Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (ARC)

432 Pages·2016·8.2 MB·English

by  Link Kelly

Steampunk!
An
Anthology of
Fantastically
Rich and
Strange
Stories
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edited by
Kelly Link
&
Gavin J. Grant
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This is a work of fi ction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
products of the authors’ imaginations or, if real, are used fi ctitiously.
Compilation and introduction copyright © 2011 by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
“Some Fortunate Future Day” copyright © 2011 by Cassandra Clare
“The Last Ride of the Glory Girls” copyright © 2011 by Libba Bray
“Clockwork Fagin” copyright © 2011 by Cory Doctorow
“Seven Days Beset by Demons” copyright © 2011 by Shawn Cheng
“Hand in Glove” copyright © 2011 by Ysabeau S. Wilce
“The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor” copyright © 2011 by Delia Sherman
“Gethsemane” copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth Knox
“The Summer People” copyright © 2011 by Kelly Link
“Peace in Our Time” copyright © 2011 by Garth Nix
“Nowhere Fast” copyright © 2011 by Christopher Rowe
“Finishing School” copyright © 2011 by Kathleen Jennings
“Steam Girl” copyright © 2011 by Dylan Horrocks
“Everything Amiable and Obliging” copyright © 2011 by Holly Black
“The Oracle Engine” copyright © 2011 by M. T. Anderson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information
retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including
photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First edition 2011 by
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
11 12 13 14 15 16 TK 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in TK, TK, U.S.A.
This book was typeset in Golden Cockerel.
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
visit us at www.candlewick.com
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For Ursula
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Introduction
O
rphans use the puppet of a dead man to take control of their
lives. A girl confronts the Grand Technomancer, Most Mighty
Mechanician and Highest of the High Artifi cier Adepts.
Another girl, who might be from another universe, stuns everyone
when she pulls out her handmade Reality Gun.
Welcome to fourteen steampunk visions of the past, the future,
and the not quite today.
Depending on whom you believe, steampunk has been exploding
into the world for the last hundred years (thank you, Monsieur Jules
Verne) or maybe the last twenty-fi ve (when the term was fi rst used
by K. W. Jeter in a letter to Locus magazine). We have had fabulous
fun working with this baker’s dozen of authors, investigating some of
the more fascinating nooks and crannies of the genre.
You’ll fi nd the requisite number of gaslit alleys, intrepid urchins,
steam-powered machines, and technologies that never were. Those are
the basic accoutrements that no self-respecting steampunk anthology
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Introduction
could be without, but as we assembled the book (fi ling down this story
here, fi nding the right solder to put these two ideas together there),
we discovered that steampunk has gone far beyond these markers.
The two Philips (Reeve and Pullman, respectively) brought moving
cities and armored polar bears. Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen brought nineteenth-century London
to a halt. Cherie Priest introduced zombies (Boneshaker), Gail Carriger
introduced vampires (Soulless), and Jeff and Ann VanderMeer brought
it all together in Steampunk and Steampunk II.
Makers and artists have taken the romance and adventure of
steampunk and remixed, reinvented, and remade the genre from
whole cloth — and, yes, brass widgets. We’ve spent hours wander-
ing through the online galleries on Etsy and Flickr, marveling at
the clockwork insects, corsets, art, hats, gloves, canes, modded
computers, and even a steampunk house (want!), and we love the
DIY craftiness that keeps inspiring more decadent and more useful
machines and toys.
The continuing reinterpretation of the steampunk idea made
us ask the writers for stories that explored and expanded their
own ideas of what steampunk could be. So we have a book of mad
inventors, child mechanics, mysterious murderers, revolutionary
motorists, steampunk fairies, and monopoly-breaking schoolgirls,
whose stories are set in Canada, New Zealand, Wales, ancient Rome,
future Australia, alternate California, and even the postapocalypse —
everywhere except Victorian London.
Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
viii
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Table of Contents
(cid:2) 1 (cid:3)
Some Fortunate Future Day Cassandra Clare
(cid:2) 17 (cid:3)
The Last Ride of the Glory Girls Libba Bray
(cid:2) 54 (cid:3)
Clockwork Fagin Cory Doctorow
(cid:2) 93 (cid:3)
Seven Days Beset by Demons Shawn Cheng
(cid:2) 108 (cid:3)
Hand in Glove Ysabeau S. Wilce
(cid:2) 112 (cid:3)
The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor Delia Sherman
(cid:2) 177 (cid:3)
Gethsemane Elizabeth Knox
(cid:2) 212 (cid:3)
The Summer People Kelly Link
(cid:2) 253 (cid:3)
Peace in Our Time Garth Nix
(cid:2) 267 (cid:3)
Nowhere Fast Christopher Rowe
(cid:2) 291 (cid:3)
Finishing School Kathleen Jennings
(cid:2) 308 (cid:3)
Steam Girl Dylan Horrocks
(cid:2) 353 (cid:3)
Everything Amiable and Obliging Holly Black
(cid:2) 376 (cid:3)
The Oracle Engine M. T. Anderson
(cid:2) 413 (cid:3)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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