Love Lust, and a brief review

Last night I appeared on the Sundance Channel’s documentary series Love Lust, in an episode on The Undead. Mostly, I talked about Lord Byron and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although I got in one soundbite on Dracula and a snarky one on Twilight. It’s available on iTunes, and Sundance will be replaying it all week (go to http://www.sundancechannel.com/love-lust/ ) for more information.

Lavie Tidhar’s The Bookman, in brief:
A steampunk romp that *gets it* — there’s a cast of historical and fictional personages intermingled here, but it never feels like they’re forced or obligatory. Rather, Tidhar’s clearly having a good time with the story of Orphan, who works in a bookshop and loves marine biologist Lucy, in an alternative England ruled by the Lizard Queens and Kings from Caliban’s Island. Other reviews here have complained that too much is going on, but that’s one of the book’s strengths — Tidhar knows his stuff and plays with it delightfully. With Isabella Beeton and Karl Marx as unlikely members of the same revolutionary cadre, Irene Adler as a police Inspector (while Moriarty serves as Prime Minister), and a Lord Byron automaton with a will of its own. I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Review in brief: What Ho, Automaton!

What Ho, Automaton, Chris Dolley. Book View Cafe, 2011, ebook.

Steampunk P.G. Wodehouse. OK, what do I do for the other 22 words?

If the concept appeals, the book should. It’s been years since I’ve read any Wodehouse, but the story of Reginald Worcester (pronounced like . . . ) and his human-appearing steam-driven automaton manservant Reeves (rescued from a closet at the Drones Club, where he’d been confined some 14 years after being lost at poker) struck me as letter-perfect. The steampunk framework is overlaid lightly, but works well. I did get a bit of the sense I was reading fanfiction; that didn’t bother me. There’s nothing particularly original about What Ho, Automaton, but it’s a loving tribute.

This ebook was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers’ Program giveaway; there is a 25-word minimum for Early Reviewers’ reviews there, hence the reference to the other 22 words.

The Difference Engine Revisited

When I first thought about blogging my steampunk reads and rereads, The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, was at the top of the list. I read Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Sybil. I acquired a book about Babbage’s actual Difference Engine. I had clearly set up for myself a dissertation-chapter length blog post. Of course I never wrote it. Having recently reread The Difference Engine for the formative stages of a couple of academic papers, I’ve realized that I do have a great deal to say about it, but that this isn’t the forum for all of it. Here’s a shorter version.

This book was my first introduction to steampunk as a concept, back in the 90s. I’d been delaying my reread because, I think, I’d seen mixed reactions to the book in reviews, and I wondered if it could live up to my very high level of memories and expectations. It’s a dark novel, but this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with Gibson’s and Sterling’s cyberpunk fiction; if a reader is looking solely for fun and adventure, this isn’t really the place.

But did the book live up to my remembrance? Very much so. This book is an amazing read for someone with an existing knowledge of the period. The first time I read it, I was someone with an interest in the period and its fiction, but not a specialist; I was already a fan of Gibson’s cyberpunk novels, as well as an avocational reader of Dickens, the Brontes, and George Eliot. I liked it, despite not being able to decode every single character or social movement presented. The second time I read it, I was in graduate school specializing in the nineteenth-century British novel, and I was stunned at amazingly well-researched and well thought out the text was. Of course The Difference Engine can be appreciated by the general reader; there are many details that add richness but that the story is absolutely fine without. (For example, you really don’t need to know that Sybil Gerard was originally a character in a Disraeli novel to appreciate Gibson & Sterling’s Sybil. In fact, differing circumstances have caused her to develop so differently that she bears little resemblance to her original, in ways that make perfect sense.) A wonderful online resource, The Difference Dictionary http://www.sff.net/people/gunn/dd , can help the reader catch up and appreciate the intricacy of the planning that went into the novel, but again, it’s not necessary to know the details to enjoy the novel.

Most of the more readily recognizable historical characters appear offstage (Byron, Babbage, Shelley) or in smaller roles (Ada, Disraeli, Keats); this is something of a relief when you consider how many fictional versions of H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, Jack the Ripper, and Oscar Wilde inhabit steampunk and gaslamp novels. (Okay, I admit, there cannot possibly be too much Oscar Wilde.)

