Spirit – by Gwyneth Jones

British SF writer Gwyneth Jones has always impressed me when I come across one of her stories in the annual Best Of anthology edited by Gardner Dozois. Usually, if I want to read more by a writer, I have to buy on Amazon, because the “SF” shelves in Waterstones are otherwise occupied by Lord of the Rings, Terry Pratchett, and Star Trek tie-ins.

While some quite respectable writers hack out the occasional tie-in book for Star Trek, Star Wars, or even Doctor Who, I’ve never been so obsessed with a TV show that I wanted to read a book based on it.

So I was somewhat surprised to come across Spirit in the Milton Keynes Waterstones, and in spite of my general policy of not paying Waterstones prices, I couldn’t resist it. How did Spirit manage to sneak past the Waterstones buyer and get onto the shelf with all the Fantasy books?

The answer, I suspect, lies on the front cover, which at first glance has every appearance of a fantasy novel: a young woman in rags in the foreground, carrying an infant, looking over what might be a fantasy landscape.

But this is not a fantasy novel, it’s New Space Opera, but it has the satisfying slow build up, cast of characters, and intrigue of the best fantasy novels. It gives itself away a bit in the blurb by mentioning it that it’s a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, but somehow knowing this just adds to the pleasure of reading it.

I’ve never read The Count…, but enjoyed a radio adaptation I once heard. All you need to know is that it’s a corking adventure story with a very satisfying dénoument.

Jones creates excellent aliens who behave in freaky ways. In one of her short stories, a peace envoy from one alien race eats a peace envoy from the other side of a civil war.
As well as properly alien aliens, Jones creates a truly weird form of interstellar travel, which only the hardy dare experience in full consciousness.

If you know The Count of Monte Cristo, you will enjoy this; and if you don’t, you’ll discover a hard SF ripping yarn with an excellent female protagonist who serves her revenge stone cold. Highly recommended.

Steampunk – edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

The big question with any anthology like this is, if you’re new to the genre, does this make a good introduction? I think the answer here is a qualified yes. It has to be qualified, because this is a genre which is at its best in the longer form – novella, at least, or novel – and at shorter lengths you perhaps don’t get as much time to immerse yourself in what can be a very strange fictional world.

What is steampunk? An alternative name for it might be “Victorian Fantasy”. Steampunk is a genre of science fiction inspired not by the latest developments in science and technology, or by speculation about the future, but by the original practitioners of fantasy and science fiction: Mary Shelley, H P Lovecraft, H G Wells, and Jules Verne. Steampunk re-imagines the science and technology of the late 19th Century and creates adventure stories full of steam-powered robots, airships, golems, and Victorian dress.

The setting doesn’t always have to be the 19th Century. Another way of thinking about steampunk is to see it as counter-factual historical fiction, or alternate history. So there can be a lot of “what ifs” as well as not-quite-right technology. Ian R. MacLeod’s fantastic novel The Light Ages is an example of this (in it, the industrial revolution is driven by aether/magic rather than by the steam engine).

If you watch any Doctor Who, you’ve already been exposed to some steampunk tropes. The Doctor, like the hero of Wells’ The Time Machine, is a time traveller. His incarnations often wear Victorian style frock coats and accessories; he stores his soul in a pocket watch; he encounters clockwork androids and moving statues; his TARDIS seems to be cobbled together from semi-organic parts and anachronistic technologies; and so on. This year’s Christmas Special, “The Next Doctor” was quintessentially steampunk: with an enormous steam-powered robot, Victorian setting, and even a hot air balloon.

So if you like that kind of thing, then you’ll like this. The collection begins with a very interesting essay which discusses the popularity of a certain style of 19th Century gung-ho dime novel fiction (Edisonades), which is (of course) forgotten as far as literature studies are concerned. It’s one of the ironies of English/American literature that you end up studying the stuff that hardly anybody reads. The really popular stuff, the trashy adventure stories and romances, are largely forgotten.

While the Edisonade celebrated technology and invention, steampunk more often focuses on the dark side, the unintended consequences (the enslaved child labourers in the Doctor Who Special are an example).

The first story here is James P Blaylock’s “Lord Kelvin’s Machine”, which is about an attempt to foil an evil genius who wants to destroy the world by triggering volcanic eruptions. There are other stories here from Ian R. MacLeod, Mary Gentle, Ted Chiang, Paul Di Filippo, Rachel E. Pollock and Neal Stephenson.

Perhaps the most disturbing story here is “The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel” by Joe R. Lansdale, which takes the form and content of the Edisonade adventure novel and mixes it with very dark stuff indeed, including graphic violence and sexual violence.

“The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance” by Michael Chabon is set in an alternative America in which the rebels haven’t successfully revolted, and the British are still in charge – complete with air ships and plans to travel into space. It’s interesting, but reads a bit too much like the opening of a novel.

Ted Chiang’s “Seventy-Two Letters” is a golem story, set in a world in which automata are animated by the magic of the Kabbalah (and face opposition from the equivalent of Luddites).

The collection finishes with a survey of steampunk sources by Rick Klaw, and another survey of steampunk graphic novels and comic books.

Recommended, but do read some novels as well.