The Clockwork man and Imbibing peril!

Burton & Swinburne in
The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man
byMark Hodder

Since I decided to participate in the annual R.I.P. challenge this novel which was already in my TBR pile has become my first title for the challenge.  Does it fit the criteria? Well it does feature ghostly apparitions and zombies and it is certainly a thrilling ride, more than anything, though, it is good, old fashioned, pulp fiction fun.  I have to say up front that I have really enjoyed both of the Burton & Swinburne titles available to date, this title and it's predecessor, The strange affair of Spring heeled Jack.  Mark Hodder has successfully created a great addition to the growing steampunk cannon and given us an entertaining narrative to while away the hours.

From the back cover:
London 1862.  A lost aristocrat returns and the steam wraiths rise!
Sir Roger Tichborne: Lost at sea but now he's back to claim his family fortune.  Or is he?  To the upper classes, he's obviously a cunning  swindler; to London's laborers, he's the peoples hero ... while to Sir Richard Francis Burton,he's the focus of a daring plot to gain possession of the legendary black diamonds known as the Eyes of Naga.  Burton's investigation takes him to the cursed Tichborne estate ... and to an encounter with the ghost of a witch!

Like the previous novel Hodder takes real events and personalities and essentially plays with them, weaving a fiction out of the thread of history.  In this volume Hodder adds the philosopher Herbert Spenser to the mix and  Charles Altamont Doyle, (father of Arthur Conan Doyle) just to name two, other significant figures also appear, but historical figures in Hodder's work bear only the flimsiest resemblance to their historical selves, rather they become far more outrageous figures in Hodder's hands and their personal histories are only relevant to the point that they enhance Hodder's narrative.  The playing with 19th century history is half the fun of these books, and they are fun, old fashioned, escapist fun, literature they are not.

A logical underpinning of the narrative is key to Hodder's story and so even supernatural elements are explained in pseudo scientific terms.  Like the previous Burton & Swinburne novel we are treated to an alternative history where technology is exceeding its historical limits and developments are rapid.  This is a  world where genetic engineering arrives long before it's reality and while Hodder's universe is far more dependent on the tropes of science fiction, elements of fantasy still exist his work.  One of my favourite inventions was the cactus gun, a by product of horticultural genetic manipulation gone feral, which amongst other things turns Ireland into an uninhabitabitable jungle of dangerous and often carnivorous plants all because of failed attempts to deal with the problem of potato blight.

Hodder also makes great use of established mythologies; ghosts, zombies and fairies are re-evaluated in what is an entertaining tale.  It must be said that Burton and Swinburne are great editions to fiction's hall of heroes.  The real men on which these characters are based must be seen as an absolute gift to steampunk.  Sir Richard Burton is like something straight out of boys own adventures; a famous explorer and geographer, a master swordsman, an exceptional linguist and master of disguise, who in his early career worked as a spy for the British in India and Swinburne the pre-Raphaelite poet with a reputation for deviancy and outrageous behaviour, outwardly the two men seem quite different, the soldier and the poet, and yet clearly they had much in common, since a very real friendship existed between these two remarkable men.  Hodder has made great use of some basic historical fact and transformed it into entertaining and creative narrative.  I am looking forward to the next installment in the Burton & Swinburne saga, while the Curious case of the clockwork man, can be read as a stand alone novel it does set up a link to the next adventure.

First book for R.I.P. done, still not sure what my second novel will be.  If I don't find something else perhaps I will read the Arthur Conan Doyle novel The Sign of the Four, a novel I have been meaning to re-read.

Looking for something to read

I have stacks of books to read at the moment but I seem to have hit a slight reading rut, one of those blah moments when nothing seems to grab, it is not a reflection on the books but on me.   Despite the numerous unread titles and many old favourites awaiting a re-read I find I just sit amongst my books not able to discipline myself to focus on one title, I find I am thinking about the books I have not yet acquired that I suddenly seem to have an irresistible urge to read right now. 
I find local bookshops endlessly frustrating, they seem to have a very limited and very mainstream range of titles, I really do want to support local bookshops, particularly independents, but when they fail to stock very little beyond what I can buy at BigW or Kmart for a discounted price I wonder why I even try.  I mention this only because it relates to a recent frustration which has  arisen.
Several weeks ago I stumbled across a new speculative fiction title which I was very interested in, at the same time I have also been intensely aware of closing bookstores at every turn, so I decided I would not order this title from Book depository or Amazon but buy from a local bricks and mortar outlet.  The problem is this, here where I live we have a limited number of book shop possibilities and within those available retailers the stock they carry is limited and generally very mainstream, sci-fi for example has become increasingly limited and marginalised, and the title I am after falls into the genre designation of speculative fiction in particular steampunk and science fiction, so despite now being an award wining title I new that it was unlikely that I would find it here locally, which I didn't.  Now local book sellers are obliging and willing to order in titles, my problem with that is they tend to take at least twice as long as it would take for me to order the same title from the Book depository and charge me at least twice as much, usually more than twice the price as the Book depository, so this combined with a generally inadequate service is why I am reluctant to do so.  My preferred option is to make the trip to Brisbane and  visit an independent retailer who I know not only stocks a wide range of speculative titles and but is in fact a genre specialist.  In this general region a number of big book retailers have collapsed and finally closed their doors, (Borders and Angus &Robertson), these are stores that I utilised, since they have now failed I am afraid that without continued support we will see the smaller independents also struggle and in some cases, ultimately fail, hence my decision to try to avoid online book retailers, at least for the moment.  I do not want to lose the pleasure of just browsing, happy wandering with the possibility of discovering a hidden gem and the welcome guidance of knowledgeable sales assistants to help the process of discovery.  To an extent book blogs have provided a substitute for that process, but I am not yet ready to relinquish it completely, hence a determination to support good independent book stores.   For months now I have been trying to find a time to visit Pulp Fiction and a perfect time has simply not arisen, until now, next week I have a uni prac in Brisbane, so will be in the city for about a week, before coming home I am determined to find time to drop into Pulp Fiction.  Hopefully they will have the book I am hanging out to read, if they don't I will almost certainly find other books to pique my interest, in any case I will be buying a book, if not multiple titles from a favourite book shop, so even if they don't have the title I am after I can assuage my guilt and go home and order it from the Book depository.
The name of the book I am so keen to read, well it is the winner of this year's Philip K. Dick award: The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder.  Just the cover alone on this title makes me want to read it, let alone the cool steam punk setting and characters.  In the meantime I discovered a great web site from the publisher where they post sample chapters from the books in their catalogue, including the first two chapters from this novel found here at;Sample chapters of Pyr Books.  Definitely a web site and publisher worth checking out.

