FAVORITE STEAMPUNK BOOKS?

[Lia Keyes]

Got any favorites? Let's compile a library list! You can also upload photos of your favorite books' covers to the STEAMPUNK FICTION album.

 

Here are a few to get you started.

 

Oldies but goodies:

• The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers - Probably the classic Steampunk novel, this is a complex tale of Egyptian magic and time travel to a gas-lit, foggy Victorian London which comes into glorious, sinister life with secret beggars' guilds, Long-Heeled Jack, and the poet Coleridge all making appearances. Powers' systematic magic is comparable to science, and the mixture of the two forms one of the most important cross-genre novels of recent years.
• Homunculus by James P. Blaylock - A skeleton piloting a blimp is the least of it in this mad and riotous novel featuring the hunchback Ignacio Narbondo (setting a precedent for eccentrically named characters in Steampunk novels), the scientist-hero Langdon St. Ives, and the Trismegistus Club, a group of scientists and philosophers who meet at the pipe shop of a certain Captain Powers...Blaylock's fabulist style transforms London into a midnight carnival that is both exhilarating and scary. The other key novel from one of the three "Founding Fathers of Steampunk," as Powers, Blaylock, and Jeter were recently referred to in France, and winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. The sequel is Lord Kelvin's Machine.
• Morlock Night by K.W. Jeter - This is the earliest in terms of publication (1979), concerning the return of H.G. Wells' Morlocks to 19th century London, where they take over the sewers. Part pastiche and part homage, it didn't make quite the impact of the other novels, but its importance is undiminished.
• Infernal Devices by K.W. Jeter - A clockmaker is caught up in a plot to destroy the Earth, involving his own doppelganger automaton, many infernal devices and divers alarums. One reviewer called this "perhaps SF's definitive Steampunk statement."
• The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers - Purists would argue that since this is not set in London, it isn't quite Steampunk per se, but it's a damn good novel nonetheless, in which the poets Byron, Shelley and Keats are linked by their relation to a strange vampiric creature, the Lamia. This is another important cross-genre novel: the seeming fantastic turns into the science fictional, but the lines are artfully blurred. Powers used real conversations and events to weave his strongest Secret History novel.

 

More recently:

• Pasquale's Angel by Paul J. McAuley - Set in a Florence transformed by Leonardo Da Vinci's becoming an engineer rather than painter, this is highly entertaining story which is also a murder mystery. Features Nicolo Machiavelli.
• The Hollow Earth: The Narrative of Mason Algiers Reynolds of Virginia by Rudy Rucker - Edgar Allan Poe on a journey to the South Pole and into the hollow Earth.
• The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter - Baxter's sequel to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine
• Anti-Ice by Stephen Baxter - A Victorian adventure concerning the discovery of the powerful "anti-ice" eventually takes a naïve reporter to the moon.
• The Space Machine by Christopher Priest - Another homage to Wells, this is an early effort by the author of the recent Clarke Award-winning The Separation.
• Fata Morgana by William Kotzwinkle - Set in and around Paris in the 1860s.
• The Witches of Chiswick by Robert Rankin - The king of the tall tale offers another crazy adventure, this time concerning Babbage super-computers, Tesla transmitters, time machines, Martians, Jack the Ripper, the Invisible Man, and much, much more. Hugo Rune returns to the Rankinverse, as does Barry the Sprout (last seen in Elvis Presley's head). The first in a projected trilogy, followed recently by the Brentford novel Knees Up Mother Earth.
• The Age of Unreason series: Newton's Cannon, A Calculus of Angels, Empire of Unreason, The Shadows of God by Greg Keyes (J. Gregory Keyes) - A series taking as its starting point an 18th century where Isaac Newton became an alchemist and discovered "Philosopher's Mercury"; a young Benjamin Franklin features in the first book.
• The Werewolves of London by Brian Stableford - Werewolves, magic, and fallen angels in Victorian London.
• Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss - American Joe Bodenland finds himself in Lord Byron's villa in Lake Geneva, with both Shelleys and a real-life Frankenstein. This was made into a film by the same name.
• Dracula Unbound by Brian Aldiss - Dracula sends time-travelling assassins to kill Bram Stoker before he writes his novel. The vampires' "time train" is hijacked by Joe Bodenland, who teams up with Stoker to fight the author's creation: an interesting example of recursive SF.

