The voice of 80′s cartoon Jem muses on the show, and how those wacky Misfits might have turned out.

Yes, I’ll admit it, I was a huge Jem and the Holograms fan. It may have been the first cartoon I took to my heart – well, that and Battle of the Planets, and Astro Boy and Mysterious Cities of Gold, and, and, and…

I don’t know how anyone could possibly read this Big Idea post by Kate Elliott and not want to read her new series! Luckily for me I have Book One, Cold Magic on my to read shelf already! I also love the description of how she worldbuilt with her kids.

“Which is how I ended up with an Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy adventure with airships, Phoenician spies, and the intelligent descendants of troodons.”

Seanan Maguire adds a marvellous post to the old ‘Mary Sue does not mean what you think it means’ discussion. It’s articulate, funny and conveys its message (that by its definition, a protagonist can’t be a Mary Sue) perfectly. Which is why I was frustrated to see the comments fill up with people who agreed with her heartily but still felt the need to claim that [insert female protagonist here] was a classic Mary Sue. Sigh.

Sarah Rees Brennan talks about being self conscious and how that can affect an author’s ability to blog, or indeed do much of anything in a public space without overthinking it.

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Catherynne Valente stirred up the internet a little with her ranty (and it has to be said, a touch curmudgeonly) post about the rage-inducing failings of steampunk as a literary genre. It’s worth sifting through the comments on that one because they are respectful for the most part, and consist of some very interesting defences as well as criticisms of steampunk.

One question which seems to emerge from the post and the comments is: Does it count as a legitimate literary movement if there isn’t a great work (a Neuromancer) to spark it off? I’m not sure that it doesn’t. While a single iconic work is a great way to market a subgenre and give it that kickstart to inspire a bunch of writers around it, the idea of one book representing a whole subgenre also doesn’t sit well with me. Our methods of academic and criticical literary discourse are moulded by patriarchal methods, and there is something that feels very “male dominated academia” about singling out one book and holding it up as the flagbearer of a subgenre. Even if that book is Bridget Jones’ Diary…

As a canon-buster and someone who prefers inclusionism to reductionism, I’m actually much more interested in the idea of a literary movement that isn’t led by one book.

The most interesting thing to me about steampunk (though I’m not really an enthusiast, more of a vaguely interested observer) is that it isn’t a literary movement at all. It’s very much a mixed media movement with a huge emphasis on artwork, craftsmanship and costuming. That’s where the greater passions of steampunk seem to lie, with the literary aspect desperately trying to catch up. There’s a flashmob sensibility to it, rather than a single line of influence. Many people in the comments of Catherynne’s post preferred to define steampunk as an aesthetic, rather than a literary movement or sub-genre. I also agree heartily with the many people in the comments who suggested that the most interesting literary steampunk was happening in short fiction rather than novels, though some novels like Boneshaker by Cherie Priest and Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld have certainly caught the imagination of readers.

For my own part, I find steampunk (or gaslamp fantasy, its magical twin) far more intriguing when there is an artistic aspect to the story – like Girl Genius, or the Miyazaki film Howl’s Moving Castle, or any cartoon appearance of TikTok of Oz… Also, while I really enjoyed Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan, I can’t help feeling that the illustrations from that book and particularly the “grand map” by Keith Thompson are the steampunk masterpiece of 2009 more than any single piece of fiction.

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This graphic novel is one of the freebies that was sent out with the Hugo packet to help those with voting rights become more informed about the shortlisted works. Can I just say, how awesome is reading comics in e-format? I need to digitise my JLA collection stat.

Girl Genius, written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio, is a webcomic available free, which also releases the stories in graphic novel format each year. I’ve been interested in this one for some time and gone so far as to bookmark the site, but have never got around to actually finding the time to check it out properly. This fantastical steampunk (or gaslamp fantasy) tale of “Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!” has been running for ten years and I knew going into it that starting at Vol. 9 was asking for trouble.

Sure enough, it was hard to get into at first. I liked the artwork, which is bright and gorgeous and features some beautifully human-shaped women (by no means a common event in any comic art). I liked the steampunk/gaslamp iconography, but for the first several pages it seemed like it mostly consisted of young people in corsets and tight trousers shouting at each other.

Gradually, though, Girl Genius got under my skin. The slow dripfeed of backstory and worldbuilding meant that by the time I was halfway through, I pretty much knew most of the relevant things that had happened so far, and what was at stake. I was also very attached to many of the characters, mildly invested in the romances, and starting to laugh at the in jokes.

