Customer Reviews

The Steampunk Trilogy (Di Filippo, Paul)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book (actually three stories) is one of the most clever pieces of Victoriana I've ever read. I looked for it forever before ordering it, and it was worth the wait. I don't know how to describe these fascinating stories which I still think about long after I read the book. The end of each story is sort of like listening to a piece of music without the last note... there's just a feeling of... unresolvedness or frustration or something... about each one. They are sort of like a Victorian, supernatural Annie Hall... a perfect, suspended, dangling little snapshot in time. And the author perfectly captures his characters... from their supernatural alienness, to their stubbornly anti-anachronistic attitudes about race, empire, and sex/gender. (And I say kudos to that - while I love anachronistic Victorian adventuresses in fiction, it's nice to see an author actually acknowledge the ugliness of an idealized era, normally glossed over in such works. Plus, the unlikeable antihero gets his well-deserved comeuppance anyway.)

An interesting if not great book, The Steampunk Trilogy relates three unconnected tales about a quirky, early Victorian world where genetically engineered salamanders reign and where nuclear train engines and "ideoplasm"-powered transdimensional prairie schooners haunt the imagination. DeFilippo's success here is in the details---the fustian prose echoes that of the 19th century, as does the fiery libertine poetry, while the characters never quite lose a certain postmodern knowingness, a glint in the eye as it were.

Alas, he never seems to weave these details into a memorable story. Two days after completing it, and "Hottentots" (the second of the three stories comprising the trilogy) is receding in my memory. The other two stories, "Victoria" and "Walt and Emily," were more compelling, but only marginally so.

Good for checking out of the library or buying from a used-book store.

and you've got to approach this book with an open mind. Moralistic he is not. Wildly imaginative, outrageous, he is. STEAMPUNK took me to the most bizarre places I've ever been, literarily speaking. And Di Filippo details his worlds to an amazing degree. Loosen your collar and enjoy the ride. Clearly this is a book the author had a blast writing. It's hard to believe anyone would pick this up and not enjoy him/her/itself.

I had read Ribofunk 5 years or so ago and enjoyed it and reread it this summer and enjoyed it even more. When it was finished I wanted more so I sought out The Steampunk Trilogy. The book was engaging and funny from the very start. Very, very clever language and style and very funny. I was particularly impressed with the life the author bestowed upon the many historical people who were incorporated into the story. After reading the books I even discovered that the Hottentots Venus' pickled "friend" is indeed at the Musee de l'Homme in Paris. As a New Englander I also loved the fact that two of the stories take place in Massachusetts. When will you be in Snipe Harbour again, Paul Di Filippo?

This is rather a weird book, but pretty good. I think the three stories kind of go in descending order from best to worst. The first is highly entertaining, even if it is rather pointless, but, as often happens, there's some irritating moral ambiguity here. In this case, the protagonist meets a lesbian schoolmistress who helps him out, but the last time we see her consists of him discovering her sexual orientation and being pissed off at her--and then she's never heard from again. That annoyed me, because it was the most interesting aspect of the story. The second tale is still more problematic. The protagonist is an incredibly egocentric, white-supremist, Swiss professor, and while his points of view are certainly not ENDORSED, you don't really get the impression that they're being condemned, either. Very odd. I did like the touch of comparing things to plants and animals and then parenthetically providing their Latin names. That was cool. The story was fairly entertaining, but, as with all of these, there's rather a pointless aura around it--you don't get the impression that anything's really happening. The third story was the weakest, I think. The portrayal of Whitman was quite good, Dickinson less memorable. And, although the back cover informs us that they meet Alen Ginsburg, don't expect any sort of meeting-of-the-minds. Yes they meet Ginsburg, as well as a number of other twentieth-century poets, but they're not really detailed in any way--they're all fairly anonymous children. And the way they meet them is really unspeakably bizarre. I have to admit, it made absolutely no sense, and it was never explained. Also, the ending was less than happy. You really have to get used to Philipo's idiosyncrasies, but if you can, you'll find a quirky and though-provoking, if somewhat flawed, work of fiction.

As I tend to be wary of more traditional fantasy owing to the amount of...let's say "not good" that can be found in that genre, I have been poking around in subgenres hoping to find both authors and ideas that do click with me. Thus my decision to explore steampunk - which led to me reading 'The Steampunk Trilogy.'

The book is comprised of three separate novellas: "Victoria," "Hottentots" and "Walt and Emily." As the three stories are connected in the loosest of ways (a character from one is tangentially referred to in another) I will discuss the stories on their own merits.

But first, I should probably note my overall feeling for the book as a whole. My expectations for "steampunk" weren't met very well as most of what happens in each story is a lot closer to "alternate-history." There are brief mentions of the sorts of things I would have expected to find - machines and techniques not expected of the era - but these were almost as fleeting as the references that tie the stories together.

The book starts off with "Victoria" which largely centers on the creation of the main character, which is a genetically modified newt that looks human. This newt is used as a replacement for Queen Victoria who has gone missing.
You didn't read that incorrectly.
The story is actually somewhat humorous, but I kept expecting a little more of it - and then ending of the story is somewhat abrupt.

Next is "Hottentots," and after reading the story for the first 25 pages or so I needed to break out the dictionary owing to my confusion regarding the title word. I had seen said word before (owing to a line in the comic strip 'Bloom County') and remembered initially thinking that it had something to do with pre-WWI Germans. This is not the case, and cleared up some significant confusion on my part (altho' not where I got that idea in the first place).
This story focuses largely on a trio of characters attempting to find an...item of power before it can be used for magical mischief. The item in question is...well, it's part of the female anatomy.
I'm *seriously* not making this up.
The character that the story mostly focuses on is somewhat of a bigot and some of his thoughts, actions and language might be construed as offensive; however, as said character is also mostly used to show how his beliefs just aren't the case is it somewhat excusable.
The end of the story here is almost equally as abrupt and even more ludicrous than the first story; it must be noted that the "humor" in this story, while similar to the first, became somewhat tedious.

The last story is "Walt and Emily" and focuses on highly fictionalized versions of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. This story really dragged for me - even more than the first two - mostly because I had come to the realization that for all the writing Di Filippo has done not much actually happens, and so there are large passages that simply need to be waded through.

All in all, I was hoping for much more than what I ended up with.

I bought this book because a book club that I was in picked it one week. I must say, I do like sci-fi but this was a little hokey to me. Admittedly, I never made it past the first story because I just couldn't get into the silliness.

Picked this up based on a "Oh, you like China Mieville, you'll like this" recommendation. Big mistake. The prose is bland, the characters are universally one-dimensional, the plot "twists" are stunningly obvious throughout, and the whole thing feels like the quality of writing you expect to pick up at a 4th grade bookmobile stop. I read through the first story, "Victoria" with rapidly dwindling interest. Only because I felt it unfair to judge the book on less than half of the read did I bother reading through the second story, "Hottentots" which is no better (and in many ways worse) than the first.

Steer clear of this one. I'm sure you could find worse things to read, but it'd take effort.