Artwork courtesy of Tyson Vick. Friday, May 24, 2024 Staff Report Photographer Tyson Vick of Bozeman, Montana, launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new omnibus edition of A Steampunk Guide to Hunting Monsters. He describes it as “an illustrated coffee table photobook/novel combining steampunk fairy tales and monster stories with photos, illustrations, and more.” The book tells the story of Philomena Dashwood, a “monster hunter and woman of fortune” who encounters werewolves, zombies, mummies, witches, automatons, giant kraken, and other creatures. Much of the saga is told in the form of ..read more

Wednesday, January 3, 2024 Staff Report With a few exceptions, major book publishers have largely shied away from steampunk in recent years. But small independent presses continue to release steampunk titles, and lots of authors are self-publishing these days, including well-established names like Shelley Adina and Gail Carriger. Here’s a look at notable releases in steampunk fiction over the past 12 months. More 2023 Year in Review coverage: Crowdfunding | Movies & TV | Music | News | Video Games | The Year in Pictures Two from Shelley Adina Adina, the prolific author of the Magnificent ..read more

Photo on right by Craig Jenkins. Wednesday, May 24, 2023 Staff Report U.K. steampunk author Paul Eccentric is taking his Periwinkle Perspective series into the visual realm, and he’s turned to Kickstarter to help make it happen. Meanwhile, editor/publisher Danielle Ackley-McPhail is crowdfunding a new steampunk story collection and a developer in Australia is seeking funds for a steampunk RPG. Periwinkle Perspective Comic Book Eccentric launched a campaign for The Periwinkle Perspective: The Poisoned Chalice, an extension of the series in the form of a 32-page comic book. Fans have remark ..read more

Monday, April 24, 2023 Staff Report After weeks of anticipation, Professor Elemental and his longtime collaborator Christopher Mole launched their Kickstarter campaign for The Art of Professor Elemental, a 220-page full-color hardcover book showcasing the chap hop maestro’s comics, novels, art prints, album art, and other visual works. The Professor described this as his biggest project ever. The book, they said, will include almost every story from the first five issues of Professor Elemental Comics as well as comics associated with his albums Apequest and Nemesis. It will also feature art ..read more

Friday, March 17, 2023 Staff Report Beehive Books has raised more than US$260,000 in a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new edition of Carlo Collodi’s classic children’s tale Pinocchio, featuring more than 50 original illustrations by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola along with annotations by author Lemony Snicket. The annotations, in the form of removable typewritten sheets, will relate Snicket’s experience reading the story for the first time, “in all of its bubbling stew of anarchic madness, surreal symbolism, and social commentary,” the publisher states. Snicket, the pseudonym of Daniel Handle ..read more

Wednesday, March 1, 2023 Staff Report Steampunk authors Madeleine Holly-Rosing and Bonsart Bokel are off to roaring starts with new Kickstarter campaigns. Meanwhile, chap hop maestro Professor Elemental is preparing to launch his own crowdfunding effort for a new 200-page art book. Boston Metaphysical Society Heads West Holly-Rosing is raising funds for the first two issues of Boston Metaphysical Society: Mystery at Pikes Peak, a four-issue comic book mini-series that continues the adventures of paranormal investigators Samuel, Caitlin, Granville, and Alma. Facing arrest, the team flees Bost ..read more

Wednesday, January 4, 2023 Staff Report Continuing our look back at 2022, these were the year’s major developments in steampunk books and comics. The biggest news involved a title released in 2021, as P. Djèlí Clark’s A Master of Djinn won the 2022 Nebula Award for Best Novel from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). It thus became the first steampunk work ever to win the prestigious award in the novel category. The Nebula was one of several honors for Clark’s opus, which also won the 2022 Locus Award for Best First Novel as well as the 2022 Compton Crook Award. The lat ..read more

Castle in the Stars Tuesday, November 15, 2022 Staff Report It’s been a busy couple of months for steampunk-related Kickstarter campaigns, and here are two more for your consideration: A new art book from the creator of Castle in the Stars, plus a follow-up to the Space 1889 RPG. Two other campaigns, for the Cogs Aplenty board game and a book about filmmaker Georges Méliès, have about seven more days to meet their funding goals. Castle in the Stars Caurette Editions, a publisher in Strasbourg, France, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Castle in the Stars: The Universe in 1875, an ar ..read more

Tuesday, October 25, 2022 Staff Report Leanna Renee Hieber is best known to steampunk fans for her historical fantasies, and for her appearances at events such as the International Steampunk Symposium. But she’s now promoting her first non-fiction book, A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts, which she co-authored with Andrea Janes. As soon as we heard about the book, we invited Hieber to be our guest for a “Steampunk Minute” segment in The World of Steampunk, our new video series. As it happened, no amount of temporal alchemy could squeeze a 26-minute intervi ..read more

Thursday, May 26, 2022 Staff Report Congratulations to author P. Djèlí Clark, whose novel A Master of Djinn received a Nebula Award on May 21 from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). It’s the first steampunk work ever to take the top honor in the novel category. The awards were presented during a ceremony at the virtual 2022 SFWA Nebula Conference. The story takes place in the same alternate-world, early 20th century Cairo that was the setting for Clark’s 2016 novelette “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” and his 2019 novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015. In this reality, agents o ..read more