Some Links To Look At

Bruce Sterling talks about Steampunk: The Users Guide to Steampunk (Thanks to Jay Lake)

The people at NASA think a patch of ocean near Perth, Australia would be an ideal spot for a Space Elevator

Book View Cafe is here. An online smorgasbord of out-of-print, experimental, or otherwise unavailable work from over 20 authors including some of my favourites, Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda N. McIntyre, Sarah Zettel and Aussie, Sylvia Kelso.

Wastelands: Age of Iron

Returning home from Wastelands was like coming back from Clarion. I was just getting into the swing of being around like-minded people who love sf, fantasy....and (best of all) Steampunk and it was time to go.

It was:

Fun and frightening reading out my paper (a first for me).

Great catching up with friends new and old.

Awesome listening to Nick Stathopoulos about art and the titanic and Mr Squiggle.

Fantastic eating cupcakes and drinking tea and talking with the ladies from Twelfth Planet Press.

Amazing looking at all the dress ups. There's something about the Victorian costume that makes me wish we still dressed like that, except maybe for the corsets in summer. And, of course, the girl who gave me a business card advertising "The Arte of Weaponry" was dressed totally the coolest. And so was Lily Chrywenstrom who seemed to be dressed in something different every time I saw her!!

A totally awesome time. Congratulations Callistra and Cheshirenoir for a job excellently done.

Next steampunk convention, I'm dressing up!

Wastelands: Age of Iron

I'm presenting a paper at Wastelands tomorrow morning:

A Brief History of Steampunk: What Wound It Up and Why It Still Ticks

Steampunk can be purely science fictional or a mixture of science fiction and fantasy, suffused with anything from a heavy dash to a light sprinkling of neo-Victorianism. So why not neo-classicism? Or druidism? Or Roman chariotpunk? What is it about the Victorians that secures their place in steampunk? To explore this question, I will look at works of proto-science fiction, beginning from the early 1800s, following an evolutionary branch to the works of Jeter, Powers, Blaylock, Gibson, Sterling and Mieville.

Steampunky Trivia

Dare I admit how long ago it was that I read the works of Jules Verne? Journey To the Centre of the Earth was my first SF novel. That impressed me so much that I kept reading SF and, when I grew up, took up caving and cave diving for a few years. Today I decided to have a reread of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in preparation for the paper I'm giving at Wastelands: Age of Iron. How tickled was I to relearn that Captain Nemo's Nautilus was powered by electricity.

All you DIY steampunkers and steampunk musicians whose awesome creations get dissed because they don't spout steam, here's your defence: The Nautilus didn't spout steam either!!

Steampunk Music

I was looking up Seattle today and found this link to Abney Park. I'm really liking this genre.

Reading Frenzy

I've got to get this proposal out of the way, so I'm reading like crazy. This week I finished off China Mieville's Perdido Street Station which is a veritable feast and one book (along with The Scar and probably King Rat) that I'm going to refer to a lot in my PhD essay. Also read K.W. Jeter's Morlock Nights which is one of the first (or maybe THE first) Steampunk novel. I found this really useful in deciding which themes I want to pursue when I write about Mieville's work because it's by far less complex and easier to critique. Now I'm halfway through Gibson & Stirling's The Difference Engine which I hope to finish tomorrow. I love the writing in this book and I keep trying to figure out which bits Stirling wrote and which bits Gibson wrote, but that's not what I'm supposed to be looking for. Once that's read, I'm going to knuckle down to some proposal writing and also try and get through Tim Powers' Anubis Gates and something by Moorecock and Sean McMullen and maybe Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Busy times ahead.

Hint: If your having trouble with pantry moths (which I am right now), Perdido Street Station is probably only going to make matters worse!!!