Noam Chomsky is probably the world’s most famous anticapitalist. David Frum is a former speechwriter for George W. Bush. I doubt they agree on much, but they agree free and open debate is vital to a democracy — and that it’s currently being attacked by the far left as well as the far right.

With 151 other leading intellectuals, including Margaret Atwood, Francis Fukuyama, Michael Ignatieff, Garry Kasparov, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem and Thomas Chatterton Williams, they caution in a letter to Harper’s that resistance to the illiberalism of the right must not harden into a dogma of the left.

Specifically, they worry that the “censoriousness” of so-called cancel culture is creating a “stifling atmosphere” in which authors self-censor their stories, books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity and editors are fired for publishing controversial opinions.

Their laments will sound familiar to anyone who has been involved in the politics of steampunk. The movement has been taken over by social-justice warriors, who brook no dissent from woke orthodoxy.

Authentic Victorian Fashion Patterns: A Complete Lady’s Wardrobe

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Hilde HeyvaertJuly 16, 2020July 20, 2020

Authentic Victorian Fashion Patterns: A Complete Lady's Wardrobe

In my review of Patterns of Fashion 2, I mentioned that there are alternatives to that work. This is one of them. Authentic Victorian Fashion Patterns (1999) has all the garments a lady living in Victorian-era America was supposed to own. Plenty are geared toward the upper-class woman, but the books contains patterns for a variety of outfits.

All the patterns are reproductions from a dressmaker’s journal called The Voice of Fashion. (Of which this is not the only reproduction, but I digress.)

Personally, I find these patterns much easier to work with than those in Patterns of Fashion 2. Not only are we provided with a short introduction shedding light onto the cost of an American lady’s wardrobe, and what should be in it according to polite society at the time; the methods needed to turn these patterns into a garment that fits your body are pretty well explained.

The Green Wave

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Hilde HeyvaertJuly 4, 2020July 4, 2020

Cassandra Kelly’s debut novel, The Green Wave, is a most enjoyable one, taking us on a wild adventure with Rosalyn Flynn, Reverend to the Enlightenment Church and airship pilot, from Canterbury to Sydney and far beyond. Along with a cast of characters that are well fleshed-out and equally interesting as the Reverend herself.

Even though the backstories of the characters are kept to a minimum, we are given ample information about them not to be left with tons of questions. Action scenes are descriptive, but short enough to keep you from becoming bored with detail. The author has definitely found that fine line between going in-depth and being overly descriptive.

The Art of Rowena Wang

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Nick OttensJuly 1, 2020

Rowena Wang is a Chinese Canadian concept artist. Most of her work is fantasy and science-fiction, but she has a few great steampunk pieces in her collection.

Patterns of Fashion 2: Englishwomen’s Dresses and Their Construction c. 1860-1940

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Hilde HeyvaertJune 27, 2020

To those who habitually sew historical garments, the Patterns of Fashion series is probably nothing new. To those who don’t: Patterns of Fashions is a series often referred to by costubers, especially those working recreating garments from the past century and before.

Do they live up to the hype?

The Art of Keith Thompson

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Nick OttensMay 28, 2020May 28, 2020

Steampunk fans will be familiar with Keith Thompson as the illustrator of Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan (2009, our review here) and its sequels, Behemoth (2010) and Goliath (2011).

The Times of Scrooge McDuck: The Master of the Mississippi

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Nick OttensMay 21, 2020May 21, 2020

The Master of the Mississippi (1992) is the beginning of Scrooge’s American adventure.

Having worked as a cabin boy for passage across the Atlantic, the 13 year-old lad from Scotland finds his Uncle Angus “Pothole” McDuck — who also sought his fortune in the New World — down on his luck in Louisville, Kentucky. But Pothole wins a steamboat, the Dilly Dollar, in a poker match and hires his nephew as deckhand, introducing him to both a lifelong ally — Ratchet Gearloose, the grandfather of Duckburg’s eccentric inventor Gyro — and lifelong enemies: the criminal Beagle Boys.

Death Shall Come

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Hilde HeyvaertMay 7, 2020May 10, 2020

A country manor in the middle of nowhere. The largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in private hands. A curse and the duo of Ishmael Jones and Penny Belcourt. Throw these things together and you know you’re in for an excellent murder mystery.

Is there a curse? Is there really a mummy afoot? Or is it something else entirely?

In this fourth book of Simon R. Green’s Ishmael Jones series, Death Shall Come, we are presented with the same formula of “Ishmael and Penny need to solve a mystery”.

Those who have been reading the series from the beginning will inevitably ask themselves the question: How many people will survive this time?

The Art of Michal Matczak

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Nick OttensMay 3, 2020

Michal Matczak only has a few artworks that can be considered steampunk, but I think you’ll agree with me they’re worth a look.

Science Fiction of Antebellum America: An Anthology

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Nick OttensApril 30, 2020

Science Fiction of Antebellum America: An Anthology

Friend of the magazine Cory Gross, who blogs at Voyages Extraordinaries, is out with a second anthology of nineteenth-century science fiction, titled Science Fiction of Antebellum America: An Anthology.

The book, which can be ordered on Amazon, collects the earliest satires, hoaxes, macabre tales, lost world fantasies and fairy tales that established the genre of science fiction in the heady days between the American Revolution and the Civil War.