| Title | : | Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1550965794 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781550965797 |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 296 |
| Publication | : | First published May 1, 2016 |
Experience steam-powered buffalo women roaming the plains; visit brutal gas-lit working class streets; join extraordinary men and women striking out on their own or striving to build communities; marvel as giant rampaging spirits are thwarted by miniscule timepieces, at a great clock that when it chimes the Seven O’Clock Man appears to terrorize a small village in Quebec, or when a Maritime scientist develops a deadly new weapon that could change the course of the American civil war.
Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction Reviews
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I'm going to update this review as I read through each story in Clockwork Canada, a (so far!) outstanding steampunk anthology from Exile Editions. Exile publishes themed anthologies with a Canadian focus - I own their zombie and apocalyptic anthos as well, and will review that later this year. I was sent Clockwork Canada for review, and I'm so glad it was.
I really enjoyed Editor Dominik Parisien's introduction: it's short, sweet, and doesn't make any grandiose claims for steampunk, as many steampunk antho introductions do.
The great thing about short fiction, like Poe said, is the intensity of focus the form demands. It requires concision and precision. Bad short fiction is usually a frustrated novel crammed into a short form. Thankfully, the first two stories in Clockwork Canada do a good job of maintaining Poe's single effect.
The first story, "Le Clochemar" by Charlotte Ashley, is positively fantastic. Canuck kaiju, clockwork compasses, and concise world building which never gets in the way of plot or character development.
The second story, "East Wind in Carrall Street" by Holly Schofield tells a tale of multiculturalism via a Clockwork Chinese lion. "East Wind in Carrall Street" has "teachable short fiction" written all over-It's nice to read steampunk without pyrotechnics.
The first two stories in Clockwork Canada are as different as they are enjoyable. I had to actively resist reading story 3!
Third story: Brent Nichols' "The Harpoonist" - former thug turns mechanized hero in face of mob violence. Not up to the level set by first two, but still compelling.
Fourth story: the lovely, touching, and haunting "Crew 255" by Claire Humphrey. This story takes my number two position for faves in the anthology. "Crew 255" isn't about the plot - it is about the characters. A very literary steampunk short story. But a few plot notes nonetheless: "Crew 255" is about immigrant workers, disability, and building the future in hope.
Fifth story: I didn't enjoy "The Curlicue Seahorse" by Chantal Boudreau but one weak story doesn't a bad anthology make. And I can see how it would appeal to steampunk readers who don't need good reasons for their Vic-style heroines to be empowered and capable: Female airship captain takes bookish male scholar on a treasure hunt. I just found it all a bit too easy. I like steampunk to reflect some of the challenges that women and POCs faced in the 19th century, but that's my bias. YMMV.
Sixth Story: Michal Wojcik's excellent "Strange Things Done" brings the antho back up to expectations! Wojcik's "Strange Things Done" tells of a manhunt in the Yukon with a heroine (w. cool steampunk gear) I'd love to see more of.
Seventh Story: Colleen Anderson's "Buffalo Gals" currently vies for third place behind "Crew 255" and "The Seven O'Clock Man." It's an elegiac (and yet somehow hopeful!) murder-mystery ghost-story about a female First Nations Mountie.
Eighth Story: Tony Pi's "Our Chymical Seance" (which feels like a certain play on My Chemical Romance) is a fun, largely plot-driven mystery/occult/ghost story. Pi has a very engaging writing style, and the solution to the story's problem was firmly rooted in Victorian science, which is a rare approach in most steampunk I've read. I found the coda to the story tonally jarring, but it doesn't ruin the story. It was just bemusing.
Ninth Story: Kate Heartfield's "Seven O'Clock Man." Steampunk is rarely scary, and rarely heartbreaking. This story is both. It's a masterwork of concise, stylistically powerful writing, about a man who must wind a diabolical clock that maintains order over a community, or lose the thing he loves most in the world. This is the best story in the anthology so far. -
Editor Dominik Parisien put together a really interesting anthology of Canadian steampunk stories. I think some of the stories will resonate more with Canadians, if only because some historical figures and locations are mentioned or alluded to, though it may depend on region.
The best written story was probably "The Seven O'Clock Man" but it was a bit too horrifying for me in the end to declare it a favorite, which probably goes to Michal Wojcik's "Strange Things Done" or Tony Pi's "Our Chemical Séance," but I have a very soft spot for Claire Humphrey's "Crew 255" about Azorean Portuguese laborers in Canada and featuring a woman with prosthetic limbs, clockwork-style. -
Canadian authored short stories featuring inclusion of a variety of nationalities along with creative and imaginative steampunk fiction. Unique.
