The Steampunk Trilogy (Di Filippo, Paul) - Hardcover

Di Filippo, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568580282 ISBN 13: 9781568580289

Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995

Synopsis

Inside the wide realm of science fiction or out, there is nothing like the three short novels in The Steampunk Trilogy. Set in a very alternative 19th Century, they feature a mix 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 hide the terrible secret from the nation. In Hottentots, Massachusetts is threatened by H.P. Lovecraft-style monsters from the deep and, of course, Hottentots; 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 and her companions meet the future Allen Ginsberg.

About this title

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?

About the Author:

Paul Di Filippo is a prolific science fiction, fantasy, and horror short story writer with multiple collections to his credit, among them The Emperor of Gondwanaland and Other Stories, Fractal Paisleys, The Steampunk Trilogy, and many more. He has written a number of novels as well, including Joe’s Liver and Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken. 

Di Filippo is also a highly regarded critic and reviewer, appearing regularly in Asimov’s Science Fiction and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. A recent publication, coedited with Damien Broderick, is Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985–2010.

About this edition

• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1568580282
• ISBN 13: 9781568580289
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 420