It's Steampunk month at Tor Books!  See the Introduction to Steampunk Month here which includes a large index of what you can sxpect to see this month.  

Of particular interest to this scrapyard sociologist are Steampunk as Subculture and No Elitism Please, We’re Steampunk both by Jaymee Goh.

I finally found a few minutes to sit down and take a look at Steampunk Tales and I was pleasantly surprised.  Steampunk Tales is an anthology of short fiction which is delivered to you digitally in multiple formats:

Emulating the style of the pulp adventure magazines of the 1920s and '30s, Steampunk Tales contains first-run, original fiction written by an A+ list of award-winning authors. Issue #1 contains 10 stories, each running between 4,300 to 11,000 words, for an unbelievable price. 

"We stand at the beginning of a revolution in the distribution of print," says John Sondericker III, Steampulp Publishing's  founder.  "The combination of low distribution costs and the potential for high-volume sales allows us to provide this product at an astounding value for the consumer. The timing is perfect to re-introduce the world to the 'Penny Dreadfuls', and the iPhone is a platform that can truly do them justice."

The publishers graciously sent a review copy but I didn't actually view that version. Instead I purchased and downloaded the iPhone version of Steampunk Tales while waiting in a hospital lounge (just some routine maintenance and upgrades, mind you, nothing serious!)

The user interface was quite usable after tweaking the page color and font. I do feel the default font size is quite a bit too large and that this makes for a great deal of extraneous page flipping.

The stories themselves are, happily, quite readable without any tweaking at all!  The experience very much reminded me of the pulp science fiction magazines of my youth: Galaxy and Analog.  This makes perfect sense since they themselves were a direct descendant of the Penny Dreadfuls Steampunk Tales is attempting to emulate.  Issues of Steampunk Tales can be purchased here and a free teaser is available here for your enjoyment!

A couple of years ago I sat down and tried to write a description of what Steampunk was as a sub-culture, or more precisely, what I thought it could be.  I filled half a moleskine with my scribblings before I decided the whole exercise was hubris, folly, and not particularly fun.  

However, as part of my research I read a couple of histories of the Punk rock movement as well as several books suggested to me by friends as influential in their lives.  The Punk rock histories brought back fond memories of High School, and while I was more into New Wave and Synth Pop back then, the energy of the Punks infused and informed much of the music and culture of the time. I enjoyed the nostalgia.

But the books suggested to me that had the biggest impact were those from the CrimethInc ExWorker's Collective.  In particular Days of War, Nights of Love.  Without going into great detail, Days is a exhortation to examine your life, to question your assumptions, and to act on the answers. It's about autonomy and anarchy and a large portion of Days is criticism of capitalism and it's negative effects on our lives.  Days is from gut, and you feel that the CrimethInc folks got it mostly right.

Rushkoff's book, on the other hand, is a rigorous history of the origins of the corporation and central monetary systems and how they self-propagate and suborn us to "their" needs.  Whether you view Capitalism as our best hope for prosperity or the greatest evil the world has ever known, Life, Inc. will give you insight into how capital has it's own agenda, and how it affects the ways in which we relate to each other.

Rushkoff is not anti-business, anti-commerce, or even anti-corporation, per se.   But he makes the case, to me at least, that the choice of our particular 'flavor' of money has had deep and lasting effects on society and that there are other ways to represent value and different choices we can make in our daily lives that are practical, beneficial, and compatible.  Ultimately, it is a hopeful book.

Attempting to tie this back into my own particular DIY version of Steampunk, let me remind you that money is a tool.  When wielded with skill and understanding it can do a great deal of good, but wielded incompetantly, with evil intent, or simply because the user see the tool as end rather than means, it can hurt and even kill. RTFM. Here's the manual.

Douglas Rushkoff mixing it up with Steven Colbert:

I can't believe I stumbled upon this. If there's any time the internet can come close to the joy of finding a discarded love letter or lost writings of a crazed man, this is it. It's $300,000 dollars worth of rare books supplemented by a 3900 word Craigslist ad fervent sermon. Holy cow.

From the ad:

"What was said by a contemporary historian of the 19th century could apply as well to America of the 1950's - that the "poor was striving in almost impossible circumstances of their lives to conform to middle-class standards of morality" Then in around 1960, something happened. Morality went the way of top hats and spats and the center would not hold as a result. Thereafter, cultural programming was generated - from BELOW, not ABOVE. Society began slouching toward today's CULTUREVILLE. As always, those who "control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning - and ultimately MANAGE THE INSTRUMENTS OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION - AND, THUS. SET THE TERMS OF PUBLIC DEBATE. Even then, the "elite", it was generally thought at the time - didn't care for the world around them - and in the words of WORDSWORTH - "Getting and spending, they lay waste OUR lives" "

I would buy the whole collection just to meet this guy. Well, no I wouldn't, but this fills me with glee and a sad sympathy all the same. How can I put this? Everyone has obsessions. I have a lot. This guy has one, and he has seen this one love be mutilated, mutated, and molested into some poor sad approximation of his beloved. Now his hard times (im guessing here) forces them away, and with his one last breath and dusty finger, he is going to tell you what he thinks of it.

Also, can you imagine the smell of those books? A perfume of old leather, ink, and crumbling paper dreams.

The news has just broken that JG Ballard, one of the most influential sci-fi (and otherwise) authors, died this morning after a long battle with illness. He was most widely known for his books Crash and Empire of the Sun, but his short stories are powerful and elegant.

