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    Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
    Unavailable
    Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
    Unavailable
    Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
    Audiobook12 hours

    Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

    Written by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant

    Narrated by Sarah Coomes, Nico Evers-Swindell, Arthur Morey and

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that never were. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, Utopian revolutionaries, and intrepid orphans-decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots-solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.

    Here, in the first major steampunk anthology for young adults, fourteen masters of speculative fiction, including two graphic storytellers, embrace the genre's established blend of sci-fi and fantasy, action and adventure, history and romance, and refashion it in surprising ways and in settings as diverse as Canada, New Zealand, Appalachia, Wales, ancient Rome, future Australia, and alternate California.

    Visionaries Link and Grant have invited all-new interpretations, explorations, and expansions, taking a genre already rich, strange, and inventive in the extreme and challenging contributors to remake it from the ground up. The result is an anthology that defies even as it defines the genre.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 11, 2011
    ISBN9781455822102
    Unavailable
    Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
    Author

    Kelly Link

    Kelly Link is the author of four collections, including Pretty Monsters and the Pulitzer finalist Get in Trouble. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press and lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts. Visit her at KellyLink.net.

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    Reviews for Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

    3.5/5

    19 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed the variety of stories in this book, they truly capture the steampunk movement
    • 4/5
      I have sort of a mixed history with both anthologies and steampunk. I WANT to like them! But with anthologies, so often they are uneven, and with steampunk so often I am annoyed by the ahistoricalness of it. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this anthology! Not only did it seem cohesive and remarkably even, it had a wide range of styles and settings which helped to keep the stories from melting together. I had favorites, but overall, I was happy with the result. [Nov. 2011]
    • 2/5
      Steampunk is a fun genre, one I have begun to explore with excitement. While I have not loved all of the steampunk novels I have read to this point, I have uniformly enjoyed the idea behind them, the out-of-place mechanization accepted as normal in an otherwise old-fashioned society. What attracts me most to this, I expect, is the similarity between steampunk and magical realism, the only difference being that the magic lies in the technology.

      With such thoughts in mind, I was eager to read this anthology, particularly considering that some authors I already enjoy contributed stories, such as M. T. Anderson, Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray and Cory Doctorow. In fact, these authors cap the anthology. It begins with the stories by the three I listed last and ends with M. T. Anderson's tale.

      Despite what should have been a strong beginning, I found the start of the anthology utterly tedious. I did actually Clare's, Bray's and Doctorow's stories, but none of them blew me away. Then, the next four stories I found to be completely awful, the anthology not picking up in quality again until Kelly Link's story, which, while interesting, really did not seem like steampunk so much as science fiction or fantasy, depending upon where the summer people came from.

      The latter half of the anthology, though, was totally satisfactory. I enjoyed all of the stories but the graphic novel Finishing School. Speaking of the comics included (Finishing School and Seven Days Beset by Demons), why were they so awful? I love that comics were included and applaud the blending of formats, but really think they could have found something better. Seven Days Beset by Demons was by far the worst story in the anthology, for it lacked plot, carried a heavy-handed religious bent and did not particularly smack of steampunk. Epic fail.

      The best stories, in my opinion, were "Steam Girl" by Dylan Horrocks, "Everything Amiable and Obliging" by Holly Black, and "The Oracle Engine" by M. T. Anderson, the final three stories in the anthology. I must admit I am a bit biased against most of the others, because I quickly tired of reading the poor grammar of western characters, who say things like "I done seen them people." No thanks.

      If you hate that all steampunk takes place in Victorian England and want to see where else it can be set, then you'll enjoy this wide range of interpretations (although personally, I found the ones in a modern setting a bit odd). Be prepared to slog through a couple of long stories that you might not be especially interested in. Or just skip those and move on.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Short story anthologies are always interesting: there are always a few that are completely amazing, and I'm always introduced to some authors and stories that I would have never picked up on my own.

      In my experience, the short stories in anthologies like this also always seem a bit...weirder? More "out there" than the novels that I read. Like these are experiments to see how far they can push up against the boundaries.

