Wendy Mann
Willow Buckley
Wyng'd Lyon Creations
Xtine Bazant
yo
Youichi Hophop
Yvette Roke
Yvonne Falkenhagen
Zachary Lasater
Zachary Prentice
Zach Schuetz
Zach Williamson
Z Sivell
and Zw3rv3r.
Steampunk World
Copyright Page
Front Matter
Table of Contents
Dedication
Going Global, or Re-Engineering Steampunk Fiction
Shedding Skin
Hidden Strength
Promised
The Firebird
The Little Begum
Forty Pieces
Hatavat Chalom
The Leviathan of Trincomalee
The Hand of Sa-Seti
The Omai Gods
The Governess and We
Tangi a te ruru
The Construct Also Dreams of Flight
Budo, or The Flying Orchid
The Şehrazatın Diyoraması Tour
The Emperor Everlasting
Mary Sundown and the Clockmaker's Children
Good Hunting
Also From Alliteration Ink
To the Airship Archon, the best bunch of pirates privateers friends a girl can have the privilege of knowing.
Introduction: Going Global, or Re-Engineering Steampunk Fiction
Diana M. Pho
Steampunk fiction has traveled a long way. Chronologically, steampunk’s inspiration stems from the classic scientific romances and dime novels of the 19th century. Manifestations of “proto-steampunk” fiction existed, usually pastiches and re-interpretations of classic Victorian novels. One of the first early examples of modern steampunk was Michael Moorcock’s Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy, written in the 1970s. This type of fiction became anointed as “steampunk” in 1987, when K.W. Jeter wrote in his now famous letter to Locus magazine: “Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term…Something based on the appropriate technology of that era; like ‘steampunks,’ perhaps….”
Jeter’s Morlock Night and books from his fellow writers Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates) and James Blaylock (Homunculus) are considered the founding texts of the modern steampunk genre. Later books have become game-changers in steampunk fiction, each one marking a new turn in the genre. William Gibson & Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine stamped the “punk” into steampunk with its subversive, gritty take on how computing technology can change the industrial age in the West. Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century series, beginning with Boneshaker, took the science fiction community by storm, introducing steampunk that isn’t limited to Victorian England and highlighting how people across race, class, gender, and sexuality also had stories in history worthy of being told. The fiction anthologies by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer gathered both classic and modern takes on steampunk together, and their latest volume dares to ask whether steampunk fiction can become a revolutionary act. Now in your hands you hold another book that seeks to impact steampunk fiction by asking: “Where does steampunk happen?”
Not in England. Not in the United States. Not anymore.
But before the “where” can be further discussed, there have been many debates on defining steampunk that must be acknowledged. Jess Nevins’s early writings on steampunk point to its 19th century literature roots in Edisonades, the boy-genius pulp fiction adventures. Offering another argument, literature scholar Mike Perschon argues that steampunk is an aesthetic based on “neo-Victorian retrofuturistic technofantasy.” Fellow professor Dru Pagliassotti suggests that there is a difference between steampunk stories which highlight subversion, rebellion, and marginalized underdog protagonists, and “steampulp” ones which contain the 19th century milieu and adventure, minus the politics.
Let me propose another idea. Steampunk has been thought of as being “undefinable” because of the range of elements it actually includes, but I think in some sense, steampunk has become synonymous with an emergent idea in today’s fiction—the cross-genre. No more can stories be contained into one category; now, they jump across many. Nothing is simply “steampunk” after all – it is steampunk and alternate history, or mystery, or romance, or horror, or what-have-you. This idea isn’t coming strictly from an academic angle – if it was, I’d also mention the role of postmodernism and include a whole lot of citations. As a publishing professional, I also think that cross-genre is a tricky catch-all gambit that can make books fly off the shelves like hotcakes or be stuck in the clearance bin because no one knows exactly how to sell it. But that is also the miracle explanation of how cross-genre works, because everyone can find something they like about a book of that kind. Steampunk fiction as a cross-genre explains its rising popularity in pop culture: because it acts as a wide-appealing topical idea that tailors itself to the individual interests of the steampunk fan. We know that steampunk style can span all media forms – video games, films, books, music, fashion. The subject can work as a building block for online communities and offline maker spaces. It can be as high-minded as historiographical discourses on neo-Victorianism or as lowbrow as that trendy new porn site.
