There are
the novels that everyone thinks of when the word ‘cyberpunk’ is mentioned: Neuromancer, Mindplayers, Hardwired,
and others. But it may be Bruce
Sterling’s anthology Mirrorshades
which best defines the
sub-genre. Capturing the spectrum of the
movement in artistic terms, the anthology covers aesthetics to ideology. Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s 2008 anthology Steampunk does precisely the same with
the eponymous sub-genre. Likewise
featuring a representative range of stories with superb introductory and essay
material, it captures the next -punk in all its major forms, in essence
defining it.
Canvassing
the field, the VanderMeers came up with fourteen stories—or at least excerpts
from fourteen stories—in Steampunk. Like Mirrorshades,
most are recognizable to the sub-genre while a few are intended along
ideological lines. Airships, steam
horses, pulp nostalgia, alternate history, Victoriana, clockwork apparati,
plebian struggles, anachronistic machines, social revolutions—all are
represented in some form or another, most more than once. The authors well to lesser known, there is
not one story, however, poorly written.
Certainly every reader will have their own opinion about what is and
isn’t steampunk, but the supplementary material—essays from Jess Nevins and
Bill Baker as well as story introductions (from the VanderMeers, assumedly)—go
a long way toward establishing a steampunk context that includes all the
material selected, and in the very least erects a scaffolding for what the
sub-genre might be.
But there
are naturally differences to Mirrorshades. The first is time. Where all of the
stories Sterling selected were published within five years of one another, the
VanderMeers tread further back in time, surveying the field and gleaning material that covers four decades, 1971-2007.
The earliest selection opening the anthology, it is an excerpt from
Michael Moorcock’s The
Warlord of the Air, “Benediction”.
And it’s precisely a tone setter. Featuring the great airships the
sub-genre is renowned for, the excerpt likewise dips into the political issues
that, steampunk—when it dains to descend from its airy heights—is renowned
for. (For those interested in reading The Warlord of the Air, I suggest
skipping the excerpt as it is the climactic moment of the novel.) “The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark
Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel” by Joe R. Lansdale is one of those airy stories. A rollicking take on pulp fiction, I wanted
to dislike this story, but Lansdale’s sense of style, attention to detail, and
sustained self-awareness at least pushed me into the ‘didn’t regret reading
this’ status. (The other way I thought to
describe this story is an anti-Lone Ranger meets Stephen King’s Gunslinger
traveling in H.G. Wells The Time Machine—a
combination that should not work, yet does in the context of pulp commentary.)
Unlike
commissioned or year’s-best anthologies, Steampunk
has the distinct advantage of being able to cherrypick from the wealth of genre
stories of the past several decades.
Case in point, Ian Macleod’s darkly beautiful “The Giving Mouth”. About a boy stuck in a vassal’s rut of life
in a gritty, feudal setting, the story resonates with proletarian sentiment,
the conclusion soaring into the heights of allegory—as richly drawn as it is
literary. Just a perfectly written
little piece. “Seventy-Two Letters” by
Ted Chiang is a novella that exists at the intersection of Frankenstein, and The Difference Engine. An intentionally pseudo-scientific story that
is concerned with the direction of humanity’s evolution; the superficial
elements (golems, Judaism, the Industrial Revolution, and vat grown humans) are
only the doorway to discussion on the some of the most basic ideas surrounding
human procreation, particularly the role mankind plays in the process. Like Macleod’s story, Chiang’s is a wonderful
balance of the visual and conceptual sides of steampunk.
Looking
back to when steampunk was just good ol’ fantastika, “Lord Kelvin’s Machine” is
Jules Verne with a zinger of pulp. The
vagaries of pulp plotting foresworn in favor of colorful character, setting,
and dialogue, Blaylock’s sense of style is spot-on—amazing for a non-Brit
(though I’m sure the Islanders would have some criticisms) telling of Langdon St.
