May has always been a packed time for steampunk events, and this year is no exception. With the help of Kevin Steil, the Airship Ambassador and our delightful guest contributor “the Mad Sonictist” Veronique Chevalier, we’ve gathered a listing of top steampunk and of-steampunk-interest festivities from around the world. This month includes nine conventions of all shapes and sizes, from a CthulhuCon / film fest for the Lovecraftians buffs to a cruise along the historic Bridgewater Canal in Manchester, UK.

Did we miss your shindig? Feel free to plug in the comments thread. Any upcoming events for June can also be sent to me at attic.hermit@gmail.com before May 15th to be featured here next month.

All descriptions are taken from the event’s website or Facebook page unless stated otherwise.

[May steampunk events around the world]

Liesel Schwarz’s A Conspiracy of Alchemists lines up the usual suspects in steampunk fiction nowadays. Cue the headstrong female lead, throw in some airships, technological gizmos, and envious descriptions of fashion, coat everything in a veneer of brass and cogs. Yet this novel also attempts to move away from well-trodden territory, and you can tell straight away with the cheeky cover design. The Eiffel Tower establishes a setting away from good ol’ Britannia. Glowing glyphs and splashy neon font signal a flash of magic and a pinch of punk too. The end result: Schwarz’s debut novel is a fluffy steampunk adventure that toes the line of gaslamp fantasy. There are fairies, the occult, mad science, and secret conspiracies. What more can a reader ask for?

[Mild spoilers ahead]

Who wants to go on an airship ride in a California ghost town? Or travel via a historical tram to another world in Amsterdam? Or go to Doctor Who-themed costume ball? All that and more is happening in April. Whether your crew wants to participate in the 2^nd annual Airship Games at the Steampunk Empire Symposium, or you just want to spend a nice afternoon in with some tea, cravats, and good company, we have a range of listings big and small from the steampunk community. Thanks always to Kevin Steil, the Airship Ambassador, and our guest contributor, the prolific SF/F author Cat Rambo for helping me gather these from across the aether.

Please give a shout-out in the comments if your event had missed our radar. Want to see your May happening featured here? Drop me a line at attic.hermit@gmail.com by April 15 (tax day!) with the deets.

All descriptions have been adapted from event websites or Facebook pages, unless stated otherwise.

[Fun times beneath the cut]

Kit Whitfield’s In Great Waters is a truly unusual book. It’s hard to describe—it’s an alternate history where there are merpeople and that has changed everything. The merpeople—or “deepsman” to give them their proper name—are like a missing link between people and dolphins. They only need to surface to breathe every thirty minutes or so. They have tails. They are immensely strong. They have language but they are sub-sapient, they’re at a very interesting cusp of alien that we don’t see explored very much. They can cross-breed with humanity, and we first see them through the eyes of Henry, who is a cross-breed, or “bastard.” He has a bifurcated tail and can only stay underwater for fifteen minutes, but he can lie and say a shark is coming when he’s being bullied by the other children. It’s a lie that always works, and it works on the adults too. Henry has more cunning than the rest of his tribe but has less strength and power. Then he comes out of the water and begins to discover the world of landsmen and how he can relate to them. We discover it all with him, how similar and how different that world is from our history, what a difference the deepsmen have made.

[Read more: no spoilers]

As spring approaches, events come out of the woodwork, it seems. Celebrate Italy’s first steampunk convention or camp out at Old Tuscon’s film studio for a wild good time. Travel with the Tokyo Inventors Society as they travel to New Dublin on their latest adventure. Find a whatchamacallit at the Thingymajigy Fayre in San Antonio. Have a pint with the authors of the upcoming gaslamp fantasy anthology Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells. All this and more has roots out from across the aetherwebz by myself, Kevin Steil the Airship Ambassador, and our guest contributors Ariane Wolfe and Mark Anderson, the founders & co-chairs of the Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition.

Miss seeing your event here? Feel free to drop a comment below.  Want to see yours here for April? Email me at attic.hermit@gmail.com by the ides of March with the details.

[March events—In like a locomotive, out like a paddleboat…]

This month is UK publication month for The Inexplicables! So WHAT you may ask IS THE SKINNY ON THIS ONE? Well, I’ll tell you, starting with an amended version of the flap copy.

[Aside: Why amended? Because I’m a control freak, basically. Also because people who read the stuff that’s actually on the back of the book tend to freak out and email me questions with lots of exclamation points. But I think it’s important to remember that (a). I, personally, did not write the flap copy, and (b). if you want proper answers to your exclamation pointy questions, it will be more expensive and time-consuming to just buy the book and read it, yes... but ultimately you’ll find that course of action more satisfying than emailing me with your demands.]

[Read more]

Now, we know the “Use the force, Harry” featuring Patrick Stewart as Gandalf is pretty good, but this one has done it one better, because there are SIX genre references!

