Collects 30 steampunk short stories.
Format: print
Publisher: Robinson
Page count: 498
Publishing year: 2012
Fixing Hanover by Jeff VanderMeer: The main character works as a blacksmith in a remote village. He’s running away from his past. When a metal man is found washed up at the shore, the MC has a bad feeling about it. But the village council’s leader orders the MC to fix it.
The Steam Dancer (1896) by Caitlin R. Kierman: Missouri Banks lost an eye and a leg to a disease when she was young. But a mechanic found her and fell in love with her. He gave her a mechanical leg and an eye. Now they’re married and Missouri loves to dance at the local brothel.
Icebreaker by E. Catherine Tobler: Muriel is the widow of a famous adventurer and inventor. She’s determined to bury her husband’s remains in the frozen north. But the sea has monsters.
Tom Edison and his amazing telegraphic harpoon by Jay Lake: Tom Edison and his freedman and friend Salmon Goodberry live in the moving steam city of City of Hoboken. The shores of Mississippi are dangerous not just because of the natives but Clarke’s Army which has now recruited flying monsters out of the Bible.
The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball by Genevieve Valentine: The Zeppelin Conductors have lived in the helium balloon so long that their bodies have grown long, and in the eyes of society, deformed. They can only be at peace among their own kind.
Clockwork Fairies by Cat Rambo: Claude is a very proper professor at a London university. He’s engaged with a mixed-race daughter of an Earl. She’s also an engineer and inventor but he thinks that she will grow out of it once they have children. Because she’s mixed race, she thinks she doesn’t really have any other choice but to marry Claude. But does she?
The mechanical aviary of Emperor Jala-ud-din Muhammad Akbar by Shweta Narayan: The Emperor of the World has subjects both made of flesh and metal. But his prized possession is his mechanical aviary where his clockwork smith works. She’s a mechanical bird herself. Told in a fable style.
Prayers of Forges and Furnaces by Aliette de Bodard: The short story is set in a future where mechanical gods have overthrown the Aztec empire’s blood-thirsty gods. Xochipil has a lame leg and because of that the only work she can get is scavenging from the surface of the earth. One day, a stranger from the outside comes to her.
The effluent engine by N.K. Jemisin: In this alternate universe short story, Haiti is a free nation because it can build airships. But they know they can’t do that for long. So they send a spy to New Orleans to ask for aid from an inventor so that he can build a machine to make a better source of energy.
The clockwork goat and the smokestack magi by Peter M. Ball: Another story told as a fable. A clockwork goat comes to the door of the Smokestack Magi, bringing an offer of truce from the Magi’s enemy. But the Magi is suspicious and takes too long to decide what to do.
The Armature of Flight by Sharon Mock: Leo is the son of a Lord and in time he’s expeted to marry and produce an heir. But while he’s still relatively free, he can enjoy his male lover. Leo ignores the future but his lover must have a plan for it.
The Anachronist’s Cookbook by Catherynne M. Valente: Jane Swallow is an orphan, a pickpocket, a former prisoner. She also distributes pamphlets to wake up the exploited people to rise up against their rich oppressors.
Numismatics in the Reigns of Naranh and Viu by Alex Dally MacFarlane: The story of a nation told through different coins. A sister and brother ruled for a day but then the brother rose against the sister who was forced to flee. She recruits people to her cause through coins. Her cause is to give the gifts from the steam gods freely to everyone, while her brother would like to keep them for himself.
Zeppelin City by Eileen Gunn & Michael Swanwick: The Naked Brains control Zeppelin City from their Zeppelins. The city’s most favored sport is autogyro racing. Amelia Spindizzy is one of the best racers, a real daredevil. But when she gets ready for her newest race, the Brains require her autogyro to be changed and she doesn’t like that. Radio Jones is a poor woman but she’s also an inventor. Her newest invention, a universal radio receiver, could change communication for everyone. Red Rudy tries to recruit people to join the revolution against the oppressive Brains.
The People’s Machine by Tobias S. Buckell: Ixtli is a priest and an inquisitor. It’s his job to hunt down anyone who still practices the bloody rites of the old Aztec gods. Now, someone has killed a young man in New Amsterdam in a way that suggests a heretic. The Mexica government sends Ixtli to find out the truth.
The hands that feed by Matthew Kressel: Jessica Rosen owns a pawn shop in a steampunk Manhattan. She has made seven small mechanical creatures which she sends out in the evening. By day, young and beautiful Divya helps her in the shop. Divya is engaged to a corrupt man who wants to become the Mayor. He despises Jessica and all Jewish people and wants to shut down the pawn shops. Jessica loves Divya but doesn’t know if they could have a future together.
