Steampunk comes to Newton.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Jake Von Slatt on his Victorian-Era RV; an old converted school bus. Yes, its a little weird - one one might ask, "why?" But you just have to love this style to understand the answer of a mere shrug of the shoulders. 

So what is Steampunk? I like how Aether Emporium describes it: "Steampunk is an eclectic world of cogs and rivets. It is airships, goggles and steam. It is romance. It is traveling on clouds and diving beneath rugged waves. It is adventure." It's essentially a combination of high-tech buried beneath a classic mechanical exterior.

You can see some examples of steampunk on the silver screen in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, Sean Connery's last film, A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Jake's web site shows what you can accomplish when you have a vivid and  creative imagination, quite a bit of skill, and a lot of time. He also explains how he makes a lot of his creations. You can see more of the photos I took here.

I'm currently reading The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Its based on Charles Babbage's plan for a victorian-era computing device, finally built by engineers and curators at London's Science Museum. I'll let you know what I think.