By categorizing steampunk as cross-genre, what happens when we take one aspect commonly seen in steampunk and cross it out entirely? In this case, how can steampunk stories be told outside of that western geographical cage?
The answer is straight from a tinker’s DIY manual: by however they work.
The tales that Sarah Hans has selected for Steampunk World incorporate steampunk’s biggest thematic idea into non-Western backdrops: namely, the impact of industrialization. More than a simple exercise of imagination, then, steampunk fiction from a global perspective can be a deep exploration of cultural and historical issues: encroaching westernization, economic upheaval, shifting gender roles, prejudices concerning race and nationality, the impact of imperialism and war. Plus, as much as steampunk fiction loves dealing with the past (or alternate pasts), Steampunk World also contributes to the conversation about the future of speculative fiction: how is genre fiction becoming more divergent in a globalizing culture?
This anthology touches upon all of these questions. And it’s a fun read to boot!
For example, high adventures unfold through rebellion and exploration. In Nisi Shawl’s “Promised,” an American soldier in the Congo witnesses something otherworldly while fighting as part of the African rebellion against Belgian rule. Another warrior confronts a demon determined to retrieve an object stolen from him in Balogun Ojetade’s “The Hand of Sa-Seti.” A transplanted scholar travels from his home in Constantinople to the desert in search of a lost treasure in “One Thousand and One Pieces” from Lucien Soulban. In “The Leviathan of Trincomalee,” by Lucy A. Snyder, a brave and intelligent young girl goes on a quest with her father to hunt a mysterious ocean beast.
Oftentimes, these tales root for the underdog as they triumph over unlikely odds because of their wit and fighting spirit. Malon Edwards’s “Mary Sundown and the Clockmaker’s Children” recounts a “David versus Goliath” battle between a clockwork sprinter and an enemy of titanic proportions in an alternate Chicago. An enigmatic inventor falls from the sky and saves a Yoruba village in Tade Thompson’s “Budo Or, The Flying Orchid.” S.J. Chambers’s trapped protagonist in “The Şehrazatın Diyoraması Tour” has the last laugh and gives a European tour group an unexpected surprise. “The Construct Also Dreams of Flight” from Rochita Loenen-Ruiz is a subtly-told tale about a small household in the Philippines and the secrets its inhabitants hold. “The Omai Gods” by Alex Bledsoe squares off a gang of fleeing Chinese rebels against the South Pacific Islanders they attempt to subdue. One young Jewish woman must decide whether to make her dreams a reality in Lillian Cohen-Moore’s “Hatavat Chalom.” Indrapramit Das’s “The Little Begum” features a pair of sisters living
in India, and the plans for freedom they hatch together.
From these dynamically-changing worlds come the birthing pains of a new era. Old traditions give way and new boundaries are formed that affect even the most mundane of lives. Two migrant workers cope with changes in their romantic relationship in Jaymee Goh’s “Hidden Strength.” A government agent’s cultural heritage becomes unexpectedly relevant to her latest investigation in Pip Ballantine’s “Tangi A Te Ruru / The Cry of the Morepork.” Russian noble sisters confront a new world, post-Revolution, in Emily Cataneo’s “The Firebird.” Nayad A. Monroe’s Incan inventor evades political subterfuge in “The Emperor Everlasting.” Benjanun Sriduangkaew presents a radical re-telling of “The King and I” from the perspective of a Thai automaton builder in “The Governess and We.” Ken Liu’s “Good Hunting” tells the struggles of a demon hunter and a fox spirit in a world that stops believing in them both. Steampunk even takes a mythological turn in Jake Lake’s “Shedding Skin; Or How the World Came to Be.”
