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Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff
By the end of writing my dissertation, I had grown to hate steampunk. I couldn't read it, I didn't want to discuss it, and even thinking about it was abhorrent to me. It's apparently a common allergic...
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Interviews, Interviews, Museums!
As I hurtle toward the end of this momentous semester, with graduation looming next week and a hydra-like stack of papers to be graded, I take a moment to do what sitcoms used to when they didn't have...
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Several Thousand Words, 500 followers
I do not have time to write of the experience of graduating, but here are the pictures worth the proverbial words, and at the bottom, an easter egg containing the link to several thousand words more,...
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Best Steampunk Reads of 2012
My apologies for promising a Doctor Who series this Christmas, and producing nothing. End of term marking was brutal this year, and then I fell ill and spent my holidays convalescing. I can only hope...
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Innocent Darkness by Suzanne Lazear
I have two New Year's Resolutions for the blog: to review books closer to their release date, and to write shorter, more concise reviews. I love receiving review copies from writers and publishers. I...
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The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman
William Blake once wrote these lines on the power of imagination to perceive the world: "The Sun's Light when he unfolds it / Depends on the Organ that beholds it." Felix Gilman told me that Blake's...
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Dead Iron by Devon Monk
Just when I think I'll have extra time, another deadline beats me up and throws me around my office. This past month had me prepping a very large document for my three-year review here at Grant MacEwan...
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The Friday Society by Adrienne Kress
Rudy Jan Faber's original cover concept for The Friday Society, which I absolutely adore. As with Arthur Slade's Hunchback Assignments, I think this cover captures the "gee-whiz!" "sock! POW!" nature...
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Badlands by Seleste DeLaney
I haven't done a proper interview with a writer here at Steampunk Scholar since my chat with Arthur Slade, author of The Hunchback Assignments in fall of 2010. But even that was an anomaly, with the...
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The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross
I was given a signed advance copy of Kady Cross's The Girl in the Steel Corset when I presented at the Canadian National Steampunk Exhibition in Toronto in 2011. Studying steampunk over the past four...
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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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