The Books I Listened To/Read In July

Fiction
'The Mammoth Book of SteamPunk' ed. by Sean Wallace
There was a recent debate on the Never Was online journal about whether you could be steampunk and right-wing: https://neverwasmag.com/2019/06/can-you-be-right-wing-and-steampunk/  I had said that it was not that simple and there are elements of the genre such as the excitement of heavy industry and portrayal of Victorian social structures that could be seen as favoured by right-wing commentators.  However, reading this anthology which came out in 2012, I realised that my reading in the genre was dated.  Almost every protagonist in the 30 stories of this collection is either disabled or gay or from a black, Asian or other group in a minority in Western Europe. Indeed Ekaterina Sedia has written an opening essay that emphasises what she feels is the prime purpose of steampunk to paint a better picture of the alternatives available in the past as this can be the only basis of a brighter future.  Though a number of the stories connect more clearly to the fantasy genre, Sedia links them explicitly to science fiction, bouncing from the past into the future.

If this was your first contact with steampunk (or SteamPunk as Wallace has it) you would assume that these were necessary parts of the genre and perhaps, in the late 2000s they had already become and are this firmly in the late 2010s. In many ways by emphasising all the bad that steampunk has kept concealed beneath its bluster, this collection showed me that the genre is effectively dead or, at best, a very gloomy type of writing. It has turned me away from the genre completely to the extent there seems no point in me ever writing in it again.  I guess for the authors featured in this book, that would be a victory because it is apparent my kind of steampunk has no place in their universe.  I am sure the authors would tell you that as a white, middle-aged, formerly middle class man from Western Europe, I have no place in the genre anyway given the views that I must hold given that background.

All the stories collected are certainly informed by feminism.  This becomes anti-man in James Morrow's 'Lady Witherspoon's Solution'.  I do not know why editors of steampunk anthologies feel obliged to include horrific stories that really, despite their steampunk trappings, belong in the horror genre. I still shudder when I think of 'The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down' by Joe R. Lansdale in 'Steampunk' (2008) by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer which is effectively torture porn; 'Victoria' by Paul Di Filippo in the same collection features bestiality.  Morrow's story featuring the reduction of men to beasts and their castration and the collection of testes as entertainment for Victorian ladies, is of the same ilk.  The men are portrayed as the worst of their kind, but even the USA, parts of which tolerate the death penalty would not permit such abuse of prisoners let alone lionise it the way Morrow does.  Simply putting something into a steampunk setting does not excuse authors from churning out such vile work.  If they feel obliged to include such 'stories', editors should include a warning.  The inclusion of the story undermines the feminist approach adopted elsewhere in the book by suggesting it is no better than male chauvinism.  Imagine if Morrow had written a story in which women were injected with chemicals that reduced them to beasts that were then compelled to fight to the death and then the victors were mutilated; he would have been roundly condemned.

'Machine Maid' by Margo Lanagan, is almost as bad. It sees a skilled woman left largely deserted in a house in the wilds of Australia, altering a clockwork 'sex robot' to mutilate her husband. Fortunately Lanagan uses implied outcomes more than Morrow. However, it does alarm me how we have come to such a bad situation in relations between the sexes that it is seen as alright to have a 'mild' little story having men mutilated and this not been deemed to be horror if not a form of sick pornography. Apparently if an uncaring man, let alone a malicious one, is the victim then it is acceptable. Even the USA has a law against 'cruel and unusual punishment' of the kinds apparently happily shown by the authors in these stories. Such porn has no place in true steampunk.

Aside from Morrow and Lanagan's chapters, there is a mixed bag of stories.  Interestingly, a number of them shade from strict steampunk into fantasy. 'Clockwork Fairies' by Cat Rambo is set in Ireland and features real fairies countering the ones of the title. 'Icebreaker' by E. Catherine Tobler, concerning a dwarf widow of a scientist taking his remains to bury at the South Pole has fantastical creatures at the pole too.  'Tom Edison and His Amazing Telegraphic Harpoon' shows North America fragmented as the Mormons have summoned forth demonic flying creatures to defend Deseret. In both cases, the steampunk technology helps the protagonists win through. 'Prayers of Forges and Furnaces' by Ailette de Bodard combines her use of South American contexts with both a post-apocalyptic setting and a vampire. 'Numismatics in the Age in the Reigns of Naranh and Viu' by Alex Dally MacFarlane, is one of the stories that uses 'artefacts' as the basis of the story rather than telling the story in a straight forward way. It is a feminist story in a fantasy setting and shows how a queen went off to form her own realm, via the coins that she and her followers produce. It is an interesting idea but a bit lifeless.

