Shameless: Confessions of a Steampunk Addict

Recently (last Sunday), I was lucky enough to attend SF in SF's release tea party for Timeless, the final book in Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series.  Shameless endorsement: Go buy these books RIGHT NOW.  They are hilarious, poignant, sexy, beautifully written, and as she herself pointed out, you don't have to worry about the author dying before the series ends!

And the whole set looks really sexy on your shelf.

Anyway, one of the nicest things about attending this was, of course, getting to meet Gail Carriger herself.  Aside from the fact that I am PAINFULLY AWKWARD and felt like a ditzy fangirl every time she was within speaking range, it was fun because she happens to be a normal person who will chat about whatever and go off on tangents and what-all, who also happens to write amazing books.  As a result, the Q&A was great fun.

Now, one thing that came up at various points in the Q&A, directly and indirectly, was what books/authors etc. most influenced Miss Carriger - which is a pretty standard question that authors get asked, and if you've read her books and/or follow her blog and Twitter religiously (like me - again, shameless fangirl), then the answers she gave weren't much of a surprise.  Most of her list was female written/driven YA fantasy, and comedic fantasy and sci-fi, with a few classic witty Victorians thrown in for good measure.  And that's what got me thinking a bit about what a weirdo I am in regards to how I got interested in steampunk, specifically steampunk literature.

I have no idea what I'm talking about, so here is a picture of a book  with gears on its pages.

There are many many fantastic members of the steampunk community out there who I follow regularly via their blogs and Twitters, too many to list them all in this post (though I'd like to).  But one common thread I notice in the steampunks I stalk is that  the vast majority of them seem to have entered into the steampunk literary aesthetic via fantasy or science fiction literature.  And here we enter the part where I'm wondering if I'm kind of a freak, because:

- I don't read sci-fi.
- I barely read "high" fantasy anymore.
- I dabble in paranormal, but only because of my vampire fixation.

I got obsessed with steampunk literature because of its connection to historical fiction and classic lit.

As a side note, there are a lot of crossover elements between science fiction, fantasy, and steampunk, and I'm not going to get into all the divisions and the concept of genre vs aesthetic (especially because Mike Perschon, the Steampunk Scholar and another of my favorite Twitter stalkees, has already dealt with that much better that I would).  I'm looking at this solely in terms of how I classify what I read, and the connections I see, so just roll with me on this.

If I take a quick look back on movies and such I really liked before I knew about the concept of steampunk, it's not that surprising that I ended up there.  I'll go ahead an cop to an embarassing list that includes things like Atlantis: The Lost Empire, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (movie and comic both), and Van Helsing.   You know what all of those had in common?

If you said "They all take place in alternate history settings with use of advanced technology," then congratulations! you are overachieving in trying to figure out if this was a trick question.  However, if you said "They all have some relation to classic literature and/or pulps," then congratulations! you've identified why I liked them so much, despite the arguable fact that two of those three kinda sucked and all three flopped at the box office.  (Two of those three also had planned TV series spinoffs that were cancelled when the movies flopped and I'm still bitter.)  But seriously, despite the fact that the movie version of LXG was entirely ridiculous, it was my geeky classic lit crossover wet dream and I still want to get together a cosplay group and all that sort of thing.  Because I'm a history geek.

I read a lot of historical fiction.  A lot.  A lot.  And most often I gravitate to Victorian era which, surprise surprise, also happened to be the era of the Industrial Revolution in which new technology like, oh, steam-powered engines played a huge part.  So if you hand me Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine I go: "Hey look, Disraeli!  And Lady Ada Byron!  And...a bunch of protocomputers...sure, I can buy that given the quasi-historical context in which they are explained as existing!"  Because I tend to dissect things as I read.  Heaven forbid you write a historical book and give someone a name that isn't appropriate for their era/age/language/country of origin, because I'll fixate on it to the point where I'll miss half the plot because I'm screaming about how you didn't do your research.  I want continuity.  And, despite my loooooong involvement with theater (or maybe because of it) I will only suspend so much disbelief before you need to explain yourself.  Example: Your protagonist cannot ride a single horse from Inverness, Scotland, to Winchester, England in a single day, period.  Caveat: Unless you have previously established that in this alternate version of Britain, all horses are descended from Balius and Xanthus and thus are born with the ability to run with the speed and tirelessness of the west wind.  I need enough strong backstory/history/mythology/whatever to convince me that there is an explicable reason from why things are the way they are in the world of a novel.  And if the author gives me enough of that, then I will be able fill in the gaps with explanations or excuses that I pieced together myself based on the world they created, and I won't be distracted by what might in fact have been an overlooked let's-just-handwavium-that item.

