vastly overweighted power compared to the regular infantry and artillery, but running an economy based on patent offices, noble estates, and logic engines is cool.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Bit of an odd offering, but one of the scenarios in Civilization 5 is called Empires of the Smoky Skies and explicitly revolves around a steampunk setting including logic machines, perpetual motion engines, galvanic tesla coils, and of course giant steam tanks and airships. The combat is busted as the steampunk units have vastly overweighted power compared to the regular infantry and artillery, but running an economy based on patent offices, noble estates, and logic engines is cool.

Did they get Landbattleships WITH logic engines ?
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
Peace In Our Time by Garth Nix
The tyranny which had ruled the entire world for generations had fallen, destroyed by one of their own superweapons. The sole survivor, the former ruler of said tyranny is visited by an outsider. Both are confused, the tyrant because he thought his regime had no outsiders, the outsider by why the tyranny essentially committed civilizationwide suicide before her civilization could launch its planned invasion.

The Oracle Engine by M. T. Anderson
Marcus Furius Medullinus Machinator loses his home and entire family in a fire after they fail to pay Marcus Licinius Crassus' private fire brigade in time and swears vengeance. He gets it. Hoo boy does he get it. A bit of excessive collateral damage to the Roman Empire and humanity as a whole though.
 
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ATP

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Peace In Our Time by Garth Nix
The tyranny which had ruled the entire world for generations had fallen, destroyed by one of their own superweapons. The sole survivor, the former ruler of said tyranny is visited by an outsider. Both are confused, the tyrant because he thought his regime had no outsiders, the outsider by why the tyranny essentially committed civilizationwide suicide before her civilization could launch its planned invasion.

The Oracle Engine by M. T. Anderson
Marcus Furius Medullinus Machinator loses his home and entire family in a fire after they fail to pay Marcus Licinius Crassus' private fire brigade in time and swears vengeance. He gets it. Hoo boy does he get it. A bit of excessive collateral damage to the Roman Empire and humanity as a whole though.

I remember book about sparta princess in Rome starting steam revolution...steam legions or something.Unfortunatelly,i forget author and probably title,and read only first chapters.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
greco-roman steampunk
greco-roman steampunk
Paris chooses Athena instead of Aphrodite and her gift turns him into a one-man industrial revolution. A decade later, the last hope of the desperate alliance of greek city-states against the nascent trojan empire with its flintlocks and aeolipile-powered ships is a scheme created by wily Odysseus, to have Helen pretend that she wants to leave Agamemnon as he's shortly no longer going to have a kingdom, using her as bait to lure Paris away from his city and security so he can be ransomed back for design specifications to level the technological playing field.
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
Difference Engine by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling - it's a mystery story set in 1855, where the world and England in particular have been transformed by practical application of Babbage difference engines
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
May Be Some Time by Brenda W. Clough

Over a century after his disappearance during Robert Falcon Scott's failed South Pole expedition, Captian Lawrence Oates wakes up in a hospital bed in a future where disappearances with no body found means no paradoxes if rescued by time travelers. Poor guy.
May Be Some Time by Brenda W. Clough said:
“On behalf of His Majesty the King, I welcome you back to the land of the living,” the Ambassador said.

How fine it was to hear a British accent! But, “His Majesty?” Titus demanded, startled. Surely King George V was not still alive?

“Oh! His Majesty King William V. You poor fellow, haven't they caught you up to date yet?”

“In due course, sir,” Dr. Lash broke in. “We've tried to bring the Captain up to speed gently. It's a big adjustment to make.”

The Ambassador beamed with pride. “But if I know anything about it, you've been damned plucky, eh?”

“Not at all.” Titus remembered now that this was why he loathed Society—one had to converse. Every anarchic instinct in him rebelled at the expectation. He was tired of being a tame poodle. “What I want to know,” he began, in his plummiest drawl.

“Yes, yes?”

Titus pinned the Ambassador firmly with his gaze. “I wondered why a pack of Yanks are making these great discoveries. I get the distinct sense that Britain's no longer in the forefront of human endeavour.”

The Ambassador turned pink and opened his mouth, but only a few disjoint syllables came out. “Shameful backsliding, I call it,” Titus pursued, twisting the knife a little. “The work we put into keeping the Empire on top of things, fighting the Boers, trekking into the hinterlands of the globe, and now look at it!”

Dr. Lash's grip on his elbow was almost painful as he swiveled Titus back to face the President.

“So, Captain,” the President said. “Now that your life has been restored to you by Dr. Piotr and these good folks, what do you intend to do?”

“There's a facer,” Titus said, at a loss. The question had not occurred to him till now. Which just showed how pulled down he was, since it was obviously of the first importance. “Something useful.”

“A fine idea.”