      Overall, I enjoyed this, but I think I prefer novels, simply because you can get to know the characters and the world more thoroughly -- in short stories, you have finally figured things out and then it's over...
    • 3/5
      This is a collection of short stories, very varied in style. Some really aren't "steampunk" in the usual sense and one or two don't seem to be at all. A few are really quite good and one or two didn't really hold my interest a lot but the rest weren't too bad at all. I think i liked Steam Girl as one of the best, and it's about two teenagers that are both loners and outcasts making friends. The Clockwork Fagin was also good. I couldn't get into the one based in ancient Rome.
    • 4/5
      Summary: The term "steampunk" conjures up visions of gaslit foggy London alleyways, but the stories in Steampunk! set out to prove that image wrong. They all take the trappings of steampunk and move them out of London, out of the Victorian era, and into times and places that steampunk's never been before.Individual Reviews: - "Some Fortunate Future Day" by Cassandra Clare involves a girl left alone in a house with only her clockwork dolls for company. I liked this one a lot, although it ended right at a critical point, making me anxious to know what happened next.- "The Last Ride of the Glory Girls" by Libba Bray is a western, with a team of outlaw girls that use a clockwork time device to commit their train robberies. One of my favorites in the collection: girl-power western, train heist, and a substantial steampunk feeling without the fog.- "Clockwork Fagin" by Cory Doctorow is a tale of an orphanage taken over by the orphans after the cruel master dies. This was also a great story, although a take on Dickens is not necessarily the best way to take steampunk to new locations, even if the orphanage was technically in Canada, not London.- "Seven Days Beset by Demons" by Shawn Cheng is a comic involving a young maker of clockwork scenes who falls for a young lady.- "Hand in Glove" by Ysabeau S. Wilce. A detective has to solve a series of murders, strangulations of random people in the street with no witnesses. While I'm not sure how well all of the various elements in this story fit into a steampunk framework, I definitely enjoyed the mystery.- "The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor" by Delia Sherman. When a young lord returns to the run-down and haunted Cwmlech Manor with clockwork servants and a plan. I don't know that I would have predicted it, but it turns out that ghost stories and steampunk go together surprisingly well.- "Gethsemane" by Elizabeth Knox is set in a Caribbean colony, on the brink of a volcano eruption. Not my favorite, felt like more of a zombie story, that was only really "steampunk" because there was an airship tossed in.- "The Summer People" by Kelly Link also didn't feel super-steampunk. It involves a young girl who is stuck in her small town, as a caretaker to a mysterious house filled with even more mysterious things. The only steampunk element was some clockwork toys the summer people leave behind, but it was such a good, creepy fairy story that I didn't care.- "Peace in Our Time" by Garth Nix involves a master artificer in retirement, and a surprise visitor who wants him to remember things in his past that he'd rather forget. An interesting story, although I had a decent idea of how it was going to play out.- "Nowhere Fast" by Christopher Rowe is a near-future post-apocalyptic, in which peak oil is a thing of the past, and a man who arrives in town in a personal car is an object of suspicion. The pacing in this story felt strange, and I didn't really get steampunk feeling from it.- "Finishing School" by Kathleen Jennings is another comic, this time of two young girls in colonial Australia, who have their own reasons for resisting the curriculum of glorifying the airships that patrol the continent.- "Steam Girl" by Dylan Horrocks is a story of the new girl in school, who doesn't fit in, but has a fantastic imagination, wherein she tells the tales of Steam Girl and her adventures across the solar system.- "Everything Amiable and Obliging" by Holly Black is a story of robot servants and a young girl who falls in love with her robot dancing instructor, as he falls for her. It had a Ray-Bradbury-esque feel to it, and I'm always a sucker for a good romance, so I was sold.- "The Oracle Engine" by M. T. Anderson is set in the time of the Roman Empire, and involves a young man who builds a calculating machine that can take the place of the oracles in predicting the will of the gods and the courses of battles. From a story level, this wasn't my favorite (not bad by any means, but pretty heavily focused on military strategy), but I thought it did the best job of any story in the collection at creating a world that used no traditional steampunk elements but felt thoroughly steampunky nonetheless.Recommendation: Not as uniformly excellent as some of the other themed anthologies I've read, but it's a fun idea, and the good stories area really, really good. If you're a fan of steampunk, or if you haven't read much of it but are curious to see what it can do as a genre, this collection provides a good sampling. 4 out of 5 stars.
    • 5/5
      Great short story collection. Some appealed more than others, of course, but the editors did a fine job of finding the common thread between stories from a variety of genres.
    • 5/5