The words "airship" and "goggles" alone do not a steampunk novel make.

So that's why I think I'm drawn to steampunk from the historical side.  History, especially post-printing press history, is pretty well recorded, so it's just a matter of looking it up.  The particular breed of steampunk I'm drawn to, that of Carriger and Gibson and Westerfield, really is a kind of alternate history, taking the existing facts and judiciously applying  a few "what if?" questions to reinvent them a bit.  As a result, everything makes sense and the existence of the technology/science/magic/etc. that make the stories "steampunk" all originate from logical beginnings.  It's the literary equivalent of finding actual metal gears and tooling them into jewelry, rather than buying a necklace made of crappy molded plastic from the local Hallowe'en store.  They'll both have the right vibe, but one of them is obviously better quality and more likely to stand the test of time.  (Not that your accessories all have to be welded or anything - my pocketwatch cameo is held together with glue dots and safety pins, but I think you get my point.)  And this is not to say that I dislike fantasy or sci-fi.  I like both of them just fine, although I personally tend to prefer sci-fi in visual media.  I'm just so incredibly critical in my reading that it takes a lot to impress me and hold my interest, and so far most of the steampunk authors have managed to do that.  Don't disappoint me, my bustled and begoggled friends.

So in conclusion, steampunk is nifty, and here is a link to videos of Mike Perschon and Gail Carriger reading from the first chapter of Soulless, which is all kinds of awesome.

My Sordid Affair with Oiled McManChest

Well, ladies, gentlemen, and spambots, it's that time of year again. Yesterday was one of my absolute favorite holidays of all time!  (For those of you unfamiliar with the history and ceremonial customs of the festival celebrated yesterday, I suggest you go read this excellent little post which concisely sums up the whole shebang.)

So considering the time of year, I thought it would be only fitting that my inaugural post address a topic very close to my heart: romance.  Or, more specifically

If I Hate Romance Novels, Why Can't I Stop Reading Them?

No, seriously, I'm asking.  I did not grow up reading my mom's romance novels under the covers at night (or anyone else's for that matter).  I was too busy teaching myself Elvish and engrossing myself in musical theater to bother with books that were, as far as I could tell, all about men and women acting stupidly on each other's behalf while having an exceedingly difficult time keeping their clothing buttoned/strapped/fashion tapped in its proper places.  (For reference: I still kill in obscure musical theater trivia, but retained no Elvish other than being able to kinda sing the Arwen love theme from the movie version of Fellowship.)

Of course, as a got well into my teenage years I became obsessed with Gothic Romanticism; I think I read for the first time Dracula, The Phantom of the Opera, Interview with the Vampire, and possibly also Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde all in the same eighteen month period somewhere between the ages of 14 and 16 for pleasure reading.  Yes, I know Anne Rice is kind of the embarrassing cousin at the classic lit reunion going on up there, but she was an example (if far from the best) of one the contemporary inheritors of the tradition.  However, what I'm getting at is that Gothic Romanticism is a lot more JMW Turner and the dichotomy of the grotesque/sublime than it is Fabio and boning.

Left: A view of the true sublime.  Right: A view of what you wish your hair would do.

