The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Dieselpunk: an emerging retro-futuristic sub-genre, similar to steampunk, based on the era between the First World War and the start of the Atomic Age, merging elements of noir, pulp, and the past with today’s technology . . . and sometimes a dash of the occult.
Award-winning editor Wallace presents a cutting-edge collection of twenty-five vibrant stories that explore the possibilities of history while sweeping readers into high-powered hydrocarbon-fuelled adventures. Join us in an era when engines were huge, fuel was cheap and plentiful, and steel and chrome blended with the grit and grease of modern machines.
Praise for The Mammoth Book of Steampunk:
'World Fantasy Award-winning editor Wallace has compiled an outstanding anthology . . . sure to satisfy even the most jaded steampunk fans and engage newcomers and skeptics. Each story exemplifies steampunk’s knack for critiquing both the past and the present, in a superb anthology that demands rereading.' Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As demonstrated in this diverse collection of 21 alternate histories, dieselpunk updates the fashions of steampunk, replacing Victorian crinolines with the flapper's short skirt, but maintaining all of the subversion of pulp fiction conventions (including airships). Thrilling battle stories are converted into more realistic and gritty accounts of the toll that war takes on its heroes, as in Laurie Tom's depiction of the cyborg resurrection of the Red Baron in "The Wings the Lungs, the Engine the Heart," or the political necessities that undercut genre staples such as having the cavalry come over the hill just in time in Carrie Vaughan's Spanish Civil War tragedy, "Don Quixote." Noir crimes are solved without fistfights, and by characters normally considered victims, in A.C. Wise's "The Double Blind." Genevieve Valentine's "This Evening's Performance" is a wonderful tribute to Walter M. Miller's 1955 story "The Darfsteller." The selections and the contributors span the globe, from China, where lovers float away during Sun Yat-sen's revolution in Joseph Ng's "Into the Sky," to a Brazil that sends the last emperor's clone into hiding to escape a military coup backed by an American robot soldier in Cirilo S. Lemos's "Act of Extermination." Readers unfamiliar with dieselpunk will find this an excellent introduction to a new but cohesive subgenre.
