An outrageous trio of novellas that twist the Victorian era out of
shape, by a master of alternate history: "Spooky, haunting, hilarious"
(William Gibson).
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
doppelgänger 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.
