Category: Steampunk Books

Charles Dickens Gets a Google Doodle

February 7, 2012

Today is Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday and Google has a special doodle for him. Most people don’t really think of Charles Dickens when they think of Steampunk, which is too bad. Sure, he didn’t write about time machines or atomic submarines, but his works provide a rich view into 19th century London life, and inform the Victorian part of the Steampunk aesthetic like nothing else.

If you haven’t read any Dickens, maybe it’s time you did. Most of it is available free for the Kindle or the Nook.

Cast the Boneshaker Movie

December 2, 2011

If you haven’t heard yet, Cherie Priest’s novel Boneshaker is headed for the big screen thanks to Hammer Films. This is great news, as the book is wonderful (and was picked as our 2010 Book of the Year).

So, let’s have some fun. Who would you cast in the different roles?

Here are a dozen main(ish) characters to get you started, but feel free to suggest choices for minor characters.

• Leviticus Blue
• Briar Wilkes
• Zeke Wilkes
• Maynard Wilkes
• Alaister Mayhem Osterude (Rudy)
• Princess Angeline
• Jeremiah Swakhammer
• Lucy O’Gunning
• Yaozu
• Minnericht
• Andan Cly
• Croggon Beauregard Hainey

I’ll kick things off with a few suggestions:

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Ganymede by Cherie Priest

September 27, 2011

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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Abaddon Books’ Summer of Steampunk

August 25, 2011

By Matt Delman, Doctor Fantastique’s Show of Wonders

Abaddon Books is declaring the next two weeks The Summer of Steampunk in honor of their Pax Brittania series of novels, the world’s longest-running series of Steampunk novels.

Starting today, they’re launching the promotion that’ll mark a new direction in the series at the dedicated Pax Britannia Facebook page. Michael Molcher, the PR coordinator, also mentioned that “the event will culminate in a major announcement about a surprising new book which throws away the rulebook of how genre publishing works.”

If you haven’t heard of Pax Brittania, it’s a series of stories set in the late 20th Century where Queen Victoria is kept alive by Steampunk technology and the British Empire never fell. With characters like Jonathan Green’s swashbuckling agent of the Empire, Ulysses Quicksilver, and Al Ewing’s ultra-violent El Sombra, Pax Brittannia is sure to excite Steampunk readers.

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