Steampunk Digest - November 29, 2024

Keep your eyes peeled for a new episode of The World of Steampunk, coming Saturday (we hope) to our YouTube channel and (later) to Vimeo. We had hoped to have it ready for this newsletter, but we needed to add some final touches and the Time Variance Authority looked askance at our efforts to pause the time and space continuum.

In Episode 12, we visit two events, the Key City Steampunk Convention in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Maker Faire Bay Area in Vallejo, California. In the Key City segment, you’ll hear from organizers Brian Fadrosh, Sheila Gorman Fadrosh, and Tobias McCurry. At Maker Faire, we spoke with Dale Dougherty, co-founder of the event. He’s been described as the father of the maker movement.

Steam Powered Giraffe will perform their 8th annual “Yulemas Special Show,” an acoustic livestream concert, on Sunday, Dec. 15 beginning at 6 p.m. Pacific time. Tickets cost $10 and include access to the livestream as well as unlimited viewings of the archived video. Watch party and VIP tickets are also available. See the band’s online store for more info.

Neovenator, a band of self-described “steampunk oddballs” from the U.K., have been performing since 2021. Now they’re out with their first full-length album, Songs from the End of the Pier. We can attest that it’s worth a listen.

They describe their music as “a charming mix of pastoral storytelling, psychedelic musical musings and a decent slab of good old Rama-Lama.”

The album is available on CD from Flicknife Records and digitally from the usual places. Find more links on their Linktr.ee.

Buzz is building for Nosferatu, the highly anticipated vampire film written and directed by Robert Eggers. The movie, slated for a Dec. 25 release, is a remake of the classic 1922 silent film of the same name. The cast features Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok along with Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, and Willem Dafoe.

Eggers is no stranger to the horror genre: His previous credits include The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), both of which received critical acclaim. The film is distributed by Focus Features, which released the official trailer in late September.

Early bird tickets are now on sale for the third annual Galveston Steampunk Festival, scheduled for April 11-13 at a new venue: Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas. The festival was previously held at the Galveston Railroad Museum.

Moody Gardens is a large, nonprofit waterside attraction featuring a science museum, aquarium, and a pyramid that houses tropical plants and animals. It also has an onsite hotel.

As with past festivals, the main event will happen on Saturday, but the organizer will also present a steampunk pub crawl/history tour on Friday and a tour of the League Kempner Mansion on Sunday. The program will also include a historic car show.

Early bird adult passes for Saturday cost $30. Tickets for the pub crawl cost $40. Learn more on the website.

Fulqrum Publishing and Dreamate, a Ukrainian video game developer, announced that their RPG New Arc Line is now available for early access via Steam, Epic, and GOG. It will also be available for Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles.

Players choose sides in a “conflict between Arcane Magic and Steampunk Revolution and tip the uneasy balance between sorcery, elves, dwarves and mysterious monsters on one side and steampunk gadgets, zeppelins, and tesla guns on the other,” the publisher says.

Early reviews are largely positive, but one publication, TheGamer, discovered and confirmed that some images were made with generative AI.

Learn more on the publisher’s website.

Related: Magic and Machines Clash in New Arc Line (COGconnected)

New Arc Line Early Access Review - A Janky CRPG With A Lot Of Promise (The Gamer)

Stunbyte, a studio in Berlin, announced plans to launch Driveloop, a vehicular combat game set in post-apocalyptic cityscapes. Players in art-deco-style fighting machines will shoot and ram their way through “steampunk-inspired mechanical hordes,” the developer says.

It’s set for release in Q2 2025, and you can wishlist it now on Steam. See the website for more info.

Related: Use your vehicle to fight off hordes of steampunk-inspired robots in Driveloop, launching in April 2025 (Digitally Downloaded)

Driveloop: Post-apocalyptic driving roguelike shooter hits Steam in 2025 (AltChar)

Driveloop Announced For Steam Release In Q2 2025 (Bleeding Cool)

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has added two new categories to the Nebula Awards: Poetry and Comics. File 770 reports that the organization will present the first awards in the new categories in 2026, recognizing works published in 2025. The Nebulas are among the most prestigious honors in science fiction and fantasy.

Related: SFWA Approves New Poetry, Comics Nebula Awards (File 770)

Events

ASBL ManifestSteam will present Uchronicité, a steampunk and Victorian festival set for Sunday, Dec. 1 at Sparkoh in Frameries, Belgium. The venue is a science park in a former coal mine. See the Facebook page for more info.

TimeShip EverMore, a New England steampunk band, will present the The Time Travelers Ball, a dress ball that poses the musical question, “What Time Are You From?” It’s set for Friday, Nov. 29, 8 p.m., at Starlite Bar and Art Gallery in Southbridge, Massachusetts. See the Facebook page for more info.

The Menagerie will kick off the Yuletide Oddities Show, a series of holiday-themed oddities markets taking place at the famed Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. It opens on Saturday, Nov. 30 and continues each Saturday through Dec. 28, with a different theme and entertainment lineup each week. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

General admission tickets cost $5. Tours of the mansion cost extra. See the website for more info.

Doctor Who fans in the Midwest will gather this weekend for Chicago TARDIS, one of the largest U.S. conventions dedicated to the BBC franchise. Special guests include Sylvester McCoy (Seventh Doctor), Paul McGann (Eighth Doctor), Jo Martin (Fugitive Doctor), Sacha Dhawan (The Master), and Ian McNeice (Winston Churchill in multiple episodes).

It takes place Nov. 29-Dec. 1 at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Lombard, Illinois. Learn more on the website.

See our website for comprehensive event listings, including steampunk events and regional fandom events in Canada, the U.K., Australia/New Zealand, and the New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Midwest, South Central, Mountain, and Pacific regions of the U.S.

Crowdfunding

Ongoing campaigns:

Sherlock Holmes: Leviathan – A graphic novel in which the detective teams up with Captain Nemo to prevent a world war. The campaign has reached 90 percent of its US$8,000 funding goal. It runs through Jan. 3.

Aerathain - Aerenthia, Dark Awakenings – A steampunk-themed D&D 5e supplement. The book includes AI-generated imagery. It is well past its €100 (US$105) funding goal. It runs through Dec. 12.

Elsewhere in the Aether

Vermont: Steampunk fashion at Springfield Library (Vermont Journal)

U.K. teacher tries to understand Steampunk (Guardian Series)

‘Enola Holmes 3’: Philip Barantini To Direct Netflix And Legendary Sequel (Deadline)

The Ten Best History Books of 2024 (Smithsonian Magazine)

Arcane Season 2 Just Fell Prey to the Worst Sci-Fi Trend (Inverse)

‘Arcane’ Season 2: A Masterful Reflection on Loss (Harvard Crimson)

We Finally Got Our First Look at Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (Inverse)

30 Epic Time-Travel Movies (Forbes)

Florida High School Presents ‘All’s Well: A Steampunk Musical’ (Playbill)

Essex, U.K.: Steampunk and pirate-themed band to play two pub gigs in Harwich (Harwich and Manningtree Standard)

Read the 132-Year-Old Message in a Bottle Found Hidden Inside the Walls of a Scottish Lighthouse (Smithsonian Magazine)