Retrenders

By now, most sci-fi and fantasy fans are familiar with the Steampunk genre, where works of fiction and art are placed in a world that features steam powered machinery and is often set in the time of Victorian-era England. In the last twenty years, we’re amazed to see how far and how creative “Steampunk culture” has pushed itself in various media, especially in literature, films, and fashion design. Though many recent fans could not even begin to explain how this genre had started out – how authors, screenwriters, and artists influenced by Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires and H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine created several whimsical and fantastic works in the 1960’s and 70’s. This then opened the door for three young authors, who were friends from the same college and were all mentored by the legendary novelist Philip K. Dick, to write their brand of Victoriana and eventually becoming, unbeknownst at the time, the pioneers of Steampunk.

Recently, we had the good fortune to have a chat with one of the pioneers, the talented James P. Blaylock, who is releasing a new Steampunk novel in his Langdon St. Ives/Narbondo series titled The Aylesford Skull published by Titan Books. It’s been twenty years since the last full novel in the series and we find out why it took that long for the book to be published, what sort of research goes into writing Victoriana, and his opinion on modern Steampunk culture.

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