The British Fantasy Society Forum

[Degsy]

There was an explosion in Steampunk-themed comics a while back. Unfortunately, while a lot of the retro-technological ideas were pretty inventive they tended to overshadow those old-fashioned necessities like plot and characterisation.

I particularly enjoyed 'Scarlet Traces' and 'The Great Game' by Edgington/D'Israeli, sequels of sorts to HG Wells' 'War of The Worlds' where captured Martian technology has been back-engineered for human use, i.e. houses are now heated by low power death-ray generators and the Household Cavalry parade while mounted on octopod robots.

This particular Victorian/Edwardian universe was pretty much 'bagsied' by Alan Moore in the LOEG series and certain ideas are starting to recur with monotonous frequency. For instance, Aleister Crowley/Sherlock Holmes/Nikola Tesla tend to appear as minor characters far more often than is strictly necessary.

Perhaps the whole genre has run out of....

[Jim Steel]

Paul Di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy is worth tracking down. It was published by Four Walls Eight Windows in 1995 and contained a novella that was first published in Interzone, another story that first appeared in Amazing, and a third that was new to the collection. Great stuff.

[sandranorval]

Loads of new stuff for me to look at, thanks all. I've downloaded some online magazines and will order a copy of Murky Depths. Now I just need to invent a time machine so I can create extra hours to read it all!