Steam Engine Cabin, National Railway Museum

There’s something wonderful about steam power. Even though it belongs to an earlier age, it feels full of optimism. Maybe that’s part of the appeal of the genre of Steampunk. It imagines an alternative present that isn’t a dystopia  and where people aren’t being controlled by technology but get to have fun with it. After all, it would be hard to feel doom laden if you were surrounded by brass, valves and pistons, not to mention all that velvet. Steampunk acknowledges that there is something inherently organic in this kind of technology. Steam power  is visible, tangible and somehow timeless.

Damian Mark Whittle