The Difference Engine hinges on a single major event from which everything else stems: Charles Babbage has actually constructed his Difference Engine (computer) in the early nineteenth century. The various historical and fictional personages have lives that have turned out differently, accordingly, and as someone who does know the figures and the milieu in which they lived, I’m very impressed – it’s all quite credibly developed. The attention to detail is impressive. I loved seeing threads from early in the book reappear later in the book. I love that a miraculously middle-aged Keats has become a kinotropist, that, as aforesaid, characters are lifted wholesale from a novel by Benjamin Disraeli (and their fates play out very differently), that Lord Byron’s become prime minister and that ideas of Chartism, Luddism, etc. are adapted to the new circumstances.

Is it flawless? No, by no means. (And I could do without the cyberpunk-y last two pages, although I appreciate their significance.) Is it fun? Intermittently. Is it a deeply satisfying read to me, is it something that stands up to my knowledge of the period? Absolutely. Jeter/Blaylock/Powers may have originated steampunk, but for me, this is where it first explored its true potential.

Embassytown by China Mieville

A Goodreads entry that grew and grew, so I thought I would crosspost it here, despite it being neither steampunk nor Victorian.    There are some spoilers, but they are after a clearly-marked spoiler space.

If you know me, and we talk about books, chances are pretty good you know I’m a fan of China Mieville’s writing. Still, I haven’t loved all his books equally. Embassytown, however, is not one of those mere four-star Mievilles. No, it’s really, really good.

First of all, as everyone says, it’s a science fiction novel about linguistics, but it manages to remain compelling throughout. There’s also a very interesting take on colonialism, which of course interplanetary travels are all about. I’m going to leave a spoiler space at the end and then say more.

I’ve always wondered, if there was life on other planets, whether we might be such different orders of being that we would be incapable of perceiving each other. Certainly, there would be significant communication and cultural barriers, and language structures and basic assumptions would be immensely different. It’s been awhile since I’ve read Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and Children of God, but she addressed some of the cultural incomprehension effectively.

Mieville, here, deals with the language, or rather, the Language, and the whole concept of how humans can possibly communicate with beings who process language in such different ways that signifiers mean nothing to them and that lying is impossible. Smart, challenging stuff.

The book has its flaws. I’m not ordinarily one who chides Mieville for lack of characterization; as far as I’m concerned he’s created indelible characters in a number of his books. Here, though, I don’t have a very solid sense of most of the characters, except in terms of their functions and some basic characteristics of each. Also, Mieville can be an incredibly visual writer, but here there’s a lack of description; I can imagine Embassytown and the surrounding Arieke world, but I can’t really *see* it, not in the ways he usually shows things to his readers. However, that may be the point. Bas-Lag and the cities in The City and The City, not to mention Mieville’s various takes on London, are solidly grounded in reality, even if it’s simply the reality of the imagination. Embassytown may be beyond what narrator Avice can show us with the language we have.

Now, please bail if you don’t want to know.

Seriously.

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The novel presents a tragedy, the downfall of the Ariekei people (the Hosts) and that what we don’t realize until the very end is that our narrator, Avice Benner Cho, is actually on the wrong side. That is, the Ambassadors accidentally addict the Hosts to a particular performance of Language, but then deliberately continue to feed it, first for their continued survival, but then for their reshaping of the planet’s society. (Opium Wars, anyone? Supplying Native Americans with whiskey?) And Avice is one of the colonists who does it. The “happy” ending, in which some of the colonists survive, to form a new society along with Hosts who have lost their Language, but learned to speak various “Anglo-” dialects, represents so many colonial histories. Avice compares the Embassytown of the conclusion to “deadwood planets and pioneer towns,” consolidating the Old West metaphor. Avice’s estranged husband, Scile, confined at the end to a prison/asylum for his support of the Ariekei resistors, is neither insane nor villainous; he’s taken a morally correct position and he’s lost. As Avice says, “he must think he’s fallen among Lucifers.” At the end of the novel, Language is on its way to being wiped out in the urban center, Ariekei collaborators are speaking forms of English and have learned to lie, and “drug” addiction is rampant.

I haven’t heard anyone talking about this, and it may be because the novel is so recent that most of what’s out there are book reviews which necessarily can’t give away the ending. But I think Mieville is also playing an interesting game with us. We’re presented with Avice as a sympathetic narrator, and don’t expect her to be implicit in the systematic destruction of a culture. And yet . . .

