Abstract: Drawing on a variety of steampunk visual, textual, and performance sources, this article traces the contentious and highly charged debate about the ideology and aesthetics of period style that circulates within this eclectic neo-Victorian subculture. Far from simply rejecting the historical nineteenth century in favour of a fantastical version, steampunk practice is animated by the problem of if, and how, the Victorian period’s social, economic, and political legacies should be signified. This discussion is nowhere more heated in the subculture’s internal micro-media than in discussions of the regalia and style of empire. In drawing attention to this compelling steampunk discourse on the ethics of representation, my paper calls for a new and more situated approach to competing steampunk practices and political identifications, one that might extend and replace the holistic assessments of the subculture that have predominated so far.

Abstract: Acknowledgements List of illustrations Foreword - Adam Roberts Notes on contributors Introduction - Sara Wasson and Emily Alder Part I: Redefining Genres 1. In the Zone: Topologies of Genre Weirdness - Roger Luckhurst 2. Zombie Death Drive: Between Gothic and Science Fiction - Fred Botting Part II: Biopower & Capital 3. 'Death is Irrelevant': Gothic Science Fiction and the Biopolitics of Empire - Aris Mousoutzanis 4. 'A Butcher's Shop where the Meat Still Moved': Gothic Doubles, Organ Harvesting and Human Cloning - Sara Wasson 5. Guillermo del Toro's Cronos, or the Pleasures of Impurity - Laurence Davies 6. Infected with Life: Neo-Supernaturalism and the Gothic Zombie - Gwyneth Peaty 7. Ruined Skin: Gothic Genetics and Human Identity in Stephen Donaldson's Gap Cycle - Emily Alder Part III: Gender and Genre 8. The Superheated, Superdense Prose of David Conway: Gender and Subjectivity Beyond The Starry Wisdom - Mark P. Williams 9. Spatialized Ontologies: Toni Morrison's Science Fiction Traces in Gothic Spaces - Jerrilyn McGregory 10. The Gothic Punk Milieu in Popular Narrative Fictions - Nickianne Moody 11. Gothic Science Fiction in the Steampunk Graphic Novel: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Laura Hilton Index

Abstract: Preface R.Holmes Prefatory Note J.Gunn INTRODUCTION: VOICES HEARD 'ROUND THE COSMIC CAMPFIRE PART I: THE LOVECRAFT CIRCLE The Provocative Abysses of Unplumbed Space S.T.Joshi Explores the Universe of H.P. Lovecraft I Am Providence H.Beckwith on H.P.Lovecraft Psycho Is Not About a Shower Scene! R.Bloch From Providence to Liverpool R.Campbell Certain Things Associated with the Night T.E.D.Klein PART II: THE HEROIC AGE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION Robert E. Howard and The Whole Wide World D.Ireland Batman and Me B.Kane The Man Who Explained Miracles J.D.Carr Superman is a Friend C.Reeve Wonder's Child J.Williamson Ragnarok and Relativity P.Anderson The Way the Future Was F.Pohl I Tell People Stories W.Tucker The Complete Enchanter L.Sprague De Camp PART III: THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES The Bradbury Collaborations Stan and Ollie R.Bradbury & R.Harryhausen Joe and Me R.Bradbury & J.Mugnaini The Bradbury Circle (Friends and Associates) Let's Put on a Show! J.Schwarz Mister Monster F.J.Ackerman Dandelion Chronicles W.F.Nolan The Repairman Cometh F.P.Wilson ABradbury Companion D.Albright PART IV: DESTINATION:MARS! Back to Barsoom:Bob Zeuschner Talks about the Mars Books of Edgar Rice Burroughs This Is Where We Start Again K.S.Robinson PART V: THE EXTRAVAGANT GAZE A Sublime Madness:Professors Albert Boime and Tim Mitchell Talk about Goya, Gericault, and Caspar David Friedrich Scenes from Childhood Album for the Young M.Sendak There's a Lot of Reality to These Fantasies C.Sturridge & F.Tale The Mysteries of Chris Van Allsburg Gahan Wilson's Diner PART VI: MUSIC OF THE SPHERES Symphonie fantastique:Professor Jack Sullivan Talks about Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt, and Others PART VII: POSTMODERN GOTHIC The Night Ride of Charles Beaumont We Walk Your Dog at Night! S.King The Kiss That Bites S.M.Charnas A Magellan of the Interior P.Straub The Billion Year Spree B.Aldiss Savage Pastimes: Gothic Schlock and Grindhouse Horrors Different Engines:Steampunk PART VIII: WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE...TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET, AND STAR TREK Frankie Thomas on Tom Corbett and the Early Days of Live Television Four Members of the Enterprise Crew W.Shatner , L.Nimoy , D.F.Kelly & G.Takei THE HERESY OF HUMANISM:GREG BEAR AND GREGORY BENFORD EPILOGUE

