“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 that era; like ‘steampunks,’ perhaps….”
Letters of Note pins the term steampunk to a letter from sci-fi author K.W. Jeter in 1987.
K.W. Jeter! He came to a party at our house in Beaverton, Oregon, probably about 1989 or 1990. Steve Miller (not that Steve Miller) and I were living in a duplex and I believe the occasion was our annual clambake. (Like every other year, it was clam-free.) I’d never hear of Jeter, and that was the only time I met him. He was a pleasant, if reserved, guy.
Farewell Horizontal had just come out — that was 1989, I see — and after somebody tipped me off that Jeter was an author I read the book and found it quite engrossing. I had no idea of the Philip K. Dick connection at the time
Now I have to go back and read Jeter’s steampunk novels, which were reissued last year.
Also, I had no idea steampunk was a 24-year-old concept. I thought it was a hipster thing from 5 or 6 years ago.
This has been the sci-fi Writer’s Journal for a Saturday. Be well, do good work, and stay vertical.