[Gail Gray]

I'm reading "Thunderer" by Felix Gilman.  What a fascinating book.  His characters are quite unusual and his world building amazing, more along the lines of fantasy and the steampunk element is more muted, except for the airship and the dystopic world. But the vivid details, fast pace and the highly unique aspects of the location (won't offer a spoiler here - its way too cool) prove it be a most intriguing reading experience.  Gilman's imagination astounds me. I can't wait to get his next book.

http://www.sfsite.com/gra/0801/thlg.jpg

[Davide Mana]

Michael Moorcock's Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy is the thing that set in motion my interest for retro-science fiction.
And then James P. Blaylock novels - Homunculus and all the rest.

Also, the old roleplayng game, Frank Chadwick's Space: 1889, was a big influence on my later reading and writing - and is still one of mi faves.

Oh, and as I am at it, I may also mention George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman novels - that do not rate as steampunk by any means, but are great victorian fun.

 

 

[Ettrick]

I've got Affinity Bridge on my bedside. 

 

I am browsing the Steampunk Anthology, ed.s Anne and Jeff Vandermeer, and intend to pick up Steampunk II, also edited by them.

 

In YA, Philip Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles if you can get them without taking out a second mortgage.

 

I passed on Boneshaker after considering it every time I walked into a shop but bought Dreadnought.  I really like the tone and craft overall.

 

More to add later but they're in the bedroom library and my wife's still asleep.

[Jenna Huffman]

*Disclaimer: I did help edit book 2.  In the interest of full disclosure!*

 

For your consideration:  The Morrow Stone and Reaper's Flight, books 1 and 2 in the Aerthos Trilogy by Ren Cummins. 

[Ettrick]

Cheers for this collection of titles.  I am enjoying the introductions.

 

One that I bought on holiday in Mendocino: The Horns of Ruin by Tim Akers.  Orphan child in a crumbling society from what I gather so far.  The jacket ends with: "...the first perfect merger of steampunk and sword and sorcery."  I'm sculpting the protagonist, Eva.

 

I got The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt at Book Passages in Corte Madera.  Jay Lake calls it 'grunge fantasy.'  Orphans pursued while possessing ancient power to save society.  The opening scenes were quite harsh and gritty.  I was shocked and put it down for a later attempt.

 

Last, has anyone read Jane Lindskold's Buried Pyramid?  In a rush at the Book Mine in Weaverville, I grabbed it thinking it looked like S-punk but now wonder if it's better described as Gaslight Fantasy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Paul Marlowe]

I see there's a new James Blaylock book coming out in June, The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs, which features characters from his earlier Homunculus & Lord Kelvin's Machine:

[Annabel xxxx]

I've read the soulless books, I loved them! And I've read clockwork angel by Cassandra clare also a very nice book.

[Ettrick]

Can anyone tell me anything about the Ulysses Quicksilver novels? There's an omnibus with three titles in one volume but I can't tell how many other titles in the series.

http://www.amazon.com/Pax-Britannia-Ulysses-Quicksilver-Omnibus/dp/...

[Nicole Ross]

I'm following a few Steampunk series at the moment, and I'll call them favourites since I'm enjoying them so much!

Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate. I love her wit and humour!

 

Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century. Although I'm not a horror or zombie fan, I really liked Boneshaker and Dreadnought. I have Clementine - it's on my (rather sizeable) "to read" pile.

 

Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan. The augmented animals are so interesting!

 

Michael Pryor's The Laws of Magic. Not strictly Steampunk, more magic (practiced as a science) meeting technology and political intrigue. I don't know if Michael Pryor's novels are very well-known outside Australia, but they should be.

[Jim Placzkiewicz]

I'm reading Dreadnought as well.   Its pretty good.

[Tracy Zielinski]

I'm grooving on Mark Hodder right now and his Burton & Swinburne books. The Strange Affair of Springheeled Jack

[Gerard Quinn]

I just re-read Infernal Devices, by the great Jeter, and enjoyed it even more than when I read it shortly after it came out in the early 80's.  Probably my favorite steampunk novel.