June 18, 2013
The Stranger
The Syrena don't trust many humans.
June 12, 2013
Porn & Revolution in the Peaceable Kingdom
This is the story of a pet human and the slime mold who loves her.
June 11, 2013
A Visit to the House on Terminal Hill
They have their own way of doing things, and don't take kindly to outsiders.
June 5, 2013
A Window or a Small Box
No matter where they run, they're always only right here.
One of the first major blogging events we’ve done on Tor.com was for steampunk, and every autumn with the turning of the leaves, the H.M.S. Stubbington gets its engines stoked for another bout of gears, cogs, and 19th-century know-how. Now, Year Four into this brass madness, the question comes to mind: “Why does steampunk still matter?”
Autumn has settled in to roost, and you know what that means: layers! Steampunks can strut their stuff for the new season at a variety of events this month. Watch a musical at the 92nd Street Y performed by The Lisps. Scare up some fun at SteamCon IV, the oldest running steampunk convention in the United States, or celebrate everything Jules Verne at a festival dedicated solely to him in Paris! All these events and more have been gathered up with the help of Kevin Steil, the Airship Ambassador and our guest contributor Simon Berman of Privateer Press.
Folks who want to see their events posted here can contact me at attic.hermit@gmail.com. I’ll be taking November events between now until October 15th. And feel free to signal-boost yours in the comments thread too!
This month, school starts and steampunks come out to play. Downtown Atlanta becomes a retronauts’ paradise, a museum doubles as a premiere concert venue in Texas, and convention-hopping becomes all the rage throughout Europe. Kevin Steil, the Airship Ambassador, and our guest contributor, Michael (aka “The Mad Hatter”) of The Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf and Book Review join me to give us some steampunk shenanigans to kick off the autumn season.
Plugging additional events in our comments is welcomed. And, as always, if you want to see your event advertised here, just drop me a line at attic.hermit@gmail.com by September 17th to be included for October.
“What is the meaning of life?” is one of those questions that every author addresses at some point in their work. In his short story collection Sorry Please Thank You, Charles Yu takes this inquiry and breaks it down even further: “What is meaning?”, “What is life?”, and even “What is ‘is’?” As intellectually heady as these questions are, the stories are told in beguilingly simple prose. Yu has been compared to Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams for his playful meta-narrative style, and I’ll add that this book takes after Being John Malkovich and The Truman Show too. Perhaps Sorry Please Thank You can be considered Yu’s personal (or possible, or one of multiple) series of answers to Life, the Universe and Everything.
The dog days of summer are upon us, and so are the hottest conventions and events in steampunk. Kevin Steil the Airship Ambassador and this month’s guest contributor Emilie P. Bush join us in recommending places where you can stay cool (especially in all those layers!). Visit a museum for the clockmaker in all of us! Party hard at the Geek Mardi Gras known as Dragon*Con! Help chaphop rapper Professor Elemental shoot a music video! Details for all for these, plus much more going on this August can be found after the jump.
Have an event to feature here? Email me at attic.hermit@gmail.com with the deets by Sunday, August 19th to have your event featured for September, and don’t hesitate to advertise in the comments too.
The biggest geek event of the year is just around the corner, and I’ve been snooping through the SDCC schedule for anything and everything that the steampunk community would love to stop in on. Print out this list or checkmark these in your Guidebook App as the fan track for any 19th century-loving, SFF junkie.
The events I’ve earmarked include steam-exclusive happenings, panels featuring known steampunk authors or performers, and any item that falls under our umbrella of Stuff We Love Too (like Doctor Who or Firefly).
We’ll be updating this post over the next two weeks for any newly-announced shindigs, so keep this bookmarked in prep for all your con needs. Please let us know in the comments if you’re hosting any SDCC-related events that should be featured here too.
This coming month, steampunks are getting out their parasols and showing some ankle! Whether it is a picnic in the park or an extravaganza in connection to the annual geek pilgrimage known as San Diego Comic Con, we have the hottest upcoming and ongoing events listing for all of your gears-and-goggle needs.
Kevin Steil, the Airship Ambassador, and guest contributor Jordan Bodewell, the steampunk music & gaming maestro behind Sepiachord.com and VictorianAdventureEnthusiast.com, are helping me round-up fun and intriguing events from around the world.
We’re constantly looking for new events to spotlight, so if you want to see yours here on Tor, email me at attic.hermit@gmail.com with the details before Sunday, July 15th. And, as always, drop a shout-out in the comments if we had missed anything.
More events after the jump!
The heat is on this summer, along with some fantastic events in the steampunk community. Outdoor festivals, revolutionary conventions, innovative art shows, and dinner theater await the retrofuturistic social butterfly. We’ve combed the aetherwebs and tuned-in our ear trumpets to the word on the street for some exciting stuff going on in June. Alongside the Airship Ambassador a.k.a Kevin Steil, joining us this month as a guest contributor is Countessa Lenora, a.k.a Lee Ann Farruga, the founder of Steampunk Canada!
