The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Read online

  Sean Wallace is the founder and editor of Prime Books, which won a World Fantasy Award in 2006. In the past he was co-editor of Fantasy Magazine as well as Hugo Award-winning and two-time World Fantasy nominee Clarkesworld Magazine; the editor of the following anthologies: Best New Fantasy, Fantasy, Horror: The Best of the Year, Jabberwocky, Japanese Dreams and The Mammoth Book of Steampunk; and co-editor of Bandersnatch, Fantasy Annual, Phantom and Weird Tales: The 21st Century. He lives in Rockville MD with his wife, Jennifer, and their twin daughters, Cordelia and Natalie.

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  Edited by Sean Wallace

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

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  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

  Copyright © Sean Wallace, 2012 (unless otherwise stated)

  The right of Sean Wallace to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are

  either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition

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  other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition

  including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

  Data is available from the British Library

  UK ISBN: 978-1-84901-736-7 (paperback)

  UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-135-5 (ebook)

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  First published in the United States in 2012 by Running Press Book Publishers,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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  US ISBN: 978-0-7624-4468-7

  US Library of Congress Control Number: 2011930509

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  Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

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  Contents

  Steampunk: Looking to the Future Through the Lens of the Past

  by Ekaterina Sedia

  Fixing Hanover

  by Jeff VanderMeer

  The Steam Dancer (1896)

  by Caitlín R. Kiernan

  Icebreaker

  by E. Catherine Tobler

  Tom Edison and His Amazing Telegraphic Harpoon

  by Jay Lake

  The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball

  by Genevieve Valentine

  Clockwork Fairies

  by Cat Rambo

  The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jala-ud-din Muhammad Akbar

  by Shweta Narayan

  Prayers of Forges and Furnaces

  by Aliette de Bodard

  The Effluent Engine

  by N. K. Jemisin

  The Clockwork Goat and the Smokestack Magi

  by Peter M. Ball

  The Armature of Flight

  by Sharon Mock

  The Anachronist’s Cookbook

  by Catherynne M. Valente

  Numismatics in the Reigns of Naranh and Viu

  by Alex Dally MacFarlane

  Zeppelin City

  by Eileen Gunn & Michael Swanwick

  The People’s Machine

  by Tobias S. Buckell

  The Hands That Feed

  by Matthew Kressel

  Machine Maid

  by Margo Lanagan

  To Follow the Waves

  by Amal El-Mohtar

  Clockmaker’s Requiem

  by Barth Anderson

  Dr Lash Remembers

  by Jeffrey Ford

  Lady Witherspoon’s Solution

  by James Morrow

  Reluctance

  by Cherie Priest

  A Serpent in the Gears

  by Margaret Ronald

  The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois

  by Megan Arkenberg

  Biographical Notes to “A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-planes” by Benjamin Rosenbaum

  by Benjamin Rosenbaum

  Clockwork Chickadee

  by Mary Robinette Kowal

  Cinderella Suicide

  by Samantha Henderson

  Arbeitskraft

  by Nick Mamatas

  To Seek Her Fortune

  by Nicole Kornher-Stace

  The Ballad of the Last Human

  by Lavie Tidhar

  About the Contributors

  Steampunk: Looking to the Future Through the Lens of the Past

  Ekaterina Sedia

  With the recent release of The Steampunk Bible (ed. Jeff VanderMeer and SJ Chambers), it seems that steampunk as a genre finally came into its own and has grown enough to demand its own compendium, summarizing various par
ts of this remarkably protean movement, and pointing out interesting things happening in its DIY culture, cosplay, film, literature and music. The fact that the steampunk esthetic penetrates all aspects and art forms indicates that it is remarkably malleable and yet recognizable. We often see steampunk as gears and goggles glued to top hats, but this impression is of course superficial, and there is much more complexity to the fashion and maker aspects of it – just take a look at the Steampunk Workshop website by Jake Von Slatt if you don’t believe me! And yet, much like pornography, all of these expressions conform to a common pattern – difficult to describe beyond the superficial, but one just knows it when one sees it.

