{"id":5972,"date":"2014-06-25T11:18:49","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T15:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=5972"},"modified":"2014-07-01T06:50:35","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T10:50:35","slug":"review-the-steampunk-trilogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=5972","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Steampunk Trilogy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <cite>Steampunk Trilogy<\/cite> (Paul diFilippo; Open Road Integrated Media) is three short novels set in a now-familiar sort of alternate-Victorian timeline replete with weird science, Lovecraftian monsters, and baroquely ornamented technology described in baroquely ornamental prose.<\/p>\n<p>What distinguishes this particular outing is that it&#8217;s <cite>hilarious<\/cite>. In the first chapter of the first book, a runaway young Queen Victoria is replaced by a newt.  In the second chapter (a flashback) an experiment in powering a steam locomotive from the waste heat of masses of uranium comes to a tragic, mushroom-clouded end when an accident slams them together just a bit too hard.  <\/p>\n<p>The books proceed in a tumbling cascade of ribaldry, parody, slapstick, and sly historical references that sends up every target in sight. And just when you think it&#8217;s all farce&#8230;Walt Whitman delivers a compassionate and psychologically astute critique of her poetry to Emily Dickinson, it isn&#8217;t comedy at all, and it&#8217;s even plot-relevant!  Along the way, Herman Melville tangles with the Deep Ones and the naturalist Henry Agassiz recognizes Dagon as an ichthyosaurus&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Even if you&#8217;re not equipped to parse all the historical and literary in-jokes, this is fun stuff.  If you are&#8230;I enjoyed the hell out of it.  You probably will too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Steampunk Trilogy (Paul diFilippo; Open Road Integrated Media) is three short novels set in a now-familiar sort of alternate-Victorian timeline replete with weird science, Lovecraftian monsters, and baroquely ornamented technology described in baroquely ornamental prose. What distinguishes this particular outing is that it&#8217;s hilarious. In the first chapter of the first book, a runaway&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=5972\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Review: The Steampunk Trilogy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","category-science-fiction","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5972"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5977,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972\/revisions\/5977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}