You may have already heard that the ‘From Bricks to Bothans’ forum are hosting a contest to see who can create their own Star Wars inspired, Steampunk styled, Lego creation!  The contest is running for the entirity of January, but entries won’t be officially considered until the 20th, but already the boards are filling up with work in progress efforts of stunning cunning!  Above is the deliciously inventive Steampunk TIE fighter from forum user RebelRock, but it is simply one of many in the running for one of the 5 Lego prizes that will be given to the lucky winners (almost £100 worth of prizes, in fact – impressive for a community contest!)

Lego and Star Wars go together so terribly well (and the games only underlined that fact) and Steampunk and Lego has done very well indeed also – with a Flickr group quietly doing wonderful things with unexpected parts, and of course we’ve also seen the wonders that occur when creative people blend Steampunk and Starwars – so the combination of all three elements was bound to happen sooner or later.  Something about the well-used nature of the original Star Wars trilogy – where spaceships need a good wallop to start working again – meshes very well with the tempremental but loved technology of so much of Steampunk.  Thanks to Metis, Noah and co-host of the contest, Don, for sending letting me know about this!  Do check out the other work in progress entries – and perhaps enter yourself!

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Mr Sillof is a skilled modifier and scratch-builder of scale figures – specialising it seems in characters from film, comic and book.  The above image shows his recently completed Justice League (from the DC Comics range) as seen through the Gotham by Gaslight view.  Gotham by Gaslight was an alternative history comic where Batman is set in the 1880s, fighting Jack the Ripper.  As you can see (and see much better on Mr Sillof’s site) there’s a more military and rivetted Superman, a corseted Wonder Woman, a begoggled Green Lantern and Aquaman can be seen in a wonderful reversed Steampunk ‘diving’ suit, with the helmet containing water instead of air.  Wonderful fan work showing some real love for the characters and what they might have been like!

Very cunningly made, and makes me wish that there was more to the Gaslight series!

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Over at the Steampunk Forum, Unklian recently showed his most magnificient Steampunk mouse mod!  With wonderfully detailed and forthright photographs and descriptions on how he went about making it at his site, you’ll see how he made a glowing, ember-filled furnace for this wonderful Babbage accessory device.  However, it seems that Unklian has been bitten by the Steampunk bug and has already set about making an improved Mk2 version – the work in progress can also be found on his site.

Do take a look at the other photographs – in particular the ones showing the ‘furnace’ at full blast!  Fantastic work, Mr Unklian – good luck with your next one!

Son of a watchmaker, and now secretly living behind the walls (and clocks) of an old Parisian train station, Hugo Cabret makes a discovery that surely any Steampunk fan would envy;  he finds an old, broken automata from the collection of Georges Melies (he of the Trip to the Moon fame) and with clockwork knowledge in his heart, he sets out to repair it.  Featuring clockwork men, toymakers and (heavens above!) a girl, it won’t go smoothly for 12yr old Hugo – but it will be an adventure!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick is a wonderfully chunky and surprisingly visual novel for readers young of heart – with over 300 illustrations, it claims to be neither graphic novel or comic, but combines sequential pages of scene setting images with pages of rip roaring text.  I admit to having almost picked it up before the holidays (alas I was not shopping for myself) and it was a lovely book to hold, pleasantly tactile – and reader Diergray (one of two who suggested it) said that both they and their six year old enjoyed it greatly!  Thank you to Diergray, Diergray’s young Steampunk fan and Ms Delaney!

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Seems to be the season for events, and if you’ve yet to commit yourself to other arrangements, and you quite like the sound of seeing the New Year in surrounded by costumed, masked, revellers in the Steampunk style, then perhaps the Seductive Alchemy event in London is for you?

The House of Wheat, ARTHOUSEPARTY, Zombies Ate My Brain and Unit 7 are all combining to create an evening that firmly declares itself to be Steampunk themed – with a strict no-mask, no-entry policy and a B.Y.O.E. understanding (Bring Your Own Experiment).  They advise to think Absinthe fairies, mad scientists, gentleman adventurers and human lab-rats – which sounds marvellous.  I’ve not found as much information as I might like, but it’ll run from 10pm to 10am, starts on the 31st of December in the Cable Street Studios, London, and they have DJ’s, Steampunk Punch and Judy, and pedal-powered cinema lined up.  It sounds very decadent indeed.