The Famous Five

We saw a biopic of Enid Blyton over the weekend; hence the title.

Katherine Mosley and Brandon Herman guested hosted a webcast on steampunk over at averageintelligence.net; I was asked to provide a list of some of the best or more representative steampunk literature. Here are my choices:

1.  The Classics:  The Difference Engine, William Gibson & Bruce Sterling.   While steampunk originated with Jeter & Blaylock, this is the book that got my attention when it came out in 1991.   Iconic cyberpunk authors Gibson & Sterling use history in an informed and purposeful way;  their use of alternative technology (Charles Babbage actually develops his Difference Engine — an early computer — in a functional way) is well-thought through.  They deal with politics, including class and gender issues, effectively.   And they repurpose characters and situations from Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Sybil, in a way that’s far more realistic than Disraeli himself.

2.  American Steampunk:  Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.   Priest’s Clockwork Century series imagines a world where the U.S. Civil War continues on into the 1880s.   She’s good at strong female protagonists and at nonstop action;  reading Boneshaker feels like seeing a good summer action movie.  Her worldbuilding is solid, and I’m particularly fond of the way she takes all of the cliched steampunk tropes (goggles, airships, etc.) and gives them purpose.   The series continues with (so far) the novella Clementine and the novel Dreadnought.   She engages with issues of race, class, and gender, though some of the ethical issues in Boneshaker take a backseat to the action.  Plus there are zombies.

3.  Drawing-Room Steampunk:  Soulless by Gail Carriger.   Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series is steampunk meets paranormal romance meets Oscar Wilde and/or P. G. Wodehouse.  Protagonist Alexia Tarabotti is a smart and independent woman constrained by the social circumstances of Victorian England, although this is a Victorian England which has come to terms with the presence of vampires and werewolves in its midst.   Consistently amusing, Carriger’s series also does a good job with gender issues.

4.  YA Steampunk:  Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.   Westerfeld’s trilogy has a fascinating premise, an alternative World War I, fought between the Austo-Hungarian Clankers, with their classic steampunk technology, and the British Darwinists, who’ve genetically engineered living weapons.   In later books, Westerfeld takes his characters out of Europe and into the wider world.

5.  Science Fiction/Fantasy with a steampunk feeling:   Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.   Elsewhere in this blog I’ve discussed where Mieville’s Bas-Lag books fit in the steampunk spectrum, but this smart, highly-political novel certain has the technology and the feel of a steampunk world, in addition to political situations (oppression of the workers, imperialism, etc.) very much connected to steampunk’s nineteeth-century inspiration.  It’s set, however, on another world, with well-conceived alien cultures and lush, gorgeous descriptions which situate the world extremely well.

Bonus:  though I haven’t yet had the chance to read all of it, Joelle Vanderhooft’s anthology Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories brings both queer and multicultural perspectives to steampunk, two things I hope to be seeing a lot more of in the near future.

An excellent discussion: steampunk vs. steampulp

http://ageofsteam.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/how-do-i-write-a-steampunk-story-by-dru-pagliassotti/

A must-read for anyone who’s seriously inquiring into the boundaries of steampunk;  Pagliassotti talks about avoiding the cliches and keeping the -punk integral.

 

Rereading Perdido Street Station: Mieville and the Boundaries of Steampunk

I confess that I spend relatively little time trying to define steampunk.   While I was drawn to the genre though my interest in Victorian literature and culture and in how people were using steampunk to play with and interrogate the ideas and boundaries of the period, its technology, and its ideologies,  I find myself in agreement with a more open conception of the genre.   While one still occasionally comes across statements implying that setting a steampunk story in the American West of the period is a radical departure from the norm, that seems par for the course to me:  I remember watching syndicated reruns of the proto-steampunk television series The Wild, Wild West as a child.   Moving away from Eurocentric settings, multicultural steampunk is a vital and important part of the genre, valuable for its critique of imperialism and other problematic aspects of the time period, and filled with rich storytelling possibilities.   Dieselpunk and other forms of retrofuturism clearly belong in the Big Tent with steampunk, and when elements of fantasy and horror are incorporated alongside the historical and science fictional aspects, my only question is how they fit into the story and whether they’re done effectively.

