Recently, I've developed a fascination for this gorgeous phenomenon. I've thought it beautiful for years, but hadn't had a name for it until some months ago. And as my fascination has grown, so has my realization dawned. Creatures... Shee...
Wikipedia
wrote:
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that typically features steam-powered machinery, especially in a setting inspired by industrialized Western civilization during the 19th century. Therefore, steampunk works are often set in an alternate history of the 19th century's British Victorian era or American "Wild West", in a post-apocalyptic future during which steam power has regained mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power. Steampunk perhaps most recognizably features anachronistic technologies or retro-futuristic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them, and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art.
This looks a lot like shee to me. Especially, if you combine C3/DS (and C4) knowledge of the shee with the C1 (and to a lesser extent C2) appearance of the world, technology, machinery and ideology. The shee society has always had a Victorianesque feel to it, and their little scientist experiments dubbed "norns" (and ettins and grendels) feel just in line with the aesthetics and feel of this phenomenon.
I mean, look at the incubator from C1. The genetic splicer from C2. The submarine. Even the elevators in C1 has a certain natural steampunk feel to them, just to mention a few things. During the evolution of the Creatures series, there have been increasing elements of more cyberpunk aesthetics and technology, but in their cultural essence, I think I've come to consider the shee society, and Albia as a world, as being of a steampunk universe. And I like it!