Steampunk Tales #2

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!