Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

Welcome back to The Circus of Brass and Bone!

Episode 2, The Great Boston Pyre, is now up at http://www.circusofbrassandbone.com. I've also added an About page in response to people asking for "back cover copy"-type information. Take a look!

Excerpt:

The skeleton man hungered.

Breakfast seemed so long ago, though he'd gobbled biscuits and tea until his stomach hurt. His precious stash of tasties was buried in his wagon for their grand entrance into Boston, along with everything else he had to his name. He had so little--he thought self-pityingly--that his kit was packed and loaded while others still dallied in their quarters, packing away the wondrous sprawl of their belongings. And so Jonathan Matzke, The Man So Thin He Wears a Wedding Ring as a Belt!, went without. His stomach clenched tight in rebellion.

Though the hardtack and cheese and dried apples he'd packed didn't appeal to him, anyway. Jonathan ravened, but not for that. For something else. He didn't know what yet.

He'd know it when he saw it, by the salivating of his mouth. Maybe one of the others might have something that would fill the aching pit in his stomach. Maybe they'd give him some if he asked nicely. Or--in the upset of packing, they wouldn't notice or care if a little bit here or there went missing. Mice. Ships always had mice.

Slip and slide around the corners, he could. Nobody noticed the Skeleton Man, because there was a quarter as much man to notice!

Read more (or download the podcast!)

Things fall apart. People come together--or die. Above all, the show must go on.

 

Via http://www.steampunkmagazine.com/

It’s a 12-meter-high mechanical elephant, made of 45 tons of reclaimed wood and steel. It can carry almost 50 passengers at a time. There’s more pictures (and the original article) over at Inhabitat.

Steampunk is a peculiar beast of a sub-genre that seems to be getting more attention lately. half_double has requested a list of such readings from me. It isn't a precisely pinned-down genre as yet. In many ways, I'd say it's more of an atmosphere or flavor than an "X,Y, and Z are present" sort of thing. Here are the elements that, in my opinion, flavor steampunk: steam-based technology, Victoriana, Victorian England, London, clockwork, mystery, fog and smog, brass devices, complexity, high density writing, social class structure as in the Victorian era, petticoats and waistcoats, fabulism, conspiracy, secret society etc. Lovecraftian influences are also often expressed in conjunction. Steampunk influences may be seen in science fiction or fantasy or both. There's also some weird steampunk/western thing going on, though I scowl in its general direction.

Books I have read and would recommend that share some/many of the above influences:
* The Difference Engine - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
* The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book - Alan Moore (comic book)
* Perdido Street Station (etc.) - China Mieville
* Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
* Sun of Suns - Karl Schroeder
* The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
* The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters - Gordon Dahlquist (this book I recommend anyway--it ate my brain for a while)
* His Dark Materials (trilogy) - Philip Pullman
* FreakAngels - Warren Ellis (Future post-apocalyptic, but strongly steampunk-influenced. Also available free on the web and pretty fantastic for serial reading! Here's where to start: http://www.freakangels.com/?p=23 [increment +1 for every week after this post that you follow that link])

Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steampunk_works

A lot of steampunk has been written as short stories, so anthologies are not a bad way to go either if you're trying to understand the genre, though I won't recommend any particular one.

Other ways steampunk is being expressed are as a fashion choice (tattered petticoats and brass goggles, or clockwork devices made accessories) and as a make aesthetic (a keyboard painstakingly reshaped to resemble a Victorian typewriter, for example).

Edited to add: See also Steampod (http://steampod.org), a podcast of steampunk stories including classics.