"Appendix N" for Steampunk & Weird West?


log in or register to remove this ad

Parmandur

Book-Friend
Jeter, not Powers, and The Anubis Gates is not particularly steampunky, especially compared to Powers' friend James Blaylock's works.
Ao ot was, but The Anubis Gates was still one of the works originally indicated:

"...the term steampunk originated largely in the 1980s[27] as a tongue-in-cheek variant of cyberpunk. It was coined by science fiction author K. W. Jeter,[28] who was trying to find a general term for works by Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates, 1983), James Blaylock (Homunculus, 1986), and himself (Morlock Night, 1979, and Infernal Devices, 1987) — all of which took place in a 19th-century (usually Victorian) setting and imitated conventions of such actual Victorian speculative fiction as H. G. Wells' The Time Machine."

All works mentioned there ought to go on a Steampunk Appendix N.
 

MGibster

Legend
I'm going to suggest Grim Prarie Tales, a 1990 moving starring James Earl Jones and Brad Dourif as two strangers who met on the plains and swap stories around the campfire. It's not a great movie, but good fodder for weird west stories.

House II: The Second Story might be an odd choice since it's set in the modern (1980s) era, but it's a weird west story nontheless.

Ravenous from 1999 is the story about a cowardly soldier stationed at a remote military outpost in California during the Mexican American War. When the soldiers encounter the survivor of a wagon train that ended in disaster and resorted to cannibalism, the fun really starts.
 

Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member
Supporter
I used a lot of these in my Champions 1900 setting. Some others I used not yet mentioned:

Kung Fu original TV series
Space: 1889 rpg
Gotham By Gaslight comic
Jules Verne books
H.G. Wells books
Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water
Ann Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.


Things I MIGHT have used had they been around when I ran that campaign:

Kurt R.A. Giambastiani’s Cloudfall novels.
Tremors 4
Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January mysteries novels*
Girl Genius comics


(There were other inspirations, but they wouldn‘t be helpful here.)





* not weird per se, but good stories with some nicely done fictionalization of New Orleans‘ historical culture and personalities
 

Remove ads

Top