From the Bookshelf of Spells, Space & Screams: Collections & Anthologies in Fantasy, Science Fiction, & Horror…

The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (Mammoth Books)

Sean Wallace (Editor),

Jeff VanderMeer

Start date: April 15, 2020

Finish date: May 14, 2020

Discussion: Previous Books of the Month

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Previous Books of the Month

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What Members Thought

May 13, 2020 Fiona Knight rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-n-sweet, steampunk

This probably averaged out closer to a 3.5 for me, but the last few stories persuaded me to err on the side of optimism.

There's a great deal of variety in the Steampunk on show here, with tinges of influence from all over map - zombies, cyberpunk, Lovecraft - from the abstract to the very precise. There's a few of the stories that use steampunk mostly as a decorative element, and others that leak steam with every sentence.

With any anthology there's stories that work for one reader and don't for ...more

20 likes · Like · see review

May 14, 2020 Lena rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: anthology, steampunk

The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jalalud-din Mohammed Akbar by Shweta Narayan ★★★★★
This was a complete, and well executed, steampunk fable. Beautifully envisioned to wind into a flawless ending. Well done!

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DA693350-2289-4909-B741-98-D00-C4-E39-A6

Prayers of Forgers and Furnaces by Aliette de Bodard ★★★★½
Aztec steampunk!!! I haven’t seen anything like it since Stephen Baxter’s The Unblinking Eye. At the height of Aztec power somehow they were toppled and subsumed by mechanical gods. Now a woman on the fringe of society is faced with a ...more

14 likes · Like · see review

May 07, 2020 D Dyer rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, owned, fantasy, queer-lgbtqia-rep, historical-fiction, 2020-reads

This features some really great stories and some new in trysting takes on the steampunk subgenre but as a collection it is very uneven. And some of the best stories in my opinion are a bit of a stretch to fit the anthology‘s intended theme.

4 likes · Like · see review

Apr 13, 2020 Shomeret rated it it was ok

Shelves: fantasy, science-fiction, anthology

I love a really good steampunk story. I read this for a Goodreads group that is currently discussing this. I've been able to do several of these lately, but I have a low probability of doing group discussions for the foreseeable future. I happened to have this book from the library. They don't want people to return books while they're closed.

I think that the best story in this anthology is "The Anachronist's Cookbook" by Catherynne Valente which I read in Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded.

Of the I love a really good steampunk story. I read this for a Goodreads group that is currently discussing this. I've been able to do several of these lately, but I have a low probability of doing group discussions for the foreseeable future. I happened to have this book from the library. They don't want people to return books while they're closed.

I think that the best story in this anthology is "The Anachronist's Cookbook" by Catherynne Valente which I read in Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded.

Of the stories that I read in this one, there were two that were almost what I was looking for.

"The People's Machine" by Tobias S. Buckell is a science fiction/mystery crossover that takes place in an alternate continuity in which the thirteen colonies are still under British rule and the Aztecs are still ruling in Mexico in the 19th century. An Aztec inquisitor is sent to investigate a murder that looks like an Aztec sacrifice in what is New York City in this timeline. It gets even more unusual from there which is the way I like my reading, but the ending left me feeling chilled. That's not the way I want to feel when I finish reading these days. If I want to feel like that, all I need to do is turn on the news. Ugh!

"Arbeitskraft" by Nick Mamatas is what seemed like an amazing retelling of "The Little Matchgirl" by Hans Christian Anderson. I recently read a novel that was a retelling of that tale that I found disappointing. This story was based on an actual historical event. I finished this story saying "Wow!" Then I researched the event which was the 1888 Matchgirls' Strike at the Bryant & May Match Factory in London. I expected it to be different from a steampunk story, but I didn't expect the difference to be that in real life these girls had so much more agency. Why did Mamatas set up a situation where they were such helpless victims who needed to be rescued by a man? The story no longer felt inspiring. On the other hand, I found out about what sounds like a wonderful history book, Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History by Louise Raw. I'm definitely going to want to get hold of that when the libraries re-open.

Other stories either didn't hold my interest, weren't memorable or I was engaged, but I felt that the stories were seriously problematic while I read through them. So I can't say that this was a good anthology or a good introduction to steampunk. I'm hoping to see better stories in The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures.

...more

1 like · Like · see review