'To Follow the Waves' by Amal El-Mohtar is one of a number of Middle Eastern set stories, a context unusual for steampunk stories; one of the lesbian romances in the book and features a woman who can craft dreams into jewellery that reminded me a lot of crafting in 'Humility Garden' (1995) and 'Delta City' (1996) by Felicity Savage.  'The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jula-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar' by Shweta Narayan is told by a clockwork bird and straddles not only those stories which seem to be more from mainstream fantasy than steampunk, but also come over as morality tales.  'The Clockwork Chickadee' by Mary Robinette Kowal is another of these, set among clockwork toys with a rather nasty revenge story. 'The Ballard of the Last Human' by Lavie Tidhar is in a similar vein though even less realistic as the heroes are a clockwork dog and a clockwork spider. 'Clockmaker's Requiem' by Barth Anderson is a surreal story about a world shifting from personal time to clock-based time, something which happened in our world, but not in a context as bizarre as this. As a result it is one of the philosophical stories of the book rather than one with real action. The clearest of the morality tales is 'The Clockwork Goat and the Smokestack Magi' by Peter M. Ball in which very little happens and it is really a parable than a standard short story.

Less fantastical, but with the same philosophical questioning at its heart is 'To Seek Her Fortune' by Nicole Kornher-Stace which features a single mother travelling the world with airship gypsies seeking a true prediction of her death. It is really about how she raises her son and is better on the context than the story. 'Fixing Hanover' despite being by Jeff VanderMeer a writer I have come to strongly disapprove of, is rather a parable too, about fixing a humanoid robot that washes up in a seaside town where a technician has fled. However, like the best short stories it hints at a far larger world that could easily fill a novel. It has a feel a bit like the settings of the 'Dishonored' (2012-16) computer games.  Perhaps similar if 'The Steam Dancer (1896)' by Caitlin R. Kiernan is like the warnings seen in the 'Terminator' movies (1984-2019) about robots becoming aggressive and/or dominant. It also highlights how much more sophisticated machinery is now portrayed in steampunk.

'Arbeitkraft' by Nick Mamatas is similar in seeing clockwork cyborgs to do dangerous jobs. It combines a robot takeover story with a Marxist critique as Friedrich Engels is the hero of the story.  It is easily assumed in these stories that with steam and clockwork technology robots with the intelligence of machines we see in science fiction would be possible, further ensuring that link to the genre I highlighted above. To me, though, this is really breaking down steampunk as having a level of rational limits and so making it simply a science fiction or indeed fantasy sub-set. 'Dr Lash Remembers' by Jeffery Ford, straddles such 'warning' stories with a fantastical element in which steam has been made into the carrier of a disease that leads to loss of control among humans so wrecking the steampunk world.  'Reluctance' is a steampunk zombie story with a disabled airship postman fighting against zombies in a remote USA town in order to refuel and escape. It is fast moving but very much as I have described it.

In my view the best story in the book is around a lesbian romance. This is 'The Effluent Engine' by N.K. Jemisin and sees an alternate history in which the uprising on Haiti has led to a black sovereign nation seeking help to defend its position by making use of the by-products of rum manufacture. Though a short story it is a great little adventure with a romancing of a female engineer at its heart and certainly hinting at a far greater 'world' that could feature in a novel.  Another one, though with an tragic lesbian theme, is' Hands that Feed' featuring a Jewish female engineer and people in a city that she encounters, one a young female thief. Again, it is set in a rich context that you want to find out more about. You hope for a happy outcome but I guess with the tone of much of this collection a tragic one should be predicted from the oppression of the setting.   Similarly mournful in tone is 'The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois' by Megan Arkenberg.  A ghost hunter is brought to the house of the former lesbian lover of the late margravine but finds that really all that is happening is all the clockwork devices she built are decaying on her death; melancholy and little more.

I wonder if it is the alternate history facet that attracts me, but I feel another strong story is 'The People's Machine' by Tobias S. Buckell, not only in a steampunk context but one in which the Aztec Empire, rather as Japan did in the 19th Century, has persisted and the geography of North America is different with New Amsterdam having persisted and the British having won two American Wars of Independence have kept the independent USA no greater than the Thirteen Colonies. It is a murder mystery with a computer at the heart of it, like 'The Steam Dancer (1896)' addressing concerns that many science fiction stories look at.

'A Serpent in the Gears' by Margaret Ronald is a strange story about a robot protecting his master while they are approaching a cut-off settlement which has sophisticated technology combined with biology, it is a kind of steam version of cyberpunk, though it is unclear where this is located even though the story is in theory set on Earth. It is not bad but rather unsatisfactory. I found I mixed it up easily with 'Biographical Notes to "A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Airplanes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum' which is by Benjamin Rosenbaum who in a conceited way has put himself into this alternative world.  This story sees a steampunk world in which India has become the dominant force in the world and its culture supreme.  In the book while avoiding airborne assassins he considering writing an alternate history novel in which Western philosophical approaches are used and aeroplanes rather than airships predominate. The background rather stymies the action presented, though jumping between airships after the assassin is well done.