Nonetheless, when I sat down to reread China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station for discussion with a local steampunk reading group, I found myself wondering: it’s art, but is it steampunk?[i] I was delighted to be rereading the book, which I had loved on my first encounter with it some years back.   But, despite the John Clute quote on the back of my copy, claiming it as “the best steampunk novel since Gibson and Sterling’s” [their monumental The Difference Engine], and despite my keen appreciation of the book as a vast Dickensian social problem novel, it hadn’t shouted “steampunk” at me.

The book claims a place on many steampunk reading lists, certainly has a Victorian-inflected aesthetic, and engages with social issues that echo Victorian reality.   But it takes place on another planet, one with a rich variety of nonhuman races.  Miéville has been publicly identified with the New Weird, not with steampunk.  I’ve never heard him mentioned as a prospective guest for a steampunk convention, though he’s someone whose readings  I’ve attended on a number of occasions.   And, considering he’s not shy about political critiques, I wonder if he might be disturbed by the perceived uncritical embrace of Victorian imperialism in steampunk.[ii] Taking all this into consideration, I find myself wondering why, or why not, Perdido Street Station might be considered steampunk.

Adopting Mike Perschon’s definition of steampunk-as-aesthetic[iii], the novel fits very well.   Miéville’s wonderfully envisioned city of New Crobuzon, and Bas-Lag, the world it is a part of, is very much not our own earth or our own history, of course.  But the city itself, which many readers have commented on as being perhaps the book’s real hero, has a feel which echoes Victorian London.  The various neighborhoods, especially the slums, have a vivid feel, often decaying and squalid, but filled with the persistence and determination of the inhabitants who make of them a home.  From the opening scene, where a basket is let down into a marketplace square, and the food retrieved by two of the characters who will become major viewpoint characters, the city is real, and lively, and compromised, and vital.   Whether Yagharek’s approach to the Glasshouse, inhabited by the core of the city’s cactacae population, or Lin’s travel through Spit Market into the khephri districts, or Derkhan’s visit to the editor of the underground newspaper, Runagate Rampant, among the abattoirs of Dog Fenn, we see again and again the lives and the existences, both marginal and mainstream, of a city comparable in every way to Dickens’s London.

But not only is there a parallel to Victorian London in its vital, overcrowded urban context, haphazard in design and in growth.  This is a port city, a city filled with factories and warehouses.  References to technology are rich in both steam power and thaumaturgy; the rivers of New Crobuzon are polluted sometimes with post-Industrial Revolution toxic sludge, and sometimes with equally dangerous magical overruns.  Transportation is by elevated rail, by airship, or by horse-drawn cab . . . or rather, by Remade-drawn cab, as the cruel technology of altering humans and animals alike into cyborgs, for functionality and for punishment, means that a passenger in New Crobuzon may find herself in a taxi drawn by a horse with steam-powered mechanical limbs, or a restructured ox, or even a human/animal/machine hybrid.  Pubs are filled with artists and writers, or working class drinkers, or the tragic and the destitute.  The government looks down from its towers in the heart of the city.  This is neither our world, nor the nineteenth century, but it is a city which contains many echoes of that London.

Finally, and perhaps most important, what makes this novel steampunk are the social issues with which it engages.   Steampunk is not necessarily political, but there is no reason why it cannot be.  And one of the political functions it can productively engage in is to critique the society that gave rise to its ascetic.   The Victorian social problem novel, such as Dickens’s Bleak House and Hard Times or Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South , is inherently a mode of the period, and certainly represents one possibility for steampunk; it’s a challenge that Miéville easily meets.   The range of political issues in the novel echoes the reality of nineteenth-century Britain quite strongly:  laborers’ strikes, ruthless military actions against working class unrest, press censorship, voting inequities, and a government that seems only to support the upper classes (and possibly only to support itself).  Karl Marx, of course, was writing and working in nineteenth century London, and his doctrines were shaped by the reality of workers’ lives in that time and place;  Miéville has serious Marxist credibility, having written his dissertation at the London School of Economics on Marxism and international law.

Perdido Street Station gives us one model of what steampunk can be.   Fans of airship pirates need not fear that I’m attempting to redraw the boundaries in order to exclude them; far from it.  But if steampunk is to grow as a genre, it must include novels of purpose, of politics, of ideas.   This novel does that.  Before you walk away, you might want to know that it also includes an interdimensional giant spider, and dream-moths that can suck your brain; it has adventure and romance and long monster chases.  It has those things, but it also has ideas[iv], and it’s not afraid to consider them.

