A science fiction blog featuring science fiction book reviews and with frequent ramblings on fantasy, computers and the web.
Amazon has posted the cover art and synopsis of the upcoming novel Luminous Chaos by Jean-Christophe Valtat, sequel to Aurorarama and second book in the series The Mysteries of New Venice.
Here’s the synopsis:
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Nifty! Check out the cover art and synopsis of the upcoming novel Fiendish Schemes by K. W. Jeter, the sequel to Infernal Devices, which is due out later this year (in October).
Here’s the synopsis:
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Andrew P. Mayer‘s third steampunk superhero novel — a fantastic and fun read called Power Under Pressure — came out from PYR Books in January. It’s the third book of his Society of Steam trilogy, following The Falling Machine and Hearts of Smoke & Steam. These stories capture the feel of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells while being set in Victorian New York City, where Mayer was born. Mayer is a game designer who has also has written comic books and short stories. You can find Andrew online at societyofsteam.com, andrewpmayer.com/, and on Twitter as @AndrewMayer.
SFFWRTCHT: Andrew, congrats on the completion of your trilogy. What’s it like to have that complete cycle under your belt?
Andrew P. Mayer: I’m still breathing the same sigh of relief that I started when I handed in the book. It’s nice to have the completed story out in the world after six years of work.
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It’s no secret I like George Mann’s Newbury & Hobbes stories, so I’m thrilled to see that Amazon has the cover and synopsis of Mann’s The Casebook of Newbury & Hobbes, a collection of short fiction featuring the pair of steampunk-era detectives.
Here’s the official synopsis:
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It’s been a while since I last surveyed the Steampunk sub-genre. I wish I had kept more in touch…there have been lots of steampunk releases in the intervening months.
Today at the Kirkus Reviews blog is the conclusion of my revisit to Steampunk: Steampunk Update, Part 3 – Mash-Ups and More.
Infinivox has posted the table of contents for their new audiobook anthology Steampunk Specs.
Here’s the description:
This collection of unabridged, spectacular steampunk speculations includes several classics of the genre. These tales will sweep you away with their amazing automata, daring dirigibles, grinding gears, and scintillating steam as days long gone are infused with tech. In Smoke City, by Christopher Barzak, a woman comes to terms with the loss of her family to the child labor mills of the city. A doctor tries to cope with a strange plague terrorizing the citizens of London in Jeffrey Ford s Dr. Lash Remembers. In Machine Maid, by Margo Lanagan, a sexually repressed wife gets revenge on her husband through a robot maid. Friedrich Engels strives to spread class revolution as a labor organizer for factory cyborg matchstick girls in Arbeitskraft, by Nick Mamatas. In Ninety Thousand Horses, by Sean McMullen, an acclaimed mathematician, with a murky past, is forced to spy for an industrialist prior to becoming Britain s foremost rocket expert during World War II. An orphan boy builds an automaton, in an aging scientist s laboratory, that becomes more than an idle companion in Cherie Priest s Tanglefoot (A Clockwork Century Story). In Clockwork Fairies, by Cat Rambo, an English aristocrat courts a woman who would rather spend her time in a laboratory than at high society balls. At Chicago s Columbian Exposition, in 1893, an Algerian bodyguard crosses paths with a disoriented naked man in Chris Roberson s Edison s Frankenstein. . In A Serpent in the Gears, by Margaret Ronald, a dirigible journeys to an isolated land and discovers people and animals merged with machine parts. Radio Jones finds a way to listen in on the Naked Brains, who rule the world, while Rudy the Red fights against the oppressors in Zeppelin City, by Michael Swanwick & Eileen Gunn. Read by Tom Dheere, Vanessa Hart, and Nancy Linari. 520 minutes in length on 8 compact discs.
And here’s the table of contents…
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Last week, planet Earth said hello to two separate extraterrestrial objects: an asteroid that was the closest near-miss asteroid fly-by on record, and a meteor that exploded over the Ural Mountains in Russia. Makes you wonder what would happen if an asteroid did impact the Earth, doesn’t it?
Today at the Kirkus Reviews blog I offer a chance to find out: Read All About It: Planetary Destruction by Asteroid, Meteor and Comet.
