The Second Coming of Steampunk

[Dave Monroe]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 4:16 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Right, but as the blurb defined Steampunk:
>
> "Originally a literary movement that mashed cyberpunk-style themes
> with speculative rewritings of Victorian culture"
>
> And since I think of Gibson as the originator of Cyber-punk, and
> _Difference Engine_ as the original Steampunk, I credit Steampunk
> mainly to Gibson.  But since I know nothing by Sterling, I'm probably
> doing him an injustice.

Again, a listing of people in a steampunk anthology, fousing on short
stories (of which there are a dearth, comparaticvely, read the actual
interview).  Viz. ...

---

Given your focus on short stories, was there a difficulty about
choosing which texts to represent?

AV: Definitely, that was a tricky thing, because a lot of the more
recognizable steampunk fiction that you're going to see out there is
at novel-length, and of course there's not as much short fiction
that's recognized that way. We did spend quite a lot of time doing
research and reading everything that we possibly could in order to get
a nice variety, because we didn't want a lot of stories that were just
like each other.

[...]

JV: Let's make a distinction, too: There's not that much classic
steampunk short fiction, as in short stories, but there's plenty of it
in a medium length—a novelette length. One of the challenges in doing
this anthology was really finding the short story pieces

It was great to see the Chabon piece in there—to build that bridge out
there to more mainstream literary uses of steampunk such as Pynchon's,
which might not be excerptable.

JV: I think we would have excerpted Pynchon if it hadn't been so
recent, and if we'd had the opportunity. (And then, of course, you
never want to have too many novel excerpts, unless you can find
something that's really self-contained.)

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Once again (and again, and again, and ...), David, you are bitching
merely to bitch.  READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE FOR ONCE FIRST BEFORE
TYPING/SENDING.  Thank you.  That is all ...