Of course, if we unfortunately missed listing your event, drop a line in the comments. Those who want to see their July event highlighted here, send me a note at attic.hermit@gmail.com by June 17th with the details to be included in next month’s round-up!
For a genre that actively explores new ideas about society, there is very little queer speculative fiction out there. When the average sci-fi reader thinks of examples, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness or the works of Samuel Delaney may come to mind, but more recent fiction doesn’t usually get time in the spotlight.
Turning the closet lights on and throwing the door wide open is what Brit Mandelo does in her edited anthology Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Fiction. She covers the LGBTQ beat here on Tor.com, and in this collection, Mandelo uses her expert eye to select seventeen stories that range from rambunctious adventure to techno-noir to romance, all featuring characters from a variety of genders and sexual orientations. Big name authors help give this anthology some of its literary chops – such as Nalo Hopkinson, Catherynne M. Valente, Ellen Kushner, Kelley Eskridge, Sonya Taaffe, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Sandra McDonald – but each of these stories is satisfying in its own way.
When writing spec fiction that falls into queer territory, one of the oft-made assumptions is that gay stories are all about relationships and romance. Where does the “speculative” come in? Having reviewed other gay fiction that fits in the speculative quite well, I had no worries that these stories would all fall into one theme. I did, though, note how some stories were much more speculative-driven while others were not (and a couple selections I thought would fit in better in an issue of Ploughshares or Glimmer Train instead). Despite this quibble, Beyond Binary has a strong showing of tales, and you can get my more in-depth impressions after the jump.
[Redefining sexuality and gender for a new geeky generation]
May’s always been a peak time for retrofuturistic adventuring, and there’s at least one event happening every weekend next month. Reporting about them is my pal Kevin Steil, the Airship Ambassador and our guest contributor S.J. Chambers, best known as the co-author of The Steampunk Bible with Jeff Vandermeer and co-propagator of its associated website, The Steampunk Bible 2.0.
For those interested in having your event listed as part of our round-up in the future, email me at attic.hermit@gmail.com. I’ll be accepting details for June events from now until May 19th. ‘Til then, get your steamer trunk packed and ready, and check out some fancy dress shindigs after the jump.
J.M. Barrie’s classic Peter Pan has seen its share of adaptations. It started off in 1904 as a play that opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, and later became written down as a novel in 1911. Peter Pan has also took to the silver screen, with creative re-interpretations that range from the well-known Disney film to the vampire teens of The Lost Boys to the sequel Hook starring Robin Williams. Under the dual pens of Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Peter Pan has spun off into a YA book series of prequels. Now, Peter and the Starcatcher, the first in that series, makes its premiere on Broadway this week at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Before Peter became “the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up,” he was just “The Boy,” a scraggly British orphan on his way to be sold into slavery in a foreign land. That is, until he encounters a mysterious trunk and a more mysterious girl on a mission from Queen Victoria.
I admit to not having read the books before seeing the show, but Peter and the Starcatcher was an innovative, high-energy production that at least made great use of Dave Barry’s referential humorous style and the other Barrie’s wondrous original material.
Spring is coming… and along with Easter bunnies, tax deadlines, and International Children’s Book Day, the steampunk convention season is in full swing, with new and seasoned cons happening throughout the U.S. and around the world this April. My fellow newshound Kevin Steil the Airship Ambassador is onboard as well as this month’s guest contributor Glenn Freund of the League of S.T.E.A.M. & the Jr. League W.A.T.C.H. to give the inside scoop on several of these events.
And, as always, if we didn’t catch your steampunk shindig, please give a shout-out in the comments. Have something epic in May? Be sure to email me at attic.hermit [at] gmail [dot] com with your event info by April 15th to be sure I’ll include it in our next round-up.
Onwards & upwards!
Fans of dragons and historical alternate history alike must know about Naomi Novik’s popular Temeraire series, where dragons and men battle during the Napoleonic Wars. Lively, uniquely-drawn characters and intriguing takes on history are two aspects I adore about these books, plus the international scope Novik brings to her storytelling. Though the war is raging through Europe, other non-European nations get slowly drawn into the mix, and Novik presents each society and their human-dragon relations in a nuanced manner. In China, for example, dragons and men are treated as equals. In England, dragons are considered widely as nothing more than working beasts capable of speech. African dragons, on the other hand, are respected as the reptilian reincarnation of deceased tribal elders.
At the end of the last novel, Tongues of Serpents, the former captain Will Laurence and Temeraire trek across Australia after a stolen dragon egg only to discover that the aborigines are trading with China. The revelation was certainly significant for the bigger global picture Novik is constructing, but it wasn’t her most exciting book to read. Too much wandering the outback and too little action.