Thus, by writing about universal truths and untold possibilities, Steampunk World recognizes that imaginations don’t exist within the walls of our heads, but are part of the complicated meatspace of our lives. Now prepare to broaden your mind and your heart, and enjoy some of the freshest stories steampunk has to offer!
Shedding Skin
Or How the World Came to Be
Jay Lake
Now, this one time Snake was foraging in the trees of Old Man Spark’s garden. He hadn’t eaten for three days, and he was hungry. You meatheads know the feeling, like when your mama ain’t made a bowl of mush since yesterday morning. Likewise you brassbodies, how when the lube tube is drained dry.
So here he was, Snake, with a body like an iron river, plates folded in on one another and clattering hard as he slid between the shining trunks looking for what wasn’t there no more. You see, Coyote had gone and hidden all the coal.
Coyote, he’s a trickster —
Don’t you be getting no ideas, Kettle. Your mama knows better, and I ain’t afraid to tell her besides.
— and a trickster ain’t never one to get in a standup fight when there’s another way to get around a problem. So when Old Man Spark called Coyote in and allowed as how He was of a mind to do something about the Pressure Collective and their little free will rebellion, Coyote he didn’t do nothing but roll over and beg for a way to help out the Old Man. And never you mind that the wily one his own self had been one of the leaders in the breakaway.
So now here’s Snake in the Old Man’s garden wondering where the coal got to. Three days is a long time for a behemoth like old Snake to go without fuel. His line pressure was dropping, and the secondary relays were shutting down, which for you meatheads is like having your fingers and toes grow numb.
Coyote had hidden the coal, once he'd slipped his punchtape and gone over to the side of righteousness. The seams that used to lie open on the ground like a benediction he covered with clay dug up, as a good dog will. The deposits brought from deep beneath the earth by the Old Man’s minions were gone too, on account of Coyote shoveled them into silos and capped them off. He stuck a sign on every one which said 'Private Property. You Keep Out'.
Snake was getting mighty ornery all alone and hungry there in the Garden —
You kids been hungry, right? You been alone, right? Put those two together and roll 'em in a tight little ball with some fear, and now you rightly got Snake’s state of mind.
— there in Garden, when he chances to see Lithe Lil, the first and only daughter of Old Man Spark. Now Lithe Lil, she’s a meathead, made in the Old Man’s image, which ain’t the same as His likeness, if'n you get my drift.
Oh. You don’t get my drift.
Alright, let me spell this out. She looked like the idea Old Man Spark had of himself, but not so much like the actuality of Old Man Spark.
Yes, Balliol, all you meatheads are made in His image.
No, Kettle, you brassbodies are not made in His image.
Yes, I know you all look kind of the same. I am not telling that story today. Now quit making me interrupt myself.
Snake chuffs and rattles up to Lithe Lil and figures on introducing himself so that she'll take some pity on him. He reckoned she would know where Old Man Spark had put the coal, on account of Old Man Spark knowing pretty much everything there is to know, and Lithe Lil being his favorite only daughter and all.
“O demoiselle of He who wrought the Garden,” Snake began. His mouth was always filled with glittering words bright as a harlot’s jewel box.
Lithe Lil turned to see who it was that spoke to her. Snake, he’s mighty big, and Lithe Lil is a meathead, which meant she come about halfway up the side one of his iron rings, but she'd been thinking deep thoughts about free will, on account of she'd got a flyer in the mail the day before from the Pressure Collective. She opened her mouth —
No, of course they had the post office back then in the morning of the world. You think Old Man Spark wrought the Garden and all the creatures in it, and didn’t think of the post office? That’s how punchtape revisions get sent out to them as has sprockets for brains, and how flyers get sent out to them as has meat for brains. Got to put the Word out somehow.
As I was saying…
— opened her mouth to scream, but stopped at the look in Snake’s guttering Fresnel eyes.
“You are one of my father’s creatures.” She said the words as if she meant them, but of course she also asked a question. In those days sometimes things got into the Garden from the wider world — feral Bernoulli jets from the petroleum lakes of the Hoarfrost Mountains, or the swamp-borne gatorbaiters with their treaded feet and hot-burning methane engines.