      In this compilation of steampunk short stories, you will find fourteen original tales by some of the hottest authors in YA and adult fantasy and science fiction. The editors write in the introduction that "The continuing reinterpretation of the steampunk idea made us ask the writers for stories that explored and expanded their own ideas of what steampunk could be" (ix). As a result, these stories push the boundaries of what you might expect from the genre, including everything from a creepy mystery to a "Clockwork Fagin."This was the perfect collection to dip in and out of during my vacation week, because I could read one story at a time or, since one was so incredibly different from the next, read three straight in a row. I was able to read authors that I already enjoy, such as Cassandra Clare and Ysabeau Wilce, and be introduced to authors that I know want to investigate more, such as Delia Sherman and Dylan Horrocks. I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite, but looking back now the stories "Clockwork Fagin" by Cory Doctorow and "Steam Girl" by Dylan Horrocks stand out the most in my mind. I highly recommend giving this collection a try.
    • 4/5
      LOVED IT, SOME STORIES MORE THAN OTHERSThis book is a compendium of stories by some of my favorite authors. Each ones is a complete story in just a few pages, but a few of them, I would really liked to see developed further. There are also several manga-type stories that are incredibly well done. I have recently become fascinated by manga and would love afford more of them. I am going to hit on a few of the stand outs here:Some Fortunate Future Day by Cassandra Clare - This is the perfect story to lead off the collection since it captures her at times, creepy writing style wonderfully. It centers around Rose and her strange clockworking father who goes off to war and leaves in the care of robots he has created. Her doll, Ellen, tells her exactly what she doesn't want to hear and and a time changing device controls her destiny.Seven Days Beset by Demons by Shawn Craig - Wonderfully imaginative and weird, this manga covers the seven deadly sins over the course of seven day through the eyes of a mechanical music box maker. Finishing School by Kathleen Jennings - This illustrated short story ends with a beginning that should really be continued. It is a story about how two girls meet up with a mechanics expert who takes on extraordinary adventures.Everything Amiable and Obliging by Holly Black - Who would have thought that there is a steamy underside to clockwork automatons? Only Holly Black could imagine this world.All of the stories in this collect merit reading a few times and this would make an excellent gift for those who enjoy a bit of weird sci fi.
    • 5/5
      I’m not sure why this anthology is listed as Young Adult, because other than a lot of the characters being young, there is nothing juvenile about it. The stories are varied in setting; some actually step outside of the standard Victorian England setting that steampunk usually is set in- one is even set in ancient Rome. Fourteen well known authors provide us with tales of airships, mechanical men and oracles, time twisting technology, ghosts, geothermal drilling and a lot more. Some, I admit, didn’t really seem like steampunk, but they were very good stories- just not perhaps the stories for this anthology. Most anthologies are very uneven and I end up being bored by some of the stories and downright hate a couple. This one, though, held my interest throughout; there is not one story in it that I disliked. If you have any interest in steampunk literature- or even a love of fantasy- get this book.
    • 5/5
      This book was just fun to read. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for all age groups. Ignore the "Young Adult" classification and ignore the "Steampunk" genre and just enjoy an excellent, fun to read, collection of stories.I've always had issues with the classification "Young Adult" (YA) and this book is an example of why this is so. Note that the entire Harry Potter series is often classified YA, then consider its universal reading audience of all ages. So it is with Kelly Link and Gavin Grant's STEAMPUNK! anthology. This is a work which also deserves a universal reading audience. This collection of short stories, two of them in graphic (comics) format, is just a fun and enjoyable cover-to-cover read. The only authors with which I was previously familiar were Corey Doctorow (Little Brother), Cassandra Clare (City of Fallen Angels), and Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles). There is definitely some unevenness amongst the tales, as would be in any collection by different authors. From Ms. Clare's sad and evocative "Some Fortunate Future Day" to Mr. Doctorow's tightly plotted "Clockwork Fagin," I found different voices and different approaches to the Steampunk genre. Note: I have the same difficulty with "Steampunk" as a genre as I do with the YA classification. In any case, these tales left me wanting to see more of the characters and the worlds evoked.I must single out that I did not expect the two graphic (comics) short stories which are included. Shawn Cheng's "Seven Days Beset by Demons" is a well drawn (and well drawn) parable of youth's desires and indulgences; Kathleen Jenning's "Finishing School" left me wanting to read more about her characters in their colonial world of dirigibles. As with the text-only short stories, these were different voices and visions, with both being, in the end, just as enjoyable.Disclaimer: The reviewer received a free copy of this book via the Amazon Vine program.