The Past Reborn in a Future Forgotten

When crafting the world for my Steampunk novel, I didn’t want to rely solely on aesthetic. I wanted to give my characters—and their world—a reason for why they lived and dressed the way they did. To me, the intricate clockwork gadgets, steam-powered machinery, and Victorian-meets-1940s fashion needed more than just surface appeal. They needed history. They needed roots.

That’s why I built a world with a compelling backstory—a world that had to start over after a cataclysmic global disaster. In my book, this disaster wiped out much of modern civilization, leaving the survivors with fragments of the past to rebuild their future. And what fragments survived? Historical tourist attractions and the treasures housed in museums.

When the dust settled, humanity was left with steam engines, vintage textiles, and relics of bygone eras as their blueprint for survival. The sleek, digital technologies of our age crumbled into useless artifacts of the old world, but steam? Steam endured. It was tangible, reliable, and accessible.

This is why my characters’ world feels like a vibrant patchwork of Victorian ingenuity and 1940s resilience. They aren’t romanticizing the past—they’re living in a world where the past is their foundation. The clothes they wear aren’t just about style; they’re about practicality. Corsets and waistcoats were what the museums preserved, and so those designs were repurposed and refined. The tools they use and the machines they build are the direct descendants of what they could salvage from history.

I also wanted this sense of history to add weight to the narrative. My characters aren’t just scavengers of the old world—they’re innovators. They take what survived and twist it into something new, blending resourcefulness with artistry. Whether it’s a steam-powered airship or a repurposed phonograph turned communication device, every invention reflects the ingenuity born of necessity.