This is yet another entry I found in a “Best Steampunk Books” list that didn’t actually fit the genre. 14 , appropriately published in 2014, is a sci-fi mystery centered on a hundred-year-old apartment building in Los Angeles and the eccentric tenants that inhabit it. The main character is Nate, a thirty-something single guy who […]
The “fascinator”, a.k.a. “that little hat worn at an angle” is a staple of steampunk fashion. Typically worn by women, you may recall Damon Wayans really rocking the look in the “Men on Film” sketch in the classic TV show “In Living Color.” I was going through our steampunk props the other day when I […]
I discovered Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age, or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer shortly after it was published in 1995. I’d read his preceding book Snow Crash and loved its anarchic spirit. By contrast, Diamond Age seemed stodgy at first as it centered on the prim and proper Neo-Victorians. As I read on, however, […]
Yesterday I saw the long-awaited and supremely-hyped superhero movie, Avengers: Endgame. It’s the finale of 22 (were there really that many?) movies starring superhero characters from Marvel comics, a cycle that began with Ironman in 2008. Of the six or seven I’ve actually seen, there were various levels of quality from awesome to “meh” but […]
Two of our most beloved young heroines hail from the Victorian Era – Alice of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865, Lewis Carroll) and Dorothy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900, L. Frank Baum.) I grew up with their stories, but perhaps because they are such a part of our culture, I never thought about […]
Never trust a “best of steampunk” list (unless it’s one of mine.) The genre is so eclectic and quirky that there are bound to be entries that aren’t steampunk at all. I found Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl in “10 Best Steampunk Novels 2019” on bookconsumers.com. The title sounds right and the cover hints at […]
One of my goals as a reviewer is to bring attention to original works by up-and-coming authors. I encountered The Atlantropa Articles through Cody Franklin’s a YouTube channel, “Alternative History Hub.” His videos are interesting speculations on how history could have gone differently if various different scenarios came to pass. This, his first novel (2018) […]
