In the comments of the post below, Johne Cook recommended I read a book featuring Doc Holliday in a Steampunk setting. So I felt like I had to come out of the closet and admit my general dislike for Steampunk as a whole.
Trying to explain what I don’t care for about it left me with a lot of questions. Why the abreaction? Why would someone who so dearly enjoys great world-building and speculative fiction of most types have such a brass-and-clockwork chip on her shoulder about poor little Steampunk? After all, by combining two of my favourite things–gadgetry and alternative history–Steampunk should, by all rights, set me on fire.
Truth be told, I really DID enjoy the first real work in the genre that I ever read. It’s been about fifteen years since I read Gibson’s The Difference Engine, so some of the details are hazy, but I recall it being mostly alternative history and What-If politics akin to Harry Turtledove and other such works of that type that I harbour great affection for. Since I love political systems I very much like the idea of unravelling a thread or two and then seeing how the tapestry changes.
But Steampunk as it stands now is less about systemic reflow and more about “how cool would it be if these Victorian era people could kick hinds with mechanical gadgets?” The stories then end up looking like hot messes. (Wild Wild West and the giant spider? League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen?) In short, the focus is more about the gadgets than the people, and while I like gadgets I’m not one for gadget primacy in a story. (This might be another reason that I didnt out and out love Dan Simmons’ _Hyperion_.)
I guess I should be honest about another thing. Well, another two things. Two People? The other main reason is probably that I’ve read too much Charles Dickens and Ripperology. To me the Victorian age is always this dark, dirty coal-smudged frigidness, playing out the last of the Little Ice Age under gas lamps and fetid steam from midden heaps. It isn’t a shiny, happy place that I have any desire to visit. Since so much of Steampunk is either set in the Victorian era or heavily steeped in Jules Vernesque stuffs and mores I think I can’t warm to it.
I hope I’ve put my finger on it enough to clarify my position, so that people understand my dislike of the genre isn’t their fault by instead lies in my own preconceptions. If anyone has a Steampunk type story they think I might like I’m definitely open to suggestions.
And on that note I’m off to watch Tombstone. It’s gonna be a Doc Holliday weekend.
Gosh, you’re far more thorough and self-aware than me. I tried several Steampunk books and plain out didn’t like ‘em. They just didn’t trip my trigger.
Have you read Perdido St. Station? I think you might enjoy it.
I think the reason most steampunk doesn’t measure up (and goes off in the gadgets-kicking-ass direction you mention) is that it’s so hard to do right. A story set in a contemporary universe can use contemporary characters; a story set in a SF-nal universe can say, “look, here’s how this universe works and what its societies are like, and therefore this is how its inhabitants think and act;” but to do steampunk well a writer has to understand a real, historical society and how it worked and what its people were like, and then figure out what tweaking that world a bit would do to those characters. And I don’t think most writers of most of the steampunk I have read have bothered to get the “steam” part right. So their characters are modern people tweaked a little instead, and those characters don’t actually belong in the worlds they’re plopped down into. It’s the same problem as with all those Jane Austen and zombies sort of mashups — once you get past the concept, you notice that the writers don’t have a clue about how early-19th-century people talked, or behaved, or anything.
I’m your huckleberry!
In this case, Resnick doesn’t write steampunk to explore all the gadgets of Steampunk, he writes a character-driven story that happens to feature alt-history elements in service of a rousing weird Western. There’s a difference.
This Doc is shrewd, dangerous, but utterly committed to the idea that he’s dying and has nothing to lose. He’s the perfect man to pit against the undead Johnny Ringo, the one man he has more in common with than anyone else. Their showdown is setup throughout the book, not a conflict steeped in mutually hatred, but an inevitability tempered by great mutual respect. It’s a neat trick, and worth the price of admission.
(Also, re: Tombstone, best line ever: “Wyatt Earp: You gonna do somethin’ or are you just gonna stand there and bleed?”)
“Steampunk really hit its apex in Wild Wild West. Why should I read anything else?” is what I say to steampunk proponents.
That said, I thought Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle was delightful.
OK, you got me. I did read “Perdido Street Station” and quite enjoyed it. (I’m ambivalent on CM’s later stuff.)
It seemed to become the flavor of the month, or the latest passing bandwagon to jump on because steampunk novels started popping up everywhere like mushrooms on cow patties after a spring rain. Tried several of them and never finished any.
Yeah; I forgot that I liked Perdido Street Station, too. (I guess if I like it I forget that it’s “Steampunk” because whatever I think of as “steampunk” I think of as “sucking out loud”)
Oh, unquestionably steampunk is a fad drawing in people who ought to leave it alone. So was cyberpunk. So was New Wave. It doesn’t mean there’s no there there. With that said, it’s never going to be my go-to subgenre of SF.
This is my problem in general with Speculative Fiction, and why I ended up avoiding it for so many years before you (nm), Casey and Jason dragged me back in.
It’s a genre that so many people do so very poorly…and don’t realise that they’ve done poorly. I kept getting recommendations for Fantasy when I told people that I didn’t care for LOTR. “This is different…you’ll like this”. Sigh. It never IS different. I never DO like it. Or did, until Martin and Rothfuss and Brett started reinventing it, making it about things besides “how I played AD&D last weekend.”
When I tell people how much I love Stephenson, I get cyberpunk tossed at me in droves. Same thing. Although I’d say that I really liked Patrick’s book. I’d call it dystopian cyberpunk. It was fun. Mostly because the focus was on action, with the world-building being there but not being overwhelming. So much cyberpunk gets lost in “look at what a Kewl wurrld I made up!”
At least with other genres you pretty much have a set line with a few standard deviations in quality. With Spec Fic the highs and lows and are a lot more high and a lot less low. There are a lot fewer “eh, it was okay” books, it seems.
This is why I mourn the decline of magazines generally, and the decline of reviewing/criticism more specifically. I love SF&F. I appreciate gatekeepers whose opinions I trust. (I don’t mean I have to agree with them, but I need to be able to read their considerations of a book or something and know whether I would like it.) There are damn few of them, and (it seems) a large number of folks who can look right at crappy writing and tell you it’s good. Same as restaurant reviewers in Nashville, I guess.
Speaking of ‘not-cyberpunk’, you’ve read Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition” and “Spook Country”, right?
For action, I’ll give two thumbs up to Dan’ Abnett’s latest “Embedded.” Read it Saturday, thoroughly enjoyed it.
I loved PR, but couldn’t finish SC.
Loved PR, liked SC, was underwhelmed by Zero History, but I’m still in awe of his writing.