Today is the BICENTENNIAL of the birth of England’s famous Queen Victoria. Victoria reigned over the British Empire from 1837 to her death in 1901, giving her name to the Victorian Era. She was the first monarch to bear the title Empress of India. Her reign was longer than any of her predecessors until the […]
On this blog, I have endeavored to review books by as many different authors as possible, mostly avoiding doing more than one by the same person. Now, however, I’m discovering favorite writers which I feel deserve additional attention. One of these is KW Jeter, the actual inventor of the word “steampunk.” His first novel in […]
I have a confession to make: Steampunk has been my gateway drug to a wider world of literature. It has gotten me interested in the classics, starting with sci-fi pioneers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Recently as I was browsing in Bookmans (an Arizona retail chain specializing in used books) I came across […]
Clockwork Imperium is a set of three stories by J. P. Medved set in an alternate history of the British Empire. All feature the same three characters, British soldiers Henry Emerson and James Billingsworth and their Sikh comrade Raheem Aranjapour. The author establishes their friendship in the prequel story, “The Great Curry Contest,” available for free […]
I love Halloween! I have more spooky home décor for both inside and out than I do all the other holidays combined. Curious about how Victorians celebrated Halloween, I did a little digging… pun intended. After a bit of research, I discovered I come by my love of All Hallows’ Eve honestly. Halloween made its […]
At the height of the genre’s boom around 2010, lots of folks were getting on the Steampunk Bandwagon. One happy side effect was a renewed interest in science fiction from the Victorian Era. The book Steampunk Prime is a collection of tales from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, collected by editor Mike Ashley. A […]
Having focused on steampunk for the last few years, I was astonished that I hadn’t run into this book before. Homunculus was published in 1986 before steampunk became all the rage in the 2000’s. It won the Phillip K. Dick award for best original paperback in 1988. Many steampunk books are modern-style novels that happen […]
