Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant
(2011)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
I wish I'd written this one up sooner, but I hadn't written earlier books yet. Also, I hadn't thought at the time that I might want to write something about the individual stories.
There was a call for story proposals for an upcoming steampunk anthology which will be published for an upcoming Steampunk convention. It will be handled by eSpec Book, which has published stories that I've written. I would've liked to have proposed a story. However, to be honest, I don't know much about Steampunk. I know the gears and the clockwork stuff and the flying ships and the steam and goggles and stuff, but not what actually makes a Steampunk story.
So I went looking for an anthology. Actually, I looked for novels first, but I kept finding romances with steampunk settings. When I discovered the anthology, I realized that I could get a bunch of different takes on what makes a steampunk story. Basically, a lot of things. For one thing, anything done by Jules Verne is fair game. Also, "The Island of Doctor Moreau" (H. G. Wells) isn't off-limits either.
Stories can be Victorian up through World War I. I don't remember any set in the Wild West, but there are analogues (read elsewhere) between Edwardian/Victorian England and the upper crust of the American West. This is good to know for writing, because I might want to set it in the American West. On the other hand, Long Island, NY was underdeveloped at the time and yet so close to NYC. But I digress.
I did find a review which broke down the list of stories. I rememeber from the authors' bios that all of them have multiple credits to their name. The ones I remember, I will comment on. Unfortunately, the book has already gone back to the library, so I can't go back and peek at it. Also, I read the stories in the book over a period of a couple of months while I was reading other things, so some of the details of the earlier stories may be fuzzy.
n particular:
"Some Fortunate Future Day" by Cassandra Clare set the stage for the book. It took place during the war (WWI). A girl, Rose, is home alone in her mansion, cared for by automatons built by her father, who also built friends for her (life-sized dolls). An injured soldier comes to the house that she (and the robots) care for. She fantasizes that the soldier will take her away and that they will live happily ever after. The soldier sees her as a child, however. The girl then uses a time travel device of her father's (not out of the realm of possibility given the setup), to go back a few days so that she can try to win the soldier all over again. When she goes back, the device remains where it was, so it can be used again. (I don't recall if that means that there will be two instances of the girl now.) I enjoyed the story. If this were the benchmark for the series, then it was set high, say 4 out of 5.
"The Last Ride of the Glory Girls" by Libba Bray. I think it took a while before I realized that this was set on another planet and not in the old West. There are Pinkerton detectives, so I assumed it was some alternate history with gadgets. Not an issue, but it threw me a little. The girl is good with gadgets, and you know she will not recognized by many for her talents because she's female. She overcomes a bad situation. Good story.
"Clockwork Fagin" by Cory Doctorow is, I imagine, a steampunk "Oliver Twist". I say, I imagine, but I've never read it or seen a film (or musical), just adaptations into other mediums and genres. There's a horrible orphange filled with kids with injuries from jobs that kids shouldn't be performing, but did back then. The new kid kills the creepy man who runs the place, but which clockwork technology, they manage to fool people into thinking he's alive until they can come up with another plan. The problem they face is, if discovered, no one knows who would take over the orphange (could be worse) or if the kids would wind up worse off. A pretty good story and made use of clockwork stuff in a belieavable way. The stuff exists, and they adapt it.
"Seven Days Beset by Demons" by Shawn Cheng was a seven-panel comic which was a little difficult to read in kindle. Each day is a deadly sin. It didn't do much for me as it was a concept story/art piece.
"Hand in Glove" by Ysabeau S. Wilce. Okay, this one I think I remember. It was weird. There's a detective and a constable solving murders. The constable wants to use fingerprints but the detective doesn't like the modern methods. The fingerprints indicate that a dead man was a murderer. The investigation leads to a Frankenstein-like setup. If I recall correctly, the mad scientist is an uplifted chimp (the term "uplifted" is not used -- in fact, I don't recall if they address it at all). The doctor is re-animating bodies, but the problem is that most bodies have something wrong with them usually related to the cause of or the aftermath of their death. So parts get taking from multiple bodies. (If I'm remembering correctly, a hand is animated and walks alone, and it might've been the murderer's hand. Again, it was a while ago.)