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[i] Thanks to the fabulous Katherine Moseley for making it, and for the NY Steampunk meetup group for a great discussion!

[ii] I hope it is needless to say that the steampunk community is aware of these associations, and through various forums including Steampunk Magazine, blogs like Beyond Victoriana and Silver Goggles, and efforts by various writers, musicians (the self-parodic rapper Professor Elemental, with his pith helmet and explorer’s gear, for one), artists, makers, and other steampunks, at least some portion of the community has been addressing them.

[iii] http://steampunkscholar.blogspot.com/2010/05/defining-steampunk-as-aesthetic.html

[iv] As do I, but for fear of this post becoming too long, I am saving them for another day.  I want to further consider gender and politics in the novel, among other things.

CFP: International Steampunk City 5/6-8

I’m in the process of pulling together an Academic Track for the International Steampunk City, to be held on May 6-8 in Waltham, Massachusetts.  The event, which is a benefit for the Charles River Museum of Industry, is going to involve the entire town of Waltham, with performances, exhibitions, and events of many kinds.  I’ve been given a room in the public library, with the mandate to program it with academic panels, lectures, and roundtable discussions, dealing with steampunk, or with 19^th century history, culture, technology, literature, architecture, fashion, etc.

We’re looking for the following, for programming on Saturday May 7 and Sunday May 8:

1)      Academic panels: I’m looking for proposals for individual papers or entire panels on topics related to steampunk or to relevant 19^th century history, culture, technology, literature, architecture, fashion, etc.   Because of the relatively short time frame in planning this, I would encourage you to submit informal indications of intent sooner, rather than later.   Formal proposals are due by March 15.

2)      Lectures: If you have a 30-45 minute presentation you’d like to make on a relevant topic, there will be room on the schedule for some presentations of this type.  Again, formal proposals by March 15, but I would appreciate hearing sooner, if you’re planning to propose something.

3)      Roundtables: These would be more informal discussions, with a single moderator or a panel, again on topics relevant to steampunk or 19^th century history and culture.

 

If you’re interested in participating, please contact me at csiemann@gmail.com and let’s discuss it.  This is going to be a major event, and one well worth being involved with.   There has been media coverage on Boing Boing:   http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/13/waltham-mass-becomes.html

The official website is here:  http://internationalsteampunkcity.com/

The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli

One of the oft-repeated themes of Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan is the jealousy and ill-nature of reviewers, who dismiss novels out of hand because of their superior qualities, while praising morally harmful works.  The Sorrows of Satan, Corelli’s 1895 bestseller, was trashed by the critics and adored by many (she was apparently a big hit with both Queen Victoria and, rather more surprisingly, Oscar Wilde; perhaps more importantly, she sold, sold, sold), but to make things even more meta, the novel contains a (lovely, charming, deeply spiritual, and in fact all-around marvelous) character called Mavis Clare – M.C., get it??? – whose novels are routinely trashed by the critics, sell in vast quantities, and actually help with the moral reformation of her devoted audience.

Indeed.

I’m  afraid that Corelli would append me to her chorus of detractors, although honestly, I find her work interesting – inadvertently humorous, but interesting.  I’d been curious about her; she’s been getting some attention from academics as an extremely popular Late-Victorian woman writer.  And the title is irresistible.  If you have a Kindle or other e-reader, you can find free copies everywhere; the one I read is fairly rife with amusing scanning errors, so consider your tolerance accordingly.

The novel’s narrator is the gloriously-named Geoffrey Tempest (don’t you wish you were named Geoffrey Tempest?  I kind of do), a starving young writer who manages to sell his soul to Satan semi-inadvertently.  Oh, all the warning signs are there – the thunderstorm, the eerie violin coming through the wall from next door, the saturnine good looks, the name . . . Prince Lucio Rimanez.  Seriously.  He does everything but wear a lapel pin that says “Sell your soul to the Devil: Ask me how.”  Nobody ever questions his origins – they’re Victorian Britons and he’s a foreigner, no need to inquire further.  Our narrator manages not to realize that his sudden accession to five million pounds from a distant relative is not mere coincidence, but get this:  his lawyers try to warn him.  His lawyers. If your lawyers tell you that they think Satan might be involved in a financial transaction, do listen.