Machine Maid by Margo Lanagan: The main character is a young woman who is very interested in mechanics and mechanical people. However, her mother forbids her to even read about such un-ladylike things. The main character married a rich cattle rancher despite the fact that she despises him. She also dislikes their home at the frontier. When her husband goes away for several weeks, she starts to tinker with her very lifelike machine maid. What she finds, surprises and enrages her.
To Follow the Waves by Amal El-Mohtar: Hessa is a dream sculptor. She builds a dream in her mind and puts it into a jewel so someone else can dream it. But now a very highborn client wants a dream about the sea. Unfortunately, Hessa has never been to the sea. She tries everything she can think of to try to invoke strong warm feelings about the sea. But then she sees a mysterious, beautiful woman in a cafe and can’t stop thinking about her.
Clockmaker’s Requiem by Barth Anderson: Krina is a clockmaker. In this world, clocks make individual time. But now an apprentice has invented a clock that can count time for everyone. Krina knows that it will destroy the world.
Dr. Lash remembers by Jeffrey Ford: A strange sickness has taken many of Dr. Lash’s patients and he can’t do anything about it. Still, he relieves their pain as much as he can. A trusted colleague tells him that the steam engines are producing the gas that makes people ill. Unfortunately, the government isn’t going to stop using the engines. Also, some people hallucinate before they die.
Lady Witherspoon’s Solution by James Morrow: A ship captain finds a paradise-like island where Neantherdals still live. But one of the Neantherdals has a journal that reveals a darker story.
Reluctance by Cherie Priest: Walter McMullin is a teenaged boy, a former soldier, and now he flies mail in a single-seater airship. One of his legs is mechanical. When the night starts to fall and his ship starts to lose fuel, he lands in a small town called Reluctance. But nobody is around.
A Serpent in the Gears by Margaret Ronald: A scientific expedition is flying to the isolated, almost mythical land of Aaris. But on this ship, few people are who they say they are.
The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois by Megan Arkenberg: Antoine de Saint-Pierre travels to Summerfall house which the ghost of Margravine of Blois is supposed to haunt. The story is told through de Saint-Pierre’s diary entries.
Biographical notes to ”A discourse on the nature of causality, with air-planes” by Benjamin Rosenbaum by Benjamin Rosenbaum: Benjamin Rosenbaum is traveling on an airship and meets a Raja, a prince, who wants Ben to come to his country. Before Ben can decide what to do, an assassin attacks. Ben is a writer of plausible fables and he thinks a lot. Even in the middle of chasing the assassin, he thinks about philosophy. The world-building, which has Eastern steampunk, was interesting but the philosophy in the middle of actions scenes was a poor fit.
Clockwork Chickadee by Mary Robinette Kowal: The Chickadee can’t fly but a clockwork Sparrow can. The Sparrow constantly talks about himself as better than the others. The Chickadee has a plan to change that.
Cinderella Suicide by Samantha Henderson: The main character, Cinderella Superstar, and his three teammates are convicts in Australia. They’ve done their time and are now looking for a better-paying job.
Arbeitskraft by Nick Mamatas: It’s near the end of the 19th century. Karl Marx has just died but his friend Friedrich Engels is determined to continue speaking and acting for the proletariat. He’s also building a Dialectical Engine in his factory, hoping to rebuild Marx’s brain. Meanwhile, he realizes that some of the young girls working in match factories have been turned into monsters. When the phosphorus eats away the girls’ jaws, their employer, Bryant and May, have replaced flesh and blood with steel. Also, steam workers have started to replace human workers in the factories. This story deals with lots of issues.
To seek her fortune by Nicole Kornher-Stace: The Lady Explorer flies around the world in her airship with her son and her crew, looking for a fortune-teller who will tell her a death that she can accept.
The Ballad of the last human by Lavie Tidhar: Chancer is an adventurer, a philosopher, a trader, and occasionally a thief. He’s also a dog. He travels all over the world in his airship, trading or stealing. Then he meets Mot, a spider. Mot knows where the treasure is hidden and they agree to look for it.
This was a very interesting collection. Some of them are more slice-of-life stories and one is even a detective story. But most of them have themes of battling racism, classism, or sexism, as the punk aspect of steampunk. Some of them have societies in an uproar. However, the back cover says that the stories have “technology used to uplift rather than to oppress” and most don’t. Usually, only the rich and powerful get the benefits and the rest are left to starve or are even mutilated.
Some of the stories have very interesting alternative worlds that I’d love to read more about, such as “The Clockwork Fairies”, “the Effluent Engine”, “the People’s Machine”, “Biographical Notes to ”A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with air-planes” by Benjamin Rosenbaum”, “To Follow the Waves”, and “A Serpent in the Gears”. “Zeppelin City” was great but felt like it was a novel squeezed into a short story. Many of the stories are set in different worlds than the typical Victorian age. So, the stories are quite different from each other and show how different steampunk can be.
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