'The Zeppelin Conductors' Society Annual Gentlemen's Ball' by Genevieve Valentine is not really a story but one of these 'artefact' chapters, in this case a series of fragments outlining how men working in airship envelopes become physically distorted, so effectively it is another story featuring disability as well as highlighting the detrimental impact of steampunk developments.  However, it is really a series of notes for a setting rather than a developed story. 'The Anachronist's Cookbook' by Catherynne M. Valente is another artefact one. It has a bit more of a story but it is largely outlined in flyers that the heroine carries calling on revolution against what a lot see as traits, certainly pre-2000s, of steampunk in being socially oppressive and misogynistic.  It is an interesting approach but basically you are reading bombastic political leaflets for a fictional setting, so it is imagined propaganda rather a real story. Not an artefact story but one in which very, very little happens is 'The Armature of Flight' by Sharon Mock which is about a male gay couple splitting up as one goes to be fitted with mechanical wings and the other marries a woman. It is more like ideas for a story, rather than an actual story.

'Zeppelin City' by Eileen Gunn and Michael Swanwick is a fast moving story in a city ruled by brains in glass tanks where aerial bombing has become a sport. It has interesting ideas and is adventurous with a couple of engaging heroines. However, it is clearly dieselpunk, even with 1950s US slang, rather than steampunk and it belongs in a different collection to this one. 'Cinderella Suicide' by Samantha Henderson which seems to be set in Australia is so full of slang from that context that it is very, very difficult to work out what is going on. I do not know if Australian readers could make any sense of it. It seems to be about an exploration to where a spaceship has crash landed on the interior of Australia. It might be more mainstream science fiction than steampunk, it is hard to tell.

Overall, how tiresome I have found reviewing this anthology has brought home to me that I was largely unimpressed by the stories. Aside from the horrific, many lecture the reader as if we are all ignorant of various essential lessons and readers.  Others drown the reader in the authors' conceits. You read a novel or short story for entertainment rather than to be harangued as happens so often in this collection.  There are some good and interesting stories but in a large anthology they are quickly lost amongst the bulk of the others.  In the future I will certainly avoid any steampunk anthologies, even if, as with this one, I find them cheap at a carboot sale.

'Silesian Station' by David Downing
This is the second book in Downing's 'Station' series set in Germany in the late 1930s and 1940s.  This one begins in the summer of 1939 and ends with the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe that September. His hero, John Russell returns from the USA where he has visited with his son and has been given a US passport in place of his British one. He now also writes for a San Francisco newspaper.  As in the first book, 'Zoo Station' (2007), Russell spends a lot of time simply travelling around, whether in parts of Berlin or out to various countries. In this one he manages to go to Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, Slovakia and Poland as well as visiting the Silesian region of Germany.  There are various motives for his journeys. In Berlin he socialises with his girlfriend and takes his son by his divorced German wife to various locations. Ridiculously he is working not only for US intelligence, but also the German SD counter-intelligence organisation and the Soviet foreign intelligence body at the time, INO.  Russell is also given personal missions, to help track down a missing Jewish woman from Silesia and help another Jewish woman who is the mistress of a high-ranking SS officer to escape Germany.  This web detracts rather than adds to the tension of the novel. There is far too much about where Russell is going with his girlfriend, a film star, or his son, where he parks, where he has lunch, what he has for dinner and so on.  Downing gives us loads of detail about Prague and Bratislava and other locales Russell visits, but largely to show off his research than truly add to the story. There is tension but only right at the end of the novel when Russell seeks to rescue Jewish women from an SS brothel and get a friend who has committed a murder, out of Germany.  Downing simply has too much going on for his main character and insists on so much detail, for the novel to really work. It is all very interesting but there are only brief moments when he snares you as a reader of a work of fiction rather than a book of popular history.

'Sherlock Holmes and The Hentzau Affair' by David Stuart Davies
As you might guess from the title this is a double pastiche, on both the Sherlock Holmes novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Ruritania novels of Sir Anthony Hope.  It is written as the Holmes stories were from the perspective of Dr. Watson.  It is very much in the style of one of those stories and Davies only makes a few slips, most jarringly when he uses to the term 'surrealistic tableau' to describe when two men masquerading as King Rudolf V of Ruritania encounter each other on a platform of Streslau station.  The story is set in 1894 and supposedly written in 1919, five years before the first meeting of the Surrealist group.  He might have got away with it if he had said 'Dadaist'. Overall, however, it is a brisk action story with sword fighting, abductions and numerous deaths.  It is a pleasure to read if you enjoy either Doyle's or Hope's work and can avoid trying to spot where Davies erred.

