This is one of the pioneering works of steampunk, and I'm glad I read it. It has many of the staples of the subgenre, from the Victorian setting to cl...moreThis is one of the pioneering works of steampunk, and I'm glad I read it. It has many of the staples of the subgenre, from the Victorian setting to clockwork men, from time travel to not-so-mythical creatures (in this case, selkies). There are several well-crafted moments of ironic social commentary. It's easy to see how this wry and imaginative tale helped to set precedents for what followed.
That said, I didn't really enjoy this as a reading experience, despite Jeter's always-elegant prose. The narrator, who inherited his father's watchmaker's store but not the man's talent for imaginative clockwork inventions, remains passive and rather baffled throughout the action. The parade of characters he encounters are colorful, but none are exactly sympathetic enough to evoke an attachment. The tone was a bit too flippant for my taste, as well; it's hard to take the danger seriously when the story doesn't take itself seriously.
For most of the novel, the episodic adventures/perils are unexplained and meant to be mysterious, but they didn't engage me quite enough to leave me wondering how they fit together. Ironically, in the eleventh hour, when the "infodump" portion of the novel connected all the dots, I discovered the underlying story was far more interesting than I'd realized. By that time, of course, the novel was drawing to a close.
I love Jeter's Morlock Night, and I'm sure I'll reread it in the future. I appreciate Infernal Devices for its impact and legacy, but I doubt I'll revisit it for anything more than the insights it provides into the history of steampunk. (less)
If I rated books, I'd want to give this one two separate ratings, one for content (4) and one for layout (1). As grateful as I am to see these lesser-...moreIf I rated books, I'd want to give this one two separate ratings, one for content (4) and one for layout (1). As grateful as I am to see these lesser-known gems of Victorian and Edwardian science fiction gathered together in a single collection, I am in equal measure horrified by the poor production values of this volume. It seems as though someone scanned the original stories using OCR software and then never proofread the resulting text; exclamation points frequently are misrepresented as capital "I"s, quotation marks randomly appear or disappear with no regard to the beginning/ending of dialogue, periods and commas and apostrophes show up in arbitrary places (including in the middle of words), and glaring typographical errors ("pubic" for "public," etc.) constantly jolt the reader out of the rhythm of the stories. It's a shame, because these classic tales deserve much better.
For the content, however, this book is well worth reading. It includes fourteen "vintage steampunk" stories originally published between 1897 and 1916. All are fascinating from a historical point of view, but many remain quite entertaining for the modern reader. I especially enjoyed "The Automaton" by Reginald Bacchus and Ranger Gull (a dark psychological story about a chess-playing mechanical man), "In the Deep of Time" by George Parsons Lathrop (about a human who is kept in suspended animation for 300 years, and then revived, coincidentally, on the same day that the Martians send their ambassador to Earth), "Within An Ace of the End of the World" by Robert Barr (in which a new and inexpensive form of mass food production nearly spells the end for our species), and "The Last Days of Earth" by George C. Wallis (a chilling account of the last hope for - and sacrifice of - humanity). Helpful introductions by editor Mike Ashley set each story in its larger context with regard to the tradition of steampunk literature in science fiction.(less)
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