Phantasmical Contraptions & Other Errors

by Jessica Augustsson, Jay Knioum, Damon L. Wakes

Steampunk tales of bravery and derring-do, of dreams and hopes, of characters big and small. Come along with us on this steam-driven rollercoaster ride of adventure!

255 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 12, 2016

About the author

Jessica Augustsson is the editor-in-chief of JayHenge Publishing. She is a grammar nerd, eclipse chaser, part-time writer, and a bit of a geek. As the editor of spec-fic anthologies, most of her writing can be found nestled among the words of other authors, but she can’t help typing out a few of her own stories now and then. As for speculative fiction in her own life, she was voted by her Idaho high school class to be the most likely to go live on the moon; when she was 20, she moved to Sweden so she guesses that’s pretty close.

Reviews

[Sara Uckelman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I purchased this book because it contains a story written by a friend. (Don't worry, the opinion expressed here is entirely my own.) I don't normally prefer short stories (Short stories are often just too short. If they are good, I want to know more -- more about the characters, more about their story, more about their history, more about their future), and this was also only my second foray into steampunk. What I discovered reading this book was that I still don't really prefer short stories, and I'm not sure that steampunk is the genre for me. Too many of the stories were too formulaic in their composition, the characters, the names, the accessories all stereotypical for the genre. But one might reply: These are the things that make the genre distinct from other genres, and I think this is probably right, but the stories still came across as very typical feeling.

Given all this, it's no surprise that the three standout stories (in my opinion) were the ones that were neither short nor particularly steam-punky, and these three stories I really enjoyed. The first was "Verdigris" by Jay Knioum (the opening story in the book: A very good move!). None of the characters were familiar, none of them were charicatures, with just a few words and phrases Knioum was able to sketch a vast foreign landscape that still remained subtly unplaceable. Is it our future? Is it an alternate past? Is it neither? Let the reader decide... The second was "Dream Preserves" by Susanne Hülsmann (conveniently located about half-way through), which was more a fairy tale than a steampunk story and reminded me of nothing more than Gaiman's Stardust, except with women at the heart of the story. The third was the final story, Kimber Camacho's "Kraken". Clocking in at around 70 pages, it was by far the longest of the stories in the book, by a significant factor, and that length meant that the characters could be developed beyond charicatures, and a deep and deftly woven story told. I would've been happy to read a stand-alone novel expanding that story.

I have two very minor typography comments, which interacted with my actual reading enough that I find them worth mentioning. The first is the font used for the titles of the stories: They were typeset in all caps and the addition of the gears to the letters made the letters themselves extremely difficult to identify. The second is that the running heads during the stories were the title of the book, and not the title of the current story. Because a title is such a strong signal to the important parts of the story in a short story, and can be used to focus the reader's attention in a way that isn't always necessary in a novel, I found both the inability to easily refer to the title problematic.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection of steam driven stories compiled by the talented Jessica Augustsson. I enjoyed the many phantasmical adventures, most especially Verdigris, Obelisk, The City of Dragons and The Dieselman of Devil Wells.
Note, I am also quite thankfully and humbly, a contributing author to this excellent anthology.