Fluent in French, English, German, Latin, and Bundeli
Adept in using Google to translate 107 languages
Electrical experience
Used electric rails to shock Papuan natives
Electrically shocked self during home repairs
Wealth
Immensely rich from salvaging treasure
Often imagined being rich
Royalty
Born a prince
Listened to music by Prince
I know, it’s eerie, right? It’s not like I set out to pattern my life after Captain Nemo. I doubt very much that I’m somehow related to him, or that I’m a reincarnation of him. However, I wouldn’t dismiss those possibilities out of hand, either.
At this point, I’d like to ease the fears of any mariners reading this post. Despite my many similarities to Captain Nemo, I have no immediate plans to voyage around the world’s oceans, ramming ships along the way. Sailors of all vessels at sea are safe from any attack by me.
I promise to use my Nemo-like powers only for good, like co-editing 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology recently launched by Pole to Pole Publishing.
Having just launched the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered, I took the opportunity to interview one of the ‘crewmembers.’ Please welcome author Maya Chhabra aboard our literary Nautilus. Readers will enjoy her story, “The Maelstrom,” and will want to find out more about her and read her other works.
Maya Chhabra is the author of the middle grade historical novel Stranger on the Home Front (Jolly Fish Press), dealing with Indian immigration and the Indian independence movement. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Cast of Wonders, and Strange Horizons. Visit her online at Maya Reads Books, or on Twitter as @mayachhabra.
Here’s the interview:
Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you?
Maya Chhabra: I don’t actually know! I’ve been writing since I was a little kid, probably because I liked books so much. I got started with poetry because my aunt is a poet, but I don’t know how I got started with prose.
P.S.: Who are some of your influences? What are a few of your favorite books?
M.C.: My influences for poetry include Sonya Taaffe, another author of mythological poetry. Prose influences depend on the project I’m working on. For example, for Stranger on the Home Front, I was influenced by Laurence Yep’s middle grade stories about growing up Chinese in different parts of US history, particularly his book The Traitor. I wanted to do a similar sort of story about early Punjabi immigrants. The cross-cultural friendship in The Traitor also influenced my portrayal of Margaret and her best friend Betty.
P.S.: You’ve had a great number of poems published. Do you find your skill as a poet complements your prose writing? Do you find yourself thinking in poetic imagery, rhythms, and word sounds before converting to prose?
M.C.: For me, they’re very different, because a poem is so compact and closed. It has to hit its theme very quickly and hard, rather than a novel where you have time to explore the theme. However, I do try to make my prose aesthetically pleasing and use metaphorical language.
P.S.: Many of your poems touch on classical or mythological references. Why is that?
M.C.: I grew up with D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths and it made a big impression on me.
P.S.: Is there a common attribute that ties your fiction together (genre, character types, settings, themes) or are you a more eclectic author?
M.C.: I think I’m definitely pretty eclectic, but my favorite genres to work in are fantasy, historical, and SF. I don’t really write contemporary, not since I was a teenager just starting out. I like the setting of my work to be removed from everyday life.
Clicking image will bring up Amazon page
P.S.: You’ve written a novel, Stranger on the Home Front, to be published in 2021. Please tell us a little about the book’s protagonist, Margaret Singh, and the conflicts she faces.
M.C.: Margaret is a mixed-race girl growing up in WWI-era San Francisco. Her father is an immigrant from India who’s involved with a radical pro-independence group based out of the US, and when the group goes on trial, he’s implicated, leading to difficulties for his family. This is based on the Hindu Conspiracy Trial, at the time the most expensive trial in US history, which exposed a link between the Central Powers and an Indian independence movement to sabotage the British Empire. Part of the conflict has to do with the perception of disloyalty, and that was influenced by my having been about Margaret’s age during the lead-up to the Iraq War. Reading about WWI, I saw many similarities in the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” mindset. The friendship and conflict between German-American Betty, who wants nothing more than to prove her patriotism despite the suspicion others have of her heritage, and Margaret, whose radical family is out of step with the nationalistic mood of the country, is really the heart of the novel.
P.S.: Where do you get the ideas for your stories?
M.C.: Often I start with a pre-existing story, like a myth or fairy tale, or a bit of history. I like to show an angle on things that people might not have thought of before, even if they’re familiar with the history or story.