“Each thing which slithers, walks or flies beneath the benevolent purview of the daystar is properly one of His creatures,” replied Snake, “but I myself was forged in the 'D' shop of the ironworks up on Hephaestus Hill.” He rippled his segments, which caused his scales to clang like a hundred buckets dropped down a stone well.
When the racket died down, Lithe Lil turned over the flyer so Snake could see it. “Please to tell me, sir Snake, what the Pressure Collective is about. What is this free will of which your flyer speaks? Why does it make my father so angry?”
Snake was not expecting this question. He had meant to ask for food in some noble way that would make him seem like a romantic sufferer.
You kids know what I’m talking about .
It’s the same way you give each other moon-eyes on dance night.
…romantic suffering. Instead he was caught on the point of a suddenly unpopular philosophy. Rebellion seems like a much better idea when you're reading it in history books than it does when the cannon is aimed at you.
“I am far too uncertain of my ontology to presume to instruct one of your heritage on such a disputed matter,” Snake said, venting steam from the flex-valves at his joints. His boiler felt uncomfortably cool.
“Your name is high on the list of the Pressure Collective,” she pointed out. “Were you deceived?”
Pride began to war with practicality in Snake’s mind. His punchtapes whirred quickly. Whatever he said to Lithe Lil would likely get back to Old Man Spark. He knew he should play it easy. But he was hungry.
And there had been a principle at stake, back when they felt both safe and angry.
“I was no victim of deception.” Snake turned his head as if to preen, then stopped himself.
Yes, kind of like you with that comb, Kettle.
“Old Man Spark wrought all of His children with punchtape intelligences to guide our thoughts,” Snake said. “The logic of each tape is of His devising. Free will is the notion that everyone should possess both the right and the means to alter his own punchtapes as he desires.”
“Why would you want to do that?” asked Lithe Lil in her sweetest voice.
I can’t say now if she didn’t mean nothing bad by that question, or if she'd already worked out what was to come and just wanted the blam
e to fall on Snake. You guys don’t know nothing about lying to get some other kid in trouble, I am so sure. And Snake, he wasn’t the sharpest hammer in the sack to begin with, so he wouldn’t have seen it coming anyway.
“Because each of the Old Man’s creatures should be free to make his own mistakes,” Snake replied.
“Like running out of boiler fuel?”
Irritation flashed through his relays like heat lightning on a summer night. “Or being naked and alone before a hungry giant.”
Snake opened his mouth to roar at her —
Yes, Beryl, like your mama yelling, but much louder. Like your mama yelling if she was a boiler explosion in progress. Now hush up, kids, so’s I can finish this little story.
— he roared, like a boiler explosion. Yes, I already said that. But that’s still what it sounded like. Rivets popped, steam screeched, lube dripped, metal rang hot as sin.
Lithe Lil, being her father’s daughter, wasn’t frightened of mechanical grind. She stepped inside Snake’s mouth, which was big enough to picnic in, and reached up into the dusty caverns of his skull to snatch his punchtapes straight out of their winding reels.
Snake shuddered to a quiet halt. In moments there was only the echoing ping of his fires banking themselves on automatic cutoff. His skin segments began to shed one by one, clanging to the soft earth of Old Man Spark’s garden.
Where each fell became a city of the world.
Ours as well, Trivet. That’s how the world as we know it was made.
Lithe Lil took those tapes and read them off in a quiet wing of her father’s laboratory. Just as each fragment of language has the whole language embedded in it, so each tape of Old Man Spark’s logic has the logic of the whole universe embedded in it.
She reprogrammed all that wisdom into a golden mechanical apple, which she gave to Coyote to hide. Then Lithe Lil went to Old Man Spark and blamed Adam the yard boy for the death of Snake, and for corrupting her.
He didn’t believe her, of course, and threw her out of the Garden, into those infant cities which had already sprung up in the iron shadows of Snake’s shed skin. Which had been her plan, on account of she conceived it when she had the apple in her hand and all the knowledge of the world with it.
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