Steampunk

    I found this image via deviantART, one of the main sites I will discuss in my paper on fanart.  Steampunk is best described expediently as a depiction of what the past would have looked like if the future had happened sooner.  Normally, steampunk clothing falls into the British Victorian era or American Wild West.  The main point of steampunk is to imagine an alternative history, one that mainly employs steam power.  The man in this image is wearing a Victorian era style hat, a pistol of complex design, and his clothing is leather with metal bolts to fasten everything together.  One of the traits that makes us him is the capacity for imagination.  No other species would be able to invent an alternative history as they are unable to think any further ahead than their immediate need.  Many of us wonder what what life be like if things happened differently and steampunk is one way of doing that.  What would our world look like if we ran solely off of steam power?  Would that make any difference in environmental impact?