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I'll have to clear this up again, I do this all the time being the in-house BioShock know-it-all (and yes, I'm bragging!).

BioShock is set in the year 1960, just a matter of weeks (or months) after New Years Day. Much of the important parts of the story happened during the later half of the 1950s, and the city itself was likely built (or began construction) immediately after the end of WWII, but no specific dates for that are ever given. They do make it very clear in the game that something big happened on New Years Day, the first day of 1960 (I think it happened at night, during the partying, but in Rapture, day and night are of little importance).

BioShock is still anachronistic, but there is little to no steam technology. More accurately, BioShock is a combination of DieselPunk (as the turrets are all gas-powered motors) and GenePunk (since the main gameplay aspects hinge on the on-the-fly alteration of DNA using the Tonics and Plasmids). While BioShock does have all the atmosphere, flair, and heavy aesthetic you would expect from a great work of steampunk, it is not by technical standards anything of the sort. In the world of BioShock, steam technology is long obsolete in favor of more "modern" and advanced gas-powered machines and electronics. In the same vein, Fallout 3 is not steampunk, but rather it is nukepunk/atompunk (everything is/was nuclear powered except the basic mechanical and electrical technology that existed during and before Cold War, with steam power again long obsolete except in the case of one undeniably steampunk weapon, a steam-powered rifle that shoots railway spikes).

Everyone always forgets the whole "steam" part of steampunk, and gets hung up on the aesthetics, fashion, and setting. Really, without the steam technology and early industrial revolution factors, it's just plain old anachronistic fiction.

My dearest apologies for elaborating on the one thing that doesn't actually belong into this thread, but I just HAD to reply to that one.

I really, really hope this is NOT going to happen. Wounds are still fresh from the last time one of my hobbies turned into a mainstream subculture. 15 years ago, the anime/manga community was just that: a community much like this one, just a bunch of people with a common interest enjoying themselves. Back then it didn't matter what shows you liked and whether you spent 24/7 basking in your hobby or were just occasionally watching/reading the stray anime/manga.

And look at the "community" today: Lots of hate and jealousy and talk about "posers" (oh, how I hate that word!) and people who do not spend "enough time" on anime/manga to call themselves fans. And don't you ever dare to admit you like Naruto (I DO! evil ), because then you're automatically a Narutard. And of course only those who watched Astroboy in their childhood are "old school fans", all the others are just "going with the fad".

I would do anything to get back the good old times, and I DEFINITELY hope the Steampunk community will just stay the way it is now. Small, yes, but a wonderful community!

I'm having a hard time following what you're saying there, TINSTAAFL, but if Steampunk goes the way of Anime/Manga/Weeaboo/Otaku, then it will be overrun and saturated by low-quality imitation and idiotic bandwagon-hoppers. We'll be labeled steamtards or some other stupid and useless moniker and have to put up with outright heretical corruption of something that, right now, is so simple and pure. Look at Punk Rock and what it used to be, and what it has degenerated into today (ie, emo, hardcore music, hot topic goths, etc).

I'm so sick of things that I like becoming so mainstream that I have to put up with hordes of idiots with one too few braincells polluting decent hobbies and interests. I know I'm never a poser in anything I do or like, but when the mainstream crowd sweeps in and claims everything as their own, it's so frustrating. I've never given up an interest due to it becoming mainstream, but I'll be damned if I have to do it again with steampunk. There's just something wholesome about having to go out and dig and search and rummage for what you want, and earn the right to enjoy it, rather than having some corporate sell-outs pound it out by the thousands and cram it down your throat and tell you that THIS is what you like now, and what you once knew is no more!

So, I'm with Nisha Lan here, I hope the steampunk community grows and thrives but never passes that point-of-no-return into mainstream.

@ Xeigrich: You are forgetting that Punk Rock is a "degeneration" of Rock, which in turn is a "degeneration" of Blues, which is a "degeneration" of Afro-American Folk, etc... I'm all about niches and "degenerations" if they give us things like Punk.

But that's exactly what I was trying to say - the problem is not the new people (let's face it, most of them will eventually just move on to the next fad, anyway), but the self-proclaimed "elite" that forms within any subculture as soon as it starts moving towards mainstream. Some of the old members, like you said, but also some of the new who spot their chance to get on top before the subculture is totally overrun by new blood.

It simply tends to kill communities. I've seen it happen to Goth (most of you might not remember, but there WAS a time when Goths where just simply people who decided to live up to their emotions and sense of beauty - and a darn nice community it was, with lots of helpful, friendly people), I've lived through the "Otaku" debacle (Tin, you should have seen what the community was like 15 years ago), it's happening to Roleplaying right now.

And there's also the matter Xeigrich just mentioned: As soon as something is mainstream, big companies grab it and turn it into something completely different - just to leave behind an empty shell a couple of months/years later to move on to the next trend. How many communities can really survive something like that?