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Steampunk Day Three, Just a Quick Link


Scott Westerfield picked up on the steampunk train because he is smart about stories and creative with his brain. Mucho kudos to him for that. But as much as you should read his books (Leviathan, for a start, which is sitting by my bedside even now), you should also read his blog. If nothing else, read it for phrases like "RATHER MORE BAD" referring to costumed Storm Troopers as opposed to aristocratic nobility, all in response to that Charles Stross article that's got steamers all fabulously defensive of their genre. Gah. He's delightful.

Charles Stross, on the other hand, is not. At least not in this post. We'd probably have some lovely conversations over even lovelier tea in any other context. But really, only someone very short-sighted would be so condescending both to history and to fanboys all in one fell swoop - and on the internet, no less! The irony will come around in about a hundred years when Stross's grandchildren look at our generation and call us dictatorial barbarians with no sensitivity or intelligence or sense of democratic well-being, and then criticize their own novelists for romanticizing our own period. My dear one, it is fiction. This is about as nutty as previous linkage to readers getting up in arms over the difference in vampire skin conditions between paranormal authors. Not to mention the fact that the moment you start thinking your own generation is so much better than the last one, you fail to learn from it.

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