P.S.: Your story, “The Maelstrom” appears in 20,000 Leagues Remembered. Jules Verne would have called it a pourquoi, or origin, story. It tells a version of the backstory of Captain Nemo, (originally Prince Dakkar). How did you come up with the idea for this story?
M.C.: I love 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I’d been fascinated by Prince Dakkar’s story since finding out about it from The Mysterious Island, especially because I basically grew up on the story of the Indian independence movement. Prince Dakkar is obviously fictional and belongs to a generation before the independence movement really took off—he’s royalty, whereas that movement was led by lawyers and other middle-class people. But his feelings toward colonialism as described by Jules Verne definitely resonated. I’d always wanted to explore his story and this anthology was the perfect opportunity. I also appreciated that Jules Verne, despite not really being ahead of his time on racial and ethnic issues, was able to portray the resentment towards imperialism with such feeling, to the point where the original English translator had to tone it down and make the narration more condescending to make it palatable to a British audience.
P.S.: “The Maelstrom” depicts Prince Dakkar’s wife as a strong and determined woman, a very admirable character. How do you see her as different from, or similar to, Margaret Singh of Stranger on the Home Front?
M.C.: Margaret is a shy girl who knows, as a mixed-race kid in a predominantly white environment, that she’s outnumbered and only conditionally accepted. She learns over the course of the story to stand up for herself, and also to realize that other people are also going through similar conflicts between social acceptance and integrity. The princess, Prince Dakkar’s wife, is far from being shy. She’s been raised in a life of privilege, but also stands out as unusual for a woman of her time. I thought she made a good partner for a strong personality like that of Captain Nemo, explaining his longstanding grief for her.
Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers, particularly things you wish you had known when starting out?
Maya Chhabra: I’d still consider myself an aspiring writer, as I’m trying to get an agent for my YA fantasy novel Thorns. But my advice would be: send stuff out. Don’t let rejection get you down, and even if it does, keep putting yourself out there. Don’t be shy about approaching editors for opportunities, but do your research first.
We had a nice-sized audience for the panel. It surprised me that so many people suffered from the problem of getting published all the time and wanted to know how to make it stop.
I had no idea the condition was that widespread, but our audience had at least taken an important first step toward a solution by attending our session.
Fortunately for them, I’m a bit of an expert in not getting published, so I was able to offer many tips and tricks.
It was an honor to serve together with such a distinguished panel. They kept things interesting and informative for the attendees, and Steve Kozeniewski kept us on track and posed intriguing questions.
Tomorrow, it’s back to the con for three more panels, a reading, and a group signing. Attend if you can, or read about it here in a post by—
The war raged on a few years ago, and I had hoped by now it was over. I’m talking about the gender war among science fiction writers.
The old stereotype was that male authors wrote hard science fiction, plot-driven stories that were true to science; and female authors wrote soft science fiction, character-driven stories that verged into magic and fantasy without a firm backing in scientific principles. Moreover, some considered the former true science fiction and the latter not SciFi at all.
However, I suspect the vast majority of SciFi readers don’t care about the author’s gender at all. There might be, among female readers, a feeling of pride in the sisterhood at reading a book by a woman author, but for the most part, readers just crave good stories by any author. To some extent, writer Mike Brotherton backed that up with an unscientific poll on his website in 2010, where 86% of the responders said the author’s gender had no impact on whether they bought and read a book.
In 2014, K. Tempest Bradford wrote an article for NPR titled “Women Are Destroying Science Fiction! (That’s OK; They Created It).” The article reviewed the controversy and highlighted a then-new issue of Lightspeed magazine, edited by women and containing stories written by women.
But Bradford’s article came out four years ago. Surely both sides have declared a truce by now. Right?
Apparently not. I went to a literary SciFi convention in Dallas, Texas last week, a convention called FENCON. I attended an enjoyable panel titled “Ladies First! – Female Writers and How they Got Started.” Authors Patrice Sarath and Mel Tatum made it an informative and educational session. The panelists praised female SciFi authors, both past and present, and neither they nor the audience (mostly male) had any trouble rattling off the names of many famous female authors in the genre.
But someone mentioned that, although we could name such authors, they tend to receive less recognition than male authors. Specifically, women win fewer Hugo and Nebula awards than their male counterparts do. (However, that’s not true of the 2018 Hugos.)
As a not-quite-famous-yet author, I thought it seemed petty to tally up the female and male award winners to see if percentages are appropriate. Then I began to realize how unfair it must seem if your gender is the under-represented one year after year, even though writers of your sex are producing fiction of comparable quality. Even if awards aren’t as valuable as sales, a striking disparity in awards must sting. Awards are a more tangible representation of esteem and recognition.