Geoffrey finds that large sums of money assist him in getting his novel published, and he’s even able to purchase himself some good reviews, but it still doesn’t sell particularly well.  No, everyone’s off buying the latest Mavis Clare, possibly because her writing has the odd side effect of making you temporarily into a good person.  Or something.  So he gives in to his wealth, and courts the beautiful, gorgeous, words cannot do her justice, blah blah Lady Sybil Elton.  Sybil has been groomed for the marriage market from an early age, and been encouraged to be proud, shallow, and dependent entirely on her looks.

Geoffrey manages to be surprised, after their wedding, that she’s not that nice a person, something he’d managed to entirely ignore up to that point, despite the fair warning she too had given him.   Nobody ever needs to deceive Geoffrey – he handles that part himself.

There’s all kinds of lovely melodrama, with more thunderstorms, Sybil throwing herself at the Prince of Darkness himself (he’s just not that into her), magical entertainments at country houses, Geoffrey getting fatter (all those 12 course dinners) and Mavis Clare being her spiritual, wonderful self.  She wears white dresses, has small dogs and a merry laugh, and lives in a charming place called Lily Cottage.  She would.  Mavis turns Lucio down flat, when he tries to suborn her, and he admires her all the more for it.

In fact, Satan’s not such a bad guy.  Lucio grants you your every wish, is charming, handsome, and deeply sarcastic, but he venerates the good and admires those, like Mavis, who he can’t entangle.   Unlike his society friends, he believes in God.  (Well, um, yeah.  He’s met Him personally.  War in Heaven and all that.)  He keeps giving Geoffrey openings to redeem himself, offering to go away and leave him alone, but dependent (bromantic?) Geoffrey keeps ignoring them.  And, oh, he quotes Milton sometimes.  Seriously, people, how much harder does he have to hint?

But the real message of this book?  Read more Mavis Clare, er, Marie Corelli.  She will provide the moral uplift you need.   The Romantic poets are suspect in their personal lives, but elevating in their works.  Well, except for Byron, naturally.  Zola?  *shudder*  And those late Victorian decadents?

It  is Algernon Swinburne who bears the brunt of Corelli’s wrath.  Embedded in a character’s suicide note is a lengthy rant about the moral corruption brought about by reading modern novels, but more particularly, the poetry of Swinburne.   Whatever else you do, DO NOT READ SWINBURNE, Corelli says.   Just don’t.  Do.  Not.

This book is an excellent example of the popular entertainment of an age, and it’s still plenty entertaining, although not perhaps in the ways Corelli intended it to be.  There’s some good social commentary on class and economics, and mixed messages on women’s rights (New Women and suffragettes are not to be trusted, but on the other hand, a woman who can support herself is much to be admired;  the marriage market comes in for its fair share of criticism).  There is a gloriously over-the-top climactic scene which is worth the price of admission alone.  The Sorrows of Satan hasn’t really stood the test of time but is fascinating as a period piece.   I’m glad I read it, but now I’m off to read some Swinburne.

The Obligatory Introductory Post

I started this blog to have a semi-public place to park my thoughts about steampunk and neoVictorian texts and culture.  I started reading steampunk . . . when did The Difference Engine come out?  . . . but it’s only in the past year or so that I’ve been conscious of the broader subculture that’s grown up around this “future that never was.”   If you’re unfamiliar with steampunk (which means you’re probably reading this because you know me), it’s an aesthetic with its origins in nineteenth century science fiction.  But it’s far too complicated to explain it in a sentence or two:  take a look at some of the blogs I link to and you can get a broader sense of the many things that steampunk can mean.

I did my Ph.D. on the nineteenth century novel at Columbia, so I’ve  had a fairly intense immersion in the culture and literature of the period which gives steampunk its origin.  I’m fascinated by ways that 21st century popular culture addresses the 19th century: what do we find interesting?  important?  what do we feel the need to revise, and what do we explore and critique?

I thought it might be useful to have a place to review books, note down passing thoughts, and otherwise start working through ideas.  I’d love it if people read this blog and had comments;  certainly I don’t expect everyone will agree with everything I have to say, but I would love to hear from you in any case!

Oh, and certainly not least important — thanks to the wonderful luis_mw for the Alice manips — I think Tenniel would like what you’ve done!