Steampunk: The Beginning
April 7 – May 10, 2012
Curator | Begovich Gallery Director, Mike McGee
About the Exhibition
Steampunk: the Beginning features over 60 illustrations created by Cal State University, Fullerton Visual Arts alumni, faculty and current students, which are inspired by three Cal State University, Fullerton alumni and their Steampunk related publications: Homonculus by James Blaylock '72, '74 (B.A., M.A. English); Infernal Devices by K.W.Jeter '73 (B.A. Sociology); and Anubis Gates by Tim Powers '76 (B.A. English).
Although many works now considered seminal to the genre were published in the 1960s and 1970s, the term steampunk originated in the late 1980s from K.W. Jeter, then a recent graduate of CSU Fullerton. Jeter had been trying to find a general term for works produced by fellow students and friends, Tim Powers, James Blaylock—who's stories took place in a 19th-century Victorian setting, which imitated conventions of such actual Victorian speculative fiction such as H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. Steampunk has since gained popularity in mainstream culture, fashion, movies and television.
A conversation about the Steampunk genre with authors James Blaylock and Tim Powers, lead by Mike McGee, took place just prior to the opening.