"The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor" by Delia Sherman was a little odd from where it started and then where it went, but that isn't a bad thing. Unexpected, which isn't bad. Victorian setting and the name is definitely Welsh. (I googled how to pronounce it.) A young maid helps her young master with the help of the ghost of one of her ancestors. She works as a housekeeper because there's no future for a blacksmith's daughter -- certainly not as an engineer.
I don't mind stories that bring this to mind, so long as the entire anthology isn't filled with them -- unless, of course, that's the theme of the anthology, as opposed to "steampunk" -- so long as this is woven into the plot and not a soapbox placed on top of the plot's throat.
This was one of the more enjoyable stories. The can never be certain when you have a ghost story because you expect the ghost to be real, but then if it is, you expect that it has some rules or at least reasons for its actions or lack of actions.
"Gethsemane" by Elizabeth Knox. I really don't remember much about this at all, which is odd because I know it's religious allegory and I usually remember those. (Particularly if really good or really bad. Maybe it was neither?) It takes place (Google search) on a fictional island in the South Pacific, part of the Shackle Islands (which aren't real, either). I think there was magic and mysticism and making people blind and dependent on you and stuff I wouldn't associate with stemapunk. But there was something steampunk-y about it, I'm sure.
"The Summer People" by Kelly Link. I don't remember much about this one either. I could be confusing this one with the previous one. Maybe the summer people have all that power. I don't remember.
"Peace in Our Time" by Garth Nix. I don't remember hating it, so there's that. An end of the world story, I think. (This is why I need to make notes sooner.)
"Nowhere Fast" by Christopher Rowe. In the future a lot of stuff is outlawed by the government, and some people like it that way because that stuff was bad (like oil and cars and stuff). Not much to say about it.
"Finishing School: A Colonial Adventure" by Kathleen Jennings is a comic about a girl who built a flying machine. I don't remember much about it becasue (again) comics in kindle are difficult to read.
"Steam Girl" by Dylan Horrocks. Two young misfits fall in love.
"Everything Amiable and Obliging" by Holly Black. I believe that this is the story with the young woman who rejects all suitors because she's in love with her personal automaton. That machine is connected to the house. When there relationship is severed, the house reacts badly to the point where the house, which is supposed to serve and please everyone, only cares for the one mistress. In the end, she weds the automaton. This story couldn't have been written 100 years ago. Actually, it could have been written by Verne or Wells but it would've ended differently. This ending would never have sold. The house would've burned down instead with the maid inside the house, or being dragged out over the shoulder of her father or one of her many suitors. The automaton might have even pushed her into whichever man's waiting arms. Actually, I could write that -- except that I'm rubbish with romance stories, not to mention Regency settings.
"The Oracle Engine" by M.T. Anderson. Steampunk in Ancient Rome. The Romans were brilliant engineers and this kicked that up a notch. It's a story of revenge of a young boy against the rich and powerful Crassus, who allowed the boy's home to burn and his father to die because the father could not afford Crassus's price to douse the flames and save the house. The boy grows up to be an engineer and approaches Crassus about building an Oracle Engine that could, given all the needed information, foresee victory or defeat in the future. And he's willing to build it for the fame that his engine will bring. Crassus heads to the Middle East on a campaign that traditional omens predict doom. He lets the enemy move about freely while awaiting the Oracle's programming to be completed. He has it tested, and then kills the young man who built it so he could make no more. He tells them that he knows who he is. Before Crassus finally launches his campaign, he has the engine checked for sabotage and finds a coin, with no memory of giving that coin to the young boy who would grow to make the engine. The coin would have altered the results. Instead Crassus hears prophecies that he believes means victory but are actually the kinds of things said by the gods and oracles to the players in tragedies before they fall. And his company falls. Revenge is had. (SPOILER, sorry)
So I can see why it took me a while to finish becuase there was a dry spell in the middle with a handful of stories that didn't do much for me, and which I barely remembered. It did finish strong, however, with the Crassus tale. Ancient Rome i not what I think of when I think "steampunk", but as I mentioned before, given Roman engineering, it actually makes a lot of sense to place a story there. Probbably moreso than in any other place at any other time in history, outside of the traditional origins.
So now I have a slightly better understanding of steampunk, except that the story I had in mind doesn't fit with any of these. I'm happy to see zeppelins, but I wanted to see flying ships, actual ships that flew. And maybe I'll still write that.
