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Ladies and gentlemen ( Read more... )

Ladies and Gentlemen ( Read more... )

Ladies and gentlemen,

As many of you are aware, I am a major proponent of exploring the wide range of cultural options available to steampunk enthusiasts (as I discussed several months ago in my Tor.com article on the subject). Today, I would like to return to the topic of the Zouaves, who I discussed some time ago in an earlier historical ( Read more... )

Ladies and gentlemen ( Read more... )

Steampunk piracy exists in a unique and incredible position, simultaneously liberated and hounded by the advanced technology of the steam age. Historically, European piracy in the Caribbean (the sort of piracy most often acknowledged and addressed by popular culture) was effectively finished by the middle of the 18th century, strangled by the ( Read more... )

As both history and popular culture remind us, when the European explorers "discovered" the Americas, they came upon a land already settled by indigenous peoples who had lived there for easily as long as Europeans had resided in Europe. Over time, the prevailing view of the Native Americans has shifted between the stereotypes of barbaric marauders ( Read more... )

Popular culture's depiction of the pre-colonial peoples of the non-European world is a shameful thing, and the prevailing view of Africa is an excellent example of this. For whatever reason, the most common viewpoint seems to be that the peoples of Africa were a race of "noble savages" who lived, child-like, in an idyllic but abysmally primitive ( Read more... )