Terrific follow up to volume one. This collection is lavishly illustrated with beautiful steampunk designs to complement the text. A good selection of mostly recent writings, including a wonderful illustrated story about Ada Lovelace and a ‘proto’ steampunk story in Flying Fish Prometheus, written in the 19th Century, which reads as surprisingly contemporary of other steampunk writings. Or maybe recent writers are just good at emulating that proto style!
Story and Author | Tags/Hub Areas | Therapeutic Tags | Personal Rating |
The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson | Art deco punk, retro futuristic architecture obsession, architectural photography, Flash Gordon, raygun gothic, meta, hallucinations, UFOs, Twilight Zone | Jungian psychology, sanity, coping, meta, escapism | ***1/2 |
Great Breakthroughs In Darkness by Marc Laidlaw | Steampunk, photography, child exploitation, darkshade, Lovecraft, dictionary | Language, compassion, mystery | ***** |
Dr. Lash Remembers by Jeffrey Ford | Steampunk, disease, plague outbreak, insanity, new reality, Prisoner Queen, Republic, mass hysteria, airborne spores | Rebellion, liberation | ***1/2 |
The Unblinking Eye by Stephen Baxter | Steampunk, alternate history, Incan civilization, Londres, cold war, terrorism, empire, solar power | Interracial love, war avoidance | **** |
The Steam Dancer (1896) by Caitlin R Kiernan | Steampunk, disabilities, steam powered prosthetics, old wild west, charity, sex scene, Shakespeare, Denver Colorado | Kindness, resilience, love | ****1/2 |
The Cast-Iron Kid by Andrew Knighton | Steampunk, old wild west, cowboys, gunfights, robot gunshooter, transgressive | Natural justice, bad guy defeated, ingenuity | **** |
Machine Maid by Margo Lanagan | Steampunk, Victorian goldfields, Melbourne, robot sex slave, isolation, murder | Feminism, liberation, freedom | ****1/2 |
The Unbecoming of Virgil Smythe by Ramsey Shehadeh | Steampunk, murder on the orient express, trains, time and reality distortion, bubble worlds, robbery, madness, liminal spaces | Self sacrifice, ambition fulfilled, glimpse of the infinite, madness overcome | ***** |
The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar by Shweta Narayan | Steampunk, mecha birds, heartsprings, Indian myths | Wisdom, revenge | ***1/2 |
O One by Chris Roberson | Steampunk, automation, Imperial China, early computers | Fear of change, continuity for conservatives, tradition | ***1/2 |
Wild Copper by Samantha Henderson | Fantasy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puget Sound, faeries, life trade, slavery, Coyote, Copper Woman, indigenous American myths | Escape, freedom, environmentalism, cost of greed | ***** |
The Bold Explorer In the Place Beyond by David Erik Nelson | Steampunk, Alternate Civil War, robots, William Burroughs, Huckleberry Finn, | Humour | ** |
Lost Pages From The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana by Jess Nevins | Steampunk, disastrous history of steamtanks, warfare | Cautionary tale | ** |
Tanglefoot (A Clockwork Century Story) by Cherie Priest | Steampunk, clockwork child, possessed by changeling, absent minded inventor, asylum | Empathy | *** |
A Serpent In the Gears by Margaret Ronald | Steampunk, dirigibles, merged humans and animals, hybrids, serpents, no fly zone, spies revealed, andropters, thaumics | Loyalty, heroism | ***1/2 |
The Strange Case of Mr. Salad Monday by G.D. Falksen | Steampunk, social media, gossip, critics, mystery, liminal being, journalism, new weird | Familiarity, mystery solved, curiosity satisfied | ***1/2 |
The Persecution Machine by Tanith Lee | Steampunk, madness, being hunted, paranoia, justified | Psychological fears confirmed and conquered | **** |
Balfour and Meriwether in the Adventure of the Emperor’s Vengeance by Daniel Abraham | Steampunk, Napoleon, ancient Egypt, clockwork monster, British agents, apocalypse, Holmesian, Victorian London, secret societies, machine as enemy | Relief, ingenuity, empathy | *** |
As Recorded On Brass Cylinders: Adagio For Two Dancers by James L. Grant & Lisa Mantchev | Steampunk, language, clockwork androids, memory cylinders, old lovers reunited, old model termination | Romance, love, memory | ***** |
Flying Fish Prometheus (A Fantasy of the Future) by Vihelm Bergsoe | Proto-Steampunk, flying machine, hurricane, human derring do, rescue, journalists | Whimsy, romance, humour | **** |
The Anachronist’s Cookbook by Catherynne M. Valente | Steampunk, language, moon colony, Victorian, Luddites, Levelers | Human rights, equality, rebellion | ***** |
Lovelace & Babbage: Origins, with Salamander by Sydney Padua (graphic story) | Steampunk, Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, alternate timeline, adventure, mathematics, computer code | Humour, whimsy | ***** |
A Secret History of Steampunk by The Mecha-Ostrich | Steampunk, mecha animals, obsession, Edisonades, communes, inventors, madness | Whimsy, renewal, defiance | *** |