So now fast forward another *mumblemumble* years, and I'm in my *muchmoremubling*th year of college, where I've spent a lot of time studying those books.  (Even Anne Rice.)  Except for Dr. Jekyll, I've read all of them at least 3 time, more in the case of Dracula and Phantom of the Opera.  I want to have Lord Byron's babies.  I can provide a brilliantly concise but descriptive definition of the sublime, and cross reference half-a-dozen examples in art, literature, and architecture.  Y'know what I read for fun recently?

This.  This is a steampunk romance novel called The Iron Duke, written by Meljean Brook, and featuring a male cover model I affectionately refer to as Sir Oiled McManChest. The plot of the novel goes something like:

Repressed police chick meets war hero sexy sexy airship pirates boning boning orgy nanotechnology boning snogging boning goggles snogging blow stuff up slightly rapey wardrobe malfunction boning boning happily ever after.


Okay, that's not entirely fair.  Brook actually does a really incredible job of setting up a plausible steampunk alt-history, and if ignored the Herculean amounts of sex that the two main characters manage to have, she'd probably get a lot more praise for her world building and attention to the actual results of Imperialism and how the world would have been affected had that power belonged to other countries.

Which brings me back around to main point: despite all the awesome worldbuilding, 85% of this book is characters having sex, attempting to have sex, thinking about having sex, and blowing stuff up (which is, in a sense, a lot like sex).  And this one is kind of the exception to the rule as far as romance novels go, since the sex actually vaguely ties in to an actual plot, whereas in most romance novels, the entire plot is no more complex than people have sex in various ways as dictated by the YKINMK* rule of sexytimes, the end.

*Your Kink Is Not My Kink, or the "Read the Label, Dumbass" rule

Now, I need to break in with another caveat here: I don't mind falling-in-love/snogging/sex/etc. as plot elements or subplots within the books I read of other genres.  I never have.  As you will begin to gather if you continue reading this blog in the future, I have very strong obsessions opinions about the way couples interact in specific works of classic and contemporary literature.  But up until the last...oh, let's say two years...I have actively steered clear of the mindless drivel of the romance novel world.  And now I find myself skimming through the free books section of the Kindle store going "hmmm...it's a romance...but her dress is pretty and the reviews say the formatting doesn't suck, so we're good!"

But I do have a theory.  Well, two theories, since maybe this really is just my single-girl subconscious screaming for tender manly affection from an idealized lover, and reading romance novels is less creepy than plastering pictures of Lt. Sharpe and Seth Starkadder all over my binders.

But the theory I think is more interesting, and possibly more accurate, is that romance novels are just doing a better job of crossing-over with other genres and hitting a higher level of literary value.  I mean, the classic historical romance goes back to Georgette Heyer, who A) was awesome and B) wrote as much about the fashion, manner, and history of the Regency period as she did about the characters falling in love.  Or there's books like Joanna Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady which I went out and bought after reading this review on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books about how brilliantly the author portrays the various languages, accents, and dialects the characters speak.  Here there's history, politics, and legitimate craft in the writing...oh, and a bunch of snogging.

(Also, it should be mentioned that after reading this post, I intentionally went out and found the pictured original cover instead of the new one, because if I'm going to read these then dammit I will suffer the shame of the embarrassing covers.  I call this guy Captain McManChest - I think he's maybe the grandfather of Sir Oiled up above.)

So that's my theory on how I, a Dickens-loving, Byron-worshiping, clever-language-connoisseur English major, ended up reading utterly ridiculous romance novels under the covers until 3am.  To be fair, I do try to have standards.  I mostly read historical romance, and my rare forays into contemporary only occur when elements of mystery or urban fantasy exist to mediate my general loathing of anything post 1950.  Also, if the characters are not named appropriately for their age/era/ethnicity/any combination thereof, and there's no legitimate explanation, I will frequently pass on a book to save myself the blinding rage of trying to justify them and failing.  That, you will learn, is one of my great pet peeves (as is non-historically accurate hair in period films - this topic will come up a lot).

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go stare at the man-candy on the covers of some cheap paperbacks I got from the library.