Yesterday, because it sounds like an interesting book and it features stories by a bunch of authors I like, I bought Steam-Powered. I bought it directly from Torquere Press, since it doesn’t seem to be at Amazon yet.
I was thinking that “lesbian steampunk stories” seemed like an interesting but oddly specific theme, until I realized that I was being an idiot. An anthology of steampunk stories with an element of romance wouldn’t seem odd at all to me, and unless editors and writers made an effort it would be all too likely to end up as an anthology of heterosexual steampunk stories. Which is just as specific and which I’m sad to say that I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
It’s also interesting to reflect that for these writers and editors, “making an effort” doesn’t mean, being more imaginative. It actually means “writing about the kind of world they actually live in – the people they are, or the people their own friends are, rather than imposing the artificial limits that some parts of our society expect.” (Well, I’m referring to the lesbian facet; I don’t think too many of them live in a steampunk world.)
On a logistical level, it was also fascinating to see how Torquere they handled the e-book sales; I was a bit worried because the website never said exactly which format it came in, but when I downloaded the file it proved to be a .zip file containing a bunch of them: HTML, .prc, .lit and a few others. (If anyone needs to know the others, I can go look.)
Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.
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