Agatha and her friends are stuck in a sentient castle that may or may not want some of them dead. One of her love interests is dying in any case, from a mysterious and extremely colourful ailment, and the other is wandering around with an Agatha-imposter, flexing his muscles and generally getting into trouble. As promised on the tin, there is adventure and romance and mad science. The worldbuilding is beautiful, especially the concepts of the Sparks, and the way that magic, science and engineering intersect with each other. The characters are appealling and I particularly loved the scenes where the two boys were forced to work together, acknowledging that they both care for Agatha and, it seems, have a secret past of their own.

Agatha Heterodyne is definitely worth your time, especially if you have a thing for strong, talented female heroes, snark, steampunk, love triangles and people building shiny things in dark laboratories. It has a feel of a particularly smart manga to it, and you can read it without paying a cent. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Ooh, and you can buy the collections in pdf form. I’m so there!

As I mentioned in a previous post, this is a book that has been calling out to me for some time. It’s Victorian urban fantasy! (or urbane fantasy, according to the author’s website, which is all kinds of awesome) The main character wields a parasol against vampires and werewolves! Mannerpunk! Oh yes. Completely my cup of tea. (did I mention the near-constant tea drinking?)

After resisting the purchase of this tempting morsel for so long, I snatched it up pretty instantly upon finally acquiring it, and read it over a couple of days. Considering how little book reading time I usually have, this is saying something. The story runs along at great pace, and with great humour. It really is like a cross between Jane Austen and PG Wodehouse, with added vampires, werewolves and steampunk.

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This is one I have taken a while to read; I think because it’s so unlike what I normally do that I have had to wait between stints to be in the right mood again. I finished the last third at a fine lick today and enjoyed it greatly. This is the first steampunk novel I’ve read that was aimed at adults rather than children/YA and I enjoyed the extra crunchy levels of relationship drama that this entailed. (it’s also, incidentally, the first steampunk novel I have read which is written by a woman)

In short, this is the story about Briar Wilkes, a widow who lives a hard life in the area outside late 19th century Seattle, a city no longer habitable because of an environmental crisis called the Blight that has poisoned the city’s air and turned a good chunk of its population into zombies. Briar keeps her head down, working hard and protecting her teenage son Zeke as much as she can from the truth about his father Leviticus Blue, the most hated man in the history of Seattle, whose grand digging machine brought the Blight into the city.

When Zeke disappears into the ruined city, supposedly to find out more about his grandfather the hero (though Briar suspects he is following rumours about his father), Briar has no choice but to chase after him, into a world of gas masks, air-pumping machines, zeppelin pilots, armoured warriors, amputees with mechanical limbs, mad scientists and, you know, zombies. Lots and lots of zombies. Will Briar find Zeke before he gets himself killed? Is Leviticus Blue really still alive in the bowels of the destroyed city?

I’m sure the fun action adventure aspects of the story are what has made this book so popular, especially I think amongst male readers, but for me the thing that kept me coming back was the relationship between Briar and her son, and the secret history of Briar and her husband. A simple personal story in between all the steampunky goodness – and how often do we get to see a Mum front and centre in a speculative fiction novel? Not enough, I say! Briar kicks arse, like a slightly saner version of Sarah Connor v. the Terminator, with nothing but the safety of her son spurring her on. I liked how real and sensible she seemed, though, at the heart of it – ordinary people doing extraordinary deeds are far more interesting to me than those with superpowers.

There is a sequel, Clementine, coming along at some point, but Boneshaker is nicely contained with a satisfying finale.

There are very few novels written in this century that leave you with the urge to shout things like “jolly good show!” Leviathan is most definitely one of them.

Over the last several years, Scott Westerfeld has established himself as a writer of fast-paced, edgy YA novels in a variety of flavours: future dystopia teenagers, vampire apocalypse teenagers, magical demon-slaying teenagers… With Leviathan he now turns his hand to steampunk, presenting the first volume of an action-adventure epic trilogy set in an Alternate Universe version of World War I.

It is 1914. Living airships roam the skies. Walking metal tanks prowl the ground. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary has been murdered along with his wife and while the political ramifications of this event spiral towards world war, their teenage son Alek goes on the run with a handful of allies. Meanwhile, British lass Deryn Sharp has disguised herself as a boy in order to train and serve as an airman. The (beautifully illustrated) world map is divided into Darwinist countries with their hybrid animal technology and Clanker countries with their more “traditional” steam-and-gears machinery, and the teen protagonists are on different sides of the technological divide as well as the war. But it’s getting harder to draw that line…

Yep, this is the steampunk everyone’s been talking about.

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