“Steampunk bursts through its subculture roots to challenge our musical, fashion, design, and even political sensibilities.” With that daring statements begins Miss Sharon Steel her investigation into the fascinating world of steampunk. For The Boston Phoenix, she writes about the “Steam Dream” of our beloved genre and developing subculture, chronicling the history of steampunk as a genre and examining the characteristics of purposes of its subculture.

I thank Miss Isabel Aller, Interactive Marketing Manager for The Phoenix for bringing this fine article to our attention!

[Re-posted, after a brief dissapearance due to the new posting system.  Sorry about the loss of comments.]

One of the most popular objects of “steampunk-ing” (that is, the craft of those skilled artisans and inventors amongst us) are undoubtedly guns. Not the typical, cold and cruel weapons in use nowadays, of course! No, these extraordinary engineers restore grace and dignity to the lost art of building rifles, revolvers, ray-guns, and lightning projection contraptions!

If you’re quite as unfamiliar with the precise operation of a “lightning projection gun” as yours truly, let us further scrutinize this depiction of Mr Danny Ashby’s creation. Apparently, the larger device, painted of course in a handsome shade of brass, co-operates with the glowing blue tank situated above it, which produces bolts of lightning to be fired toward one’s adversaries and what offworldly perils with the gun itself.

The aforementioned Mr Ashby, who created these lovely devices, including the steam-powered revolver visible in this picture but still under construction, goes by the name of Vladislaus Dantes and has much more photographs of his work on display in his Profile. Those interested in all kinds of steampunk-styled firearms definitely ought to check it out! For even more sabre-rattling, might we suggest the “Collective Thread for All Them Guns” over at the forums?

According to retired submariner and amateur historian, Gavin Menzies, in 1421, decades before Christopher Columbus spotted the New World and a century prior to Ferdinand Magellan’s exploration of the world beyond the Unknown, a humble Chinese admiral by the name of Zheng He set out with His Majesty’s fleet to discover the world!

Mr Menzies’ theory has obviously been dismissed by more professional historians, yet had Zheng He’s fleet been composed of such fanciful dirigibles as the craft depicted here, perhaps he would have been capable of sailing the clouds to unravel the mysteries of those continents beyond the horizon?

This charming artwork was created by a Mr James Ng, Hong-Kong born but traveled across the Americas in a fashion similar to the exploits of his medieval ancestors—that is, if we are to believe Mr Menzies after all!