Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Sto... by Kelly Link

Starred review from AugVeteran editors Link and Grant serve up a delicious mix of original stories from 14 skilled writers and artists. The result is an anthology that defies its genre even as it defines it. Grant have invited all-new explorations and expansions, taking a genre already rich, strange, and inventive in the extreme and challenging contributors to remake it from the ground up. Here, fourteen masters of speculative fiction, including two graphic storytellers, embrace the genre's established themes and refashion them in surprising ways and settings as diverse as Appalachia, ancient Rome, future Australia, and alternate California. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, utopian revolutionaries, and intrepid orphans solve crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and re-craft a world of automatons, clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that never were. Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. It gives the reader a glimpse into the Steampunk genre and allows a taste of many different varieties.In the first major YA steampunk anthology, fourteen top storytellers push the genre's mix of sci-fi, fantasy, history, and adventure in fascinating new directions. There are 2 graphic stories, stories which would appeal to girls, stories which would appeal to boys and stories which would appeal to all. I have always been creeped out by talking dolls and this was no exception, but the story was excellent. On the other hand, Some Fortunate Future Day by Cassandra Clare was an enjoyable (if creepy) read about a girl whose dolls tell her what to do. I found myself bogged down by the language of it all. I can’t put my finger on it (no pun intended).

Wilce 2008 winner of the Andre Norton award for Young Adult Science Fiction and fantasy was too something for me. The orphans kill him, take over and build a clockwork version (like a robot) of the man so the nuns won’t realize that he is gone. Cory Doctrow writes about a Canadian workhouse for crippled orphans run by a horrible man. Libba Bray, for example, writes a story about a gang of horse riding Wild West girls with a mechanism that slows/stops time long enough for them to rob a train and get out.

Steampunk: a subgenre of science fiction and fantasy featuringadvanced machines and other technology based on steampower of the 19th century and taking place in a recognizablehistorical period or a fantasy world.Įach short story is a work by a noted YA author.

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Sto... by Kelly Link