The Steampunk Trilogy [Paperback]

Paul Di Filippo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1997

Steampunk is the twisted offspring of science fiction and postmodernism, a sassy, unpredictable tongue-in-cheek style of which the incomparable Paul Di Filippo is master. The three short novels in The Steampunk Trilogy are all set in a very alternative nineteenth century, and feature a mixture of historical and imaginary figures. In "Victoria," a young and lissome Queen Victoria disappears from her throne and is replaced by a sexy human/newt clone. The race is on to find the original Victoria and to hide the terrible secret from the nation. In "Hottentots," Massachusetts is threatened by monsters from the deep; in "Walt and Emily," Emily Dickinson hooks up with a robust and lusty Walt Whitman, loses her virginity, and travels to a dimension beyond time where she meets the future Allen Ginsberg.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Queen Victoria as a trollop-in-training whose newt-human clone serves as stand-in during Victoria's trysts? Walt Whitman as lusty seducer of an only partly reticent Emily Dickinson who loses the "Keys to the Inner Chambers of her Heart" to him? This fine and funny madness is "steampunk," a branch of cyberpunk fiction that locates itself in historical venues rather than in the future. Paul Di Filippo has certainly done his homework: the settings as well as the language emulate the times and, in Dickinson's and Whitman's cases, their poetic language, which asserts itself into their conversational dialogue and thoughts at most unusual but appropriate moments. Dickinson's "Universe Entire" is disrupted by a naked Whitman bathing in her rain barrel and singing his "body electric." But will Dickinson's "White Election" remain intact?

From Publishers Weekly

The term "steampunk" has come to intimate a subgenre of work set in a fantastic 19th century characterized by the inhumanity wrought by bogus science and a fanatical embrace of scientific method. Di Filippo's first book is a collection of three novellas that jumbles science and pseudoscience into an interesting, if not always completely successful, melange. The narratives are united not only by their reliance on the occult?mysticism dominates "Walt and Emily" while Lovecraft's monsters appear in the previously published "Hottentots"?but also by their focus on female sexuality. "Victoria" replaces the Queen of England with a licentious salamander, while "Walt and Emily" features a robust poetic encounter between Ms. Dickinson and Mr. Whitman. Even the weakest of the pieces here?"Hottentots," in which nothing is learned while much credulity is stretched?features amusing faux-Victorian prose worthy of Anne Rice ("Like a Maine sawmill, like an asthmatic platypus... like a Michigan beaver... uneasily winter-dreaming of Ojibway hunters led by a wild Chief Snapping Turtle, Mister Dogberry roughly rasped and snorted through the night, making it nigh impossible for Agassiz to get any rest") and enough "scientific" pasquinades to satisfy the Luddite in anyone.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 354 pages
• Publisher: Running Press (November 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568581025
• ISBN-13: 978-1568581026
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, and unusual, March 16, 2005

By 

E. K. M. Busch "award-winning dork" (pittsburgh, pa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Steampunk Trilogy (Paperback)

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.)

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant in spots, but on the whole, forgettable, June 14, 2006

By 

Jason Mierek "uniqueness is ubiquitous" (Urbana, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Steampunk Trilogy (Paperback)

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.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Di Filippo is unique..., October 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Steampunk Trilogy (Paperback)

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.