Or maybe not. I’m still mulling it over.
First off, I’ve had a lot going on lately but I have been reading and lurking here and there. One of the esoteric “there’s” that I allow my inner self are various design sites just for the sometimes inspiring, sometimes amusing but almost always “oh, wow” images that pop up. Just recently I ran across a brand new blog to check out along those lines:
The Steampunk Home
I believe that Steampunk is more than just brass and watchparts. It’s finding a way to combine the past and the future in an aesthetic pleasing yet still punkish way. It’s living a life that looks old-fashioned, yet speaks to the future. It’s taking the detritus of our modern technological society and remaking it into useful things. Join me as I search for items for my house that combine the scientific romanticism of the Victorians with our real present and imagined future.
via The Steampunk Home: Art Donovan’s Newest Creations.
It was as I was browsing through a few of the posts there – check them out, they’re eye-popping – that it suddenly occured to me that there might be a very good, logical and non-storytelling reason why I like to watch science fiction and not read it.
It is the worldbuilding – just not in the way everyone usually interprets that term, phrase or whatever it is.
Consider this – and also keep in mind that I’m still working this thought out in my head so it isn’t at all fully formed – but when I saw the images on The Steampunk Home blog I realized that they only made sense to me as I was looking at them. Visually in context. Now someone else might find it fascinating to have that type of world described in excruciating detail but I like seeing the visual texture and haven’t yet figured out how to jump off that cliff yet. 😉