The Salon: Steampunk Without Empire

004, Discussions

This month in The Salon we discuss whether steampunk is necessarily all about empire. The guests are Karin Lowachee (from Canada via Guyana), Lavie Tidar (from Israel) and Jeff VanderMeer (co-editor of two steampunk anthologies and other steampunk-related books).

If you have difficulty listening this podcast you can also find it here, or via iTunes.

The list of steampunk-related discussions referenced can be found at the bottom of Jonathan McCalmont’s article from last issue.

Here are some links to things mentioned during the podcast:

Jonathan Clements has promised us an article on steampunk in Japan for a later issue.

Here are some of the books mentioned during the podcast:

  • Gaslight Dogs, Karin Lowachee (Orbit) [Purchase]
  • The Bookman, Lavie Tidhar (Angry Robot) [Purchase]
  • Steampunk, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Tachyon) [Purchase]
  • Steampunk Reloaded, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Tachyon) [Purchase]
  • War in the Air, H.G. Wells (Penguin) [Purchase]
  • The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers (Orion) [Purchase]
  • The Difference Engine, William Gibson & Bruce Sterling (Gollancz) [Purchase]
  • Anno Dracula, Kim Newman (Titan) [Purchase]

Jeff VanderMeer’s Steampunk Bible and Lavie Tidhar’s Camera Obscura are due out in mid 2011.

I’d like to apologize for using the term “American Indians” during the podcast rather than “Native Americans”. Sometimes when you are thinking about the British Empire its terminology comes to mind unbidden. — Cheryl

Karin LowacheeKarin Lowachee was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. Her first novel Warchild won the 2001 Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. Both Warchild (2002) and her third novel Cagebird (2005) were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. Cagebird won the Prix Aurora Award in 2006 for Best Long-Form Work in English and the Gaylactic Spectrum Award also in 2006. Her second novel Burndive debuted at #7 on the Locus Bestseller List. Her books have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese. Her current fantasy novel, The Gaslight Dogs, was published through Orbit Books USA in April 2010.

Lavie TidharLavie Tidhar is the author of The Bookman and forthcoming sequel Camera Obscura. Other books include linked-story collection HebrewPunk, novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (with Nir Yaniv), and recent novellas Cloud Permutations and An Occupation of Angels. He also edited The Apex Book of World SF and runs the World SF News Blog.

Jeff VanderMeerAward-winning writer Jeff VanderMeer’s latest novel in his Ambergris Cycle, Finch, has just been published in the US, in the UK from Atlantic’s Corvus imprint. His writer guide Booklife and associated Booklifenow website focus on sustainable creativity. With his wife, he recently edited the charity anthology Last Drink Bird Head. His short fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales, and several year’s best anthologies. He writes nonfiction for The Washington Post Book World, Omnivoracious, The New York Times Book Review, the B&N Review, and many others. Murder by Death recently completed a CD soundtrack based on Finch.