TRP & Steampunk

[Craig Clark]

Paul DiFilippo writes:
 
> The catalog description of MASON & DIXON leads me to hastily want
> to lump ther new TRP, sight unseen, into the "steampunk" category:
> po-mo reimaginings of the Victorian/Edwardian era employing a 
> comic tone, in an attempt to fathom the roots of our present.  See
> Gibson & Sterling's THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE, Doctorow's WATERWORKS,
> and my own THE STEAMPUNK TRILOGY.  Thoughts thereon???

_M & D_ concerns a different historical era to the works I usually 
associate with the steampunk label: it's set as I understand it 
before the Victorian era. Also the steampunk works I know tend to 
employ a distinctively SF set of tropes, which has not yet been 
indicated by anything I've read about _M & D_. There's another 
tradition of po-mo reimaginings of past history, notable examples of 
which include the works of William Vollman and Barth's _The Sot-Weed 
Factor_, which predates the steampunk label.

BTW Paul, is your trilogy out of print? Can't find it anywhere.

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"