I looked forward to Crucible of Gold, however, in hopes there would be more excitement. And there definitely is.
[Sea-journeys! Incans! Dragon Tournaments! Mild spoilers ahead.]
Steampunks are a-gathering as the tail-end of the winter season arrives (and it’s still appropriate to wear all those layers!) Among other things this March, stop in for a pub quiz at The Way Station, celebrate Steampunk Ottawa’s 3rd anniversary, or have a picnic or three! Kevin Steil of Airship Ambassador and additional guest Nancy Overbury of Overbury Ink are joining me to recommend the latest goings-on in the steampunk world.
Remember, folks, you can have your steampunk or steam-relevant event spotlighted here by emailing me at attic.hermit@gmail.com with the details. The deadline for featuring your favorite events for the month of April is March 18th, 2012. If we missed out on your event for this month, though, drop a shout-out in the comments below.
Now onto all the things!
[Steampunk events across the United States & around the world]
Before Jules Verne and H.G. Wells came onto the literary scene with their scientific romances, another genius inventor took the stage: Frank Reade, the 19th century whiz kid who tackled the globe with his fleet of electronic-powered vehicles in a series of popular dime novels. Scholars like Jess Nevins argue that Frank Reade and other Edisonades were the proto-sci-fi figures that influenced the steampunk subgenre today. If you ever picked up a classic Frank Reade story, (there are some available online), you’ll also find that they were very much pulp stories of their place and time, filled with adventure, innovative machines, juvenile writing, and the whiff of imperialist attitudes and racist stereotypes.
[Global exploits by land, by sea, and by air. Mild spoilers ahead.]
Steampunks of the Pacific Northwest, mark your calenders for a trio of steampunk book events that will amaze and inspire. Boy genius Frank Reade took the 19th-century by storm in sci-fi periodicals that showcased his globe-trotting escapades and his array of electric-powered, all-terrian vehicles. Since then, Frank Reade and his amazing machines has fueled steampunk’s imagination. Now, Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett — the authors behind the counterfactual history book Boilerplate — return with the “inside scoop” about the Edisonade’s past in FRANK READE: Adventures in the Age of Invention. This February, Guinan and Bennett will launch a series of book signings that give testament to Frank Reade’s ingenuity.
For every upcoming month, I’ll be spotlighting various steampunk events across the US and around the world (we’re a social bunch!) with the help of the Airship Ambassador and the occasional guest from the steampunk community. For February, witness a musical re-telling of the Opium Wars, attend a gala to sponsor the Madison Ballet, join the post-apoc wasteland at a retrofuturistic gaming convention, and much more…
As always, if we missed listing your event, comment below with the details. For March, please send all event details to Ay-leen at attic.hermit@gmail.com by February 17th to be included in the next round-up!
The steampunk community is pretty open to all creative types, but for those who are looking for any basic how-to books in order to get those artistic juices flowing, they are of a limited sort. A few craft books exist for jewelry and sewing projects, and there are online resources popping out everyday too. Yet for an efficient all-in-one resource for basic prop-making, one book I’d recommend to inspire a steampunk-in-the-making is Thomas Willeford’s Steampunk Gear, Gadgets and Gizmos: A Maker’s Guide to Crafting Modern Artifacts. This book has already garnered some attention in sci-fi circles, and I had the opportunity to attain a copy myself for some project inspiration.
[Some assembly required. Internal combustion engine not included.]
“I really wanted to write a pulp detective story and everything that it would entail, so I set in New York City,” Adam Christopher explained during his reading of Empire State at the Mid-Manhattan Library last Tuesday. Our reading location was in full view of the famous Library Lions of Fifth Avenue, which were draped in nighttime shadows as the faceless crowd, wrapped in their dark winter jackets, bustled by; looking at this atmospheric backdrop, I could understand how NYC can become a gritty inspiration to any outsider. But more than giving just a tip of the fedora to a classic American genre, Christopher talked about how superheroes, Prohibition, and alternate universes all play a role in his debut novel (read Tor’s excerpt or review).
In our round-up for steampunk events in January, the description for the theater production Miranda was certain intriguing to me. Murder mysteries are always fun, but a steampunk murder mystery? That’s an opera? Where all of the actors play their own instruments? Some criticize steampunk style as being too cluttered for its own good; Miranda sounded very much like an overwrought outfit, tooled too elaborately to satisfy. And yet, all of these elements drew me to the HERE theater space in NYC to watch last Friday’s show. Frankly, Miranda managed to take all of the aspects of what steampunk is – thematically, aesthetically, and even, dare I say it, musically – and combine it to create a compelling smash powerhouse of a show.
[Welcome to jury duty for the New Federation of Northern States]
