Books: Merchants, Convicts, Brains, and The Steampunk Bible

[woodwardiocom]

The Trade Of Queens by Charles Stross

This is the sixth and final volume in The Merchant Princes, in which a tech reporter from our world discovers she's a member of a vast family of world-walkers, who can travel between alternate Earths. The two primary alt-Earths of interest are a quasi-Medieval one (where the Family mostly makes its home), and a vaguely-1915-ish one (where a small branch of the family has been stuck for a few centuries).

It's hard to talk about the last book in a series without spoiling the whole thing. Let me just say that this one mostly has to do with the Family's ill-advised efforts to meddle in USA politics, and fallout from same. The series is part Chronicles of Amber, part Paratime Patrol, and (by this point) part Tom Clancy technothriller. With maybe some Baroque Cycle thrown in. The series often moves on from a topic before I feel it's been adequately handled. E.g., I would have liked to see a lot more of our heroine bringing technology to New Britain, but she gets yanked off that project after only half a book. Alas, it's clear (mostly from having heard Stross talk about the series at a reading) that he was getting a bit tired by the sixth book, so it ends quite abruptly. You have a clear vision of how things will move on, but he doesn't waste time wrapping things up too tightly. Nevertheless, I recommend the series, moderately strongly.

Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg

This is a late-60s novel, expanded from a novella. In the early 21st century, the US has turned totalitarian, and is sending its political radicals through time to a prison in the Cambrian era. Our hero is the leader of the outcasts, who was a revolutionary more through inertia than fervor, but has found his place in the limited society of Hawksbill Station. Then someone very odd comes through the gate from the future... A thin book, and the only female character is (as usual for Silverberg) a sex object, but it has a couple interesting ideas. Very mildly recommended.

The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald

I picked this up after reading about it in (I believe) bobquasit's LJ. It's a kids' book, set around 1900 in Utah (written in the 1960s), about a young boy and his genius brother, the titular Brain. The Brain is scheming and greedy, but has a good heart, and when he uses his powers for evil, he usually repents. When he uses his powers for good, watch out! There's some values dissonance, and any book in which the hero tries to help another kid commit suicide should be vetted by parents first, but it teaches interesting lessons about the dangers of a good salesman. Recommended.

The Steampunk Bible by Jeff Vandermeer and divers hands

This is a beautifully illustrated (if a bit slim) guide to the genre and phenom of steampunk, covering the Verne-Wells era, the first- and second-generation steampunk authors, comics, music, crafts, fashion (Oh yes!), anime, movies, television, and the Future of Steampunk. It is, as near as my dilettante scholarship can determine, darn well-researched and, as I said, gorgeous. It makes some interesting claims about steampunk being a "green" movement (expanding on the idea that steampunk craftsmen build and repair their own devices in a more sustainable manner), and slightly more defensible claims about the genre being used as an examination of the prejudices of the present, by deconstructing those of the past. I would have liked to see it longer (224 pages is not really enough). Its treatment of steampunk anime is a bit cursory (though it makes it past Miyazaki to Sakura Wars, at least). It completely falls down on steampunk games — there's no mention whatsoever of Space: 1889 (which was steampunk back before The Difference Engine — indeed, almost before the word "steampunk" had been coined), Warmachine, Myst, Castle Falkenstein or, to hype a colleague, GURPS Steampunk. (Granted, games are always the forgotten medium, but still.)

Anyway, regardless of its failings, I highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in the genre, whether literary or sartorial.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I commented on my general reaction to where steampunk is going now, including the maker aspect, over on my own lj a couple of days ago, after getting back from the local Gaslight Gathering. I must say I'm amused by the idea of the "green" label going to a movement that celebrates the first fossil fuel economy.

I'm afraid I won't be reading this one; I looked at one of Vandermeer's earlier books and concluded that not only his prose style but his entire literary approach would cause brain poisoning if I exposed myself to any more. I love steampunk as a look back to the age when the modernist idea of one truth was taking form; I have no enthusiasm for the postmodernist reversal of that outlook.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

not only his prose style but his entire literary approach would cause brain poisoning

He certainly has a specific style, but I found it readable — indeed, a quick read. I'd recommend flipping through it in the bookstore if you stumble across it. It is, as I've said, very well-illustrated.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Ah the Great Brain books. I read them all as a kid and loved them.

[theloriest.livejournal.com]

Oh man... I love the Great Brain books! I read every single one of them as a kid, and rereading them as an adult was just as much fun.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

Something I'm going to bring up is that a number of women have....issues with Stross's treatment of his heroine. I enjoyed the early books, but was actually pretty horrified by book 5, enough so that it just killed off any interest in bothering to read the conclusion.

I was talking to another woman last weekend, and she said she'd had the same reaction, much earlier. In a lot of ways Merchant Princes turned out to be heir to the rather casual misogyny of Amber, too. While I found I was willing to accept it in books conceived 40 years ago, I expected better from Stross. There were ways to make her helpless that didn't involve surgical rape and forced pregnancy - I'm not even terribly "rape culture sensitive", but it wasn't called for, and her post-rape actions make no sense for the character we're told she is in the earlier books.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

This is true.

If it matters, in the sixth book she has her people hunt the doctor in question down, and drop a building on him. She and her friends are clearly Very Pissed about it.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

...ugh. I'm glad I heard about this before I started reading the series. That book can go back into the Half-Price books pile.