Steampunk Magazine Anthology!

Steampunk Magazine has just released a BEAUTIFUL anthology of issues 1 thru 7 with introduction by Jake von Slatt and all seven issues for only about $21. I've got two pieces in it, and can't recommend the rest of the pieces included enough. You can buy it from AK Press or Amazon. Check it out!

Vintage Tomorrows

Anyone remember that awesome steampunk project I was working on over the summer? It's out in the world now, and you should check it out!

I did research for the book Vintage Tomorrows, but it's also a film, and there will be a sneak-preview at New York Comic Con this weekend!
Saturday 15 October 12:15-2pm. Details here. Open Facebook invite here.

Class and Steampunk

Think Progress has some graphs today about just how big the gap between the top 1% and everyone else really is. They make a powerful point about who has the wealth in America. I think I've seen charts like these show up in my blogroll about once a month for six months now, but I think they bear repeating again and again.

This is percentage of the country's wealth by percentile. That's the top 1% with 42% of the nation's wealth, and the bottom 80% - as in, 80 times more people - with 7% of the nation's wealth.

This is the percent of the country's income growth taken home by the bottom 90% compared to the top 1%. While income for the top 1% has shot way up in the past 50 years, income for the bottom 90% has dropped steadily.

But you knew all that. Let's get to the fun part: What does this have to do with steampunk?

Nothing, really, but Margaret Killjoy has a fabulous article on Tor.com about how steampunk can never be apolitical, and it made me think of those numbers. He argues that, coming out of Cyberpunk as it does, steampunk has deeply political roots: "Cyberpunk was the punking of science fiction, introducing as it did the corporate dystopia and a strong sense of class struggle, taking the stories away from interspace travel and back towards the problems here on earth." Being rooted in the 19th century, which we often remember as a time of deep inequality - Charles Dickens' street rats on the one hand and ladies in ball gowns on the other - steampunk seems to me uniquely positioned to play with themes of economic inequality and its consequences. So maybe if you're sick of seeing graphs like the ones above, you could stop reading blogs and pick up some good science fiction, and get a pretty similar message.

Back to School Links!

This time tomorrow I'll be hauling boxes up a flight of stairs in an AC-less dorm to my lovely new room, but here's a few slightly-outdated links for you to peruse while I'm setting up my room!

Standing on the Side of Love posted a blog post I wrote about my summer working for the campaign. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot (for example, I am now a Wordpress expert after crashing the campaign's website one afternoon!).

Free the Princess has a series of blog posts about Steampunk and Multiculturalism by Ay-Leen the Peacemaker (this link is to part 7 of 7, which was probably either my favorite or second-favorite in the series, but I recommend reading the whole thing!). She covers a lot of ground and makes some fantastically insightful points. The series is making something of a whirlwind tour of the internet, and is coming to Steampunk Magazine next, so if you don't catch it here definitely look for it later!

Women in Steampunk

(Cross-posted from Steampunk Magazine - check out the discussion going on in the comments there!)

I was going to post a bunch of book reviews I'd saved throughout the week, but then I realized that they were all just this week's posts from Steampunk Scholar and you could just go to his blog and follow them yourself. (Which you should consider, as they're always quite insightful.)

But instead, I submit for your consideration: The Invisibility of Women in Science Fiction, an article by Alisa Krasnostein at Hoyden About Town. Her premise for the article is as follows:

"We still see low representations of women in science fiction magazines and anthologies, many awards shortlists, and in criticism of the genre. One of the issues that has become apparent is that those who commentate and review the genre wield much power in directing what works get read and recognised. To me, this seems like a significant wall that needs to be broken down in the quest to see women equally respected and represented in this genre."

The whole thing is definitely worth a read, especially because I think it could be argued that science fiction's "woman problem" extends into steampunk. I don't have it on me right now, but I seem to recall that the first steampunk anthology I ever read included but a single woman, and the past year of book reviews by Steampunk Scholar includes, if my count is correct, one book written by a woman and one co-authored by one.