If I didn’t have other arrangements, I’d be rather tempted to try it out (any excuse for a nice Steampunk mask, of course) but if someone else should go – do let me know how it plays out.  Thank you very much, Mr NK Guy!

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Mr Hayden found some rather well done photomanipulations of how certain popular gadgets and toys of today might look if they were given a more Steampunk feel to their look.  Over at the somethingawful.com site, there’s a small but lovely collection by Eightcell including a Nintentdo DS, Wii, Wiimote and an Apple Ipod, all given a dark wood, brass and valve look.  Does it say something about me that I instantly recognised the source of the murky orange tube on the left there?  (Source image probably inspired by the Weta rayguns, I believe.)  I’d certainly prefer to have a Steampunk looking Wii and Wiimote, than the (admittedly very sleek) white that it is presently.

Very well found, Mr Hayden, and to the mysterious Eightcell creator – very well done indeed!  You have an excellent eye.

If you should find yourself in New York city in February of next year (2008), then you may be very interesed to hear that the Dances of Vice group will be hosting a two day Steampunk and retro event – the Dances of Vice Festival –  of music, theatre, costume and Victorian fencing!  Featuring artists such as Rasputina, The Deadfly Ensemble, The Blackforest Fancies and more – the highlight of the two day schedule to me sounds to be the grand neo-victorian costumed ball!

The Dances of Vice group are not strangers to the Steampunk theme, having had several monthly events under their belt already which wantonly revel in themes and costumes from the early 20th Century and a good two decades on either side to boot.

Do take a look at their website for more information, but I admit that just as I found the one-off Steampunk White Mischief event an impossible to resist temptation, the Dances of Vice Festival may well have me booking a trip across the pond!  I wonder how airport security would view a gizmo-embellished top hat – perhaps not a hand-luggage item.  Thank you, Ms Lee!

Mr Medrano very kindly let me see a recent image that he created when inspired by the somewhat Steampunk novel “The Diamond Age” (Amazon – UK, US) by Neal Stephenson.  Also known as “The Young Ladies Illustrated Primer”, the image above shows the nanotechnology-powered book in question carried by a be-goggled gentleman with what looks like engine grease across his brow.  A lovely, inspired, and beautifully realised image, Mr Medrano – thank you for letting me see it!

The Temporal Council (est. 1845) owes its existance to the work of the original Time-Traveller, Lord Arabast Smythe and his time interfering device.  Admittedly constructed by a benevolent alternate dimentional version of Lord Smythe and gifted to his less academic self, our Lord Smythe used the device on many adventures and became the foremost time traveller of his, ahem, time.  Devices such as the one above were eventually created – a beautiful (if somewhat elaborate) example of the Chrono-Interpositionists art.

Yes, this is yet another stunning piece by AlexCF of Many Dead Things – a commision piece for the Solaris Publishing Group for use on the front cover of their upcoming Steampunk Anthology – Extraordinary Engines!  So, not only a beautiful item (with a wonderful backstory, Alex – you could fuel a room full of authors yourself) but an excellent sounding book for it to grace the cover of!  I look forward to not only reading stories from luminaries such as Mr Moorcock, Mr Di Filippo and Mr VanderMeer, but to have a professional photograph of one of Mr AlexCF’s pieces of art to gaze at between short stories.  You excel yourself, Alex – though I hope you are giving Victorian-Science generated wormholes the respect they deserve!

Mr Kaden Harris, of Eccentric Genius (what a well named site), sent word and images of this most dashing of Babbage contrivances – Marvin, the Anthropomorphic Concierge!  Equipped, for your pleasure, with illuminator eyes, a Farnsworth nocturnal electronic eye positioned in his nasal position, an Edisonic vocaliser for a mouth and suitably positioned binaural microphonic array.  Connectable via the universal serial data tram (bus is such a common word) this wonder of science is moved and positioned with a Phidget and is able to not only track persons and sounds around the room that it is located within, but is able to differentiate individuals!

This was a commission piece, and I admit to having a rather unhealthy dose of envy for the ultimate owner of Marvin, tempered with admiration at coming up with such a wonderful request.  Mr Harris – you have outdone yourself, and I can only hope that your patron is exceptionally pleased with the results!  Perhaps you could furnish us with a cinematogram of Marvin going through his paces?