City of Ember
Based on a series of novels about a post-apocalyptic underground city that's running down, the movie focuses on two adolescent heroes who discover the world above ground. The movie comes out Oct. 10.
Steampunk levels:
The underground city, Ember, has an industrial feel. Expect a lot of giant pipes and huge generators. But the movie is set in the future, and there's no Victorian sensibility to it. On a scale of one to steamy, it isn't even wearing goggles.

Mutant Chronicles
Set 700 years in the future, the Earth is ruled by feudal corporations and has depleted most of its natural resources. During a war between two corporations, a machine unleashes mutants on the world and our heroes must destroy it to save the world. The movie comes out later this year.
Steampunk levels:
Steam power is all that's left in this future, and the feudal corporate governments are reminiscent of nineteenth century industrial companies that pretty much owned their workers. But there are also shades of medieval society here too. On a scale of one to steamy, it's condensed steam on brass.

Here Be Monsters!
Set in an alternate 1850s London, this is the tale of a boy who emerges from an underground city of monsters to live the life of a human. Based on a novel. No release date yet.
Steampunk levels:
Set in the Victorian era, complete with subterranean world of dreamy crawlies. On a scale of one to steamy, it's a burnished gear.

Larklight
Set in an alternate nineteenth century which includes extensive space travel, this flick is being directed by period movie master Shekhar "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" Kapur. Our heroes must travel in their Victorian spaceships to fight pirates. No release date yet.
Steampunk levels:
We've got the Victorian era crossed with the era of space flight, which is a classic steampunk mashup move. There are also pirates. On a scale of one to steamy, this flick is scalding hot.

The Diamond Age
Last year, the SciFi Channel announced they'd be doing a miniseries based on Neal Stephenson's classic retro-nano-corporate novel about (in part) a group of people called the neo-Victorians. No word on what's happening with the production, though last year George Clooney was attached as producer.
Steampunk levels:
There are neo-Victorians who borrow their fashions, social mores, and styles from Victorian England. But they use nanotech and computer science, not steam and industrial machines. On a scale of one to steamy, this miniseries is an iPhone tucked into a tophat.

Bioshock
Based on the popular videogame about a failed underwater Utopian community, Bioshock is set to be directed by Gore "Pirates of the Carribean" Verbinski, who told Variety that he's taking his concept design cues from Jules Verne and Ayn Rand (whose work inspired the game).
Steampunk levels:
You've got the Verne influence, and you've got an underwater city. Plus if the visuals in the game are preserved, there's a lot of brass and Victoriana, mingled with a strange 1950s feeling. Really, the city in Bioshock is a kind of historical hodgepodge. On a scale of one to steamy, this movie is unpolished brass.

The Adventures of Luther Arkwright
Based on a series of comic books, the story follows multiverse rift-tripper Luther Arkwright when he finds himself in an alternate reality where the British Empire never fell.
Steampunk levels:
Alternate reality that includes the British Empire, plus cross-dimensional travel. Expect a lot of swashbuckling and lovely scifi mumbo-jumbo about timelines. On a scale of one to steamy, it's screaming like a teakettle on the boil.

Additional research by Lauren Davis.

Ideas and stories that used to get passed around in dank basements among dudes with thick glasses have become mainstream Hollywood movies. We list the seven signs that fandom is synonymous with glam, and try to discover if there are any shreds of authentic fannishness left in pop culture.

Kristin Bell
This blond bombshell was the star of geek sleuth show Veronica Mars, where her character made Star Wars references, hung out with hackers, and used the word "frak" a lot. Now she plays electricity-wielding Elle on fan glam show Heroes, and will appear in the forthcoming flick Fanboys (pictured above). She's said in interviews that she loves nerd culture and Star Trek. But she's also a cover girl for fashion magazines. The fan world has always had its pinups, but fashion mag cover girls? This is a sure sign of fan glam.

Any authentic geek pinups left? Veronica Belmont, host of many an online geek TV show (currently Tekzilla). She's cute but not glam, wears Star Trek uniforms for fun, and can talk for hours about the latest gadget specs.

