Just Add An Airship

Hello all, I hope you all had a great weekend cheering on your favorites at the Olympics, I know I did.  As much as I love the Olympics I had to take a break from the screen and read for a couple hours yesterday...ahh so refreshing :-)  I finally finished The Mammoth Book of Steampunk with its 30 short stories all set in the Steampunk genre.  This book took me FOREVER to get through and as I contemplated why I came up with one main reason.  Writing steampunk is hard.  I find steampunk and all its co-genres and sub-genres and parent-genres to be a very visual thing and sometimes it feels that all an author has to to is add a zeppelin and BAM steampunk.   Now this is not true for everything, in my last post I showed off some of my favorite books in the punk genre's and all of them are excellent.  A couple things I have noticed about genre books I like, the story always comes first. In all of the books I mentioned the story comes first, world building, characters, and genre conceits are all well done, but are added to serve the story, not make a book steampunk.  Here is where I veer into total personal opinion, everything I am about to say hinges sole on my own likes and dislikes as a reader, you may see things in a completely different way, which is awesome and wonderful and you should tell me all about it.

The biggest problem I have with written steampunk, especially in short stories is that it gets really really dense.  The authors seem to get caught up either in trying to describe every little cog and wheel or they meander into over inflated pseudophychology/philosophy of deepness/scientificology (those are all real words I swear).  I love the idea of exploring alternate universes and timelines and I understand this means discussing various ideas of those times, but when you sound like a jumbled pretentious book your overly academic professor assigns you in how to sound like a rambling jerk class it is no longer enjoyable to me (yep I have actually taken that class before). The books and stories tend to get caught up in minutiae or

vagueness or vague minutiae when all you want is to know what is going on.  Again I think that part of the problem is that steampunk is so visual, if I say steampunk what pops into your head is probably images of top hats and goggles, clockwork limbs, the ever present airship, the genres seems to be most easily defined by its visual aesthetic and when a writer tries to write to that you end up with a jumbled mess.
On the other hand their is some wonderfully written steampunk(ish) out there, oddly enough most of them are in the YA section (as I am sure you noticed in my last post).  I think this is because YA novels are allowed to be about the story or characters, while adult genre sometimes feels it needs to be thought-provoking and deep, and gritty, and "real"  all of the time.  This is not to say that YA stories are all perfect, or you cannot get a good adult steampunk book, in my humble opinion I just have an easier time finding it in the YA section.  I have also found that a lot of books fall into the steampunk (or sub-genre punk styles) without us even realizing it.  Many of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne books could be now considered steampunk (though back when it was written it was plain old science fiction).  I mean how can you read The Time Machine and not think clockwork and science, or how about my personal favorite 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea which has to be at least one of the inspirations for the octopus/seahorse steampunk aesthetic.

Overall I guess I have to say that I prefer my stories first and then genre second.  If you can use cogs and wheels and steam and alternate history to tell me a great story then I will love you all that much more for it.  But if the only way you can make a book steampunk is by overly descriptive phrases stating exactly what each automaton or air ship looks like, or use it as a platform to pontificate on an alternate philosophy then I will let somebody else enjoy it.  As for The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (on which this post was supposed to be a rambling) it has some good little stories like Icebreaker by E. Catherine Tobler, Clockwork Fairies by  Cat Rambo, The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jala-ud-din Muhammad Akbar by Shweta Narayan Numismatics in the Reigns of Naranh and Viu by Alex Dally MacFarlane and Lady Witherspoon's Solution by James Morrow.  I found these stories to have a good mix of story and atmosphere and in a few a good bit of humor.  This book is full of variety so if you have any interest in steampunk, science fiction or short stories go ahead and pick it up, just be warned it is not a sit down and read straight through collection, but more of a keep it at hand for when the mood strikes.  I give it 5 out of 10 clockwork gear airships.

What part of steampunk most appeals to you?  How defined do you think the steampunk or any specific genre or sub genre should be? Do you sometimes think that I am just a wind-up bot that types until my spring runs down?