The Steampunk TrilogyAn outrageous trio of novellas that bizarrely and brilliantly twists the Victorian era out of shape, by a master of steampunk alternate history Welcome to the world of steampunk, a nineteenth century outrageously reconfigured through weird science. With his magnificent trilogy, acclaimed author Paul Di Filippo demonstrates how this unique subgenre of science fiction is done to perfection-reinventing a mannered age of corsets and industrial revolution with odd technologies born of a truly twisted imagination. In "Victoria," the inexplicable disappearance of the British monarch-to-be prompts a scientist to place a human-lizard hybrid clone on the throne during the search for the missing royal. But the doppelg nger queen comes with a most troubling flaw: an insatiable sexual appetite. The somewhat Lovecraftian "Hottentots" chronicles the very unusual adventure of Swiss naturalist and confirmed bigot Louis Agassiz as his determined search for a rather grisly fetish plunges him into a world of black magic and monsters. Finally, in "Walt and Emily," the hitherto secret and quite steamy love affair between Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman is revealed in all its sensuous glory-as are their subsequent interdimensional travels aboard a singular ship that transcends the boundaries of time and reality. Ingenious, hilarious, ribald, and utterly remarkable, Di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy is a one-of-a-kind literary journey to destinations at once strangely familiar and profoundly strange. "Paul Di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy is the literary equivalent of Max Ernst's collages of 19th-century steel-engravings; spooky, haunting, hilarious." -William Gibson "Di Filippo stirs up a funky stew of puns, literature, natural history and sex, and serves it up in an elaborate Victorian dish-300-odd pages of juicy reading pleasure. . . . From Dickens to the cutting edge of the avant-garde, Di Filippo's got it covered, in a spunky synthesis that manages to be at once raunchy and well-read." -SF Site "With this superb trilogy, Di Filippo can lay claim to being steampunk's] supreme practitioner. . . . Di Filippo brilliantly combines authentic Victorian language with choice, outlandish premises to produce a variety of wry, inventive storytelling that is unlike anything else in science fiction." -Booklist Paul Di Filippo is a prolific science fiction, fantasy, and horror short story writer with multiple collections to his credit, including 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. |
