I don’t know if it’s the steampunk sub-genre or the fact that the publisher is U.K. based, but a lot of the stories in this original anthology have a distinctly British flavor to them. Certainly a Dickens style world lends itself well to steampunk’s low-technology ethos, dark brooding and full of all sorts of intrigues that can serve as a basis for a plot. On the other hand, it starts to feel a bit monotonous after a bit. The last four stories thankfully aren’t Brit themed, but you gotta read a while to get to them (or intersperse them out of order now that you know).
I definitely appreciate getting the chance to read a few authors I haven’t been exposed to prior to this, at least beyond seeing their names mentioned in a few reviews here and there. I think this is my first reading of eight of the twelve authors appearing.
My favorites of the anthology are from Roberts, VanderMeer and Lake. Lovegrove’s Steampunch
is a good opener as well. There’s nothing I hated or couldn’t get through, even with Youmans’ confusing Static
. I normally hate the stories that confuse me, but this offered other delights. Good to see a fairly new imprint in SF making a name for itself. As they say on EBay, AAA+++.
Steampunch
, James Lovegrove- An old hand at a penal colony tells a newcomer his story. He used to train Steampunch, the mechano-boxing legend, before robot fighting was declared illegal. Battlebots with an edge. Decent story.
Static
, Marly Youmans- I couldn’t really figure out most of what’s going on here. There’s a lot of electricity in the air. Not tension. Electricity. And a woman abuses and/or treats poorly her ward, her grand-niece. On the good side though, Youmans uses some great metaphors in the story.
Nothing was thrown away at The Towers, so time accumulated its sediments inside hatboxes and wardrobes.
Great stuff. If only I understood what was going on. Speed, Speed the Cable
, Kage Baker- Saboteurs scheme to destroy the Trans-Atlantic cable before it’s even been laid. Counter-schemers plot to prevent this from happening so their secret world domination plans aren’t disrupted. Kind of eh, but not bad.
Elementals
, Ian R. MacLeod- I’ve never much been fond of
Law of Attraction
kinds of things. I’m a born skeptic. If science ever shows that it’s true, I’ll gladly go along. But until then, it’s a lot of hooey (like most of the anti-Obama bull-crap that right-wing ignoramuses spout on blogs and chain email). Elementals is a law of attraction kind of story. Not that MacLeod believes it (I’ve no evidence either way), but it’s mere presence as the unifying theme of the story biases me against it (like it did against a similarly premised Ursula K. Le Guin story from an anthology). The premise here is that elementals are energy spirits that can inhabit people or things and provide them a life of their own. The key this time is that people have to believe in them for them to be effective (or at least believe in their effect, kind of like a self-additive bubble). The scientist who has discovered them and determined a process to use/enhance them can’t convince people his theory is sound, and so he falls by the wayside because no one believes in his elemental self. To sum up, eh. Machine Maid
, Margo Lanagan- I could see where this story was headed fairly soon in, so there’s a strike against it. On the other hand, Lanagan wrote something that affected me in a way that doesn’t happen all that often. She wrote a character that I really dislike, but also one for whom I felt a lot of sympathy. Mr. Goverman owns a remote Australian tract of land, and moves there with his wife (the story is about her) to better track his investments in nearby gold mining. Mrs. Goverman hates sex, and detests contact with her husband. Then she discovers that the electric maid, Clarissa, has functionality to service male owners. I dislike the character for being both insufferable and a prude. And I sympathize with her for accepting/allowing that which she so clearly hates as well as her distaste for her position in general that she feels forced into by society. The plot isn’t anything to write home about, but the character and some of the moral implications are quite interesting.
Lady Witherspoon’s Solution
, James Morrow- I don’t doubt that Morrow’s tale is a take off on Hitler’s
Final Solution
what with references to Nietzsche spread throughout the text. In the satire, Morrow not only spoofs 19th century feminism but also the Nietzschean übermensch. A couple of spots in the story made me laugh here sitting in my favorite coffee shop. And that ain’t easy to do. Hannah
, Keith Brooke- The intro by Nick Gevers says
Hannah
is about medical ethics gone bad. Seemed more like a garden variety cloning story to me. Petrolpunk
, Adam Roberts- An alternate reality version of steampunk. Featuring a writer Adam Roberts and an editor Nick Gevers in a world where steam technology continued to be dominant because of a Compound that is added to water to lower the boiling point to 40° C. Of course, Compound is also toxic. But from an alternate reality comes other people who want to steal the petroleum and ship it through dimensional gates to their petroleum based worlds. Quite good, even if I really am tired of British themed stories at this point.
American Cheetah
, Robert Reed- Finally a non-British theme! Robot Abraham Lincoln faces off with robot Jesse James gang. Reminded me a little too much of Asimov’s robot stories for me to go
hey neat
. That and there’s already been a couple of robot stories in the anthology. I prefer the less intelligent versions of Steampunch or Machine Maid if we’re going to have a steampunk story. Again, it’s not bad. But it didn’t stand out either. Fixing Hanover
, Jeff VanderMeer- Another robot story, but this one stood out for me. Not quite sure why. I liked the interplay between Daniker, Lady Salt, and jealous Blake. The steampunk aspect isn’t the important part of the story, though it adds spice. Though it could use a better title.
The Lollygang Save the World on Accident
, Jay Lake- I’ve generally been a sucker for created worlds. I don’t mean world-building, though that is nice and has a part in created worlds. I mean artificial worlds, like ringworld, or Dyson spheres, or the smoke ring, or Virga. But they don’t have to be space-based. I loved the Linear City. This story features a created world consisting of a very large Pipe of indeterminate size. Where is it? Doesn’t matter. Could be in space. Could be on a planet somewhere. People live in decks inside. It’s been created by beings as an experiment, and most likely left to rot. Many parts of it lay disused and in disrepair. Unused communications devices. Pipes and tanks with unknown fluids. Totally awesome! The Lollygang (which is as you might think from the name, a youth gang), come across Gloves which let them perform feats unimaginable in their world. “Magically” opening locks and whatnot. Not really sure what they can do, and for once I didn’t care that I didn’t know. But the gloves have a way of taking over. Sounds contrived when I write it out, but it really works in the story.
The Dream of Reason
, Jeffrey Ford- I believe Jeffrey Ford is the author that told me to kill myself this summer. And you all thought I was cranky one on the internet! The Dream of Reason is a good story about one man’s scientific experiments to determine the composition of stars. His theory, if he slows light enough eventually diamond dust will fall off it. Dust picked up by bouncing off far away stars. But how to slow it down enough? And how to build a big enough device to conduct the experiment (it’s like a steampunk version of the Large Hadron Collider!).
Solaris Books provided this mass-market edition of Extraordinary Engines free of charge through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. In return for a free copy, I am obligated to post a 25 word (or longer) review on LibraryThing. This entailed no other obligations.
Title: Extraordinary Engines: The Definitive Steampunk Anthology
Editor: Nick Gevers
Cover creator: Adrian Wood (photo) / Alex CF (artwork)
Imprint / publisher: Solaris
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 441 p.
Publication date: September 2008
ISBN-10: 1-84416-634-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-84416-634-3
