"an unfortunate engagement" and naughty gear

[sergebroom]

As I’ve said here and elsewhere, I was a fan of steampunk long before it was known by that name, and still prefer describing those stories as retro SF, which I think is a more accurate label - but common usage has decided otherwise. One of the appeals of those tales for me is that, by reinventing the past, their authors, when seeking to evoke a sense of wonder, don’t have to oneup each other as they would when writing stories set in our future. . Retro SF can reawaken the awe we should feel toward devices that are now taken for granted, whether they be submarines or airships.


(Model by William Waldrop - click on the photo for more details.)

That being said… I recently finished reading Steampunk Magazine’s first 4 issues. They have a different approach, which aims to put the ‘punk’ back in steampunk. This is best exemplified by the tales told by the Catastrophone Orchestra, which are really about how ghastly things were in our 19th Century, but I appreciated them nonetheless. The magazine published other stories, which met with various degrees of success, but I especially enjoy G.D.Falksen’s serialized adventure An Unfortunate Engagement, which is more along the lines of the kind of steampunk I am seeking. It has a British narrator who knows that his country has the finest people, but who is a friend of crazy Rhinelander Bruno von H---, who is quite upset at the Bavarian swine who destroyed his airship’s prototype using music boxes and dynamite. Unfortunately, the magazine’s fifth issue, which presumably will carry the adventure’s next installment, has been experiencing delays in coming out.

Curses!

The group also published, separately, five tales of what they call steamypunk. In other words, steampunk erotica. I was rather disappointed, as I mentioned in this thread in Susan de Guardiola's blog. I had expected stories that'd function as steampunk tales where the main... ah... thrust would have been sexual. What I found instead mostly were sex scenes without anything really leading up to them and where steampunk really was nothing but a prop - except in Margaret Killjoy's A Pirate of Both Day and Night, whete steampunk was, not literarily but literally, a prop. The story's setting is a pirate ship crewed by just one woman, but sometimes she brings a companion on board. This time, it's another woman, to whom she demonstrates that, by diverting the engine's steam flow, she causes the control levers to vibrate just so, which allows her to... Overall, the stories aren't particularly arousing. It's not that easy to write erotica.

Comments

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

No photo!

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

You want naughty photographs? How about this (http://pics.livejournal.com/serge_lj/pic/0009c3be/g10)?

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

LOL But the picture is there now!

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Oh, you were referring to the photo of the Albatross. I guess LiveJournal was acting up again when you first looked. I was beginning to think I'd have to dig for pictures of naughty Victorians.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Yep. The label was there, but no picture.

Good fiction/bad fiction

[ajreardon.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

An Unfortunate Engagement is what keeps me reading Steampunk magazine (that and the occasional really cool how-to or interview with someone awesome like Doctor Steel). It's a really enjoyable bit of serial fiction.

However, I find the Catastrophe Orchestra stories to be a little too heavy-handed in their moralization, and not particularly well-written. They do dredge up some very interesting things to be outraged about, I just don't like the tone.

Re: Good fiction/bad fiction

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

The Catastrophone Orchestra indeed is heavy-handed. Then again, it is the punk side of the zine. I found it interesting, but the story structures were a bit on the clumsy side. But, again, it's Falksen's serial that I enjoyed, which probably reveals to the world that at heart I am a steambourgeois.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, G.D. Falksen lives in my town! I met him at Saloncon, too - I took a picture of his back here:

http://smg231.typepad.com/photos/saloncon_2008/gdvest.html

I enjoyed his Saloncon presentation on the history of steampunk as well. Definitely a smart and stylish guy. Check out his website:

http://www.gdfalksen.com/

Susan
http://www.rixosous.com

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

His dark steampunk and vintage weird detective story, "The Strange Case of the All-Seeing Ear" is currently being published in a serial format by The Willows Magazine

I guess I shall have to acquire those issues when the whole story has been published.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I just went to their site. Interestingly, while only the most recent issue and the one before were for sale separately, they made it possible to get a subscription that started with the Jan/Feb 2008 issues, and the selling point for that is it's where G.D.Falksen's serial begins. Of course that's what I chose.

blame goggle alert for this comment

[jaborwhalky.livejournal.com]

Steampunk Magazine has dropped most of its fiction along with An Unfortunate Engagement.
But part five and the rest of it will be publish in issues of http://www.thewillowsmagazine.com/ very soon once the all seeing ear is done.

You can also find one of his other serials being published right now..

If you like steampunk pop over here
http://community.livejournal.com/steamfashion/profile

Re: blame goggle alert for this comment

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tips. I went to The Willow's site yesterday and became a subscriber as of January 2008, which means I'll get to read all of "The Strange Case of the All-Seeing Ear" . Little did I know that this meant I'd also get the rest of "An Unfortunate Engagement".

Hurrah!