When steampunks fall in love, and finally decide to tie the nuptial knot, the thorny question of the wedding cake will eventually arise – What to do? Well, that’s what happened to two Seattle Steampunks, and this was their solution:

A custom made wedding cake – the metallic gears, doors, rivets, and panels are all made of fondant and are entirely edible.

Of course, for those with a little less to spend, but still wanting to show the colours, as it were, how about a nice robot cake topper?

(Thanks to deborah for this, via email)

Tim Robinson loves Babbage engine (don’t we all?), and has built a few in Meccano. These are working Babbage Engines, with only a few deviations from the original plan, due to the mechanical limitations of Meccano. Oddly enough, there are more working Babbage Engines today, than in Babbage’s own era, as he never actually completed construction of one.

Robinson’s Differential Engine #1:

Robinson’s Differential Engine #2:

Full details, and more images and videos may be seen at: The Meccano Difference Engine Page

(more…)

High Treason is a 1928 film based on a play by Noel Pemberton Billing. Set in the London of the “future” (the 1950s), the film features cigar-shaped cars and airships over a skyline rather more like that of New York City. The plot resolved about a “Peace League” battling a band of evil agitators while the world’s superpowers stand on the brink of devastating war.

Perhaps more “retro-futuristic” than steampunk (even though there’s dirigibles there!), the film provides an intriguing glimpse into what seemed possible during the Interbellum. As a past projection of the future, it should be of interest to any steampunk enthusiasts, if only because we learn that combat gear of the future includes high heels!

We all know about Charles Babbage, creator of the Difference Engine, the predecessor to the modern computer, and Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer. Did you know that they built mammoth difference engines the size of  buildings, fought crime, encountered salamander people, battled with the economy, fought off the alien invasion of 1898, raced steam engines with Brunel, raged against poetry and street musicians and made lengthy discourses about cheese? No? Well, then, time to educate yourself with this wonderful webcomic by professional animator Sydney Padua called 2D Goggles. You can read the webcomic here.

Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan is the first volume of a new series of young adult novels. Leviathan is set in an alternate steampunk past, in which the powers of the world are divided into “Clankers” ,who favour huge, steam-powered walking war-machines; and “Darwinists”, whose hybrid “beasties” can stand in for airships, steam-trains, war-ships, and subs (inclusing a giant squid/octopus hybrid called the kraken that can seize whole warships and drag them down).

Set on the eve of WWI, the story’s two main characters are Aleks, the incognito orphan of the freshly assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Deryn, a Scots girl who has dressed in boys’ clothes to join Britain’s Darwinist air-corps.

Leviathan is, (of course) a floating ecosystem a quarter-mile long, made up of whales, bats, bees, six-legged hydrogen-sniffing dogs, and all manner of beasties that make her the meanest thing in the sky.

Filled with gripping air and land-battles, political intrigue and danger, science and madness, Leviathan is part Island of Dr Moreau, part Patrick O’Brien. And to top it all off, the volume is lavishly illustrated with fabulous ink-drawings of the best scenes from the book, executed in high Victorian style by Keith Thompson.

Leviathan is available now at amazon.com

(info via Boing Boing)

The two premier steampunk online magazines have released their latest editions. SteamPunk Magazine’s fifth issue features “everything from emergency welding to a very special guest essay by Bruce Sterling” while the seventh issue of the Gatehouse Gazette is dedicated to “The Metropolis,” with reviews of the 1927 film, columns and an exclusive preview of Toby Frost’s upcoming Space Captain Smith novel, Wrath of the Lemming Men.

• Click here for SteamPunk Magazine’s Issue #5
• Click here for the Gatehouse Gazette’s Issue #7

I want to thank everyone for showing such interest in our blog and forum; the growth over the past couple of weeks has been amazing.

Unfortunately, it took us by surprise, and the swell of interest has proved a little too much for our server. We’re working on keeping it online, and making improvements to make sure it can handle even more growth.

Thanks for your patience while our team of volunteers (me) works on things!

Update: we’ve upgraded our server! See this topic for details.  Thanks for all your patience!

From October 13,2009, until February 21, 2010, the first museum exhibition of Steampunk art will be held at The Oxford Museum of the History of Science. Located in the original Ashmolean Building, it is eminently appropriate that Victorian Inspired Steampunk art would have it’s first, museum premier at this prestigious location.

Steampunk Art @ Oxford

“The lives of robots have always been a topic explored by authors and artists alike. Isaac Asimov has written some of the best novels in the history of robots, DreamWorks created the computer animated movie Robots in 2005 and Pixar is currently making Wall-E.

“But it is not just the “big guys” who create amazing robotic art. Independent artist Andrew Chase is making this 50-page picture book about the Robot TME (short for “Trionic Morphatractable Engineer”)” and the pictures are absolutely stunning! See more at this Page. Thanks to a Mr Andy Barss for bringing this to our attention!