Non-Fiction
'Creative Editing' by Mary Mackie
I bought this book when it was published in 1995. I have dipped into it periodically since then but have never before read it cover-to-cover. While it shows its age, wordprocessors were only really coming into common use when it was published; it suggests you go to a library to do research because there were no internet searches and novels were still submitted on paper rather than via email, it has many principles that remain useful today. I should have read this book sooner because it has become apparent recently that with my school's strange aversion to direct speech, at times insisting on only reported speech in creative writing, what I learned about it was wrong. I was depressed to realise that I had not noticed my errors from reading hundreds of books since then. This added to the sense of despair that I will come back to at the end.

I did find Mackie's guidance on handling points of view much better than other commentators who insist on just one. I do disagree with her on the passive voice as she seems oblivious, like many people, to how it can distort the intended meaning and lead to highly contorted sentences. One compensatory thing is that Mackie, while highlighting various aspects to consider, keeps emphasising that it is down to the author themselves to decide how to apply them, rather than insisting that the author follows her prescriptions to the letter the way that some other help books on authoring do.  Added to that, including exercises, the book in the edition I read is only 208 pages long and is broken up into easy to access sections.  Thus, while I would recommend reading the book right through, it can be dipped into in the way I foolishly did over the past 24 years.  Having read the book in its entirety, I now recognise that even from this 'light touch' rather than dictatorial book, there are just so many things that you must get perfectly right to just get your book to a level at which a publisher might consider it, that it is an impossibility and that I should have abandoned my fantasy of ever getting a book published, decades ago.

Audio Books - Fiction
'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' by Ian Fleming; read by David Tennant
Unlike for most James Bond books, the movie of this one stuck very close to the original novel.  As a consequence, if you have ever seen the movie, you will have a very good idea of what happens and even individual lines from the book feature in it.  At the start of the novel, Bond is back in Royale-les-Eaux a fictional town between Étaples and Montreuil-sur-Mer that featured in 'Casino Royale' (1953), following Teresa 'Tracy' di Vicenzo who had beaten him racing recklessly through neighbouring towns. Paying her gambling debt he is then abducted by Tracy's father, Marc-Ange Draco who happens to be head of the Union Corse organised crime group. He tries to bribe Bond into marrying his daughter.  Draco puts Bond on to the trail of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. he has been pursuing since the end of 'Thunderball' (1961).  Bond goes undercover as a member of the College of Arms to Piz Gloria, a mountain top base in Switzerland where Blofeld is hypnotising British and Irish women to spread agricultural pests and diseases to wreck the British economy.

This novel actually feels like a James Bond movie, with the chases and the final climactic explosions.  While lining up to marry Tracy who is murdered at the end by Blofeld and his accomplice Irma Bund, he still sleeps with one of the hypnotised women.  While Bond is ambivalent about marrying Tracy until very late on, he seems to have less self-doubt than in the previous novels, though he wearies of chasing Blofeld with so little outcome. His relationship with Tracy is almost accidental but he feels that he has found someone of his nature who is as equally reckless as himself driving and gambling.  Bond does not, however, have any qualms dealing with Draco despite him being a major criminal engaging in smuggling and prostitution.  In fact the burgeoning relationship between the two men develops more steadily than that between Bond and Tracy and is reminiscent of the relationship between Bond and Felix Leiter which features in a number of the novels.  For Fleming to have continued the series Tracy had to be killed to free up the agent once more.  As a result, perhaps you come to expect it and it is less cutting when she dies than you might expect.

There are longeurs when Bond is undercover at Piz Gloria. He seems very dim in failing to work out what Blofeld is up to.  This leads to an extended section of Bond being at M's house working with various ministers over the Christmas period, which as it is laboured, fortunately does not feature in the movie.  For some reason Fleming felt compelled to replicate large tracts of a US government document on biological warfare as if he feared readers would not believe the basis of the plot featured in the story, but at times it is just a list, slowing the story unnecessarily.  The action scenes are well handled but interspersed at times with too much 'info dump' sections.

Tennant does pretty well and seems to have been brought in for this book because his natural accent is Scottish which Bond uses when pretending to be Sir Hilary Bray while undercover at Piz Gloria.  He is generally good on all of the voices, though, as he outlines in the interview at the end of my edition of the book, he struggled with the French and German names.  Overall, this is perhaps the book in the series which we would see as being most clearly 'James Bond' as it is understood in  popular culture and it does that job pretty well, but could have been tauter.  Perhaps by this stage of his career, Fleming was not being edited as thoroughly as in the past.