If I haven’t mentioned it before (and I probably have, and I’ll probably do so again), I love the webcomic XKCD. I loved it when I first read it, and recently I have come to the undeniable conclusion that, as I type this article, it’s my favorite currently-being-updated comic of any type, web or print. Again, I feel the need to invent a new word because the typical standbys—brilliant, awesome, totally awesome, and the like—just don’t convey how much I love this webcomic. It’s interblaggeektasterific.

The XKCD comic that has been flying around the blagosphere lately is this one. (Actually, this was flying around like two weeks ago, which makes it terribly stale for me to be writing about it now. Two weeks of real life is like two years in internet-time. I mean, really.) Nevertheless, I thought of something interesting, and this comic and its related happenings—which I will be discussing momentarily, for those of you not keeping up with every iota of interblag minutiea—was the catalyst.

Go read the comic if you haven’t already. It’s okay if you don’t understand the punchline; I’ll explain. I hope you get the overall joke which is: people from the future have blagofaires (”blag” being XKCD slang for “blog”) the way we have Ren faires—complete with ridiculous assumptions about life in that general time period and getting many details wrong. Incidentally, it’s very similar to this PBF comic—which will probably end up happening to a certain extent.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, blogger, and open source activist. He’s kind of quirky and mostly liked by his readership and geeks who follow that sort of thing. (Alas, I have read but one of his works which was good, if exceedingly short. He’s on the “authors I really really do plan to read at some undetermined date in the future, no really, I’m serious” list.) Anyway, the point is, if anyone could be said to be blogging in goggles and red cape from their hot-air balloon, he’s as good a choice as any.

Not to get off topic, but it raises an interesting question: parody-ly speaking, what would I wear as a Not A Blogger™? Frankly, I kinda like the red cape and goggles. I was thinking about dressing up like that for Halloween next year, and then when people ask me what I’m supposed to be, I’ll say, “A blogger!”—thereby creating an inside joke at the office with an audience of one. I’m not wild about the hot air balloon, though. How about something more like the B-liner?

Anyway, shortly after the XKCD comic ran, Doctorow received the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s pioneer award and, quite appropriately, I must admit, they had goggles, a red cape, and a balloon waiting for him. So it’s become this sort of fun inside-joke, geeky thing that’s probably not on the radar of anyone reading this Not A Blog™, I’ll admit. (Except maybe Graham.)

The point is, the idea of a blagofaire kills me. I think this is really great. Unfortunately, that future is far enough in the future-future that I’ll be dead long before I become old enough to participate—red capes and goggles, or not.

But I have this feeling that the time is ripe for a successor to the venerable Renaissance Faire. Not a replacement, but something new—a new time period that we are appropriately fuzzy on. A new time period with all the excitement of the Renaissance: it’s own set of technological advancements, cultural and artistic developments, and striking personalities, easily stereotyped. Fortunately for us in this day and age, such a time period exists.

The latest fad-trend in science fiction appears to be steampunk: a celebration of the Victorian era, industrial revolution style technology, when electricity itself was high tech, steam engines commonplace, and people wore top hats. (And capes and goggles, right?) This style, of course, is often about “lost” technology—the sort of thing wrought by Nicoli Tesla on a dark and stormy night. Like fantasy, steampunk doesn’t “fit” anywhere in the history of the world, and for that reason I have a hard time getting into it for any length of time. I’ve never bothered trying to read The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, for example—even though I’ve written my own short stories which, by a gross stretching of genre boundaries, could be considered “steampunk”. Still, it exists in a “world of tomorrow” / future-history type way that I find intreguing.

But what’s even more interesting are the parallels that can be drawn between the Renaissance (the real one), and the Industrial Revolution. There are tons. I’m not even going to be able to list them all because I keep thinking of new ones.