“I don't suppose Britain's at war or anything,” Titus said with dissatisfaction. “Perhaps we could try and claim the Colonies again, eh?”

The President's smile did not waver, but her gaze flickered, searching for rescue. The British Ambassador hastily said, “No wars on at the moment—but your old regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, is anxious to welcome you back into the ranks.”

Titus had kicked his heels in an idle peacetime regiment before—codswallop, pointless parades, catering to the whims of the brass—and was not about to take the shilling for more. “Perhaps I could work at the TTD here,” he said. “Lend a hand with the time traveling business. I have the experience, after all.”

The Ambassador gave a small polite laugh. “Oh, very good.”

The President glanced at Dr. Piotr. “You planning another jaunt into the past, Doctor?”

“Not soon,” Dr. Piotr said. “And not another person. Captain Oates here is probably the one and only man who will ever travel through time, because that's a dangerous trick to try. But by plucking him out of the past we have more than just the proof of the fundamental theories. It was a test of the Fortie technology. They taught us how to build a drive that can twist space—or time. This was the easy part. The Captain is living proof that the time travel works. Next, we test the technology on the main job: travelling to the stars.”

Titus listened closely, sifting nuggets of meaning out of the incomprehensible. “Do I understand you correctly?” he cut in, interrupting Dr. Piotr in mid-peroration. “You didn't set out to travel through time? You didn't intend to rescue me?”

The scientist cast a pained glance at Dr. Lash, who said, “But, Titus! I explained this to you. And the film this morning discussed it in detail!”

“This is the Fortie project, Captain,” Dr. Piotr said patiently. “Your rescue was part of it.”

“Ah, you took him over to the museum, very good,” the Ambassador said. “I love IMAX films myself, ever since I saw 'To Fly' down at the Air and Space Museum when I was a wee lad.”

For a moment Titus was speechless. No one had said that he was the sole beneficiary of a titanic temporal rescue effort. He had only assumed his was the central role. Apparently he wasn't the pivot of the project: had never been. He was an unimportant cog in a big engine that was driving across the heavens towards Tau Ceti. The readjustment in his picture of the situation was painful but nearly instantaneous. He had never been one of those status-conscious blokes, always trying to get an edge on his fellows. He had enough self-confidence to speak up right away: “Right-oh. Count me in then. I've never been to another planet! When do we leave?”

Embarrassment, shuffling feet, a nervous laugh. Had he said something wrong?

“Now isn't that just the spirit of exploration,” the President said, with the air of a schoolteacher determined to find something positive to say about a rowdy pupil. “You're a firecracker, Captain. Larger than life!”

“A credit to the nation,” the Ambassador said. “Ah, sherry!”

An overall relaxation, as trays of drinks circulated and people began to move towards the buffet. Titus seized a glass of sherry and hung back as the nobs went forward. “Monster,” Dr. Trask whispered, grinning. “So this is how Victor von Frankenstein felt!”

“You're a troublemaker, Titus,” Shell agreed. “You've got your nerve, jerking the poor Ambassador's chain like that. I thought I'd bust a gut.”

Titus refused to be distracted, even by the spread of food. “I like the idea of going to Tau Ceti. Who else is going? You, Lash?”

Dr. Trask snickered at the idea. “Not with his asthma! And you're never getting me up in one of those things. Clonal surgeons have plenty of work Earthside, grafting new limbs and boobs and organs onto people. Shell's the one who'll sweep those Forties off their feet.”

Titus blinked. He had not meant to suggest that women could be explorers. “If they have feet,” someone else in the line remarked.

Shell sipped her sherry and laughed. “Did you see that awful cartoon on the Today page?”

“Well, prophylactics wouldn't take up all that much cargo space!”

The talk veered off into jokes and chatter that went right over Titus's head. “It sounds like a perfect job for me,” he grumbled, accepting the plate someone handed him. What an odd and casual way to eat—and they called this a banquet? To Titus, banquets meant waiters and service, not shuffling through a line for bangers and mash.

Dr. Trask plopped a scoop of potatoes onto her plate and said, very kindly, “Titus, the teams have been in training for ten years. It'd be an awful lot of work for you to get up to speed.”

“Frankly, old man, you were the highest example of the explorer as amateur,” Dr. Lash said. “But this is the age of the professional. It's no reflection on your own worth.”

In fact Titus did not believe this. His entire experience, leavened with the example of Buck Rogers in the 25th century, assured him that all he had to do was try. Surely a concerted effort would bring success. He helped himself to an enormous plateful of food, only belatedly noticing that he had cleared off half the sausages. How odd, that meat should make up such a small fraction of the offerings! But he had always been a carnivore, and it would surely be incorrect to shovel part of his portion back onto the platter. Instead he allowed them to seat him at the head table.