Your daily collection of offsite contain even more sentences and images to mess with your mind. Highlights include:

1. Steam robots
2. The Rock talking about things he is interested in/knows.
3. How Felicity Jones will be bringing you bad luck.

[Read more]

Look at this stuff! Isn’t it neat? Wouldn’t you think my AWESOME TIME MACHINE is complete? Is Ariel the girl who waited? How will the Doctor keep Ariel alive? Some awesome forcefield? A ganger-version of Ariel?

This wonderful art is only one in a series of Disney princesses being enticed by the Doctor and comes to us from Karen Hallion. Your offsite links are gonna live out of these waters. 

Highlights include:

1. BIG ASS SPIDER
2. Average Shark has things to say on Twitter
3. What Stephen King thinks about your ideas about a Shining prequel.

[Read more]

Brrrrr—February weather isn’t encouraging to the social set, but there are some events cropping up that I’d brave these temperatures for (or wish I could hop a plane to!). Splice a sequence or roll a D20 at a biopunk-themed gaming convention in Rhode Island, celebrate a week of retrofuturistic goodness in Barcelona, or discover your role in solving a real-life murder at a Prohibtion-era bar in NYC. Kevin Steil, the Airship Ambassador, and guest contributor Lucretia Dearfour of Nerd Caliber and the Copper Claw join me in rooting out this coming month’s steampunk and of-steam-interest events.

If we had missed out on featuring yours, don’t hesitate to plug away in the comments section. And if you have an event in March that we should know about, email me at attic.hermit@gmail.com by February 15th to be featured here in the future.

[Steampunk events to stave off the chill (and cabin fever)]

(a.k.a. The tempest in a teapot.)

This past week, the steampunk community expressed both apoplectic shock and exuberant clamoring over a press release from IBM’s Social Sentiment Index predicting that steampunk will be a retail trend from 2013 – 2015. After that announcement, the media picked up and ran with it, as the media usually does: Forbes reported the news, followed by Time, and soon all of the sci-fi and geek blogs were buzzing about the “discovery” of steampunk by the rest of pop culture. Even James Blaylock, one of the old-timers who started the subgenre with K.W. Jeter and Tim Powers, put in his two cents on HuffPo to explain what steampunk is to the masses.

Of course, with every new wave of attention, the steampunk community is reminded of all of the other times when people thought the aesthetic movement was hitting the mainstream (for good or for ill). Remember the elation when The New York Times covered it? Or how many cringed when Steampunk Palin went viral? Or how about that Justin Bieber video? (Click at your own risk.)

And wasn’t rococopunk being praised as the next big thing a couple of weeks ago?

[So steampunks, cool down your engines.]

2013 is the year to get ready for some pseudo-time-travelling, what-if wanderings, and speculative festivities of the dapper variety. I have a list of 39 steampunk and steam-friendly conventions and one-day events from around the world, gathered with help from Kevin Steil, the Airship Ambassador.

Since new steampunk cons spring out of the gearwork every so often, if I had missed yours, please drop a comment (and email me about featuring it for my monthly steampunk events roundup).

All descriptions taken from the convention website or Facebook page.

[Steampunk conventions worldwide]

Titan Books’ cover for James P. Blaylock’s newest novel, The Aylesford Skull, inscribes STEAMPUNK LEGEND below the author’s name. It’s true, Blaylock’s one of the original trio—the others being Tim Powers and K.W. Jeter—whose work in the eighties defined, or perhaps invented, steampunk as a literary subgenre. The Aylesford Skull marks his first novel-length return to Victorian England since 1992’s Lord Kelvin’s Machine, and it marks my own very first acquaintance with his work.

Accustomed as I am to hearing “steampunk” and thinking of Priest’s Boneshaker and Carriger’s Soulless, Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls and Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan, Blaylock’s languid pace and studied absence of over-the-top cogs-and-wheels and steam-powered machines comes as something of a culture shock. He’s taking it seriously! You’re not supposed to take it seriously!

[Read more]

In Victorian Liverpool, the Transatlantic Span, a bridge connecting England to New York, looms over the city, a hulking monument to human excellence and arrogance. As crews scramble to complete the bridge in time for Her Majesty’s dedication ceremony, a sinister plot boils to the surface with the discovery of a corpse with its face cut off on the banks of the River Mersey. Inspector Langton, despondent over the death of his wife Sarah a few months prior, is assigned the case. At first, Langton thinks he could use the case both as a distraction from mourning his wife as well as a way to get back in his Chief’s good graces for his recent poor performance, but it quickly becomes clear that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye.