  And of course the literary component of the genre has complexity beyond what is visible to a casual reader. Some will think of early steampunk, as envisioned by Powers, Baylock and Jeter; others will recall the retrofuturism of Wells and Verne; yet others will shrug and deride faux Victoriana with its grafted-on machinery. The beauty of steampunk is that none would be wrong – much like trying to determine the shape of an elephant by feel, summarizing literary steampunk is daunting, and it is tempting to grab a trunk and call it an elephant. It is tempting to say that in order to be properly steampunk, a story needs to be an alternate history, or to be set in Victorian England, or at least have an airship or two. And surely there cannot be steampunk without steam engines?

  Instead, I think, it is more constructive to avoid trope-based definitions altogether, and focus instead on the operational – that is, what do these stories do? And this is where we see that time and time again, great steampunk stories confront an uneasy past with its history of oppression and science that serves to promote dominance, where women are chattel and where other races are deemed subhuman and therefore fit to exploit, where we can take things because we feel like it, where the code of moral conduct does not apply to treatment of lower classes. Industrial revolution came with a heavy price, and now as its inheritors we cannot help but look back and ask, is this really progress? And if it is, can we have progress without the horror that accompanies it? What would happen if, for example, Galton’s eugenics and Spencer’s Social Darwinism were dismissed while John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women became a mainstream success, influencing policies and laws?

  The answer will of course differ from one writer to the next. But this examining and interrogation of the past, the search for alternative turns, imagining what would happen if technology were used to uplift rather than oppress: this is the “punk” element, the rejection of calcified norms and either examining them or appropriating them for the use these norms had previously shunned. Challenging the centrality of Western civilization or the common perception of men as movers of history as women stand quietly by the side, the invisibility of genders other than binary, sexualities other than hetero – all of these issues are currently receiving attention. We as a society are struggling for acceptance and tolerance, and we are recognizing the importance of talking about these issues. Websites such as Beyond Victoriana and Silver Goggles question the Eurocentric narrative of what we perceive as the history of civilization, while fiction writers are busily reworking our histories to let the voices omitted from the mainstream (and actively suppressed) be heard and to tell their stories.

  The question, of course, remains: what does it matter if we reimagine the past? Sure, it is nice to pretend that the wealth we’re enjoying now was not ill-gotten, but it doesn’t really help to right past wrongs. However, I would argue that by reimagining how things could’ve gone, we can hold up the mirror to our present, and by extension to our future. After all, if we cannot imagine a better past, how can we even begin to understand what we need to do today to build a more equitable, more sustainable, kinder future?

  This book offers as many answers as there are writers – from Freidrich Engels building a Dialectical Engine and the mechanical-jawed factory girls of Nick Mamatas to the creation of Shweta Narayan’s mechanical bird to Catherynne M. Valente’s unapologetically punk approach to Victoriana, the possibilities are as boundless as their imaginations. All of these stories have one thing in common: while they may push the boundaries of what is commonly considered steampunk, they never waver in their interrogation of the human condition, and the ways in which our past shapes our future.

  Ekaterina Sedia, May 2011, New Jersey

  Fixing Hanover

  Jeff VanderMeer

  When Shyver can’t lift it from the sand, he brings me down from the village. It lies there on the beach, entangled in the seaweed, dull metal scoured by the sea, limpets and barnacles stuck to its torso. It’s been lost a long time, just like me. It smells like rust and oil still, but only a tantalizing hint.

  “It’s good salvage, at least,” Shyver says. “Maybe more.”

  “Or maybe less,” I reply. Salvage is the life’s blood of the village in the off-season, when the sea’s too rough for fishing. But I know from past experience, there’s no telling what the salvagers will want and what they’ll discard. They come from deep in the hill country abutting the sea cliffs, their needs only a glimmer in their savage eyes.

