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Turkish author Ihsan Oktay Anar's The Book of Devices (2017, Kitab-ı Hiyel) employs pseudo-steampunk characteristics in a pre-modern Ottoman context. The novel experiments with the possibility of steampunk's expansion as a translated/adopted cultural element within the larger concept of world literature. I argue that The Book of Devices distorts the Anglo-American attitude of Neo-Victorianism as exemplified in steampunk. Anar's (in)competence in depicting actual course of events in history, in portraying an imaginable technology that might work, and in forming a non-colonialist cultural background create a distorted example of an application of the steampunk genre in the Turkish setting. The book then comes to be an attempt to create a Neo-Ottoman mindset against Neo-Victorian expansion as reflected through steampunk. This way, though steampunk presents itself as "inhospitable" in that it resists outside intrusion from non-European experiments, Anar successfully merges it with modern Turkish literature to establish a local genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the visual experience of steampunk culture using Steampunk Council of the Parana Lodge, a youth group in Brazil, as a research focus. It mentions that Steamers, as the participants call themselves, recreate the past of 19th century Victorian England, mainly in the context of the Steam Age, inserting current perceptions and futuristic technology into their creations.

Western steampunk uses fantastic images of technology-out-of-time to create critical commentary on the notion of progress and the inherent tension between 'civilization' and nature. As a hybrid subgenre it uses the steampunk aesthetic to introduce technology-as-spectacle-breathtaking, larger than life, focus rather than backdrop-and traffics in fetishism, making technology the stuff of fantasy and obsession. Through the steampunk Western, we see the working out of the tension between popular fascination and fear in relation to technology and the machine age-a commentary on the loss of the wildness, independence, and freedom of the frontier West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]