Fishpunk

When Wisconsin Territory botanist Calvin Scholz receives a mysterious package from an old friend who recently came to an untimely demise, it sparks a wild adventure. The mid-1840s is a dangerous time, for the Americans are at war with Mexico. Scholz survives attempts on his life as he attempts to deliver the package to his friend’s brother, a Savannah ichthyologist interested in fish-powered machinery--ichthyotech. The situation grows increasingly dire, and Scholz finds himself aboard a riverboat in the Amazon Basin wilderness. While this novel contains a fast-moving, original story, it is also a tasteful parody of the Steampunk movement. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, as well as a few compulsory bad puns.

Rick Novy makes his home in a suburb of that great metropolitan desert region of Arizona known as Phoenix. He grew up in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin and graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater with a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics. His fiction has appeared in respectable publications, including Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Flash Fiction Online, M-Brane SF, and Tales of the Talisman. He is a member of Codex Writers Group and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).