Do you think steampunk women writers have as difficult a time as other sci-fi women seem to?

The "Punk" in Steampunk

Have you downloaded Issue 7 of Steampunk Magazine yet? No? Go check it out! Besides my poem Alice's Tumble, it also contains some fascinating stories, interviews with steampunk bands The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing and Sunday Driver, and many fantastic articles, my favorite being the one on the future of steampunk fashion. The magazine is available for free download, and can also be purchased for eReaders or for real life.

While you're over there, also check out my latest blog post, More on the "Punk" in Steampunk.

Things I Love Thursday

I'm a bit late to do a proper Things I Love Thursday, but some things today were just too exciting to pass up:

+ Finding my favorite snack in the dorm vending machine
+ Epic debates about Steampunk politics and related, fascinating articles on Steampunk ideology.
+ Bombing the moon.

Seriously, that last one made my morning. Intro to Biological Concepts is so much more enjoyable with an impeding threat of alien retaliation.

Anarchists Arrested for... Twittering?

I haven't blogged in a while, but here's a bit of news I thought I'd share... Professor Calamity, who works on Steampunk Magazine with me, has been arrested. During the G20 protests he updated his Twitter with information about where the police were, which apparently constitutes 2 felonies.

Here's a post on the magazine blog - one of the people who lives with the Professor gives the details of the raid on their house.

Three of us stayed to watch the hazmat team come in to investigate a child’s chemistry set, to see them search the garage on an additional warrant, to sign vouchers for all the things they confiscated as “evidence”—Curious George plush toys, artwork, correspondence with political prisoner Daniel McGowan, birth certificates, passports, the entire video archive of a local media collective, tax records, books, computers, storage devices, cell phones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs, flags, banners, posters, photographs and more than can be recounted here.

The police had a warrant, but a motion has been filed asking for the items seized to be returned, since a lot of them were irrelevant and/or not even his. (Among them were copies of Steampunk Magazine. Cuz science fiction writing is totally evidence of interfering with police activity.) The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has more details of the case.

The whole debate about what use of Twitter constitutes criminal activity is interesting, since it's so used in organizing protests - everything that happened in Iran, for example. But the search seems to have been a bit ridiculous, so hopefully the case won't get very far.

A Corset Manifesto

My essay A Corset Manifesto is now available in the recently-released and TOTALLY AMAZING Steampunk Magazine #6, which is available for free download on the publications' website. Also included are other fabulous authors too numerous to list, though I'll name Margaret Killjoy, John Reppion, and Dylan Fox as awesome people you will find included. After I get done internet-ing, I plan to curl up in my dorm and spend the night reading it cover to cover.

This is only partially to avoid the pro-life protestors currently praying outside my dorm, in protest of the Health Care Town Hall going on here on campus this evening. "Abortion is the worse poverty!" Urg. I'm not even going to go there.

An excerpt from my piece:

Were you to seek an international measure of a woman's value, you would need look no further than her appearance. Across history, women have been treated as china dolls in glass cases, judged only for their beauty, and no era is more guilty of this than the one we build upon: the smog-choked alleys of Victoria's Empire that are our inspirations hid women trapped in parlors and kitchens, bound in gilded cages of silk and steel.

The costumes we create from ruffles and tea-stained lace summon images of the garment-restraints worn by the women we claim as our inspiration. Their identities were bound in laces criss-crossing up their spines; their creativity and passions were labeled hysteria and locked away, leaving them with musty parlors and parasols to keep their delicate skin from the sun should they, God forbid, find the need to step outside. Their young daughters were dressed like dolls in heavy skirts, and quickly learned that the price of a stain or tear outweighed any wish to climb a tree.

But wait, I like pretty ruffled things AND climbing trees! Whatever shall I do? Go read the whole thing to find out!