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The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives [Hardcover]

James P. Blaylock , J. K. Potter
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)


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Book Description

November 30, 2008
A good deal of controversy arose late in the last century over what has been referred to by the more livid newspapers as The Horror in St. James Park or The Ape-box Affair....

So begins the first chronicle in the long and often obscure life of Langdon St. Ives, Victorian scientist and adventurer, respected member of the Explorers Club and of societies far more obscure, consultant to scientific luminaries, and secret, unheralded savior of humankind. From the depths of the Borneo jungles to the starlit reaches of outer space, and ultimately through the dark corridors of past and future time, the adventures of Langdon St. Ives invariably lead him back to the streets and alleys of the busiest, darkest, most secretive city in the world -- London in the age of steam and gaslamps, with the Thames fog settling in over the vast city of perpetual evening. St. Ives, in pursuit of the infamous Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, discovers the living horror of revivified corpses, the deep sea mystery of a machine with the power to drag ships to their doom, and the appalling threat of a skeleton-piloted airship descending toward the city of London itself, carrying within its gondola a living homunculus with the power to drive men mad....

This omnibus volume contains the collected Steampunk stories and novels of James P. Blaylock, one of the originators of the genre, which hearkens back to the worlds of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, a world where science was a work of the imagination, and the imagination was endlessly free to dream.

The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives will contain the original illustrations J. K. Potter created for the novel Lord Kelvin's Machine, plus many more for the novel, Homunculus, and the short stories.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Long recognized as a master of steampunk fiction, Blaylock (The Man in the Moon) collects four short stories and two novels featuring indefatigable and unflappable Victorian scientist Langdon St. Ives in a deluxe omnibus edition profusely and masterfully illustrated by J.K. Potter. In The Ape-Box Affair, St. Ives attempts to launch an orangutan named Newton into outer space, but the ship crashes in a pond in St. James Park, terrifying the people of London into believing that they've been invaded by aliens. In Philip K. Dick Award–winner Homunculus, St. Ives battles the evil, hunchbacked genius Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, who attempts to awaken the dead, while in Lord Kelvin's Machine, a grief-beset St. Ives must counter Narbondo's threat to throw the Earth in front of a passing comet. Intricately detailed if somewhat haphazardly plotted, at once droll and horrific, these highly mannered tales are classic examples of this popular subgenre. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 500 pages
  • Publisher: Subterranean; 1st edition (November 30, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1596061707
  • ISBN-13: 978-1596061705
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,740,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
(6)
4.5 out of 5 stars
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Received and read with joy November 19, 2008
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
To be totally honest, I have to say right at the beginning that I am predisposed to love anything Mr. Blaylock writes. So it was with joy that I set in my comfy armchair, cozy under a quilt for the night, and stayed up the entire night reading this wonderful collection. What we have in this book is the Langdon St. Ives stories compiled with the novellas "The Homunculus" and "Lord Kelvin's Machine." What we get is a coherent whole, a novel really, about Professor St. Ives, and his steampunk adventures.

If you love the English language, if you love science fiction/fantasy as it might have been written by P.G. Wodehouse, if you get chills of pleasure when you read well crafted stories, this book is for you.

I cannot say enough good things about this fine author. The only negative I can think of is that he doesn't publish often enough for me!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars P.G. Wodehouse meets Jules Verne - well, maybe Tim Powers December 30, 2008
Format:Hardcover
This volume collects four short stories ("The Ape-Box Affair", "The Hole in Space", "The Idol's Eye", "Two Views of a Cave Painting") and two novels ("Homunculus", "Lord Kelvin's Machine") all featuring the over-the-top adventures of Victorian inventor-hero, Langdon St Ives. If you liked The "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series you'll probably like these; "Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius" is silly steampunk in much the same vein (although comic-book format.)

St Ives, his super-valet Hasbro, young Jack Owlesby, and an assortment of other colorful eccentrics try to save the world, or at least themselves, usually from villainous mad scientist Ignacio Narbondo (or at least themselves!) Airships, infernal devices, victoriana, and absurd inventions collide into (usually) absurdly satisfying endings.

I prefer Blaylock's first period ("The Elfin Ship," etc) and third period ("The Last Coin" et al) to these second period stories, but they're still consistently mildly amusing in a Wodehouse kind of way.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Time Travel Done Right April 9, 2011
By N
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is a fantastic romp through the possibilities of a technologically curious Victorian era. Though the reader never sees directly through the title character's eyes, other characters' descriptions and first-person opinionated accounts form a firm and fond attachment between St. Ives and the reader. Each short story stands well on its own, and also blends perfectly with its neighboring installment to form an enthralling story about one man's intellectual rise into self-destruction, an adventurous support group's sacrifices for friendship, and a society in which superstition is just as real as logic.
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