It’s been a while since I last surveyed the Steampunk sub-genre. I wish I had kept more in touch…there have been lots of steampunk releases in the intervening months.
Today at the Kirkus Reviews blog is the second part of my revisit to Steampunk: Steampunk Update, Part 2 – Old & New Cogs in the Steampunk Machine.
It’s been a while since I last surveyed the Steampunk sub-genre. I wish I had kept more in touch…there have been lots of steampunk releases in the intervening months.
Today at the Kirkus Reviews blog is the first part of my revisit to Steampunk: Steampunk Update, Part 1 – Following Up.
REVIEW SUMMARY: Two fine short Fantastic Victoriana stories from Daniel Abraham.
MY RATING: 
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Balfour and Meriwether, special agents to the British crown, deal with extraordinary and fantastical threats to their monarch, and the world.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Light, fun atmosphere, breezy dialogue, clever action and appealing protagonists in a fine Secret Fantastic Victorian Era.
CONS: The stories are a bit short, and feel a bit constrained in word length.
BOTTOM LINE: Two fun stories that show yet another side to one of Genre’s best and facile writers today.
Balfour and Meriwether in Two Adventures, published by a new digital publisher called SnackReads, collects two Victoriana stories by Daniel Abraham, one of the most facile and flexible writers today. The title characters are agents for the British Crown in the late 19th century. The two stories deliberately obscure in time, and are told from the perspective of Mr. Meriwether looking back on the adventure from a journal written after the first world war. The stories have a fantastic Victorian feel, but with the twist of it being a secret history. Ordinary people have no idea the extraordinary threats and dangers Belfour and Meriwether face.
Check out the cover art and synopsis of the upcoming Apparatus Infernum novel Bronze Gods by A. A. Aguirre, the pseudonym for Ann & Andres Aguirre.
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They say you shouldn’t judge a book by cover…unless it’s an SF Signal Book Cover Smackdown!
It’s time once again to have your way with some upcoming book covers, this time with a new trio of steampunk titles being released next month.
Here are today’s contenders…
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Here is the cover art and synopsis of the U.S. version of the upcoming novel The Executioner’s Heart by George Mann.
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Editor Scott Harrison has sent along an updated table of contents and cover image for his upcoming anthology Resurrection Engines: 15 Extraordinary Tales of Scientific Romance, being published by Snowbooks.
Here’s the book description:
Resurrection Engines is an anthology of Steampunk and Alternate Timeline ‘retellings’ and ‘reimagining’s’ of classic fiction tales (Edgar Allen Poe, Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology, Moby Dick, Charles Dickens, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, etc) from some of today’s finest Steampunk writers.
And here’s the table of contents with each author’s chosen classic or author.
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Jason Erik Lundberg is a USian now living in Singapore, and the author of several books of the fantastic — The Alchemy of Happiness (2012), Embracing the Strange (2012), Red Dot Irreal (2011), The Time Traveler’s Son (2008), and Four Seasons in One Day (with Janet Chui, 2003) — one children’s book — A New Home For Jia Jia and Kai Kai A New Home For Bo Bo and Cha Cha (2012) — and more than a hundred short stories, articles, and book reviews. He is also the the founding editor of LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, series editor of Best New Singaporean Short Stories, and editor of Fish Eats Lion (2012), A Field Guide to Surreal Botany (2008), and Scattered Covered Smothered (2004). His writing has appeared in venues such as Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, the Raleigh News & Observer, Qarrtsiluni, Sybil’s Garage, Strange Horizons, Subterranean Magazine, The Third Alternative, Electric Velocipede, and many other places.
His short fiction has been nominated for the SLF Fountain Award, shortlisted for the Brenda L. Smart Award for Short Fiction, and honorably mentioned in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. From 2005-2008, he facilitated an occasional podcast called Lies and Little Deaths: A Virtual Anthology. With his wife, artist-writer Janet Chui, he runs Two Cranes Press, a critically-acclaimed independent publishing atelier established in 2003. He is a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and holds a degree in creative writing from North Carolina State University, and is an active member in Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and PEN American Center.
Jaym Gates: Jason, thanks for taking the time to discuss Red Dot Irreal your new collection from Math Paper Press. “Bogeyman,” the first story in the collection, is an action-packed steampunkish tale of magic, romance and adventure. Was this story inspired by any historical tales?
