Sean Wallace (editor) - The Mammoth Book of Steampunk

Sean Wallace is the founder and editor of Prime Books, which won a World Fantasy Award in 2006. In the past he was co-editor of Fantasy Magazine as well as Hugo Award-winning and two-time World Fantasy nominee Clarkesworld Magazine; the editor of the following anthologies: Best New Fantasy, Fantasy, Horror: The Best of the Year, Jabberwocky, Japanese Dreams and The Mammoth Book of Steampunk; and co-editor of Bandersnatch, Fantasy Annual, Phantom and Weird Tales: The 21st Century. He lives in Rockville MD with his wife, Jennifer, and their twin daughters, Cordelia and Natalie.

Edited by Sean Wallace

Constable & Robinson Ltd

5556 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

Copyright Sean Wallace, 2012 (unless otherwise stated)

The right of Sean Wallace to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously,
and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,
hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication
Data is available from the British Library

UK ISBN: 978-1-84901-736-7 (paperback)
UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-135-5 (ebook)

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First published in the United States in 2012 by Running Press Book Publishers,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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US ISBN: 978-0-7624-4468-7
US Library of Congress Control Number: 2011930509

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Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

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Printed and bound in the UK

by Ekaterina Sedia

by Jeff VanderMeer

by Caitln R. Kiernan

by E. Catherine Tobler

by Jay Lake

by Genevieve Valentine

by Cat Rambo

by Shweta Narayan

by Aliette de Bodard

by N. K. Jemisin

by Peter M. Ball

by Sharon Mock

by Catherynne M. Valente

by Alex Dally MacFarlane

by Eileen Gunn & Michael Swanwick

by Tobias S. Buckell

by Matthew Kressel

by Margo Lanagan

by Amal El-Mohtar

by Barth Anderson

by Jeffrey Ford

by James Morrow

by Cherie Priest

by Margaret Ronald

by Megan Arkenberg

by Benjamin Rosenbaum

by Mary Robinette Kowal

by Samantha Henderson

by Nick Mamatas

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

by Lavie Tidhar

With the recent release of The Steampunk Bible (ed. Jeff VanderMeer and SJ Chambers), it seems that steampunk as a genre finally came into its own and has grown enough to demand its own compendium, summarizing various parts of this remarkably protean movement, and pointing out interesting things happening in its DIY culture, cosplay, film, literature and music. The fact that the steampunk esthetic penetrates all aspects and art forms indicates that it is remarkably malleable and yet recognizable. We often see steampunk as gears and goggles glued to top hats, but this impression is of course superficial, and there is much more complexity to the fashion and maker aspects of it just take a look at the Steampunk Workshop website by Jake Von Slatt if you dont believe me! And yet, much like pornography, all of these expressions conform to a common pattern difficult to describe beyond the superficial, but one just knows it when one sees it.

And of course the literary component of the genre has complexity beyond what is visible to a casual reader. Some will think of early steampunk, as envisioned by Powers, Baylock and Jeter; others will recall the retrofuturism of Wells and Verne; yet others will shrug and deride faux Victoriana with its grafted-on machinery. The beauty of steampunk is that none would be wrong much like trying to determine the shape of an elephant by feel, summarizing literary steampunk is daunting, and it is tempting to grab a trunk and call it an elephant. It is tempting to say that in order to be properly steampunk, a story needs to be an alternate history, or to be set in Victorian England, or at least have an airship or two. And surely there cannot be steampunk without steam engines?