Carriger says Steampunk is a re–imagining of either the past or the future where steam technology never died, and electricity never dominated, and a Victorian aesthetic overshadows all. Think Jules Verne and hot air balloons flying to the moon.
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Her next release, in November 2015, will be Manners & Mutiny of the Finishing School series. If you haven't read Sophronia's exploits yet, I highly recommend you do so posthaste! |
About the story, Killen says:
This story started out as my way of playing around with noir/crime drama tropes: the hardboiled detective, the hooker with the heart of gold, the corrupt public official. Of course, being me, I had to end up with a story in which these tropes took the form of cyborgs in outer space.
The second major piece of this story was my realization that very few stories about conflict between humans and robots/cyborgs/cylons/etc stop short of full-blown apocalypse. Instead of the conflict escalating to victory for one side or the other or ongoing total war a la The Matrix or Terminator, I wanted to explore a world in which a human-cyborg conflict resulted in a fragile but workable peace.
The end result is a story in which the main conflict stems from the tricky details and competing interests that come with that peace.
Very interesting! Thanks, Jamie!
If you submitted a story by the July 15 deadline, you should have already received an email. If you furthermore had a story in hold-for-voting, you should be getting another email very soon.
As usual, it was very difficult to get the attention of the wait-person. Ha! Kidding! (No, I'm not.) No, as usual, it was very difficult to decide amongst the many excellent stories. All the stories in hold-for-voting were publishable. If you had a story there, pat yourself on the back. Nice job!
If you've submitted a story to us: Thank you very much! We appreciate it!
One deciding factor this time seemed to be length. We accept flash fiction, but it's tough to write a complete story in a flash length. We had a couple flash pieces as finalists but in the end, they weren't emotionally satisfying enough.
At the other extreme, we had a loooong story that we enjoyed but it was ~7000 words and no one was willing to edit it. We may revisit our word length limits in the future.
Bottom line for writers: avoid the shortest and longest lengths.
As usual, genre was an issue. We had one story we decided was not, in fact, speculative fiction, so it had to go. The upcoming issue has to have a variety of genres, so the stories we ended up with reflect that. I will blog more about the upcoming stories in the coming weeks. We may even hear directly from some authors...
Some genres we don't get much and would like to see more of:
The New Yorker had a very interesting article last week: Samuel Delany and the Past and Future of Science Fiction. Peter Bebergal says From the beginning, Delany, in his fiction, has pushed across the traditional boundaries of science fiction, embraced the other, and questioned received ideas about sex and intimacy. Hurray for him! I think SF is the perfect place to push and explore boundaries of all kinds. Check out the article.
In recent years (with the exception of a few pathetic baby canines) I think our society has caught up with the ideas and ideals Delany brought forth for our consideration. Authors like Delany contributed significantly to this change. Literature, even genre literature, has the ability to change the world.
As for troublesome puppy-types, Delany says, "It has nothing to do with science fiction. It has to do with the rest of society where science fiction exists."
What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree?
As Grand Master James E. Gunn said in our January 2007 issue of Electric Spec, "Let's save the world through SF!"
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