艑AMARU, New Zealand (AP) 鈥� The woman in the pink frock coat announced herself as steam curled from a strange brass contraption on her back.
鈥淚 am Lady Sarsaparilla Ovabyte, of the Coventry Ovabytes,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e are purveyors of fine cordials.鈥�
Her companion peered through glasses made from fused-together forks.
鈥淐aptain Bob McSpoon, inventrepreneur,鈥� he said.
On a Victorian-era street in rural 艑amaru, , Ovabyte and McSpoon, who usually go by Juliet and Greg Thorn, weren鈥檛 the only ones wearing goggles or forks, or emitting steam. They were in the small town to attend the annual steampunk festival, a four-day love letter to being as odd as possible, which draws thousands of visitors from around the country and abroad.
Steampunk fuses Victorian aesthetics and mechanics with a science fiction twist to create a parallel universe imagining what the age of steam might have produced if it had continued to the present day. The genre is limited only by imagination, and the weirder the better.
Steampunks pride themselves on a knack for recycling and DIY, honing skills in sewing, metalworking, hat-trimming and steam mechanics as they dream up fantastical personas with outfits to match. During the year, attendees are bricklayers, engineers, artists and farmers, with many describing themselves as normally shy or reserved. But they had come to the festival to be seen.
鈥淭he first time you dress up and go out in public is really scary and then people get such a buzz out of it,鈥� Juliet Thorn said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 so cool that you take on a different personality.鈥�
Teapot racing and parasol dueling are steampunk sports
In its 17th year, whole traditions and sporting codes have sprung up around the steampunk festival, which is among the world鈥檚 best-known.
Hundreds crowded into upstairs rooms and old community halls for steampunk-themed contests. They raced to dunk cookies in cups of tea and cram the soggy results into their mouths before their competitors. A parasol-dueling contest looked like competitive vogueing judged on speed and style.
Michele Cotten won a fashion show displaying wild and upcycled outfits that participants spent months finessing. Cotten fused steampunk with the Star Trek universe to create a hooped dress made in the style of a navy Starfleet uniform. It was rigged with Christmas lights to evoke a galaxy and Cotten, a crowd favorite, strutted and posed to whoops from onlookers.
Then there was the teapot racing, in which competitors sent remote-controlled vehicles mounted with teapots around a fiendish obstacle course to the gasps and groans of a watching crowd.
鈥淚f you go out of bounds, that鈥檚 a disqualification,鈥� said Ross McKay, one of the sport鈥檚 creators, who dreamed it up with his late wife and a friend. He has since introduced teapot racing to other steampunk events worldwide.
鈥淚t鈥檚 lots of fun and the judges will take bribes,鈥� he added.
When McKay鈥檚 wife showed him pictures of steampunks, he recalled thinking, 鈥淲hat a bunch of weirdos,” but the self-confessed 鈥渉istory geek and science fiction nerd鈥� found plenty to love about the genre. The retired banker was soon enrolled in night classes for sewing.
Now he is Captain Roscoe Dangerfield, Inspector of Nuisances to Her Majesty Queen Victoria III, which combines the historical element of a real Victorian job with the fiction of a monarch who never lived.
The steampunk community had become his tribe, he said.
Small town is an unlikely steampunk capital
艑amaru is the placid home to 14,000 people and 3,000 endangered native penguins, the latter of which live at the far end of town in a colony so pungent it can be smelled from the hill above. The town on New Zealand鈥檚 South Island doesn鈥檛 feature the sweeping vistas popularized by the Lord of the Rings films, which , and for years was mostly seen as a stopping point between the cities of Christchurch and Dunedin.
An architectural quirk has put 艑amaru on the map as what locals call the steampunk capital of the world. The town features a completely preserved Victorian street by the harbor, a legacy from the 19th century days when 艑amaru was a commercial and mercantile powerhouse as a departure point for meat, wool and grain exports from New Zealand to Britain.
The cream-colored stone buildings now form the backdrop for the festival’s steampunk adventures. Later in the year the town also hosts a Victorian festival celebrating a historically accurate version of the era, with the events coexisting peacefully after the steampunks and Victorians decided the town was big enough for everyone.
Anything goes in a no-rules genre
Steampunk, a term coined in the 1980s, gives participants an opportunity to rewrite Victorian-era social conventions on the basis that if you are flying on a magic carpet or traveling through time, it doesn鈥檛 matter if you make the rest up.
鈥淲e鈥檙e an equal opportunity society,鈥� said Iain Clark, who co-founded the festival and is widely known in the community as Agent Darling. 鈥淲omen, unlike in Victorian times, can be anything. We have female engineers, captains of industry, captains of airships, adventurers, explorers, scientists.鈥�
Sometimes all in the same week. Bringing a different outfit for each day of the event is common and fitting rooms at the festival鈥檚 headquarters allow for quick changes, with nothing strange enough to raise eyebrows.
In the street, a Star Wars trooper trudged past, followed by a pack of wolves. A French tourist nervously adjusting his crocheted and leather gloves was introduced to steampunk only three days earlier and immediately fell in love with the genre.
鈥淵ou can be creative and you can be somebody else and no one cares,鈥� said John Syben, who was attending his fourth festival.
His partner, Chris Sinclair, said the pair previously had been 鈥渇ar too tame, so we鈥檝e gotten more and more outrageous every year.鈥�
鈥淭here鈥檚 always someone who鈥檚 more nuts than you,” she said.
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