I just have one question... what started this whole steampunk trend?

HawkSkater0

Very cool, not sure how practical it would be to have 60% of your vision blocked in an already gas filled environment,but hey... it's steampunk.

Garrison Dean, King Awesome

I hear Max Mosley commissioned one for his next "party"

jarque

@battlehamster:
"Mmmmmpphhhh mph mmm mm mph!"

impreza

I've never wanted anything else more in my life.

Captain_Collide

That thing looks so cool, its looks like what you would see people wearing in a propaganda film! If i had $650 sitting around i would buy it!

HawkSkater0

@dman0586: thats funny.

I have a gas mask, does it warrant doing something like this to it?

hu_hu_cool

"via ebay via livejournal via steampunk workshop via wired" did anyone else laugh at this particular detail?

dman0586

I like the spatulas on the eyes!

awemaker

@battlehamster: Pyro GIRL!

Jason Chen

Iron Man Version 1.0

mrkymrk

Pyro guy from TF2, is that you??? :)

battlehamster

LARPing? Really Jason? I thought we left such things to Annalee and Charlie Jane over at i09...

EBone

@HawkSkater0: Hard to say. The term, which I don't think is particularly accurate seemed to come out of the cyberpunk genera to describe a psudo Victorian ethic.

For my money, it was the Wild Wild West ([en.wikipedia.org]), and I don't mean that awful movie. The original TV series was part sci-fi, part western, and spy genera. All of the gadgets were "steam punk" long before the term evolved.

One might also point to early sci-fi. H.G. Wells certainly had the esthetic. Georges Méliès took H.G. wells stories and put them to screen and created perhaps the first visual "steam punk" like world in Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon).

+ Watch video

DeadWriter

Careful, the Sandpeople are going to be looking for their mask.

Zeta1

@HawkSkater0:

wikipedia is your friend

Although many works now considered seminal to the genre were published in the 1960s and 1970s, the term steampunk originated in the late 1980s as a tongue in cheek variant of cyberpunk. It seems to have been coined by the science fiction author K. W. Jeter, who was trying to find a general term for works by Tim Powers (author of The Anubis Gates, 1983), James Blaylock (Homunculus, 1986) and himself (Morlock Night, 1979 and Infernal Devices, 1987) which took place in a Victorian setting and imitated conventions of actual Victorian speculative fiction such as H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. In a letter to the science fiction magazine Locus, printed in the April 1987 issue, Jeter wrote:

" Dear Locus,

Enclosed is a copy of my 1979 novel Morlock Night; I'd appreciate your being so good as to route it Faren Miller, as it's a prime piece of evidence in the great debate as to who in "the Powers/Blaylock/Jeter fantasy triumvirate" was writing in the "gonzo-historical manner" first. Though of course, I did find her review in the March Locus to be quite flattering.
Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like "steampunks," perhaps ...

-K.W. Jeter

nutbastard

@HawkSkater0: People who were rejected by all the other "trends". Basically Goth and LARP rejects.

Git Em SteveDave has a new Lego set

@Zeta1: Yes, while they scare easily, they will be back, and in greater numbers.

Git Em SteveDave has a new Lego set

I love all things steampunk.

cello

Looks kinda like the KROENEN mask from Hellboy.

Stacky Botrus

Wow, whoever made that was a fool for having buy it now set to a mere $650. That could have sold for FAR more.

Elliuotatar

@DeadWriter: Now that we know the moon people will explode into dust with any sharp impact, we can finally take over and RULE FROM OUR MOONBASES.

Human Bomb

@Stacky Botrus: "Looks kinda like the KROENEN mask from Hellboy."

Huh. Hadn't occurred to me, but now that you mention it...

Killjoy