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Steampunk is a genre that appeals to a wide range of people, from diehard Hayao Miyazaki animation fans to those still mourning Fox's failure to recommission Joss Whedon's Firefly. So creating an anthology that works for all could have been a challenge, but the editors have done a good job, pulling together short stories and two graphic novellas by writers/artists, both well known and less known.
I won't summarize all the stories (and not doing so doesn't mean they are bad!), but here's a taster of the variety included.
It's easy to picture The Last Ride of the Glory Girls as an episode of the afor-mentioned Firefly series. (for non-Americans, mash up Star Wars, Farscape and Deadwood and you're at least part way to getting what Fox deprived us of). In a story with Pinkertons, train raids and a nascent gromance between the protagonist and the gang of girl outlaws she has been sent to infiltrate, Libba Bray provides a solid backdrop of landscape and characters in a story that asks us to imagine how we would use time if we could stop it for ten minutes. There's a stroppy Welsh apparition trying her best to save her descendant's estate in Delia Sherman's The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor; and in M.T. Anderson's The Oracle Engine, we get a portrait of Roman power politics and the hold that divination has, even for those who don't believe they are superstitious. My personal favourites are Kelly Link's The Summer People, where an unseen fairy folk give strange and wonderful devices and an otherworldly protection to those who tread carefully on their territory; and Dylan Horrock's lyrical and beautiful Steam Girl, where two unlikely teenage misfits find magic in an imaginary world.
I won't summarize all the stories (and not doing so doesn't mean they are bad!), but here's a taster of the variety included.
It's easy to picture The Last Ride of the Glory Girls as an episode of the afor-mentioned Firefly series. (for non-Americans, mash up Star Wars, Farscape and Deadwood and you're at least part way to getting what Fox deprived us of). In a story with Pinkertons, train raids and a nascent gromance between the protagonist and the gang of girl outlaws she has been sent to infiltrate, Libba Bray provides a solid backdrop of landscape and characters in a story that asks us to imagine how we would use time if we could stop it for ten minutes. There's a stroppy Welsh apparition trying her best to save her descendant's estate in Delia Sherman's The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor; and in M.T. Anderson's The Oracle Engine, we get a portrait of Roman power politics and the hold that divination has, even for those who don't believe they are superstitious. My personal favourites are Kelly Link's The Summer People, where an unseen fairy folk give strange and wonderful devices and an otherworldly protection to those who tread carefully on their territory; and Dylan Horrock's lyrical and beautiful Steam Girl, where two unlikely teenage misfits find magic in an imaginary world.