doctormonocle:

Bathyscaphe

(via lavenderfirefly)

hildekitten:

Outfit 18.9.2011: International Talk like an Air Pirate Day!

Ok so it was a day early, but it was that day that the Belgian Cupcakes Lolita community held it’s annual Pirate meet.  And yes I know, it’s steampunk and not Lolita, whoops.  Next year I’ll wear my AP skirt with this outfit and all will be well.

Photo by Noura Khenfi.

Goggles: customised vintage Necktie: made by me Shirt: my own design, made it myself Waistcoat: my own design, made it myself Belt: Veritas Spare pockets: Alt.Kilt Bloomershorts: my own design, made them myself Stockings: We Love Colors Boots: Champion Attitude Boots Toy flintlock pistol: present from my dad, who bought it in Rhodes Accessories: handmade, vintage, Angelic Pretty, Sonia Rykiel for H&M, gifts

浮遊パラソル

(via steampunkd)

hildekitten:

outfit 16.8.2011 

Steampunk Lolita for the Belgian Cupcakes purikura meet in Mechelen (Belgium)

Headpiece: handmade by my friend Claire T-shirt: H&M Shirt: H&M Waistcoat: my own design, made it myself Bag: Cambridge Satchel Company Pocket watch bag: my own design, made it myself Pocket watch: Fossil Teddybear bag: Duffy the Disney Bear, Tokyo Disney Sea merchandise Skirt: made it myself Petticoat: Dear Celine Nylons: H&M Spats: my own design, made them myself Shoes: Secret Shop

anekdotico:

Mechanika Daylight Drall3 by *IamLizbit

(via my-ear-trumpet)

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities by Ann VanderMeer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities is by far the strangest collection of tales I have thus far laid my hands on. It is also one of the most fascinating.

Where to start? This whole book is one complete piece of art, within and without. The hardcover is beautifully designed and a gem in every bookshelf. The stories,tales, artwork, photographs inside are entertaining, inspiering and sometimes rather haunting. The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities: Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories from Top Authors and Artists really contains some curious pieces, the title does not lie, the assembled contributors also carry quite a literary punch. Among them are such notables as Michael Moorcock and Cherie Priest.

As is to be expected by an anthology, the stories differ in quality but there is not a single one in the whole book I would consider mediocre. Every single piece is highly enjoyable and the different styles make for a very divers and entertaining reading experience. Moreover, since all stories describe the contents of the eponymoous cabinet of curiosities, they form one great narrative and paint one great combinig picture.

And what a picture it is. The Cabinet of Curiosities comes from a strangely familiar and yet disturbingly different Steampunk version of our own world. It writes a what-if narrative of a Steampunk past reaching into a Steampunk/Dieselpunk present. I found it most fascinating how many different aspects of a Steampunk/Dieselpunk (and in one case teslapunk) version of earth are tackled within the pages of this book. Education, religion, life extension, other medical subjects, curiosities of all shapes and sizes, the contributing authors have created an astounding and clourful collection, one amazing piece of art. And it is not only the quality of the writing that makes this anthology so enjoyable. The artwork, too, is fittingly and hauntingly beautiful. Sketches, drawings, photographs of props, everything fits together and adds to the narrative of the book, enhabcing it and giving it more substance.

A final aspect I do not want to forget: Almost every single story in this collection and every contraption and phyiscal curiosity described in these pages can be used as a hook or central piece in a Steampunk role playing adventure. This is a quality I have thius far not encountered in any other piece of Steampunk related literature so far.

View all my reviews

ladydulac:

Trying out a gothic-ish steampunk look. Nothing fancy, but hope you like.

(via my-ear-trumpet)

The original is once again over at my main steampunk blog

Back in the late 1980’s when I first regularly delved into the vast multiverse of Role Playing Games I came across Space 1889. It then held little interest for me. I was predominantly into Shadowrun (First Edition) and Dungeons & Dragons (the original boxed sets which went up to level 36). In my local RPG shop, I once flicked through the rulebook and an adventure and found the names of the German characters rather amusing. The people at Games Designers Workshop could have at least looked up some German family names in the New York City phone directory… Instead, they came up with rather ludicrous names, but this gave the first edition quite some charm. Well, now that I am heavily into Steampunk (you may have guessed…) I am the proud owner of an original first edition rulebook of Space 1889 and I am also onsidering getting the new and improved German edition. As far as I remember, my friend Matthias over at Steampunk Welten was involved with this one. Since its re-release earlier this year (in case you are unaware: Games Designers Workshop went bust in the mid 1990’s), Space 1889 has experienced quite a rennaissance and the community on the ætherweb is rather active, and some new fiction has come from the Space 1889 universe. And this brings me to the topic behind the headline: In a few weeks the first e-books of the Space 1889 series Space: 1889 & Beyond will be released at an e-book store near you. Frank Chadwick, the mastermind behind Space 1889, is involved in the project, it will be great. To get a taste of it, Louis Shosty, who is one of the contributers forwarded the following excerpt of the first part of the series for your reading pleasure:  

“JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF LUNA”

By Andy Frankham-Allen

Prologue

1.