Ives, his trusty side kick Hasbro, and their attempt to stop the nefarious
Narbando from unleashing volcanic tragedy on Earth. Another delightfully written spot of fun is
the first third of Paul Di Filippo’s fixup The
Steampunk Trilogy, the novella “Victoria”.
As clever as clever can be, Di Filippo is a wordsmith of the nth degree telling of the young British
biologist Cosmo Cowperthwaite and his rough-around-the-edges American sidekick
Nails McGroaty as they attempt to track down the escaped teenage queen
Victoria. Irreverent, splash-dashtastic,
uproarious, endlessly inventive—these terms only begin to describe the
adventures Cowperthwaite and Nails get into in the back streets of London and
beyond fulfilling their (newt backed) mission.
“The
God-Clown Is Near” by Jay Lake is a bit of macabre Weird in a Victorian setting
where golems are constructed of living flesh in back alley “offices”. A combination of doll-making and mortuary
work, Doctor Cosimo Ferrante receives a most unusual commission one day from
the glint-eyed twins Reve and Traum Sueno: to create a moral golem. A very visual story with a surprise yet
fitting twist, the deal is eventually consummated, just not to everyone’s
liking. “The Selene Gardening Society”
by Molly Brown is a Victorian delight of gardens on the moon. Fun science in a light-hearted aristocratic
setting, Brown captures a ladies club, bustles, and ‘natural science’ in a turn
of the 20th century tale of lunar terraforming straight from Jules Verne’s
imagination.
It’s title
intriguing, “The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance” by Michael Chabon is a
piece of alternate history wherein the American Revolutionary War never
happened, and is instead pushed back to the middle of the 19 th century, round
about the time the American Civil War took place. The story of two boys separated from their
family, it is a superbly written story that never goes where the reader thinks
it might, poignancy pulling the reader along whether they want to read or
not. “Reflected Light” by Rachel E.
Pollock is a short but intriguing story that leaves as much between the lines
as in them. Purported to be the
fragments of historical recordings of a woman and her daily work at a
leathersmithery, revolution against a never-described overseer simmers on the
fringes in this understated yet quality story.
While I
wish the VanderMeers, like Sterling, had chosen to name their anthology based
on a symbol (Clockwork: The Steampunk
Anthology has a nice ring to it, no?), the selection of stories they produced
is nevertheless representative across a wide variety of points. They have an eye for quality regardless of
sub-genre, and the anthology reflects it.
While I personally think the expression ‘gaslight romance’ better
conveys the core of what we’ve come to call ‘steampunk’, either way you look at
it, the VanderMeers have captured the heart of the sub-genre in short fiction
form—the essays and introductions to each story the icing on the cake. Given that the scope of the work is more a
look back into the field than an attempt to capture the zeitgeist, I would even
argue that Steampunk is able to offer
stories of a slightly better caliber than Mirrorshades… Regardless, the anthology is an invaluable
resource for those interested in learning more about steampunk or are
established readers. Well done.
Published
between 1971 and 2007, the following are the fourteen stories in Steampunk:
Introduction:
The 19th-Century Roots of Steampunk by Jess Nevins
Benediction
(Excerpt from The Warlord of the Air) by Michael Moorcock
Lord
Kelvin's Machine by James P. Blaylock
The Giving
Mouth by Ian R. MacLeod
A Sun in
the Attic by Mary Gentle
The
God-Clown is Near by Jay Lake
The Steam
Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel by Joe R. Lansdale
The Selene
Gardening Society by Molly Brown
Seventy-Two
Letters by Ted Chiang
The
Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance by Michael Chabon
Victoria
by Paul Di Filippo
Reflected
Light by Rachel E. Pollock
Minutes of
the Last Meeting by Stepan Chapman
Excerpt
from the Third and Last Volume of 'Tribes of the Pacific Coast' by Neal
Stephenson
The
Steam-Driven Time Machine: A Pop Culture Survey by Rick Klaw
The
Essential Sequential Steampunk: A Modest Survey of the Genre within the Comic
Book Medium essay by Bill Baker
For a much
better review than mine, see the SF Site here.
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