J J Abrams
This dashingly dorkish director/producer has got the fan glam look with his nerd glasses and mop of uncombed curly hair. Plus, he's the auteur behind fannish-but-mainstream hit shows Alias and Lost. He reinvigorated the giant monster genre by producing Cloverfield, and now he's single-handedly attempting to reboot the most fannish franchise of all: Star Trek. Everything he's created repackages fantasies ripped from the dark heart of fandom for audiences who would never consider themselves scifi fans. In many ways, Abrams is a shaper of the whole fan glam craze.

Any authentic geek directors left? Joss Whedon, creator of cult hits Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, has always been a little too fannish to be glam. Hired to write the new Wonder Woman script, he eventually left the project because what he wrote wasn't commercial enough. Now he's making another scifi TV show, Dollhouse, whose premise sounds brilliantly quirky but may again be too strange for audiences seeking glam rather than fandom.

Sweding - Movies about fans paying homage to their favorite stories are all the rage. Be Kind Rewind coined the word "sweding" to describe what happens when fans remake their favorite creations in a funny, low-budget way. Now everybody is sweding everything, but of course fandom has been doing this stuff for years in fanfic (fan-written fiction based on popular franchises) and fan films. A new movie, Son of Rambow, also celebrates fan reenactments and will be shown in sneak previews across the U.S. in the ultimate fan glam locations: Apple stores.

Any authentic fan fiction left? Harry Potter fanfic, stories written by fans about the characters in J.K. Rowling's popular series about pubescent magic users, is still going strong in the underground. Rowling has said that she will tolerate fan fiction about her books (though she claims not to read it), but none of these stories will ever be published by mainstream publishers or made into Hollywood movies. Many of these Harry Potter fanfic tales are as good as or even better than the originals, so at least the fans get something special that can't be commodified — yet.

Comic-Con explosion
Comic-Con, the annual comic book and science fiction fan convention in San Diego, used to be a quiet little nook full of dorks. Now it's grown to a 100,000-person event that takes over the whole city. It's become the hot place for giant media conglomerates to showcase their latest special effects blockbusters, and for Hollywood stars to put in an appearance (like Halle Berry, signing autographs at Comic-Con, below). It's basically a Sundance Film Festival — except it's full of fan glam instead of indie geek chic.

Any authentic international cons left? WorldCon, which focuses more on books and writers than it does on mainstream media, is still as authentic as it gets when it comes to large gatherings of scifi fans.

Threadless T-Shirts
It used to be that t-shirts with obscure slogans or rebus-like jokes on them marked their wearers as socially marginal and perhaps unhealthily obsessed with cultural arcana. Now internet company Threadless has turned such t-shirts into fan glam (see one of their glammy shirts below). Each shirt the company makes features a design submitted by a member of the site, which other members vote to have printed. Basically, it's Digg for t-shirts, which translates into mass-produced dorkery, with an emphasis on "mass" rather than "dork."

Any authentic nerdy t-shirts left? Any Dragon*Con shirt was and will always remain authentic.

Comic book film industry
Until recently, comic books were the purview of editors who lived in their mothers' basements. Sure there were TV shows and movies devoted to Batman and Superman, two of the industry's biggest franchises. But any comic book more obscure than Spider-Man could never hope to reach eyes that weren't already focused myopically on their local comic book store's new releases rack every Wednesday. These days, comic book writers get movie deals almost before their books hit the stands, and even irascible creators like Alan Moore are getting the splashy Hollywood treatment with From Hell, V for Vendetta and Watchmen. Smaller books like 30 Days of Night and Wanted (starring Angelina Jolie, looking glammy in previews for the film below) have gone celluloid too. Comic books are seriously glam.

Any authentic comic books left? No.

Action figure art
An action figure should be something like a Gray Hulk, lovingly painted and put on display behind a "do not touch" sign. Having a collection of them should be a badge of pure dorkdom, like the 40-year-old virgin in the movie of the same name. But these days, high-end boutiques like Kid Robot have turned the grubby action figure genre into high art with manga-influenced action figures more like sculpture than fannish fetish objects. Having a Frank Kozik bunny (left), or an Attaboy original, is seriously fan glam.

Any authentic action figures left? Limited edition obscure action figures for cancelled science fiction TV shows are still authentic.

Halle Berry photo by Tostie14. Nerd tee from Threadless.