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From Amazon
Queen Victoria as a trollop-in-training whose newt-human clone serves as stand-in during Victoria's trysts? Walt Whitman as lusty seducer of an only partly reticent Emily Dickinson who loses the "Keys to the Inner Chambers of her Heart" to him? This fine and funny madness is "steampunk," a branch of cyberpunk fiction that locates itself in historical venues rather than in the future. Paul Di Filippo has certainly done his homework: the settings as well as the language emulate the times and, in Dickinson's and Whitman's cases, their poetic language, which asserts itself into their conversational dialogue and thoughts at most unusual but appropriate moments. Dickinson's "Universe Entire" is disrupted by a naked Whitman bathing in her rain barrel and singing his "body electric." But will Dickinson's "White Election" remain intact?
From Publishers Weekly
The term "steampunk" has come to intimate a subgenre of work set in a fantastic 19th century characterized by the inhumanity wrought by bogus science and a fanatical embrace of scientific method. Di Filippo's first book is a collection of three novellas that jumbles science and pseudoscience into an interesting, if not always completely successful, melange. The narratives are united not only by their reliance on the occult?mysticism dominates "Walt and Emily" while Lovecraft's monsters appear in the previously published "Hottentots"?but also by their focus on female sexuality. "Victoria" replaces the Queen of England with a licentious salamander, while "Walt and Emily" features a robust poetic encounter between Ms. Dickinson and Mr. Whitman. Even the weakest of the pieces here?"Hottentots," in which nothing is learned while much credulity is stretched?features amusing faux-Victorian prose worthy of Anne Rice ("Like a Maine sawmill, like an asthmatic platypus... like a Michigan beaver... uneasily winter-dreaming of Ojibway hunters led by a wild Chief Snapping Turtle, Mister Dogberry roughly rasped and snorted through the night, making it nigh impossible for Agassiz to get any rest") and enough "scientific" pasquinades to satisfy the Luddite in anyone.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Afternoon of Summer's Wane,
By
This review is from: The Steampunk Trilogy (Paperback)
I had read Ribofunk 5 years or so ago and enjoyed it and reread it this summer and enjoyed it even more. When it was finished I wanted more so I sought out The Steampunk Trilogy. The book was engaging and funny from the very start. Very, very clever language and style and very funny. I was particularly impressed with the life the author bestowed upon the many historical people who were incorporated into the story. After reading the books I even discovered that the Hottentots Venus' pickled "friend" is indeed at the Musee de l'Homme in Paris. As a New Englander I also loved the fact that two of the stories take place in Massachusetts. When will you be in Snipe Harbour again, Paul Di Filippo?
5.0 out of 5 stars
Di Filippo is unique...,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Steampunk Trilogy (Paperback)
and you've got to approach this book with an open mind. Moralistic he is not. Wildly imaginative, outrageous, he is. STEAMPUNK took me to the most bizarre places I've ever been, literarily speaking. And Di Filippo details his worlds to an amazing degree. Loosen your collar and enjoy the ride. Clearly this is a book the author had a blast writing. It's hard to believe anyone would pick this up and not enjoy him/her/itself.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Quirky but flawed,
By GeoX "GeoX" (Men...Of...The...Sea!) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Steampunk Trilogy (Paperback)
This is rather a weird book, but pretty good. I think the three stories kind of go in descending order from best to worst. The first is highly entertaining, even if it is rather pointless, but, as often happens, there's some irritating moral ambiguity here. In this case, the protagonist meets a lesbian schoolmistress who helps him out, but the last time we see her consists of him discovering her sexual orientation and being pissed off at her--and then she's never heard from again. That annoyed me, because it was the most interesting aspect of the story. The second tale is still more problematic. The protagonist is an incredibly egocentric, white-supremist, Swiss professor, and while his points of view are certainly not ENDORSED, you don't really get the impression that they're being condemned, either. Very odd. I did like the touch of comparing things to plants and animals and then parenthetically providing their Latin names. That was cool. The story was fairly entertaining, but, as with all of these, there's rather a pointless aura around it--you don't get the impression that anything's really happening. The third story was the weakest, I think. The portrayal of Whitman was quite good, Dickinson less memorable. And, although the back cover informs us that they meet Alen Ginsburg, don't expect any sort of meeting-of-the-minds. Yes they meet Ginsburg, as well as a number of other twentieth-century poets, but they're not really detailed in any way--they're all fairly anonymous children. And the way they meet them is really unspeakably bizarre. I have to admit, it made absolutely no sense, and it was never explained. Also, the ending was less than happy. You really have to get used to Philipo's idiosyncrasies, but if you can, you'll find a quirky and though-provoking, if somewhat flawed, work of fiction.
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