Steampunk (original 2008; edition 2008)

Steampunk : "it's a clockwork universe, Victoria" / Ann & Jeff VanderMeer --
The 19th-century roots of steampunk / Jess Nevins --
Benediction : excerpt from The warlord of the air / Michael Moorcock --
Lord Kelvin's machine / James P. Blaylock --
The giving mouth / Ian R. MacLeod --
A sun in the attic / Mary Gentle --
The god-clown is near / Jay Lake --
The steam man of the prairie and the dark rider get down : a dime novel / Joe R. Lansdale --
The Selene Gardening Society / Molly Brown --
Seventy-two letters / Ted Chiang --
The Martian agent, a planetary romance / Michael Chabon --
Victoria / Paul Di Filippo --
Reflected light / Rachel E. Pollock --
Minutes of the last meeting / Stepan Chapman --
Excerpt from the third and last volume of Tribes of the Pacific coast / Neal Stephenson --
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. ( )

This was an amazing anthology. If you've got any love, or interest in, the steampunk genre, get this anthology. If you already read steampunk, this one will jump to the front of your favorites. If you haven't read steampunk, but you're kinda curious, this is the perfect introduction. There are examples in this anthology of what the genre can do when in the hands of truly talented writers. (ya... I'm talking to you Mr. Vandermeer)

This was an amazing anthology. If you've got any love, or interest in, the steampunk genre, get this anthology. If you already read steampunk, this one will jump to the front of your favorites. If you haven't read steampunk, but you're kinda curious, this is the perfect introduction. There are examples in this anthology of what the genre can do when in the hands of truly talented writers. (ya... I'm talking to you Mr. Vandermeer)

I was surprised by how much I disliked this collection, given my very positive reaction to the follow-up (which I had read first.) There are a few stories I liked, and a few that I felt mostly neutral about, but the majority were grim, gory, cheerless, and often misogynist - not qualities that appeal to me in the least. Steampunk isn't a particular thrill for me to begin with, and 70s-era pulp and its imitators tend to be more appalling than appealing to me. ( )

Meant to be an introduction to the Steampunk genre the book that shares the same name was rather hit and miss. The essays that start the book off explain the origins of steampunk and its eventual evolution are worth reading, as they show you that the idea of steampunk is a lot older then most of us would expect having its origins in the penny dreadfuls and dime novels of the past. It is also interesting reading the excerpt from Michael Moorcock's The Warlord of the Air, as it is though to be one of the books that influenced and the many of the early modern era steampunk writers of the 1980's. However once you get to the stories themselves the book starts to strike out. The stories do their job of showing different aspects of the genre, although I did find that some, namely The Giving Mouth and Excerpt From the Tribes of the Pacific Coast only had a tenuous linking to Steampunk. Some of the other stories in the collection I just found rather dull and had to force my way through them. However, there are a few Gems that I really liked:

A Sun in the Attic by Mary Gentle asks the question of the worth of progress in a society
The Selene Gardening Society by Molly Brown tells of a group of Victorian ladies who want to turn the moon into a garden
Seventy-Two Letters by Ted Chiang shows a world where Kabbalistic magic is used to create scientific wonders
Victoria by Paul Di Filippo tells a tale of mistaken identity where a Homunculus that looks like a young Queen Victoria is placed on the throne when the real Victoria run away.

The essays at the end of the book were also nice as they give you a brief survey of steampunk in movies and comic book form as well as gives you a nice list of some of the authors favorites. Overall. the book was just average for me. Its a good introduction to the genre and the essays really help but i wish they had done a better job at selecting some of the story's. ( )