Steampunk [Paperback]

I was looking for a good compilation of Steampunk having read The Difference Engine (Gollancz S.F.) and the superb The Steampunk Trilogy.

As a fan of Jeff Vandermeer this one appealed (read The Situation it's an excellent fun wee book).

Anyway: this is an excellent anthology.

The stories are as follows:

Introduction: The 19th Century Roots of Steampunk (Jess Nevins) - obviously an introduction to the sub-genre.

Benediction: Excerpt from The Warlord of the Air (Michael Moorcock) - an excerpt from the novel: I enjoyed it and have read much of Moorcock's works, shame that his steampunk stuff seems to be out of print.

Lord Kelvin's Machine (James P. Blaylock) - same as above Blaylock has a load of steampunk novels that seem to be hard to get.

The Giving Mouth (Ian R. MacLeod) - an odd story - not *entirely* sure what was going on. But I like that.

A Sun in the Attic (Mary Gentle) - Nice feminist subcurrents to a story about the potential for technology to disrupt society.

The God-Clown is Near (Jay Lake) - Pretty funny, gory and a good job at playing with mad-scientist tropes (well, that's how I read it, anyway!)

The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel (Joe R. Lansdale) - Full of crude language and works hard to deconstruct heros and so on (more about this in the opening essays). It's not bad - I kinda liked it, though you *could* describe it as puerile. I think deliberately so. It didn't in any way offend me, but I think it tries a little too hard to do this.

The Selene Gardening Society (Molly Brown) - Apparently this follows on from a Jules Verne story - sadly one I'm not familiar with! (From the Earth to the Moon, I think). OK, interesting, but the writing was nothing special.

Seventy-Two Letters (Ted Chiang) - Ted Chiang doesn't publish much. But when he does, it's great. Magic + steampunk. Absolutely fantastic.

The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance (Michael Chabon) - Excellent Alternate History which posits an America which rejoins with Great Britain.

Victoria (Paul Di Filippo) - excellent story (and part of The Steampunk Trilogy). Does what I think Steampunk *should* do. It's more than just an adventure story with some cool stuff bolted on.

Reflected Light (Rachel E. Pollack) - Takes in socialist revolutionary themes...but is not turgid for all that. An interesting work...well worth reading and deserving of its place in this.

Minutes of the Last Meeting (Stepan Chapman) - Pacy and interesting. It's set in Russia too, this is unusual: most steampunk I've read has tended towards being set in the British Empire.

Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of Tribes of the Pacific Coast (Neal Stephenson) - slightly cyberpunky (naturally given Stephenson's background?) but has some good social commentary about colonialism - still relevant, I feel.

These last two are more *about* Steampunk than actually being short stories. I think they're worthwhile, but then I'm one of those people that reads the notes after I've read a novel, if they're there. Always nice to get another perspective, I feel.

The Steam-Driven Time Machine: A Pop Culture Survey (Rick Klaw)

The Essential Sequential Steampunk: A Modest Survey of the Genre within the Comic Book Medium (Bill Baker)

It's a mostly excellent book, not all the stories are brilliant, but it's unusual to find any anthology that is entirely. Well worth it if you enjoy steampunk.

This collection of Steampunk stories is exceedingly entertaining - it covers a range of humorous, dark and sometimes frightening themes, with every piece bringing something new to the reader. If you like mad scientists, cunning villains, rampaging monsters, and unlikely-sounding robots, you'll love this.

Not knowing much about Steampunk (I love "The Anubis Gates" and didn't like "Morlock Night", and that's about it), I bought this as a kind of immersion course. I'm not sure how well it's worked.

I adored three stories. Joe Lansdale's "The Steam Man..." is a very funny, over-the-top dime novel that descends into extraordinary ultraviolence. You'll laugh, hate yourself for laughing, and then start laughing again. Probably till you're sick. By contrast, Ted Chiang's thoughtful and uplifting "Seventy-Two Letters" puts an amazing twist on the old idea (it goes back at least as far as Heinlein's "Magic, Inc.") that the occult sciences are alternative technologies governed by their own rigorous logic. The other gem was Paul De Filippo's "Victoria", in which hilariously appalling events disrupt the early years of the grand old queen's reign. The excerpt from Moorcock's "The Warlord of the Air", which kicks things off, is also fun, if somewhat shoehorned in, and Ian McLeod's "The Giving Mouth", though revolting, is inventive and well-worked, if somewhat beyond general ideas of what Steampunk is.

That last comment applies to quite a few stories here, which don't necessarily have the focus on alternative Victorian worlds and technologies that a lot of readers would probably expect. That's not a problem - there's nothing wrong with having your horizons broadened - but many of these stories just didn't do it for me. Although they're all inventive, there's a tendency (also seen in other anthologies edited by the Vandermeers) towards stories which are stronger on atmosphere and worldbuilding than on plot. The biggest disappointment is Michael Chabon's "The Martian Agent". Chabon is a fine writer, and the alternative world he sets up here is interesting, but the story is overwrought and doesn't go anywhere. Molly Brown's "The Selene Gardening Society" has charm, but the others, in various ways, all left me feeling dissatisfied.

The additional material - essays on Steampunk in popular culture generally, and in comic books specifically, by Rick Klaw and Bill Baker, and an introduction by Jess Nevins - is illuminating and helpful.

So there you have it. It's by no means a bad book, and some parts of it are absolutely superb, but it wasn't all to my tastes. Yours may differ and you may love the stuff that didn't work for me. Such is the nature of anthologies.