During the FENCON panel, someone also mentioned that in any listing of the top science fiction authors, there are usually few women’s names. Women science fiction authors have come a long way since the early days, but clearly, they’ve not yet attained the credit and appreciation they deserve.
I suspect this situation is much like any field of endeavor that started out predominantly male. At first, a few brave female pioneers enter the field, and endure a lot of criticism, but persevere. Later, women become more and more accepted over a long period. Eventually, no one will be able to recall a time before women had been working in the field.
If the SF gender war is not yet over, we’re at least in witnessing only its final skirmishes. In some more enlightened age (soon, I hope), we’ll realize how stupid this war was and we’ll settle into a comfortable peace.
Then we’ll probably start a gender war over something equally inane. That’s the pessimistic view of your humble observer of human nature—
Today I’ll continue with the partially true tale of my cruise to Alaska with my wife, Jean, and another couple—Mike and Brenda. I made up many of the names in this narrative (including those).
Seattle Train Station
We rode a shuttle bus from our downtown Seattle hotel to the train station on King Street. I admired the station’s beautiful interior with its intricate white, carved walls and ceiling.
Trains much like the one we rode to Vancouver, BC
We boarded the Continental Train (ConTrain) Line, Train 516 (the Salish) bound for Vancouver, British Columbia. Everyone in that area always specifies which Vancouver they mean, because there’s a Vancouver in Washington State, too. The train proved to be comfortable, with large windows and spacious seating.
Somewhere along the train ride, our ever-joking conductor announced we’d be passing Chuckanut Bay, and rumors spoke of a Chuckanut Sea Monster lurking there. Passengers should get their cameras ready, he said. Sure. A sea monster. I kept my camera packed away. Within moments, though, I saw a long neck and small head protruding from the water on the train’s left side. When it became obvious it wasn’t moving and was a fake, we passengers laughed.
Then a strange thing happened.
A swarm of gigantic tentacles emerged from Chuckanut Bay and amid them, a fearsome head with colossal, glaring eyes. The tentacles flailed, then shot toward our train and got a grip on the first passenger car—our car. Tentacles, with those huge gripping suckers, were all we could see through the windows. The engine strained and the wheels made ear-splitting screeches against the rails. Finally, our entire train began to break free, and the beast’s arms slid off our streamlined car and vanished to the rear. Though we passengers felt shocked and distressed by this, the conductor made no announcements about it, and I suspect ConTrain will try to hush up the whole thing.
Arriving in Vancouver, late, we ate a quick lunch and took the SkyTrain (Vancouver’s elevated subway) to the Waterfront station at Canada Place beside the quay. Signs there directed us toward our ship. I’d like to praise the quickness and efficiency of the boarding process. I really would. Instead, some masochist had devised an endurance test to see how many escalators, back-and-forth lines, long waiting stretches, and passport viewings people could stand before either collapsing or screaming in agony. The four of us made it through, after stepping over the twitching bodies of many who didn’t. Toward the end, even I felt an agonized scream coming on. In fairness, the authorities had to process three cruise-ship-loads of passengers at one time, and shepherd them through both Canadian and U.S. Customs.
Finally, we crossed the gangway and boarded our ship, the MS Hellandam of the NetherStates Line. Helpful crewmembers directed us to our cabin on Deck 6, the Verandah Deck, on the starboard side, forward of amidships. At 3:45, the ship held a scheduled “emergency” drill requiring all passengers to muster at their lifeboat stations. Considering the chaotic way that went, I vowed, in an actual emergency, to take the quicker route and swim to shore.
Leaving the pier, as seen from our verandah
The ship got underway at 4:53 pm. From our verandah, we marveled at the view, with lush, green mountains rising to majestic snow-topped heights under cloudy skies.
Unfortunately, some misguided crewmember had assigned the four of us a dinnertime of 8:00 in the Main Dining Room, and by then I could have walked to every table and devoured snatched everyone else’s meal. Luckily for all but a few diners, I have deep reservoirs of self-control. Designers had furnished this gorgeous two-level dining room with large chandeliers, a ceiling with blinking stars, and wrap-around stern windows. The chefs’ skill equaled that of the room’s designers, and I can heartily recommend the Beef Stroganoff.
