Diesel City: Fiction Reveals Truths That Reality Obscures

From Paris with love arrived my copy of Stefan’s Diesel City today, a collection of his marvelous dieselpunk artwork supplemented with little blurbs of text that were translated for the English edition by none other than our friend Tome Wilson of the Dieselpunks community.

It’s hard to be objective for this review, because I’ve known Stefan and his work for so long and have even been involved a little in the making of the book.

Fortunately, there is little, if anything, to criticize about this volume. Dieselpunk fans will rejoice in the dozens of pictures collected in this book, some of which are familiar to those who know Stefan’s work, others are new.

Through eleven chapters, the book introduces the reader to the world of Diesel City, its megalopolis and “bizarchitecture” to retro-futuristic forms of transportation and pulp era tales of heroes and war. It brings together all the facets of the genre, from the Interbellum and totalitarianism to the American futurism of the 1930s and 40s to film noir and gasoline-fueled machines and adventures.

1,200 copies of the English version of Diesel City were printed, with a limited edition of one hundred including four folio pieces signed and numbered by Stefan himself. At least one of those is now in my possession so you better be quick and order a copy yourself!

I am sure that this book will be remembered as groundbreaking for the dieselpunk genre. Let no one pretend that we’re just a subgenre of steampunk anymore! Stefan has defined the dieselpunk aesthetic perhaps more than anyone I can think of and I’m incredibly proud to see his work in print.

This is the quintessential dieselpunk volume. If anyone ever asks you, what does dieselpunk look like? show them Stefan’s work and they’ll know.