It was impossible! Aether flyers were not, by definition, designed for a crew of one, a fact that Annabelle Somerset felt with ever increasing dismay as she raced from the control to the navigation station. Just getting the Annabelle (yes, God bless her uncle, he had named the flyer after her) out of the gorge had been hard work. Starting up the boiler single-handed, then rushing the length of the flyer to the control room to check the instruments to make sure the water was creating enough steam, then back to the engine room at the rear of the flyer to set out the rocket engines her uncle had designed especially to combat the awkward gravity of Luna.

She cursed Tereshkov once more, and squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment.

I have to do this, she continued to tell herself. She had survived much worse. Annabelle almost laughed at that. Living for two years amongst Geronimo’s band of Chiricahua Apaches had tested her when she had been a mere slip of a girl. She had survived that, and she was certain she would survive this. That she had no choice was beyond question; there was no other left who could get the message to Earth. Uncle Cyrus’ life was in the balance and she could not allow herself even a moment of weakness in her endeavour. She had let her parents down, and she refused to let history repeat itself with her uncle.

She was not a little girl anymore, and the Russians be damned!

Instruments were laid out before her on the navigation station; some of standard design like the orrery, a mechanical analogue of the Solar System, and an astrolabe which allowed precise measurements of the planets positions; others were of her uncle’s making, and these she did not even know the names of. They were recent creations of his, and her decision to join the expedition had transpired late in the day, ill affording her the time to study these new inventions. Annabelle was no expert at reading the standard instruments, but she understood enough from having watched Blakely at the station to ascertain the current position of the Annabelle. The flyer was barely a kilometre from attaining a low lunar orbit.

She scrambled across to the control station once more, almost colliding with the bulkhead as the flyer shook around her. The damage sustained to the aether propeller by the Russians was too much. When she had first set her eyes on the propeller she had been certain she would never be able to navigate the flyer, despite the relatively unscathed nature of the aether propeller governor. She was fortunate the Russians did not recognise the governor for what it was, or they most certainly would have found a way to remove it from the Annabelle, and if not the whole apparatus then certainly they would have taken the diamond that served as the aether lens. Without it the governor would have been less than useless.

She gripped the aether wheel, a small ratchet-operated wheel that controlled the aether propeller at the rear of the ship, and turned it slightly. Annabelle looked out of the window and was elated to see the distant shape of the Earth, and before it, barely a speck in the depth of space, Her Majesty’s Orbital Heliograph Station Harbinger.

When she had first happened upon this plan with K’chuk she had hoped to be able to pilot the flyer to Earth; it was a difficult task, one fraught with many dangers, but the odds were not insurmountable. Upon seeing the damage rendered by the Russian okhrana, Annabelle knew she would have to adapt her plan. Obtaining a lunar orbit was the best she could hope for, but it would be enough to put the Annabelle in a position relative to the Harbinger. It was operated by the British Empire, and that served her purposes perfectly, as the help she required was located in England and not her native America.

She turned to the heliograph apparatus and was just about to start tapping in her coded message when her eyes espied a most terrible image through the port window. Annabelle’s finger paused over the key, and her eyes stared wide. Its iron clad surface reflected the light from the Sun, rising from Luna like the Great Beast of Hell.

“No,” Annabelle hissed. “This cannot be the end.”

So, she determined, it would not be. The Russian flyer was closing in, its gun ports no doubt opening as she looked, her mind trying to catch up with the increasing beat of her heart. Uncle Cyrus’ flyer was not a warship; he was an inventor, and his flyer echoed that. It was designed for exploration, not for battle. Any armaments it did have were minimal, and even if Annabelle were able to get to them in time, she doubted greatly their effectiveness against a fully armed Russian ironclad.

Annabelle turned away from the approaching flyer and focussed her attention on the heliograph before her. She began typing out her message, praying that the orbiting station would pick it up and relay the message with haste.

Space: 1889 © & ™ Frank Chadwick 1988,2011

Logo Design © Steve Upham, 2011

‘Journey to the Heart of Luna’ is © Andy Frankham-Allen & Untreed Reads LLC, 2011

Space: 1889 & Beyond is published by Untreed Reads Publishing, and the first series begins late August 2011. You can now buy the season pass, and save 25% directly from;

The Untreed Reads Store

joesgiantrobots:

Steampunk Tetsujin 28-go (AKA Gigantor)

My all time favorite giant robot, Tetsujin 28 (Gigantor) gets a steampunk make-over.

threestepsoverjapan:
I’ve written about Docomo’s ad campaign using Tetsujin 28-go (Gigantor) for promoting their cell phone line before. But, there’s been a resurgence in the advertising, with posters showing up in Shinjuku station, as well as on the JR trains, and the booth that reappears in Akihabara station every so often. So I figured that I might as well write another blog entry on it.

~Joe

(via turner-d-century)