Abstract: Western steampunk uses fantastic images of technology-out-of-time to create critical commentary on the notion of progress and the inherent tension between “civilization” and nature. As a hybrid subgenre it uses the steampunk aesthetic to introduce technology-as-spectacle—breathtaking, larger than life, focus rather than backdrop—and traffics in fetishism, making technology the stuff of fantasy and obsession. Through the steampunk Western, we see the working out of the tension between popular fascination and fear in relation to technology and the machine age—a commentary on the loss of the wildness, independence, and freedom of the frontier West.

Abstract: There was a time, not so long ago, when the definition of steampunk was generally agreed upon. As late as 2005, F. Brett Cox’s entry in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy defined steampunk in essentially the same way as Peter Nicholls did in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), whose definition was little changed from K.W. Jeter’s coining of the term in a letter published in the April 1987 issue of Locus magazine to refer to his “gonzo-historical” explorations of “Victorian fantasies” and alternative technologies (57). How things have changed. As of summer 2011, the term has become an intense semantic and philosophical battleground, albeit one whose combatants have little time for or interest in their opponents. The combatants are the prescriptivists, who maintain that only the Jeter/Nicholls definition is the correct one, and the descriptivists, whose preferred definition of the term is far broader than Jeter/Nicholls and reflects its current (shambolic) status rather than its past (traditional) use. The descriptivists are winning. “Steampunk” appears as a designation for everything from the Western-flavored space opera Firefly (2005) to pseudoEdwardian colonialist high adventure anime, from the industrial dance music of the band Abney Park to the current alternative fashion of mock-Victorian clothing. The struggle between the descriptivists and the prescriptivists is by no means over—at the moment steampunk is a fad, but once the faddists move on, steampunk will in all likelihood return to being primarily a literary category. Until then, steampunk will remain a catch-all term without an agreed-upon definition, and thus a term of little critical utility. The articles and books reviewed here reflect this lack of consensus and clarity. Steampunk Prime is thoroughly traditional, as befits its late-nineteenthand early-twentieth-century contents. The authors of the articles in the special issue of Neo-Victorian Studies only partially accept the developments of the past six years and are as much traditional, and prescriptivist, as they are descriptivist. Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded firmly embraces the descriptivist position. In the foreword to Steampunk Prime, Paul di Filippo perhaps wisely avoids any attempt at defining steampunk, instead portraying it as a kind of cadet branch of mainstream science fiction—the 2010s version of the New Wave and

Abstract: This article introduces an early Victorian popular song, with some preliminary reflections on how it, and indeed similar texts, might be relev ant to twentieth and twenty-first century practitioners and critics of steampunk. 'The Steam Arm' describes a veteran who acquires a prosthetic limb, with disastrous consequences. As a text from the start of the 'steam age', it reveals the fantasies and anxieties surrounding tec hnological progress in early Victorian literature. 'T he Steam Arm' (transcribed in full below) is an ano nymous ballad that appears to date from just before Victoria's accessi on to the throne. It relates the story, in the third person, of a one-armed Wate rloo veteran, beaten by his "arrant scold" of a wife, who determines to get even with her by replacing his lost arm with a mechanical steam-powe red limb. The prosthetic arm is successfully grafted on to his st ump, but once in action, it turns out to be too successful, not only striking d own his wife, but the police who come to arrest him, the mayor who tries him, an d the walls of the cell in which he is imprisoned. In the second-to-last st anza the hero attempts to return home and take his wife in his arms, but as h is steam arm "smash'd the crockery ware", its incompatibility with love a nd domesticity is apparent. The soldier is finally doomed to remain a lienated from all society, a haunting figure wandering "like a sprite", while "his arm keeps moving with two-horse might". In attempting to define steampunk, one recent commenter in the online forum 'The Great Steampunk Debate 2010' argued that a common denominator is its evocation of "retrofuture": the future as imagined from a nineteenth-century standpoint (Steampunk Scholar 2010). 1 'The Steam Arm' is an exciting text for steampunk enthusiasts, because it seems to justify steampunk retrofutures, to give them histor ical credibility. That is, the song's fantasy about the powers of technology d emonstrates that its unknown nineteenth-century author, as well as the m any performers and

