I just finished
Steampunk with The Immersion Book of Steampunk, a collection of diverse short
stories edited by Gareth Jones and Carmelo Rafala. I love this geek subculture.
The costumes, the visual aesthetic, the creativity, the different ways to tell
a story based in the same idea. This book is a great introduction to the
various ways people handle steampunk: science, magic, aliens, monsters, ether,
clockwork men, using figures we know from history, etc.
For me the range was
the best and worst thing about this book and why it took me so long to read.
This genre requires a good bit of world building so with each story I had to
relearn the rules of each world. Here we have steampunk science then we have
aliens now here are some clockwork people and now we’re entering a dream world
with characters from history. Each of these is written in a totally different
voice. It gave me literary whiplash to zip from one the other. It made it hard
to finish because I wanted to stop before I had to work to understand another
universe.
All the stories are decent
and all of the writing is good but I got the most out of it when I read the
stories one or two at a time. My favorites were The Machines of the Nephilim,
The Clockworks of Hanyang, Cinema U, Empire of Glass, Steam Horse, and
Professor Fluvius’s Palace of Many Waters.
If you like the
genre, this is worth a shot but if you’ve never read steampunk, I would try a
novel first. Learn how the genre works before you see where it can go.
1)
Fiction – A Once Crowded Sky by Tom King
2) Nonfiction – The
Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
3) Sci-Fi – Redshirts
by John Scalzi
4) Fantasy
5) Mystery – Book
of Lies by Brad Meltzer
6) Horror
7)
Memoir/Biography – Data, A Love Story by Amy Webb
8) Chick Lit – Me
and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter
9) Feminist – Commencement
by J. Courtney Sullivan
10) Teen – What
Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen
11) Holiday
12) Essays – What
Was I Thinking? ed. by Barbara Davilman & Liz Dubelman
13) Short
Stories
14) Library
15) Animal
16) Book about
Books – Judging a Book By Its Lover by Lauren Leto
17) New – Pitch
Perfect by Mickey Rapkin
18) Old – Dark
and Stormy Knights edited by P. N. Elrod
19) Pop Science –
Why Men Fake It by Abraham Morgentaler, MD
20) Near
21) Far
22) Graphic Novel –
Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret? by Thomas F. Zahler
23) Reread – Ready
Player One by Ernest Cline
24) Wild Card
25) Otherworldly
Creature
26) Free – Point
Your Face at This by Demetri Martin
27) Noteworthy
28) Bestseller –
How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
29) Themed
Anthology – Red edited by Kris Goldsmith
30) Steampunk – The Immersion Book of
Steampunk edited by Gareth Jones and Carmelo Rafala
31) Movie-Book
32) Media – Doctor
Who: Touched By an Angel by Jonathan Morris
33) Travel
34) Food
35) Classic
36) Humor – Sleep
Talkin’ Man by Karen Slavick-Lennard
37) Poetry
38) Past – Stasiland
by Anna Funder
39) Future
40)
Dystopia/Post-Apocalyptic
41) Zombie
42) Sports