I'm saddened immensly by the news. Almost all the artists I know were influenced heavily by his masterful, powerful, heavily cerebral works. BBC says:

"Despite being referred to as a science fiction writer, Ballard said his books were instead "picturing the psychology of the future".'

Link to the only news out so far.

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is a strange book, I'm just going to come out and say it. It lays on a strange three way intersection of Science Fiction, Detective Noir, and Absurdist Fiction. And the really odd thing is, you get it. Haruki Murakami is able to craft an eye brow raising narrative and plot while still maintaining its accessibility and comprehensibility. You empathize with the characters and the events, despite them being strange to the point of unbelievable.

. . .

There are two types of people in this world. Those that will survive the zombie apocalypse and those that won't. Those that will are the type that, upon entering a building, assess its entry and exit points, tend to gravitate towards second story residences, and always seem to have a crowbar with them. Those that don't have a propensity towards long hair, loose clothing, and panic.

As Steampunks we are probably in a better position for the end of the world then most. We believe in do-it-yourself, sustainable materials, and practice fundamentally vital and sustainable technologies. All these are handy when political and economic infrastructure has gone sliding down the gullet of the howling undead.

It is with these things in mind that I read World War Z. It is a faux-oral history of the zombie wars, the global zombie incursion that happened twelve years before the book was written. It's written by the same man who brought us the invaluable "Zombie Survival Guide", a book so realistic one would think Max Brooks has had some experiences we don't know about.

. . .

The Graveyard Book is a straight-up children’s novel. I searched around Neil Gaiman’s shelf in the fantasy section of my local bookstore for quite a bit before thinking to check “Young Readers.” However, adults who enjoy Gaiman’s other work (especially Coraline) should not let this dissuade them from picking up a copy. While it does not contain the depth of American Gods or the subtle humor of Good Omens, The Graveyard Book is a pleasant break from more mature works of fiction. Gaiman’s storytelling is good enough to transport one back to the days of elementary school and flashlights under the covers, and makes for an easy weekend read.

The novel is essentially a collection of short vignettes of the life of Bod (short for Nobody) Owens, a boy who is adopted as a baby by an entire graveyard after the horrific murder of his family by a man known simply as “Jack.” Bod is raised by his adopted family, a pair of respectable ghosts known as Mr. and Mrs. Owens, his tutor Silas (who is neither dead nor alive), and a myriad of other ghostly figures.

. . .

Imagine, if you will, a mad scientist's genetic amalgamation of Socrates, William Gibson and Tolstoy. Then imagine this creature was sent to live in a secluded convent of monks for fifty years. Then, imagine he is dropped into the middle of a major metropolitan city with a typewriter. Try to come up with a idea of what he would write. About to blow a gasket in your head?

It seems the muses decided that genetic manipulation and gregorian monasteries were a tad on the short side, so rather than going through the whole complicated process imagined above, they just told Neal Stephenson about the Millennium clock, to more or less the same result.

That result is titled Anathem, and is Stephenson's latest work. Its hard to really put the novel in words. As with so many of his works, there are multiple layers – first  is the plot, second is the concept, and third is the ideas. The plot follows a young man who has grown up his entire life in a mathematical/philosophic convent, in a  world which is being shaken up by fantastic and unprecedented events. To say any more really just ruins it. The next layer, the concept, is a world where the long term is taken seriously. The people and organizations think on a a scale of thousands of years rather than their own lifetimes. This world is split into the 'Mathic' world of thinkers (the aforementioned academic monks) and the 'Saecular' world (all casino's, rising and falling empires, chemical dependancies and pogroms). Thirdly, is the idea, which is, as I go it, socratic and plutonic philosophy applied on a societal level.

Sounds dense? Well I wont lie to you, it is. But the entire thing is dipped in the dark chocolate of Stephenson's wit and skillful wordsmithing. The man turns dry philosophic discussions between characters into fascinating dialog and makes what would otherwise be slow and plodding approach a break neck race, so much so that by the end of the 850 some pages, your still grasping for more.

[As promises but a day later, here is part two of The Tailor of Time from the new anthology Clockwork Phoenix.  Enjoy!  - Jake]

A tale of cosmic clockwork, "The Tailor of Time" is taken from the fantasy anthology Clockwork Phoenix, published in July by Norilana Books and for sale on Amazon and other online stores. Editor Mike Allen describes the book as "a home for stories that sidestep expectations in beautiful and unsettling ways, that surprise with their settings and startle with the ways they cross genre boundaries." The anthology also includes strange new stories by Catherynne M. Valente, John Grant, Cat Rambo, Laird Barron, Ekaterina Sedia, Tanith Lee, Marie Brennan, Vandana Singh and John C. Wright. Says Publishers Weekly, “Lush descriptions and exotic imagery startle, engross, chill and electrify the reader, and all 19 stories have a strong and delicious taste of weird.”

Author Deborah Biancotti lives in Sydney, Australia. Winner of the Aurealis and Ditmar awards for her short story writing, she is now working on her first novel. A collection of her work will be launched by Twelfth Planet Press next year, and she has a novella lined up for 2010 publication with Gilgamesh Press. Her stories have appeared in Eidolon 1, Redsine, Ideomancer, infinity plus, 2012, and the anthologies YEARS BEST AUSTRALIAN SF & FANTASY and AUSTRALIAN DARK FANTASY & HORROR. Deborah can be found online at both her journal and her website.

Avery stood to leave, the plan agreed. On a good day, when Bella could breathe without help, he would send word.