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Lord Kelvin's Machine by James Blaylock
I'm reading my way through the seminal steampunk works of K.W. Jeter, Tim Powers, and James P. Blaylock for a chapter in a forthcoming academic anthology on steampunk. It's meant a re-read of some of...
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Mechanized Masterpieces, Edited by Penny Freeman
There is perhaps no better way to express my understanding of what steampunk has become in the 21st century than stories like those in Mechanized Masterpieces from Xchyler publishing. I consider...
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Preview of Pure Speculation 2013 - 20,000 Leagues Under the Spec!
I first spoke at the Pure Speculation Festival here in Edmonton in 2009, when I presented on Steam Wars and Captain Nemo. Since then, I've attended and presented every year. Each year made me love this...
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The Art of Steampunk, Second Revised Edition
I came across Art Donovan'sincredible Shiva Mandala in 2009 while retooling my lecture on Captain Nemo for the first Steamcon. It was gorgeous, and seemed to be a concrete representation of the three...
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Weighted: The Neumarian Chronicles by Ciara Knight
The following is a review of the audiobook for Ciara Knight's Weighted: The Neumarian Chronicles, which is a brief prequel to the full novel Escapement, a dark romance-adventure set in a...
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The Aylesford Skull by James Blaylock
I've been studying Blaylock's work for four years now, since I first read portions of the omnibus collection of his early steampunk works, "The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives." When I was asked to...
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Ether Frolics by Paul Marlowe
This is the first year since 2010 that I didn't do a dedicated feature on Canuck Steampunk. As I said earlier in 2013, I'm no longer looking to produce vast reams of content, both because I'm done...
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Fall Roundup - Kinslayer, Clockwork Canary, Charmed Vengeance, Sauder...
Sorry I've been so quiet this past month and a half, everyone. It's been a busy start-of-term, with provincial budget cuts leading to class-size increases, which results in more grading for me! C'est...
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Doctor Who: The Girl in the Fireplace
In the early years of my research, I was often asked the question, "Is Doctor Who steampunk?" While I haven't been asked the question in some time, the relationship between Doctor Who and steampunk has...
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Doctor Who: The Next Doctor
My research kept me from enjoying a lot of geek content between 2008 and 2012. I spent most of my "free" time reading steampunk novels, their antecedents, and secondary sources related to the topic. So...
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Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol
Steven Moffat's "A Christmas Carol," the sixth Doctor Who Christmas special, begins with a galaxy-class starship, an obvious intertextual allusion to Star Trek, hurtling through a roiling cloud mass,...
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Doctor Who: The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe
At the 2009 Eaton Science Fiction Conference in Riverside, California, SF writer Rudy Rucker commented that the Wardrobe of C.S. Lewis' Narnia chronicles was just another way of traveling to another...
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Top 5 Steampunk Reads of 2013
This year was a tough one for steampunk. While precious few steampunk writers continue to produce quality work, from Gail Carriger's manga editions of The Parasol Protectorate and her new Finishing...
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Murdoch Mysteries (Guest Post)
The following is a guest post by an ardent fan of Murdoch Mysteries who wishes to remain anonymous. Once you read the opening paragraph, you'll know why. As a Canadian citizen, I can run the risk of...
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Mainspring Reconsidered - in memory of Jay Lake
Jay Lake made me famous. Well, as famous as any academic working on steampunk can ever be, but it was when I posted my review of Lake's steampunk novel Mainspring that I saw my visitors shoot from the...
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Spotlight on J.M. Frey, author of the forthcoming Skylark Saga!
Reuts Publishing announced this morning that they've signed a three-book deal with science-fiction/fantasy author J.M. Frey (rhymes with Sci-Fi!), for the Skylark Saga, with the first book due out in...
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The Greyfriar: Book 1 of the Vampire Empire by Clay & Susan Griffith
Here it is, Halloween, the anniversary of when the Steampunk Scholar was born, at Steamcon, one of the first (if not the first) big steampunk conventions in North America. It was two months later that...
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Top 5 Steampunk Reads of 2015
It's back! After a long hiatus, I'm finally reading steampunk again in earnest, motivated primarily by the first book on the list this year. Mark Hodder's Burton and Swinburne series restored my faith...
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Swecon 2014: Steampunk Festivalen
This post is part of Steampunk Hands Around the World, 2016.In 2008, the website Gizmodo announced that "steampunk is dead." This was a bit of a disappointment to me, given that I was just starting my...
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Clockwork Lives by Kevin J Anderson and Neil Peart
One of my great frustrations in my final year of studying steampunk was that, although I had Rush's Clockwork Angels to keep me company as I finished writing my dissertation, I never got around to...
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I Am Writing A BOOK.
When I was in grade four or five, I sent a letter to a writing college. I'd been subscribing to Writer's Digest (no, for real) for a few months, and had been dreaming of going to one of the writing...
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Mortal Engines
I saw award-winning fantasy author Tim Powers speak at the first Steamcon steampunk convention in 2009, where he was asked about the then-forthcoming Pirates of the Caribbean 4, a film adaptation of...
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A Decade of Steampunk with Steampunk Scholar
It's been 10 years (and one week) since I started this blog. When Steampunk Scholar went live in 2008, I was busy finishing up two term papers: one on Captain Nemo which would go on to become my first...
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Steampunk FAQ (I wrote a book)
It's already been three months since the launch of my first book, Steampunk FAQ. What a ride it's been, from getting a cold-call email from Robert Lecker in December of 2015 asking if I'd be interested...
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Let’s Try This Again, Shall We? (A Soft Reboot)
It’s wild to me to think that it’s been over 15 years since I started this blog. It feels weird just writing the word ‘blog.’ Who blogs anymore? Everyone who writes is on Substack or Ghost these days....
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