seriously, what is with the goggles

[marydell]

Ok, I'm finally catching up with the rest of the crowd and reading a steampunk book.  I'm enjoying it, but - okay - if the purpose of your particular special eyewear is to let you look through special lenses, rather to protect your eyes from harm, why oh why are they goggles instead of glasses?  And why is everybody else in town also wearing goggles instead of glasses? Is metal and metalwork free or something? Are noses and ears made out of bone, in this alternate reality, instead of cartilage, so the extra weight is no biggie? 

Comments

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

OMG what are you reading that has everyone wearing goggles? Cause unless Absolutely Convinced Otherwise I am going to avoid it. That's cosplay-level worldbuilding.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Oh! I must clarify: most people are not wearing goggles. However, for those folks wearing eyewear containing special lenses, the eyewear takes the form of goggles rather than glasses.

I'll post a review in a couple of days and then I will tell you what it is--I don't want to talk cons without also talking pros. But you can probably guess...

[sabotabby]

Rule of cool? Mad scientist aesthetic? Putting them in just so everyone knows that your book is steampunk?

I dunno; the explosion of steampunk lit distresses me, as much of it is not very good and I think the subgenre will be dead in a year (long before I can manage to get anything written in it). If there are even editors at publishing houses anymore, I don't think they ask questions like this; they just rush to get the book out before the fad dies.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

I've read so little of late I have no idea, but I look forward to your review.
Also...yeah, just *facepalm* over the lack of glasses.

[naomikritzer]

Molly's steampunk costume features goggles, because that's how you know it's steampunk! That's pure costuming, though, not storytelling. I take her to local cons where she really loves this steampunk-setting mystery LARP run by a group in town, and she's started really enjoying dressing up for these events. She's really cute in her goggles even if it makes absolutely no sense at all that a ten-year-old would be an airship pilot.

I can think of a couple of reasons to have characters with goggles instead of glasses, even if all you basically need is polarized glass:

1. Goggles are on a strap, and thus you can let them dangle around your neck or push them up onto your forehead without fear of losing them.

2. Goggles serve double duty as protective eyewear, if you work in a heavy industrial job or occasionally hop rides on airships.

3. Goggles are maybe sturdier, and perhaps can hold a much heavier lens, if a heavy lens is inherently required, which maybe it is.

I can't remember if any of these factors could reasonably apply in the book I'm pretty sure you're reading.

[naomikritzer]

And the basic problem with steampunk lit is that the absolute coolest thing about steampunk is how it looks. I was explaining it to my non-fan parents and said something like, "if Sherlock Holmes had a ray-gun, steampunk is what it would look like." Then I pulled up a picture of the steampunk laptop and the steampunk monitor and my mother gasped and said, "ohhhhhhhhhhh do they SELL things like this? I WANT one." I think the appeal is pretty near instantaneous and in a lot of ways a reaction to our own mass-produced society.

But turning that into a story rather than a piece of visual art is really hard.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I am hopeful for the genre since it's young, and since there is a lot of interesting stuff that can potentiall be done within it as it matures, particularly in relation to colonialism & sexism etc. However I expect Sturgeon's law to apply as usual.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

These are good, plausible explanations (and I believe you have guessed the book correctly, unless they are all the same). If they appeared in the book I would be mollified but of course, they don't. Actually I'm somewhat mollified anyway, since it lets me stop worrying about that question. Now I've moved along to the question of why a small, determined population with access to firearms, flammable oil, matches, and assorted rooftop vantage points hasn't managed to exterminate the local preditor population.

Also, why does airship travel require goggles? This seems to be a wide-reaching convention of the genre but this guy (http://i.usatoday.net/sports/_photos/2008/02/11/blimp-topper.jpg) seems fine with normal sunglasses.

[naomikritzer]

Well, aren't more preditors constantly being created by exposure to the toxic gas that periodically gets belched out? I don't think they have a way to plug the gas leak.

And the guy in the blimp has a windshield. A large sheet of sturdy, flawless glass would be much harder to create without modern technology, yes? (I'm not actually sure what technological requirements there are for windshield creation.) But no windshield = you need goggles, not just glasses, to keep them on your face at high speeds. (You don't need them in a hot air balloon because you don't go very fast, but in an airship they have propellers or something to make you go faster, don't they?)

Spoiler territory!

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Just in case anyone reading this hasn't read Boneshaker...here be vague spoilers, for the first half of the book that is.

I'm only halfway thru the book, but it seems to be established that the gas stays at a more or less constant level, that the not-very-many inhabitants of the area have adequate protective gear, barring the occasional accident or zombie bite, and that newcomers to the area are rare. Meanwhile there are "thousands" of zombies, and they're extra hungry because at least some of them have been there since the beginning. I don't understand why there isn't a daily (mask-wearing) shooting or burning party--the live people have a thingy that can make them fall down for three minutes, which should be plenty of time to burn them. And shooting them from a rooftop seems to work fine, too.

I think there are plausible explanations for the lack of extermination, but the book isn't offering them, so I'm having to invent them myself, and that kind of thing makes me grouchy.

I am willing to buy your windshield explanation, thank you :)

Re: Spoiler territory!

[naomikritzer]

That's a good question about zombie extermination squads! The thing that puzzled me the most was why ANYONE stays in (/near) Seattle. I mean, you're living outside ZOMBIEVILLE and things are so toxic that you have to process your water to make it not turn you into a zombie? Sure, Seattle is a nice town and all but OMG THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF NICE TOWNS THAT DO NOT HAVE ZOMBIES IN THE SUBURBS. Or the former city core. Either.