The President had asked Dr. Piotr a question about the economic impact of speedy space travel, and the talkative scientist was off and away. “At FTL,” he said with enthusiasm, “the planets are just suburbs. We can colonize the solar system! No more of this three-years-to-Mars stuff. We've already gained so much from this one Fortie contact, I can't wait to see what else is coming.”

Every word was English, but Titus found he had no idea what was being said. He leaned nearer to Shell. “Do you understand him?”

“Sure.”

“I don't.”

She laughed. “And Piotr prides himself on being a populizer, too! Don't disappoint him by telling him.”

“Hamilton's such a show-off,” Sabrina Trask muttered from beyond Shell. “Just because she taught economics and math at Stanford.”

Titus wasn't even sure what economics was. Something to do with money, he hazarded. Born to wealth, all he knew of money was how to spend it. He wondered what precisely Buck Rogers had lived on, and how he had got into the 25^th century's military. “Shell, how much education have you had?”

“Me? Gosh, let me think—twelve years of school, four years college, medical school, another two for my communications doctorate … If you count the Fortie training, I've been in school just about all my life.”

Dr. Piotr had finished his remarks, and the President applauded, saying, “Doctor, I swear if you ever want to quit the Paticalar business, I have a job for you in politics. You could sell shoes to snakes.”

The doctor grinned, pinker than ever. “Once, Madam President, you might have tempted me. Now, I know the better part. This is where the fun is going to be.”

“Gad, I envy you young people,” the Ambassador said. “Tell us more about the time business—what's this new time window trick the newsies are chattering about?”

Obligingly Dr. Piotr said, “Well, it's disruptive and difficult to pull a real object or person through time. A perfect candidate like the Captain here is rare. It would be as much fun, and cheaper, to just pull light—images. I wouldn't mind a photograph of a velociraptor, would you? We could make a fortune on the posters and screensavers alone.”

This is beyond me, Titus admitted silently. He bowed his head to the inevitable. Buck Rogers was a cheat, the invention of some fantasizing duffer who'd never actually had to work with less than seventy percent of the knowledge necessary. Titus would live the reality, and he could acknowledge now that much of it would be forever beyond his comprehension. To swallow down the entire 21^st century was too big a mouthful. His only hope was to select an area to worry at and, please God, to master.

But which area? If he wasn't going to explore, then what? “Lash, what am I going to live on? They must have proved my will and settled the estate. I don't suppose my heirs' descendants, my great-grandnephews and so on, will want to part with the money even if there's a bean left after all this time. Will you people support me until I die?”

“A stipend's in the works,” Dr. Lash said. “PTICA is responsible for your existence, Titus—you won't starve.”

“But I bet anything you like, you're not going to want to live out your life as a couch potato,” Shell added. “I can't wait to see what the newsies will say, about your re-conquering the American Colonies!”

Dr. Lash shuddered. “I could wish, Titus, that you'd be more careful about what you say!”

Titus ate steadily, thinking hard. His life had been handed back to him on a platter. But the President, of all people, had put her finger on the key question: what could he do with it? He knew how to fight, and he knew how to die. He had a sense there was very little call for such skills in the 21^st century. As useful as knowing how to blow a duck call, he thought sardonically. Perhaps he could assist that young black at the museum.

He had it now: enough information so that he could distinguish what was truly vital. Clear as day, Titus saw that if he didn't carve a niche for himself, he would indeed become a couch potato—he was repelled without even knowing what that was. There was a higher fence to clear than just learning to exist here. The crucial battle lay not in the past, nor the present, but the future. From infancy, playing with popguns and wooden horses, he had always known what he would be: a soldier. Now in this strange new world this destiny was gone, and he was adrift. He could do anything he set his will to. But first he had to find a new destiny to replace the one he'd left behind in 1912. Else he'd become a pet, a parasite, leeching off the moderns for the rest of his useless life, trotted out for display every now and then to bark for the visiting brass.
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
Lookback Page 1 - Next Town Over

Next Town Over - a gaslamp webcomic set in magic touched alternate Wild West. The art is really good and storytelling is compelling, but I really dislike both protagonists, doesn't stop me from reading it though. I think it is heading towards an epilogue now.
 

Simonbob

Well-known member
I remember book about sparta princess in Rome starting steam revolution...steam legions or something.Unfortunatelly,i forget author and probably title,and read only first chapters.
It's called Steam Legion by Evan Currie, and I quite liked it.


It works well, as far as I'm concerned.
 

ATP

Well-known member
It's called Steam Legion by Evan Currie, and I quite liked it.


It works well, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks,i read first chapter.Good one,and i wish spartan princess well.
But - romans were fucked becouse of :
1.No good changing emperor system
2.Slavery - nobody need new machines,if you could just toss more slaves at your problems.

So,i think that Rome would fall anyway,but we would get steam punk medieval Europe as result !
 

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