[“I am sorry to tell you this, but your wife is beyond our help”]

After you’ve survived the holiday revelries of 2012 (and one apocalypse false alarm... for now), is it too soon to start off 2013 with even more chronologically-askew entertainments? Attend a voyage into the past-that-never-was onboard The Queen Mary. Delve into a delectable brunch at the steampunk-esque diner in Newton, MA, or purview the artistic creations of international artists in Barcelona. Accompanying myself and Kevin Steil the Airship Ambassador this month is Jeff Mach, the infamous bearded and bespectacled gentleman behind steampunk events such as Steampunk World’s Fair and the Anachronism.

Anyone we have missed out are welcome to shout-out their event in the comments.  Folks interested in having their event featured for February can drop me a line at attic.hermit@gmail.com with the details by January 15^th.

[Ring in the New Year]

Good story anthologies aren’t a ramshackle bunch of pieces crammed in any order—like CD albums, there should be a flow, a greater focus beyond the individual stories. These anthologies conduct conversations inside of them: selections that tease, question, argue back and forth with each other, as well as tie together key themes and concepts. Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution, moreso than the previous volumes in Tachyon Publications’ well-known retrofuturist series, demonstrates the power of a well-orchestrated collection.

Steampunk has proven to be particularly popular in short form, and for round three, Ann Vandermeer acts as the sole editor to select from the subgenre’s rich offerings. Full disclosure here: Ann is one of our newest additions to the short story acquisitions staff on Tor.com, and the introduction to this anthology was also featured here on Tor as part of our recent Steampunk Week. So I already knew a bit about what to expect when the book arrived.

What distinguishes this volume from the previous two is its sharpened sociopolitical focus. Namely, how can literature instigate revolution? Is that even possible anymore? Many old-school methods of communication to the masses aren’t as effective in our global, digital era. Twitter can organize better than handing out radical pamphlets on the street. TV shows and websites alert us to social causes faster than books written in the vein of Charles Dickens or Victor Hugo. Even pizza can be ordered from across the globe to support another country’s protest. So how can steampunk play a part in social change? Ann argues in her introduction: “In the Steampunk context, it means to examine our relationship with technology, with each other, and with the world around us. And by doing that through the lens of Steampunk, it allows our imaginations to take off. Let’s use creative play to look at creation, invention.”

This collection addresses the dynamic facets of revolution: industrial, political, social, and historical. Not all of these stories are about the flash-and-bang, the anarchist bomb, the topping of statues. Instead, revolution is framed as acts of personal action in the face of social pressure, for good or for ill, which are possible because of that world’s innovative technology.

[This revolution will not be telegraphed. Neither will this book.]

The Inexplicables, Cherie Priest’s fourth novel in the Clockwork Century series, breaks from her previous books in several ways. Most significantly, instead of being set in a new location in her Civil War-torn US, we return to Seattle with a new perspective: that of the drug-addled Rector Sherman, the kid who had a brief appearance in Boneshaker as the boy who showed Zeke Wilkes how to enter the city. This is the first full-length novel with only a male protagonist (though she did have Captain Hainey starring in her novella Clementine, and Andan Cly shared the spotlight with Josephine Early in Ganymede). There isn’t a mechanical showpiece that serves as the title’s namesake, either–though discovering exactly what the “Inexplicables” are surprised me.

The breaks from her previous storytelling don’t hinder her, however. In fact, The Inexplicables doesn’t rehash as much as it refocuses on the aspects that got readers to love her world in the first place: a gritty survival tale where gas masks and goggles are necessary to live another day, and the aesthetic’s rough edges feel natural and real. Like all of the books in the Clockwork Century, The Inexplicables is a stand-alone novel, but is accessible enough to pull in new readers while giving nods to longstanding fans.

[Zombie Redux. Mild spoilers ahead.]

It seems like people fancy the 19^th century the most between Halloween and New Year’s. With Victorian Christmas events popping up left and right, who would be better fitted to attend than your local troupe of time-hopping, goggle-donning retrofuturists? This December go on a cruise on the river Thames, celebrate Dickens’ big 2-0-0 in San Francisco, or rock out over the aethernetz at a steampunk holiday concert. Airship Ambassador Kevin Steil and guest contributor Matt Delman of Doctor Fantastique’s Show of Wonders join me in celebrating the holidays with a bit of brass.

But if we have made the grievous oversight of missing your event, don’t hesitate to plug it in the comments below! And for those who want to get an early start on 2013, email me at attic.hermit@gmail.com with the details by December 15th to feature your January event.

[‘Tis the season]

Steampunk and Weird West battle Alt History this month for supremacy among the fourteen new genre benders. Be prepared to visit 15^th-century Holland, the 1942 Pacific Theatre, 1944 England, 19^th-century Colorado, 8^th-century Persia, and, just for good measure, a dystopian, futuristic Yellowstone National Park.

Fiction Affliction details releases in science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and “genre-benders.” Keep track of them all here.

Note: All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher.

[Read this month’s genre-bending releases.]