  To Shyver, maybe the thing he’d found looks like a long box with a smaller box on top. To me, in the burnishing rasp of the afternoon sun, the last of the winter winds lashing against my face, it resembles a man whose limbs have been torn off. A man made of metal. It has lamps for eyes, although I have to squint hard to imagine there ever being an ember, a spark, of understanding. No expression defiles the broad pitted expanse of metal.

  As soon as I see it, I call it “Hanover”, after a character I had seen in an old movie back when the projector still worked.

  “Hanover?” Shyver says with a trace of contempt.

  “Hanover never gave away what he thought,” I reply, as we drag it up the gravel track toward the village. Sandhaven, they call it, simply, and it’s carved into the side of cliffs that are sliding into the sea. I’ve lived there for almost six years, taking on odd jobs, assisting with salvage. They still know next to nothing about me, not really. They like me not for what I say or who I am, but for what I do: anything mechanical I can fix, or build something new from poor parts. Someone reliable in an isolated place where a faulty water pump can be devastating. That means something real. That means you don’t have to explain much.

  “Hanover, whoever or whatever it is, has given up on more than thoughts,” Shyver says, showing surprising intuition. It means he’s already put a face on Hanover, too. “I think it’s from the Old Empire. I think it washed up from the Sunken City at the bottom of the sea.”

  Everyone knows what Shyver thinks, about everything. Brown-haired, green-eyed, gawky, he’s lived in Sandhaven his whole life. He’s good with a boat, could navigate a cockleshell through a typhoon. He’ll never leave the village, but why should he? As far as he knows, everything he needs is here.

  Beyond doubt, the remains of Hanover are heavy. I have difficulty keeping my grip on him, despite the rust. By the time we’ve made it to the courtyard at the center of Sandhaven, Shyver and I are breathing as hard as old men. We drop our burden with a combination of relief and self-conscious theatrics. By now, a crowd has gathered, and not just stray dogs and bored children.

  First law of salvage: what is found must be brought before the community. Is it scrap? Should it be discarded? Can it be restored?

  John Blake, council leader, all unkempt black beard, wide shoulders and watery turquoise eyes, stands there. So does Sarah, who leads the weavers, and the blacksmith Growder, and the ethereal captain of the fishing fleet: Lady Salt as she is called – she of the impossibly pale, soft skin, the blonde hair in a land that only sees the sun five months out of the year. Her eyes, ever-shifting, never settling – one is light blue and one is fierce green, as if to balance the sea between calm and roiling. She has tiny wrinkles in the corners of those eyes, and a wry smile beneath. If I remember little else, fault the eyes. We’ve been lovers the past three years, and if I ever fully understand her, I wond
er if my love for her will vanish like the mist over the water at dawn.

  With the fishing boats not launching for another week, a host of broad-faced fisher folk, joined by lesser lights and gossips, has gathered behind us. Even as the light fades: shadows of albatross and gull cutting across the horizon and the roofs of the low houses, huddled and glowing a deep gold and orange around the edges, framed by the graying sky.

  Blake says, “Where?” He’s a man who measures words as if he had only a few given to him by Fate; too generous a syllable from his lips, and he might fall over dead.

  “The beach, the cove,” Shyver says. Blake always reduces him to a similar terseness.

  “What is it?”

  This time, Blake looks at me, with a glare. I’m the fixer who solved their well problems the season before, who gets the most value for the village from what’s sold to the hill scavengers. But I’m also Lady Salt’s lover, who used to be his, and depending on the vagaries of his mood, I suffer more or less for it.

  I see no harm in telling the truth as I know it, when I can. So much remains unsaid that extra lies exhaust me.

  “It is part of a metal man,” I say.

  A gasp from the more ignorant among the crowd. My Lady Salt just stares right through me. I know what she’s thinking: in scant days she’ll be on the open sea. Her vessel is as sleek and quick and buoyant as the water, and she likes to call it Seeker, or sometimes Mist, or even just Cleave. Salvage holds little interest for her.