Twenty thousand goggles descended on Hannibal, Missouri this Labor Day weekend for the 11th Annual Big River Steampunk Festival, and if you slept on it again, that’s on you. Historic downtown Hannibal is basically a SteamPunk stage set that was already standing before anyone coined the term: steamboats on the river, Victorian architecture up and down Main Street, and the ghost of Mark Twain scowling at everyone for not reading enough. The Doctor approves of this venue on a cellular level.

The lineup this year included Nerf and Tea Dueling (which is the most perfect sentence in the English language), vaudeville shows, illusionists, a full costume contest, live music, workshops, and a Pet and Human Costume Parade on Monday morning because apparently even the dogs in Hannibal have aesthetic standards. Admission was free, with some ticketed events layered in, which means there is literally no excuse. None. You could have shown up in a corduroy blazer and a pair of goggles from the hardware store and called it a day. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal.

Worth noting: the city council tried to table the festival permit back in March (some councilmember had, apparently, never heard of having fun) and the community pushed back hard enough that it went through. Good. Hannibal without its SteamPunk weekend would be like a dirigible without a boiler: technically still a structure, completely useless. Mark your calendar for Labor Day 2027 and stop making excuses. High-5.

Via: The Steampunk Explorer

Someone applied the Formulae to a WWII shipyard employee manual, and the result is exactly as beautiful and deranged as that sounds. South Carolina artist Tony Snipes is Kickstarting Employee Handbook: Portsmouth Aeroshipbuilding Co., a ~100-page dieselpunk art book dressed up as the onboarding packet for a fictional 1940s shipyard where the battleships don’t just float, they fly. Alt-history WWII. Sky dreadnoughts. Authentic mid-century workplace culture. Original dieselpunk illustrations. A signed copy for thirty bucks.

The campaign launched today and already blew past its funding goal, so your fellow degenerates clearly have taste. It runs through October 4. The Doctor hereby designates this “Essential Reading” for anyone who has ever sat through a mandatory safety orientation and thought: this would be better with aerial warships. High-5, Mr. Snipes. High-5.

Via: The Steampunk Explorer | Back it on Kickstarter

Feudal Japan. Boshin War. Steam-powered war machines stomping through ancient temple courtyards while yokai tear into imperial soldiers from the shadows. The British East Nippon Company (yes, really) has handed Emperor Mutsuhito’s forces a massive technological leg-up, and here you are, a ragtag party of ronin, retainers, and one very suspicious child, trying to survive the whole mess. That’s Shadow of the Road, and Owlcat Games just locked in a release date at gamescom: November 12, 2026, on Steam, GOG, and Epic.

Developer Another Angle Games has serious pedigree (Witcher, Ghostrunner, Rogue Trader alumni), and the tactical bones look sharp: turn-based combat with relationship mechanics, multi-attack combos, environmental interaction, and a yokai transformation mode for when everything has gone completely sideways. The Omega7Red Formulae looked at 19th-century Japan, said “needs more rivets and fog,” and apparently the result is a war story where your most dangerous enemy might be a steam automaton, a supernatural fox spirit, or your own party members’ conflicting loyalties. All three, probably, before lunch. A free demo is already on Steam if you want to find out the hard way. High-5.

Via: RPGamer

The rockets have landed. Last night at LAcon V in Anaheim, the 2026 Hugo Awards were handed out at a live ceremony, and the sci-fi/fantasy community has (once again) argued about the results on the internet for approximately twelve consecutive hours. Tradition is beautiful. The full winners list is up on the LAcon V site, so go see who took home the rocket.

The base this year was designed by Scott Lefton, which matters more than people realize: the iconic rocket stays constant, but the base is redesigned every single year to reflect the personality of the hosting convention. Southern California theming on a Hugo trophy. The Doctor approves. The Lodestar Award (that is the Young Adult fiction prize, for those of you not keeping score at home) got its own custom design courtesy of H Emiko Ogasawara. Good job, high-5. And yes, Best Poem is a category again, running for the second year in a row on a trial basis. Poetry at Worldcon. Carlin would have had thoughts.

Look, the Hugos are not a Punk award ceremony. Nobody walked the stage in a top hat and a clockwork monocle (probably). But the community that hands out these rockets is the same community that built every genre we celebrate here, including the Punk genres that keep this blog’s lights on. That makes it worth 30 seconds of your attention. Now go read the winners list and fight with strangers about it. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal.

Via: LAcon V (lacon.org)

A new steampunk TTRPG just landed on Kickstarter, and The Doctor is paying attention. Brass & Embers, from Questborne Studios out of Orlando, runs on a D6 system and drops you into a world where the whole civilization is about to tear itself apart over a mineral called machnite. The industrialists want to burn it for profit, the faithful want to keep it sacred, and the Queen is sitting in the back doing her best “entertaining fad” impression while quietly expanding her empire on everyone else’s dime. Sound familiar? Good. That means the setting has teeth.

The system is designed to be easy to pick up and can run short campaigns or long-haul ones, which is the right call: nobody wants a steampunk RPG that requires a graduate seminar just to roll initiative. Pledges start at US$20 for a digital sourcebook, $55 for hardcover (early-bird tiers, standard is $10 more). They’re after $42,000 by September 16th and were sitting at about 10 percent of goal as of last week, so if this sounds like your kind of industrial-age theological throwdown, go give it a shove. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a fully funded Kickstarter is a decent start.