A bird only a female Horned Grebe could love
Back in our cabin, we noted how late the sun got around to setting in these latitudes—after 9:00 pm. I liked the efficient arrangement of our cabin; it came equipped with everything we could want. Beyond that, two very large pictures by Audubon hung on the wall opposite the bed, with near-life-sized paintings of two Turnstones and two Horned Grebe, watching us in bed. That male Horned Grebe won no beauty points from—
Are you the type of writer who measures progress through word counts? If so, here’s today’s question: how do you measure your progress in the second draft?
I first explored the metrics of writing in this post, but I was thinking of first drafts as I wrote it.
It’s easy to measure progress on your first draft. The manuscript was x words long at the end of yesterday, and y words long at the end of today; therefore, today’s word count is y – x. Any word processor can count those for you. There are several blog posts where you can compare your words/day count to those of many famous authors.
That’s fine for the first draft. There was a blank screen before, and there are words on it now. Easy to see and measure the difference.
What about the second draft, and all subsequent ones? For me, those are the more difficult and time-consuming drafts, and therefore it’s even more important to find a way to measure progress. But despite the crying need for a good metric in these drafts, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable one.
Let’s illustrate the problem with some numerical examples. Let’s say the first draft of your short story contains 6000 words. At this point, you don’t really know how long the finished story will be. That first draft might have been too verbose, so cutting will be necessary. Or you might have left out some key points, so it needs to be longer.
You start the 2nd draft editing process, using whatever technique you’ve grown accustomed to. At the end of the first day of this, you reviewed 1000 words of that first draft. To that, you added 100 words and cut 200. Those 1000 words are now 900 words (1000+100-200), with 5000 remaining to review.
How do you measure the work of that first day of editing?
Do you count added words as positive, and cut words as negative? That would be -100. On days when you cut more than you add, your ‘progress’ will be negative.
Do you count the percentage complete for editing the entire story (900 ÷ 6000 = 15%)? In that case, how long do you think the final story will be; what number do you put in the denominator? 6000 was the length of the first draft and most likely won’t be the length of the second.
Since both adding and cutting represent work on your part, do you add the adds and subtracts together (100 + 200 = 300)? That may not be easy to get your word processor to do.
Do you count all 900 words as the finished portion of your 2nd draft?
To me, the last option seems the best. It’s easy to get your word processor to count, and does represent completed work on your part. On the other hand, some days, you may not have much editing to do and will nevertheless get credit for quite a bit of work. On other days, you may cut most of what you read, and will end up with very little credit for all that work.
I offer the question up to the wisdom of the web. Comment and let me know how you measure your daily progress through 2nd and subsequent drafts. If there’s one writer you can count on who can learn from others, it’s—
Ever wonder what it must have been like to serve on a submarine in World War I? You can’t visit or tour one, since there are no U.S. subs from that war on display. You may have seen and walked through a WW II sub in a museum, or seen one in a movie, but the earlier WW I subs are a mystery to most of us.
Recently, one of my wife’s relatives loaned me the journal of her grandfather, a submariner in WW I. I eagerly read it, and now offer you the following description.
Submarine L-10 (SS-50)
Chief Machinist’s Mate Frank Laugel served aboard the submarine USS L-10 (SS-50). (Back then, they didn’t give submarines names, only alphanumeric designations.) His journal covers the period from Monday, December 3, 1917 to Saturday, February 1, 1919.
The book itself is a U.S. Navy ledger book with lined pages; the cover is brown with purple trim. The binding is covered and protected with gray duct tape. Laugel began writing on page 1 and ended on 106 of 200. His cursive writing is quite legible, and I rarely had to pause to decipher a word. There are oil or grease stains on some pages.
The journal begins by chronicling the sub’s departure from Newport, Rhode Island on December 4, 1917 in the company of other submarines and the submarine tender USS Bushnell (AS-2), the crossing of the Atlantic and arrival at Port Delgado on Sao Miguel Island in the Azores on December 19.
They left Sao Miguel on December 30 to continue the crossing. The crew lost a man overboard, a gunner’s mate, on January 24, 1918. They arrived in Bantry Bay, Ireland on January 26, 1918.
The L-10 and its crew spent the war operating in and around Bantry Bay, going out for short excursions and returning to tie up alongside USS Bushnell. They saw little war action. They rarely sighted an enemy and never sunk anything.
