This collection of steampunk stories covers a lot of ground. (Steampunk is science fiction or fantasy set ina world where technology hasn't progressed beyond the steam engine, but that's a very big tent.) It was a great introduction to steampunk, and all of the stories were worth reading. I was blown away by a couple of the stories, and you probably will be too -- just not the same stories. ( )

This anthology presents short stories in the steampunk genre. Steampunk, in my mind, is a subgenre of science fiction, usually set in the Victorian Era with the use of advanced steam or clockwork technology and very much inspired by Jules Verne. Though some people would argue that it is more complicated than that.

"Seventy-Two Letters," by Ted Chiang and "Victoria," by Paul Di Filippo don't exactly fall into that category. While they are both set in the Victorian Era, they are more biopunk (biopunk, to my limited understanding, being a genre in which the science is more focused on biology and genetics.) than steampunk. Nevertheless, both stories are well written and enjoyable, so the break in genre did not bother me much.

However, the rest of the stories fall well into my definition of the genre, and the stories are consistently good throughout. These are some of my favorites:

"The Giving Mouth," , by Ian MacLeod, in which a dark feudal society, driven by steam powered horses and an industrial complex, is threatened by a shadowy killer.

"The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down," by Joe Lansdale, in which the former hero of H.G. Well's The Time Machine has become a monster and has torn time and space apart in his travels.

"The Selene Gardening Society," by Molly Brown, in which making the moon inhabitable could solve a rather disagreeable problem.

There are also three essays that define the genre and look at steampunk in pop culture and the comic book medium.

Overall I would say that this is a decent introduction to the genre, and well worth a look. ( )

I read a review of another Vandermeer anthology that said these two, as editors, are very good at propaganda for their genre du jour, and I think that is true of them in this anthology as well. Steampunk is here treated like the hip, cool, look-everyone-is-doing-it sub-genre of the moment, which may or may not be true, but that sort of attitude inevitably leads to some overstepping; not all of these stories are dominantly steampunk and several are simply alternate histories that happen to have the odd airship (read: blimp, for those not in steampunk mode) or boiler-driven vehicle in them. It’s always difficult to define a genre, doubly so a sub-genre, but it seems to me that lately people are getting entirely carried away with inclusivity. Not every story with a blimp in it has to be steampunk, but perhaps because steampunk started out merely as a neo-victorian aesthetic, here the assumption seems to be that if it touches that aesthetic, it must be steampunk. Hmm. Genre considerations aside, this anthology is still inconsistent. Some of the stories (like Ted Chiang’s “Seventy-Two Letters” which I had read and admired several years ago in an unrelated anthology) are lush and brilliant, some, frankly, suck (Stephen Chapman contributes a steam-nano hybrid which seems to want to be all things to all people – and we know how well that usually works – and offers an ending that’s in the running for “world’s lamest apocalypse”). Several of the best stories here can be found in other, more consistent anthologies, like the sublime Vanishing Acts (where I first encountered Chiang’s story); though I generally enjoy victoriana and do like a lot of steampunk, I probably won’t revisit this anthology as a whole any time soon.

I've been a fan of steampunk for a few years, and so when I heard that this collection of short stories was coming out, I was really excited. Steampunk is a mostly pretty good set of stories with a bit of history up front and at the end. The selection of stories covers a pretty broad spectrum of the genre, with a few surprises - such as Michael Chabon's steampunk vision. Although, the book is worth the price for "Lord Kelvin's Machine" - the original story, not the expanded book - and for "The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down".

The introductory material by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer is a reasonably good history of steampunk stories and books, but the ending pop culture survey was not much more informative than the wikipedia entries on steampunk. And I wasn't interested at all in Bill Baker's comic book survey.

Recommended, especially for anyone who wants a jump start in the genre. ( )

Another interesting retrospective anthology from the VanderMeer marital team, from the same publisher in Tachyon, too. This one I think with a cooler and more appropriate cover.

The difference here is that neither of the editors are as heavily invested in the subject from a personal writing point of view as with The New Weird. So, there is a Team VanderMeer intro, but then they hand over the non-fictional reins to others more knowledgeable.

For early genre fiction of this ilk, if there is anyone more knowledgeable than Jess Nevins it would be surprising - and they certainly haven't written all the cool stuff on the internet that he has - go and check out his website, it is a marvel. So, pretty much anything he writes on this sort of topic will be worth looking at - and here he gives the early history of work that leads to 'Steampunk'. From before Verne and Wells, to the American explorer-scientist 'Edisonades' as he points out these have been termed, right up to the first 'story 'included here, Michael Moorcock's Oswald Bastable excerpt.

He does talk about the 'punk' element here, and even first and second wave steampunk, and who the first wave authors were - Blaylock, Jeter, etc. Nevins concentrates on prose.

Rick Klaw talks about Steampunk in popular culture in a wide variety of media, film, anime, etc.

Bill Baker gives an overview of Steampunk in graphic format - and there are lots, and gives a reasonable looking bibliography as such, including the awesome Warren Ellis and John Cassaday Planetary and Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that are must reads, for those that like this sort of thing.

On the whole, reasonably well done, although a couple more lists from Nevins and Klaw wouldn't have gone astray, even though work is mentioned. Such things are good for asking librarians 'here, check these out on Interlibrary Loan for me would you please'?

There is a wide range of stories from the very fluffy-light Molly Brown story through madcap Blaylock, to the, to quote my spousal unit, who read this before me 'the really twisted' Joe Lansdale. The final story is a bit different, nanopunk if you like - from Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age setting. A nice score to get a story from him though, and it, too, is cool.

There are no bad stories here, although the footnote ending of Pollack's is weak, and Chabon's is annoying to read with all the em-dash line beginnings that make it like your eyes are trying to herd ants to follow it.

The publisher shouldn't be shy about making use of spare pages to advertise other anthologies they have done or possible books of interest to those of us that buy these things. I don't think many of us mind that, within reason, if you have the space.

Overall, I'd put it a bit under 4.5, but certainly good enough to round up to there.

Steampunk : Benediction: Warlord of the Air - Michael Moorcock
Steampunk : Lord Kelvin’s Machine - James Blaylock
Steampunk : The Giving Mouth - Ian MacLeod
Steampunk : A Sun in the Attic - Mary Gentle
Steampunk : The God-Clown Is Near - Jay Lake
Steampunk : The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down - Joe Lansdale
Steampunk : The Selene Gardening Society - Molly Brown
Steampunk : Seventy-Two Letters - Ted Chiang
Steampunk : The Martian Agent: An Interplanetary Romance - Michael Chabon
Steampunk : Victoria - Paul Di Filippo
Steampunk : Reflected Light - Rachel E. Pollock
Steampunk : Minutes of the Last Meeting - Stepan Chapman
Steampunk : Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of the Tribes of the Pacific Coast - Neal Stephenson

Fleet going down.

3.5 out of 5

Magnetic field massacre mouse save snakes into mad scientist volcano shootout showdown.

4 out of 5

Eater machined.

3 out of 5

Archival barbarian reports.

3.5 out of 5

Really getting their goat.

4 out of 5

The Time Traveler vampire show is a rip of a ride.

4.5 out of 5

The Moon? What a load of rubbish.

3.5 out of 5

Foetal experiment orders named.

3.5 out of 5

Airship hopes.

3 out of 5

Newt but a Queen.

4 out of 5

Less handy rebels.

3 out of 5

Tsar Nukeallofus.

3.5 out of 5

Nano Protoctol crossbow source defense samurai chainsword rescue.

3.5 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2008/07/steampunk-jeff-vandermeer-and-ann.html
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