#CanadianBookChallenge10 - canadian located + authored -
A mostly good book of short stories.
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Some good stories here, but several felt like they weren't quite finished or were rushed and needed more work to round them out. There's also one story which, while well-written and interesting, seems the odd-one-out in this collection because it has no noticeable steampunk element.
My favorites:
La Clochemar - Charlotte Ashley
East Wind in Carrall Street - Holly Schofield
The Harpoonist - Brent Nichols
Crew 255 - Claire Humphrey
Strange Things Done - Michal Wojcik
Buffalo Gals - Colleen Anderson
The Seven O'Clock Man - Kate Heartfield
Let Slip the Sluicegates of War, Hydro-Girl - Terri Favro -
A fantastic collection of steampunk stories, each wildly different from the next. I always enjoy finding a steampunk story set anywhere other than London, so to discover an anthology of tales set in various Canadian locations was a true breath of fresh air. There are some absolute gems in here - 'The Seven O'Clock Man' by Kate Heartfield, 'The Harpoonist' by Brent Nichols, 'Crew 255' by Claire Humphrey, and 'East Wind in Carrall Street' by Holly Schofield were among my favorites. Absolutely recommended for any steampunk reader.
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A brilliant collection of fifteen Steampunk stories set in Canada. The variety of authors provides a rich variety of style, technique, theme and approach. Most of the stories are excellent, with only two or three that miss the mark, but most are superlative.
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An excellent collection of short fiction, really brings the rough aspect of Canada in the wild in some of the stories. Creativity and imagination shine forth!
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Interesting collection of Canadian short stories in the steam punk genre. Appreciated the variety of voices and perspectives.
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Steampunk has often struck me as a genre that has tended toward overly rosey views of the Edwardian and Victorian Eras. The steampunk tales I have read have often uncritically represented colonialism as adventure, portrayed technology divorced from the horrible conditions of the factories, ignored massive wealth disparity and troubling social conditions. It is a genre that is ripe with neo-futurist possibilities to invite critical engagements with ideas of historicity and presentness, but often forgets the “punk” aspect of itself, the part that invites critical questions and instead pulls down the goggles of nostalgia.
Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction does that critical questioning, inviting a history filled with possibility. The stories in this collection invite critical questions about the way that we view history and the relationship we have to the past. While inspiring an interest in local histories and tales, it also reminds the reader of all of those stories that get stuck in the cogs of the machines of nation-building and invites us to oil the machines and seek out new stories and new ways of viewing the past.
The regionalism of Clockwork Canada, its setting within a national boundary, invites readers to question canonical tales of history and our founding origin myths by asking who benefits from the history that we tell ourselves and what erasures have been part of the construction of this thing we call “Canada”. These tales question the stories we tell ourselves by providing alternative stories, stories that highlight people and groups that are under-represented in our national myths.
Rather than representing the historical tales that we see in Heritage Minutes or CBC specials, the stories in Clockwork Canada highlight the oppression of indigenous peoples in Canada, border conflicts, representations of disabled people, labour conflicts, the exploitation of Chinese labourers on the railroad, Canada’s head-taxes and borders closed to immigration … all of the narratives we erase in constructing ourselves as a Just Nation. These are tales that speak back to erasures and the editing of Canadian history to include only canonical narratives that focus on Canada as a place of tolerance, acceptance, and openness.
Clockwork Canada reminds readers that the idea of “nation” is itself a story that we tell ourselves to hold us together and that that story, that history, can be divisive, damaging, and harmful. The multiplicity of stories in Clockwork Canada invite readers to think of our nation as a storied space, filled with a multiplicity of voices. These steampunk stories punk canonical narratives and invite readers to question the history they encounter. This isn’t nostalgia fiction, these stories are all about gearing up for a critical take on history.
To read reviews of some of the individual stories in this collection, visit my website at
https://speculatingcanada.ca/2016/05/...
https://speculatingcanada.ca/2016/04/...
https://speculatingcanada.ca/2016/04/...
https://speculatingcanada.ca/2016/04/...
https://speculatingcanada.ca/2016/04/...
https://speculatingcanada.ca/2016/04/...
https://speculatingcanada.ca/2016/05/...
https://speculatingcanada.ca/2016/05/... -
Honourable mention goes to Strange Things Done, Our Chymical Seance, and Komagata Maru
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Anthologies are always hit-and-miss, but this one has way more hits than misses. Great collection of stories!
