Jema Emilly Ladybird Hewitt - Steampunk emporium: creating fantastical jewelry, devices and oddments from assorted cogs, gears and curios

This has become an increasingly difficult question to answer especially as the steampunk movement increases and expands in popularity reinventing itself as it goes!

Steampunk at its most basic is Victorian-style science fiction. As a genre it covers books art music films clothing and jewelry all bound together by a fantastical yet historical premise: that the world instead of discovering electricity and silicone chips continues to be paused in the 1800s powered by steam and clockwork. What might have happened if Victorian inventor Charles Babbage had finished his mechanical computer the Analytical Engine (which can still be seen in Londons Science Museum today)? What if the earth really was hollow with another world inside and the only way to it was by a steam-powered mole machine? What if it was possible to sail the aether winds in a pressurized airship to alien-inhabited planets?

Unlike other fantasy genres that rely on magic to provide a world difference steampunk is based on mechanisms and machines gadgets and gizmos. Most of these retain Victorian stylings of brass mahogany and fine metal filigree harking back to an era when machinery wasnt just useful but beautiful as well. There are often fantasy elements includedthe Victorian obsession with fairies vampires and the supernaturalthat influence the modern genre.

The author popular at the very beginning of all this whimsy was Jules Verne. Verne was born in 1828 in Nantes France and even as a child had a passion for travel and adventure once attempting to stow away on a ship bound for India! He wrote the very first books of what we would later come to call science fictionstories of exploration into space and the future; of course at the time he was writing about contemporary people in fantastical situations. Many of his stories are still familiar to us today through screen adaptations of A Journey to the Center of the Earth Around the World in 80 Days and 20000 Leagues Under the Sea.

The actual phrase steampunk appeared almost 150 years later when authors William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote their alternate-history novel The Difference Engine. They had already written many novels in the 1970s and 80s in the futuristic sci-fi genre called cyberpunk. It is thought that another author K.W. Jeter referred to this book in a review as steampunk because it had a historical Victorian setting. Politics and satire often bordering on the revolutionary permeated these new novels as it had the science-fiction writings of Verne Poe and H.G. Wells.

For many people steampunk is a way of life. They may dress in Victorian-inspired clothes including button boots and corsets cravats and bowler hats. Some steampunkers dress like this all the time some just on weekends and for special events. They may create their own beautiful machines like brass and wood computers and filigree bluetooth telephones some of which work while others are just objets dart. There are those who like a dark and sinister steampunk style while others take a more historical angle. And then there are the ones who just like Victorian space piratesHuzzah! Steampunkers love getting together and having tea parties and balls telling stories going on adventures and admiring steam engines. Some play in bands some in orchestras. But above all they are creative well mannered and have fun!

It is my sincerest wish that you will find all the wit and whimsy of steampunk in this tome. I am so excited to share this wonderful world with you through items to wear devices to aid you in expeditions and oddments at which to marvel. I cant wait for you to join me in my adventures and hope you may find new inspiration for some amazing stories and characters within the pieces you create.

Emilly Ladybird

TO THE EDITORThe Times

Without doubt Undine Petridess discovery of Atlantis must be considered an extraordinary achievement. For such a young explorer to rediscover an entire civilization especially within the inky depths of over 20000 leagues is unparalleled. The Atlanteans themselves believe Undine to be Valoeen a lost descendent of a noble Atlantean family exiled many centuries ago for wanting contact with the upper world.