Abstract: In the spirit of steampunk this paper juxtaposes ideas about craft, technology, and labor from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century to explore new ways of thinking about contemporary making. Richard Sennett's concept of open-source software as “public craft” is investigated through the history of free speech and free software, as a precursor to the integration of crafter and hacker culture. These concepts are embodied in the recent work Coal Fired Computers (2010) by YoHa, and FLOW, a watermill by Ed Carter and the Owl Project (2010–12). The integration of technology and the handmade is considered as a form of contemporary craft.

Abstract: Reckless: Steinernes Fleisch. By Cornelia Funke. Hamburg: Cecilie Dressler Verlag, 2010. 349 pp. Reckless. By Cornelia Funke. New York: Little, Brown, 2010. 394 pp. While questing for treasures, the hero of the Grimm tale "The Golden Bird" (AT 550) enlists a fox helper, who turns out to be the enchanted brother of the princess who must be rescued. The analogous assistant in Asbjornsen and Moe's "Lord Peter" (AT 545B) is a cat; this time she herself transforms into the human hero's true love at the story's end. Cornelia Funke's Reckless: Steinernes Heisch - in which folktale tropes are subversively engaged to construct a postmodern narrative of siblings, parents, and young adult pair-bonding - features an incarnation of this animal-helper figure, perceived by many readers as the book's most sympathetic character, although she is not its titular protagonist. Fox, a shape-shifting vixen-girl, yearns to upgrade her faithful-sidekick status to something warmer but is thwarted on two fronts: not only by the urgency of the quest she participates in but also by the impatience and self-centeredness of the book's questing hero, Jacob Reckless. Prior to the events of the novel, Jacob has been employed, like the hero of "The Golden Bird," as a hunter of magical treasures for the nobility. Now, however, he is engaged in a race against time, attempting to counter a curse that has befallen his brother, Will. (No, their first names are not a coincidence.) Both brothers were born into the world we know - twenty-first-century New York City - and have accessed the alternative-European landscape that is Fox's native land by the tradition-honored means of a magic mirror. Jacob has come to the perilous Mirrorworld many times and survived, but Will has made only one journey there, and it may result in something very like death for him. (Is this my fault? This is the persistent question haunting the four main characters: Jacob, Will, Fox, and Clara, Will's medical-student girlfriend, also from our world.) Funke's novel plays its Marchen-motifs both straight (gingerbread houses and seven-league boots on the concrete level; young men who sally forth to "learn what fear is" on the thematic level) and crooked. Funke's greatest subversion of her folktale sources is the doubt that any of its characters will actually find what they are looking for. Jacob, specifically, came through the Mirror the first time in search of his missing father, John Reckless, an engineer: he may meet him in a sequel volume, but perhaps he won't. The novel's many allusions are drawn from broader sources as well. There is a gruff pub owner who, like any Beowulf, displays on his taproom wall the severed arm of a slain ogre. Anthony Hope's Ruritania lurks in the names of secondary characters and in the alternative -Habsburg empire where the center of power lies. The cities of the Mirrorworld, with their Victorian fashions and steampunk technology, have their analogues in Terry Pratchett; the warfare, which is laying the landscape to waste, has a narrated nineteenth-century flavor. Many magical beings inhabit the Mirrorworld, but at the top rung of the power hierarchy (deities being distant or absent in this very contemporary European worldview) are the Fairies, modeled on those in the Grimms' tale of Briar Rose. These Fairies are capricious, and their spells are effectively irreversible. …