$7.99
ISBN B002HREQ2W
available through
Amazon
Reviewed by Jean Roberta
(08/19/09)
Circlet Press was founded in the 1990s as a print publisher of erotic "spec fic," a broad term that includes fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, vampire, werewolf and shapeshifter tales, science fiction, slipstream, everything that isn't strictly realistic. Several years ago, this press faced and survived a financial crisis. One of its rescue strategies was to begin releasing e-books, mostly theme anthologies including stories of up to 10,000 words.
Circlet now seems poised to become a leading producer of steampunk, a fascinating subgenre of science fiction. These stories are mostly set in the later Victorian Age (Victoria reigned from 1837 until her death in 1901) or the early Edwardian era (before World War I) and focus on the technology of the time, as well as the widespread faith of that time that all the world's problems could eventually be solved by science. (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, first published in 1900, expresses that optimism and subtly debunks it.) The marvellous contraptions in these stories are beyond what could actually be created in that era, so there is an element of fantasy in this genre.
The first Circlet steampunk anthology that was released as an e-book was Like a Wisp of Steam. It became a bestseller in the Circlet catalogue, so it was followed by a sequel, Like Clockwork, with another sequel yet to come. So far, the stories fit the genre without following a formula. They are steamy and shiny in every sense. Who knew that machines could be so sexy?
In the opening story, "The Yearly Scientifiction Colloquium" by Eric Del Carlo, the young male narrator has travelled from New York to London by airship for an international conference on "scientifiction," or sci-fi. There he meets a female fan who is literally too beautiful and welcoming to be real, and who is especially moved by one of his stories about a human's love for a complicated invention. The young writer's fascination with sex, an unfamiliar experience for him, matches his interest in science.
In "Concerning the Ars Mechanica" by Michele Poirier, the nephew of a brilliant scientist and lecturer at Harvard inherits all his uncle's property, including a mechanical man who was disassembled in the 1860s, before beings like him had any rights at all. (The analogy with slavery and emancipation is clear, although it isn't mentioned.) Haider, the mechanical man who was named by his creator, has the power to feel as well as to think. What he proposes to the nephew seems shocking at first, but as Haider points out, if one can leap across the social gap between humans and machines, why be frightened by other social taboos?
The female chimera, or woman who is both "bred" and created by artificial means as a sex toy for gentlemen in "Nightingale" by Jason Rubis, can only speak when a wooden lozenge (a kind of forerunner of a computer disk) is inserted under her tongue. Her status as a sex slave, and her desire for speech, uncomfortably remind the reader of the Greek myth of Philomela, the woman who is raped by her sister's husband, King Tereus, who cuts out her tongue so she can't tell anyone what he has done; she becomes a nightingale who can't sing like other birds. The male narrator, like the naive young man in Eric Del Carlo's story, wants to save her.
In "The Succubus" by Elizabeth Schechter, the artificial "woman" of the title is more of a consciousness than a being or an object. She occupies the whole top floor of a brothel, and her role is to discover the sexual tastes of the men who are sent to her by "Madame." She exists in the form of various arms, implements and bondage devices. There is no way to escape from her until she chooses to release her human subject.
In "Caged Dragons and Explosions" by Helena Weiss, the lovers are a human husband, a brilliant inventor, and his wife from a higher social class than his. According to Victorian mores, a liaison like this is as shocking as one between a human and a machine, and other characters threaten the marriage. The husband shows his love for his wife by agreeing to work for an arms manufacturer to support her in the style to which she is accustomed, but she loves him too much to let him prostitute his geeky creativity in this way. Their physical expression of love is completely human and satisfying.
Probably the most atmospheric story in the collection is "The Clockwork Theater at the Midnight Fair" by A. N.Cortez. It describes a sex show to which "Nobles" (tops or dom/mes) bring their "Gentles" (human pets) to be worked up to fever pitch by watching a woman (human or mechanical?) being sexually stimulated and brought to orgasm numerous times. As in the alternative universe of the movie The Matrix, human energy is literally the power which keeps the whole operation running.
"The Beast in the Machine" by Lionel Bramble is a kind of over-the-top Victorian spy caper as well as a long sex scene in which a willing female agent is "tantalized" or teased by a mechanical device that won't allow her the release she craves. She has volunteered for this torment to win a bet, and she is warned that other women have failed the challenge. Desperate to succeed, she realizes something about the nature (so to speak) of the machine that torments her.
Just as there is a Good Side (pro-human) and a Bad Side (anti-human) in the movie Transformers, the machines in these stories have various relationships with the human beings who are their intended masters or playthings. Those who love Victorian erotica or sci-fi will love the combination of lacy petticoats and intricate wiring in this book. So far, steampunk as a genre shows no signs of running out of steam.