1. There was a huge cultural revolution in all the major areas: science, technology, art, music, and philosophy. In a way, the industrial revolution (before we discovered all the downsides such as worker exploitation and pollution), was very optimistic, in the same way we envision the Renaissance to be today. (Or was it? The fuzziness begins.) The Renaissance had photorealistic breakthroughs in its art (perspective, etc); likewise, by most definitions the modern art period began in the late Victorian era. True, the abstractness that we associate with modern art didn’t come into fruition until the first part of the 20th century, but the seeds are there. More importantly, it has it’s own distinctive artistic, musical, and prose styles that people can latch on to without thinking about it too much. (Those would be impressionism, romantisicm, and, well, romantisicm, respectively.)

2. There’s a distinct language difference. The Renaissance Faire has Shakespeare; the Steamfaire has Poe. Everyone still gets to talk in faux-English accents with old words and overwrough superlatives, which, let’s face it, is an undeniable facet of the Faire experience.

3. There’s still an undiscovered continent left. That’s the “New World” of the Americas for the Ren Faire. The Steamfaire has the “Dark Continent” of Africa. In the same way the Ren Faire has its explorers, so too can the Steamfaire have the British army traipsing around in pith helmets.

4. There’s a group of “outlaws” who no one seems to mind hanging around. That would be everyone’s Ren Faire favorite, the pirates. Now we don’t have pirates in the late 1800’s—at least not the “Arrr me maties”, swashbuckling, deck-swabbing, Pirates of the Caribbean pirates—but we still have a rough (though not strictly outlaw) group of people who are distinctly different from the rest of the culture: cowboys. Europe has pretty much decided that every person in America, with the exception of those in downtown Manhattan, is a cowboy, so we might as well embrace it. Never mind that cowboys only really existed for about ten years—and this was before the industrial revolution—we have a few decades of fudge room. After all, pirates were most prominent in the mid 1600’s—which may or may not coincide with the “year” of the average Ren Faire—but that doesn’t stop anyone, either. (Not to mention there are always a few people who dress up like Vikings. What? That’s like not even the right millenium. Come on.)

5. Jousting. Well, to be perfecly honest, I haven’t figured this one out yet. The joust is a pretty big draw for the Ren Faire. They had duels in the Victorian era (I think), but those were usually over after some guy gets shot, which took all of 0.2 seconds. I’m imagining some big excuse for a technologically based “joust”, except instead of horses, it would be a bunch of inventor guys on old steam-powered automobiles. Or maybe reenact that stunt where Thomas Edison electrocutes an elephant with AC to show that Telsa’s power was dangerous and that everyone should use Edison’s own DC. That would be a big hit with the kids.

There are so many things about the Victorian Era/Industrial Revolution/Romantic period that make it perfect as the next Faire. You could create a little Victorian town, which, of course, has its own distinctive architecture. You still get to have your psychics (the paranormal was huge in the late 1800’s), your myths. You get the “undiscovered” new continent of Africa to bring curiosities back from. There’s great technology complete with fussy brass fittings and electrical devices. You have your stock historical figures: Edison and Tesla, of course, Poe. Mark Twain was getting up there, but still around. There’s Van Gogh (well, he died in 1890, so that’s a stretch. Whatever, you still have Guaguin, Cezanne, Seurat, et al.), Oscar Wilde, hell—you have H.G. Wells and his bestseller Anticipations (in 1901) about life in the year 2000! It’s recursive-tastic!

Frankly, I can’t believe no one else has considered doing this yet. Despite the niche in which Steampunk exists, I think there’s a larger, more general market for the flamboyant optimism of this period in exactly the same way there is for Ren Faires. (Although I don’t know specifically for sure, I’ll bet there are Western Faires in the midwest that recreate old west towns. It’s basically an extention of the same-ish time period to encompass what was going on in the rest of the world.) The Ren Faire exists in its own universe that is only tangentially related to the one we’ve lived through, and I think the industrial revolution is just far enough away now that it can be made fuzzy in this manner, as well. If steampunk is any indication, this breaking down of actual history and rebuilding in a utopian meme has already begun. Now someone just needs to build it.

And when we go, I’ll be wearing my cape and goggles.

-Ted