Jason Erik Lundberg: Not from any specific tales per se, but I was inspired by legends of the Bugis, who were a seafaring ethnic group in the mid-1800s and were known to be quite fearsome throughout the Indonesian archipelago. I’ve lived in Singapore for the past five and a half years, and I love the idea that such a squeaky clean paternalistic country was once a popular haven for regional pirates (although quite likely different from the ones presented in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie). I also found it fascinating that the stories brought back by British sailors about the ruthlessness of the Bugis led to the more generic term “bogeyman” as a way to frighten children into behaving themselves.
I initially wrote this story as a challenge for a pirate-themed anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer called Fast Ships, Black Sails. And they quite rightly rejected it; the pirates are largely off-stage for most of the story, only making an appearance near the end. However, to my surprise, Bill Schafer bought it for Subterranean Magazine right afterward, and I was honored that it was published in the magazine’s final print issue.
In episode 141 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester gathers a pantheon of Steampunk greats to discuss the genre.
This trailer for Tai Chi O features some nifty martial arts in a steampunk setting. Not the usual mashup we see, but nonetheless appealing in its own way. Here’s the short synopsis from IMDB:
Young genius Yang Luchan travels to Chen Village to learn the forbidden secrets of martial arts, but quickly learns that the village is menaced by a formidable battalion of Steampunk soldiers. The villagers realize that in order to save their home, they must trust this strange outsider with their knowledge of Tai Chi.
Sound interesting? Here’s the trailer…
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Scott Harrison has posted the table of contents for his upcoming Steampunk anthology Resurrection Engines, being published by Snowbooks. The anthology will feature 16 brand new stories from some of the most exciting names writing in genre fiction today, and will contain Steampunk ‘reimaginings’ or ‘retellings’ of classic works of literary fiction.
Here’s the sorta-toc (list of contributors with their chosen classic or author)…
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A few years back, I was hanging out with one of my friends and his kid did this kung-fu move and shouted something about bending air at me. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then my friend suddenly kicked the ground, did another kung-fuey move, and said something about bending earth.
I was completely lost.
It was explained to me that there was this ‘kick ass show’ called Avatar: The Last Airbender that all the kids were into and that it was also pretty entertaining for their parents. Ok. I didn’t check it out until Netflix started streaming the show and found that I was really impressed. My only complaint came when I realized how few episodes there actually were of the series: 3 seasons, 61 episodes. Still, given how poorly genre shows typically do with series endings, I had to admit that Avatar at least had a beginning, a middle and (most importantly) an end. A pretty good one, too. The show had a rich world and great characters. I think a sequel was inevitable.
Enter: The Legend of Korra.
WARNING:Spoilers for the original series from this point forward!
Ann VanderMeer has posted the table of contents for her upcoming anthology Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution, forthcoming from Tachyon Publications later this year:
Playfully mashing-up the romantic elegance of the Victorian era with whimsically modernized technology, the wildly-popular steampunk genre is here to stay. Now…long live the revolution! This entertaining and edgy new anthology is the third installment in the bestselling Steampunk series that includes Steampunk and Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded.
Steampunk Revolution features a renegade collective of writers and artists—including steampunk legends as well as hot, new talents—who are rebooting the steam-driven past and powering it into the future with originality, wit, and adventure. Lev Grossman’s “Sir Ranulph Wykeham-Rackham, GBE, a.k.a. Roboticus the All-Knowing” is the Six-Million-Dollar Steampunk Man, possessing appendages and workings recycled from metal parts, yet also fully human, resilient, and determined. Bruce Sterling’s “White Fungus” introduces steampunk’s younger cousin, salvage-punk, speculating on how cities will be built in the future using pre-existing materials. Cat Valente’s “Mother is a Machine” explores the merging of man and machine and a whole new form of parenting. In Jeff VanderMeer’s anti-steampunk story “Fixing Hanover,” a creator must turn his back on his creation because it is so utterly destructive. And Cherie Priest presents “The Clockroach” a new, unsettling mode of transportation.
Going far beyond corsets and goggles, Steampunk Revolution is not just your granddad’s zeppelin—it’s an even wilder ride.
