A New Twist on Steampunk
Jun. 10th, 2010 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickBack to yammering on about "Secundus" again -- specifically, an idea I had for it. I'm on the TV Tropes page for Steampunk, and near the end of the main description (before the examples) is this paragraph:
As an interesting aside, note that any Victorian-era society which actually tried to create steampunk technology would soon find itself in stark trouble. The power requirements necessary to make real-world versions of steampunk devices (or at least Victorian-era versions of 20th century technology) would be enormous, and would soon exhaust all available supplies of coal and wood. A real steampunk society would have to either immediately transform into a fully modern society (with oil, gas, and nuclear power driving devices made of modern, lighter materials) or would quickly become, in all probability, a technological dead end.
This got me to thinking -- what if one of the mad scientists involved actually noticed this and started playing around with alternate power sources? I mean, the mad are known for not accepting the physical limits of the world. There's always fast-growing trees for wood, of course, and probably some sort of carbonization method to make coal, but what about something else?
My specific thought -- somebody rigs up SOLAR-powered steam machines. As in, the sun is responsible for heating the water and such. Steampunk gone green!
. . .Well, I thought it was kind of awesome.
-TD: You're mad, and I appreciate that.-
XD
As an interesting aside, note that any Victorian-era society which actually tried to create steampunk technology would soon find itself in stark trouble. The power requirements necessary to make real-world versions of steampunk devices (or at least Victorian-era versions of 20th century technology) would be enormous, and would soon exhaust all available supplies of coal and wood. A real steampunk society would have to either immediately transform into a fully modern society (with oil, gas, and nuclear power driving devices made of modern, lighter materials) or would quickly become, in all probability, a technological dead end.
This got me to thinking -- what if one of the mad scientists involved actually noticed this and started playing around with alternate power sources? I mean, the mad are known for not accepting the physical limits of the world. There's always fast-growing trees for wood, of course, and probably some sort of carbonization method to make coal, but what about something else?
My specific thought -- somebody rigs up SOLAR-powered steam machines. As in, the sun is responsible for heating the water and such. Steampunk gone green!
. . .Well, I thought it was kind of awesome.
-TD: You're mad, and I appreciate that.-
XD
