Tag: SteamPunk

April 30, 2018

A War Across the Glass

A War Across The Glass A review of Patrick Bollivar’s “Operation: Looking Glass” in Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland Edited by Colleen Anderson (Exile 2018) By Derek Newman-Stille It turns out Wonderland isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Patrick Bollivar’s “Operation: Looking Glass” explores a group of people who are in a battle with Wonderland to get their sister back....

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March 2, 2017

A Wilde Ride Through Time

A Review of Sean McMullen’s “The Life and Soul of the Party” in Lazarus Risen (Bundoran Press, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille Sean McMullen’s steampunk tale “The Life and Soul of the Party” imagines a world where the dead can be brought back to life through the use of atomata, letting their spirits inhabit the bodies of machines. McMullen plays with...

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September 11, 2016

Class Constraints

A review of Rebecca Diem’s “The Stowaway Debutante” (Woolf Like Me Publishing, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille Rebecca Diem’s “The Stowaway Debutante” is a steampunk story of disruption, shaking up the class divides of the Victorian Era. Diem writes a tale of escape from the boundaries, barriers, and confinements placed on gender and class. This is a tale of change and...

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May 31, 2016

Putting the Punk Back in Steampunk

Putting the Punk Back in Steampunk A review of Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction Edited by Dominik Parisien (Exile Editions, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille Steampunk has often struck me as a genre that has tended toward overly rosey views of the Edwardian and Victorian Eras. The steampunk tales I have read have often uncritically represented colonialism as adventure, portrayed technology divorced...

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May 4, 2016

A Seance Evoking Future Horrors

A Seance Evoking Future Horrors A review of Tony Pi’s “Our Chymical Seance” in Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction edited by Dominik Parisien (Exile Editions, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille With “Our Chymical Seance”, Tony Pi plunges us into a world of Victorian spiritualism, a world filled with mediums, ectoplasm, haunting devices, and complete with the obligatory skeptic who brings a rational...

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May 2, 2016

Frozen Wooden With Steampunk Horror

Frozen Wooden with Steampunk Horror   A review of Kate Heartfield’s “The Seven O’Clock Man” in Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction, edited by Dominik Parisien (Exile Editions, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille As much a horror tale as it is a steampunk story, Kate Heartfield’s “The Seven O’Clock Man” evokes the powerlessness of youth. Heartfield constructs a community where the late mayor...

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April 28, 2016

Signing the Electric

Signing the Electric A review of Terri Favro’s “Let Slip the Sluicegates of War, Hydro-Girl” in Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction edited by Dominik Parisien (Exile Editions, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille In “Let Slip the Sluicegates of War, Hydro-Girl”, Terri Favro creates a technologically advanced steampunk Canada in the midst of the war of 1812, using the hydro-electric dam at Niagara...

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April 26, 2016

Disability and Immigration

Disability and ImmigrationA review of “Crew 255” by Claire Humphrey in Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction, edited by Dominik Parisien (Exile Editions, 2016). By Derek Newman-Stille In “Crew 255”, Claire Humphrey uses steampunk to comment on the interrelationship between immigration, disability, and ethnicity. After an explosion of an airship in Toronto, people are brought into the city from other countries to...

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April 24, 2016

Working in the Industrial Revolution

Working in the Industrial RevolutionA review of Brent Nichols’ “The Harpoonist” in Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction edited by Dominik Parisien (Exile Editions, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille Despite the disabling effects of the Industrial Revolution and the number of limbs lost in the desire to mechanise, most steampunk doesn’t examine the relationship of disability to the technological gadgetry that is employed...

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April 21, 2016

Steampunk Multiculturalism

Steampunk MulticulturalismA review of Holly Schofield’s “The East Wing in Carall Street” in Clockwork Canada; Steampunk Fiction Edited by Dominik Parisien (Exile Editions, 2016).    Canada’s late 1800s were an era of exploitation of Chinese-Canadian workers. With head-taxes on immigrants from China and the exploitation of Chinese labourers for widescale production, Canadian interactions with their Chinese-originating populations in the 1800s...

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