9 posts tagged “literature”
Many thanks to everyone who voted in last week's survey about the future of the Steampunk Librarian. The overwhelming majority told me to keep everything as is, and so it shall be!
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I took this last summer and was a Gadgeteer. Apparently my tastes have changed a bit.
Your result for The Steampunk Style Test...
The Ragamuffin
18% Elegant, 55% Technological, 13% Historical, 48% Adventurous and 60% Playful!

You are the Ragamuffin, the embodiment of steampunk playfulness. Chances are, you approach the genre from a much more casual and lighthearted standpoint than most other fans. To you, there is always an element of play inherent in the genre, and you may very well enjoy fashion as much for the opportunity to dress up as for the style itself. You probably wear goggles as an accessory, and rarely as actual eye-protection. Your outfits are likely to incorporate a lot of brown or cream, and combine large boots, Victorian corsets or vests, aviator caps or bowler hats, and gypsy skirts or slacks, simply because you like them all.
Anyway! Steampunk Month continues over at Tor.com, with all sorts of neat posts and book excerpts. As for books, has anyone read Kage Baker's stories? They look intriguing.
Also intriguing: the web production titled Riese: The Series. The costuming alone looks awesome!
Steampunky websites with fabulous names: Strange Undisciplined Dreams of Great Things and the Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000.
The artist known as Tin does quite beautiful art with robotic overtones.
And finally, a poster that could serve as the Steampunk Manifesto!
The good people at Tor.com have dedicated October to steampunk, so you should get over there and immerse yourself in some good writing. On the graphic novel side, io9 has a great article on François Schuiten -- his website, although mostly in French, is definitely worth a visit for the art of it all.
A Brooklyn bar named the Way Station is to open soon, and promises to bring steampunk to the neighborhood. They have a page on Facebook listing events and more information; I may check it out when I'm in town next!
More stuff coming out that may interest steampunky types: Boilerplate in book format and Rotor'Scope, a "fiendishly difficult" computer game. And for the retro gamers, take a gander at the Frankencade Machine!
(As a postcript, I will mention that I list steampunk-type events over on the Steampunk Empire as I find them; if you have an event, please feel free to hop over there and list it as well! We're going for a comprehensive calendar!)
- Datamancer now has a blog!
- Warehouse 13, a new show on the sci-fi channel now called SyFy, is heavy on the steampunk.
- a 40-minute bio on H.G. Wells is online.
- Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre!
- Beats Antique, a band for the 21st century.
- How to make your own spats.
- Ice: A Victorian Romance. (Ice usually wins.)
- NYPL looks at Victorian fashion.
- Everyone was on opium and cocaine back in the good old days!
- The New York Tribune pages from 1909 onward.
- Mark your calendars now for the PanKinetic Exposition in April 2010!
Today's steampunk entry is mostly about the visual oohs and ahhs. If you'd like something with a little more density, however, sink your teeth into the history of science fiction between 1900 and 1910 - great material for research and inspiration! (Swiped from Matt's weblog.)
And now, on to fantastic robots that clank, a synthesizer that steams, a weblog full of artistic wonders that tick, and a game of clones and Cherry Chronoberry pies.
And look, a steampunk podcast! Huzzah!
SL: A novel with an automaton for a protagonist is about as steampunk as you can get, I think! What inspired you to write about Mattie?
ES: I am always drawn to not quite human characters -- I think because by being so essentially different they help bring into focus some of the more human concerns. With Mattie, who is explicitly a thing, it created an additional layer of interesting questions -- such as the agency of a created entity and the possibility of directly interacting with the person who gave her life. It also seemed like an interesting vehicle for talking about gender and essential definitions of such.
SL: The city almost seems like a character of its own in the book, and [your previous book] The Secret History of Moscow features a city as well. Is there something that draws you to cities personally?
ES: Yes, I do love cities, especially in the sense of them being expressions of people who live in them, accumulating those layers of history. The way they grow tells us so much about what happened to people in it, how this city came about -- LA, for example, is a city built around cars, while many European cities have such narrow streets that they are much more welcoming to pedestrian traffic. You see cities springing quickly with industrial development, or slowly expanding over centuries; you see cities planned on a grid and cities that are completely haphazard. So yes, places where people live are important because of what it says about them.
SL: Do you have a certain room or a certain space for writing?
ES: I have a small office in my house, and I do some of my writing there. I also have a NEC 900 handheld PC, and that allows me to write anywhere. I'm not at all picky about space -- I'm quite happy writing on a train or while watching TV with my husband.
SL: Which character is your favorite in the book? And which one gave you the most trouble?
ES: Mattie would be too obvious, so I'm going to say The Soul-Smoker. He is a sweet sweet man whose mere proximity will kill you. What's not to like?
Loharri was the most troublesome. He, as a perspicacious reader once noticed, is an asshole, and yet he's not devoid of some good qualities. So keeping him balanced and complex, without letting his veer into too much melodrama or evil, was difficult. The readers will see whether it actually worked.
SL: What's next for you? Do you have more books in the works?
ES: I have one more book coming out with Prime -- The House of Discarded Dreams, should be out next year. I am currently working on another book -- steampunk/alternate history. And I have a YA in the works, so keeping busy.
SL: Do you write your books in Russian or in English? Do you find that one language is more expressive or more restricting than the other?
ES: I only write in English, because I find it easier. Russian is a more complex language, and it is more difficult to write *well* in Russian -- for me, at least.
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Again, many thanks to Ekaterina, and I hope to feature more of this literary bent in future posts!