Monthly Archives: September 2011

Ganymede by Cherie Priest

Two years ago, Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker brought a new vitality to steampunk and kicked off her Clockwork Century series. Ganymede, the latest installment, come out today and is definitely worth adding to your library. (Whether it is third or fourth depends on whether you choose to count Clementine; I count it, but not everyone does.) I found it a more enjoyable read than Dreadnought which seemed to bog down at times, although still not as gripping as Boneshaker (which to be fair benefited from the excitement of introducing us to a new world).

This book follows two characters in more or less alternating chapters. First is Andan Cly, the Seattle airship captain we met back in Boneshaker who is making his first supply run as a legitimate business man, more or less, but who also needs to stop by New Orleans to do a favor for our second viewpoint character, Miss Josephine Early. Josephine runs a brothel in Texian-occupied New Orleans, but is also working with her brother and other guerrillas to help the Union’s efforts to end the 20 year civil war still ravaging North America. Andan doesn’t know is that the favor is piloting a secret stolen Confederate submarine, the titular Ganymede, or that the Confederate forces will stop at nothing to prevent that from happening. I won’t spoil anything here, but as with the earlier books in the series, the tensions build strongly to a powerful finish.

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PBS Takes on Steampunk

So, PBS has decided to give us their take on Steampunk in the latest installment of Off Book. PBS Arts’s Off Book is a “web series focused on experimental and non-traditional art form,” so it is certainly an appropriate forum for steampunk to be discussed. Their brief documentary gives a nice look at steampunk aesthetics, especially as applied to craft, music, and performance. It is unfortunate that the literature that gave birth to the movement is not discussed, but that may lie outside of the Off Book‘s core focus (although why literature would not be part of “arts” is beyond me). Regardless, it is nice to see steampunk getting some wider attention.

Here’s the documentary; let me know what you think.