In the mean time I have managed to pick up a book and will hopefully over the next week manage to finish The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds, not a long novel, so far characterised by beautiful prose, hopefully it will distract me from this blah mood and keep me reading.  It was shortlisted for the 2009 Booker prize and has been a title I have been meaning to read ever since it was mentioned on the Booker shortlist, I'm just a couple of years behind the times.

Steampunk or back to the future with brass, brown and perhaps a just a little bit of burlesque.

I thought I might just throw up a quick post on the subject of steampunk.  The term is now well known, a sub-genre of speculative fiction that incorporates, a neo-Victorian aesthetic, it speculates on what might have been if the industrial age had developed at an even greater technological rate, what things would have been like if Babbage completed his Difference engine or if other technologies, such as rocket technology went forward with steam tech.  It celebrates a kind of Victorian discipline and Victorian enthusiasm for science and technology, combined with a kind of Victorian comportment and aesthetic, in essence it is a rich and varied sub culture that with a romantic sensibility speculates on what might have been and what could be. Personally I consider some texts that combine old technology with more recent, such as Philip Reeve's wonderful Mortal Engines series as possessing distinctly steampunk elements, though set in a dystopian future.  And while the genre does not really include the 'scientific romances' of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells they certainly provide much of the inspiration for the current genre of steampunk.

Steampunk is something of a zeitgeist idea or aesthetic, at the moment, with it currently permeating popular culture at multiple levels, everywhere in fashion at the moment one can see the influence of steampunk or neo-Victorianism.  Pop culture now embraces the ethos with things like the new invigorated Doctor Who incorporating steampunk into its narrative vision, (how cool was the Silurian Victorian vigilante from the A Good Man Goes to War episode). 

I guess I have to admit to being a bit of a fan of the whole steampunk aesthetic, and for that matter a bit of a history junkie with a fascination for all things Victorian, with a particular interest in the technology of the age both in terms of history and in terms of speculative literature.   The essential romanticism of the movement, combined as it is with a celebration of the development of technology and innovation is hard to resist, and then there are the clothes, oh my, the clothes, is there anything sexier than a corset?  When women chose to wear them, as opposed to wearing them for the sake of an unrealisable ideal, they become an object of empowerment, a kind of glorious wrapper for femininity.  And I have to say a surprisingly comfortable piece of clothing to wear,  they do wonders for posture which in turn seems to ease the aches of a slouching progress through modern life, corsets seem counter to back ache, so yay for sexy Victorian wear.  Not that it is all just about corsets, the guys look pretty hot also, weather they wear the formal attire of the Victorian gentleman or the rolled up sleeves, braces and corduroy of the working engineer, steampunk or neo- Victorianism is just plain gorgeous.  And who doesn't love the chance to play dress ups.

I have read some rather glib, if possibly accurate summations of steampunk recently, which really just further reveals the extent to which the idea is permeating pop culture, one such definition in a major newspaper was; 'steampunk is what happens when goths discover brown', and certainly steampunk has much in common with the romantic goth movement.  Another was 'steampunk is a desire for machines that aren't crap', who can't relate to that, when we have to replace our digital tools every couple of years not just because they become obsolete so rapidly, but also because they just don't last, they really are crap, (IPhone being a case in point).  And now since I have outed myself as a steampunk fan here are some  photos from the steampunk picnic I attended yesterday, (oh and after my defence of corsets I must admit to choosing not to wear one yesterday, Steampunk and neo-Victorianism is about more than just one narrowly defined dress code).

More to come.  But in the mean time and just for fun here is the link to Girl Genius: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ adventure, romance and mad science and very definitely one of the many steampunk texts around and this one can be read online.  Girl Genius with it's ready availability online is one of those texts I often point teen readers towards but it is not just for young adults, my other half is a huge Girl
Genius fan, in fact it was G who introduced me to the fun that is Girl Genius.