Via: The Steampunk Explorer

Science Saru (the studio that gave us Dandadan) just went and made the Ghost in the Shell adaptation the manga has deserved for thirty-plus years. Not a remake of the 1995 Oshii film. Not a sequel. An actual manga adaptation, beat for beat, with Motoko Kusanagi doing what Motoko Kusanagi does: being the most lethally competent cyborg in the room while Section 9 slowly assembles around her. Eight episodes in on Prime Video, episode 9 lands September 1. The Doctor has opinions about timeliness, and “fashionably late” is one of them, so consider this your warning shot.

Is it CyberPunk? Obviously. Does the Omega7Red Formulae apply? The Formulae was built for this. A full-conversion cyborg questioning the nature of consciousness inside a near-future surveillance state is basically the Formulae’s operating manual in anime form. If you have a Prime subscription and you have not started this yet, I don’t know what you’re doing with your life, but it’s wrong. High-5 to Science Saru. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, and Section 9 is about to prove it.

It’s here. Tomorrow. Weekend at the Asylum 16 descends on Lincoln, UK August 28-31, and if you’re not already on a transatlantic flight with your brass goggles fogged from the sheer anticipation, I genuinely cannot help you. The Ministry of Steampunk has stacked the evening entertainment like a proper mad scientist stacks capacitors: Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer, Victor and the Bully, Alice Strange, Madam Misfit, and Tom B. Wild Esq. are all on the bill. That is not a lineup. That is a declaration of intent.

Lincoln’s Drill Hall and the surrounding Victorian streets turn into the most gloriously unhinged retro-futurist party on the planet for four days every August, and this is edition sixteen. Sixteen. The Doctor has been watching this one grow from a curious experiment into an institution, and institutions that celebrate corsets, copper fittings, and chap-hop deserve every chandelier they’ve got. Go. If you can’t go, follow along on social media and feel appropriately miserable about your life choices.

Nothing can beat old age and betrayal. But a weekend in Lincoln might come close. Grab your tickets and your top hat.

A free outdoor steampunk festival in a historic Ontario town near Detroit, running September 18 through 20: gears, top hats, axe throwing, teapot racing, a wizard academy, a steampunk opera, and a comedian who bills himself as “40 Minutes of Danger and Dad Jokes.” The Doctor has read that sentence three times and it keeps getting better. They even laid on free bus service so you have zero excuses, including the classic “I can’t get there” excuse that you’ve been rehearsing since 2019.

Amherstburg is one of those towns where the Victorian architecture does half the work for you, which is exactly how the Omega7Red Formulae likes it: apply it to a place that already looks the part and you get something genuinely Uncommon. Cosplay in your finest steampunk or wizardry kit, challenge an international chess master, watch a live mural go up, and cap the night with fireworks. Most of it is free. FREE. The only thing standing between you and a weekend of this is your own lack of ambition, and frankly that’s a you problem.

Mark September 18-20 on whatever brass-fitted calendar you keep in your study. Full details at the official festival page. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal.

Bonsart Bokel (the Netherlands, creator of The Association of Ishtar series, host of the Radio Retrofuture podcast, and apparently incapable of sitting still) has a steampunk TTRPG on Kickstarter called NIGHTWATCH, and it is exactly as unhinged as it needs to be. The premise: rifts tear open portals to other worlds, some full of alien lifeforms, some populated by suspiciously advanced human civilizations, all of them begging to be explored by your faction of Operators who are absolutely NOT getting paid enough for this. Cosmic mystery. Pulp adventure. Steampunk everything. The Doctor approves.

The system is built around fast setup and high-action flow (board game mechanics were raided for inspiration, which is either genius or heresy, and I’ve decided it’s genius). Reviewers describe it as one of the easiest TTRPGs to pick up while still delivering deep world-building, and the art is handled by award-winning illustrators including Yohan Alexander. Play in Victorian London’s darkest alleys, or kick the rift open wider and end up in the Old West. The multiverse is your problem now. Grab the free prototype PDF on their site and see if you survive long enough to back the full thing.

Via: Kickstarter / NIGHTWATCH

Hand-built sculptural vehicles versus flying monkeys, killer robots, and zombies. On a closed course. Judged by how well the contraption handles the chaos. This is the Obtainium Cup Contraptor’s Rally, produced by Obtainium Works out of Vallejo, California, and the 10th Annual edition just went down on July 28 at Mare Island Art Studios. Ten years of this glorious nonsense. The Doctor approves wholeheartedly.

If you need a scorecard: participants build people-powered (and occasionally motorized) sculptural vehicles out of found objects, hence "obtainium," which is the most SteamPunk word that has ever existed. They then pilot those contraptions around an obstacle course while being assailed by stuffed flying monkeys, confronted by mad robots, and generally menaced by the entire cast of a fever dream. Trophies are awarded for creativity, tenacity, and participation. There is no trophy for dignity, because dignity didn’t show up. Good.

Ten years in, the Obtainium Cup is proof that the maker spirit is alive, greasy, and completely off its rails, in the best possible way. High-5 to every contraption that survived. And a moment of respect for every one that didn’t. Via: The Steampunk Explorer