From Publishers WeeklyProlific anthologist Ashley (The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy) digs deep into literary history to find 14 proto-steampunk stories written between 1880 and 1914. From these contemporaries of Wells, Verne, and Shelley come tales of robotic humanity ("The Automaton" by Reginald Bacchus and Ranger Gull) and exploration of the poles and center of the earth ("From Pole to Pole" by George Griffith). The future holds cold sleep, world government, and space travel in George Lathrop's "In the Deep of Time" and global catastrophe in Ernest Favenc's "What the Rats Brought" and George C. Wallis's "The Last Days of Earth." These tales have the pulpy goodness steampunk fans adore and a literary veneer of contemporary realism, but dated writing and simplistic plots will deter readers not already invested in Victoriana. (Nov.) (c) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From School Library JournalGr 10 Up–Steampunk has seen a surge in popularity in recent years. Many books for children and teens have incorporated some of the genre's more popular elements, such as clockwork automatons, mad scientists, intrepid adventurers, and steam-powered technology. But to truly appreciate steampunk, one must go back to the very beginning, back to the time when the technology in the stories wasn't anachronistic, but rather, was visionary. This collection, written around the beginning of the 19th century, includes stories set in the early 1900s as well as those set in a distant future. They all have in common a Victorian sensibility and an idea of the possibilities inherent in technology, whether dangerous or beneficial to mankind. Included among them is the tale of an eerily constructed automaton that longs to be free from his oppressive creator, a nearly deadly train trip through a tunnel across the Strait of Gibraltar, a man frozen and reawakened in a far-distant future where he discovers a love he thought lost, a story of vampire bats that feed on the blood of humans, and the story of our world almost destroyed by a new method of food production. Within this collection, readers will find romance, mystery, adventure, and, of course, the iconic steampunk airship.–Heather M. Campbell, formerly at Philip S. Miller Library, Castle Rock, COα(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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