The submarine left Ireland on Friday, January 3, 1919 and arrived at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on Saturday, February 1, the date of the final journal entry.
When the sub is at sea, Laugel’s entries carefully record the weather, the time of day the ship dives and surfaces, the depths they reach, and the number of engines running at any time. He identifies the other ships they sighted.
Laugel’s in-port journal entries state when other ships, both U.S. and allied, arrive and leave. He details the equipment that breaks aboard the sub and it seems he spends most of his days in port fixing things or cleaning the boat.
L-10 moored with her sister boats in British waters in 1918. The “A” (for “American”) was added to avoid confusion with British L-class submarines.
Journals are personal logs, begun for various personal reasons. A journal writer never intends for others to read his words, and therefore excludes things with which he’s intimately aware and feels no need to describe.
That’s true with Laugel’s journal. His entries are extremely impersonal. Except for a few brief mentions of the captain, he never mentions the names of any fellow crewmen, including the one lost overboard. Absent is any description of the submarine itself, or what life aboard was like.
Perhaps some of that is due to security restrictions, but then why did he feel free to note the submarine’s depth and the sightings of other vessels? Moreover, there would be nothing classified about his liberty time ashore, yet these entries contain equally sparse descriptions of this time, with brief mentions that he “went out to dinner…went to a dance…went to a movie…”
The closest Laugel gets to anything personal is in noting the receipt of every letter from Frieda, his girlfriend. He also mentions the occasional chances he gets to talk to Walter, presumably a relative or friend assigned to a different ship.
If Laugel feared death due to enemy action or submarine malfunction, he didn’t feel a need to write about it. There is one brief mention about the risks of war, and his attitude about that is philosophical.
L-10 moored with sister boats at the Philadelphia Navy Yard soon after her 1 February 1919 return to the U.S.
A journal-writer is often so close to events that he cannot know what will be important to others. Laugel describes the initial crossing of the Atlantic as mostly routine, free of drama. Yet, according to the Wikipedia entry on USS L-10, the submarine’s captain, Lieutenant Commander James C. Van de Carr, received the Navy Cross for his distinguished service.
In part, that citation reads, “While en route from Newport to the Azores, the submarine which he commanded was separated from the escort and the other submarines of the squadron, leaving him without a rendezvous. He thereupon proceeded to destination successfully, assuming the great responsibility of starting a 1,700-mile Atlantic Ocean run in winter weather and in a submarine of a class that had never been considered reliable under such conditions.”
From the journal, I can infer some things about Laugel, but these are just suppositions. Assuming he took the same care with the sub’s engines that he did in penning his journal, he was in large part responsible for the sub’s successful ocean crossing. A strong sense of humility must have prevented him from taking credit for any significant repairs; he only mentions team efforts, that “we” did this or that. I also sense he was a practical and methodical man, reserving his strong emotions for Frieda alone.
I’m grateful for the chance to read Frank Laugel’s journal, and I shouldn’t criticize him for writing in such a dry style. He was a machinist’s mate scribbling in a journal for his own reasons. He wasn’t writing a novel or a movie script.
Frank Laugel, along with all U.S. submariners, has earned the unending admiration of—
Hoisted by their own petard? The very science that science fiction readers adore has now declared them idiots.
Or has it?
Some accounts of a recent scientific study are concluding that reading SF makes people stupid. Researchers Chris Gavaler and Dan Johnson of Washington and Lee University set out to challenge the results of an earlier 2013 study suggesting literary fiction makes readers smarter. These researchers believed whatever was going on in the earlier study had nothing to do with genre, and hoped to prove it.
It might help to know some terms used in the recent study:
Theory of Mind (ToM)—the text doesn’t tell readers what a character is feeling or thinking, so they must infer those things.
Theory of World (ToW)—the text doesn’t tell readers about the world of the story (physical laws, social norms, etc.), so they must infer those things.
Initially, Gavaler and Johnson suspected ToM would be the same in any genre, but ToW would be more challenging in SF, since the worlds of those stories are so different from our own. Things didn’t work out that way.
They asked 150 randomly selected readers to read a 1000-word short story. Each read one of four versions of the same story:
Text 1: set in a small town diner. Character’s thoughts and feelings inferred.
Text 2: set in a space station cafeteria. Character’s thoughts and feelings inferred.
Text 3: small town diner. Thoughts and feelings stated.
Text 4: space station. Thoughts and feelings stated.
Study participants answered questions posed by the researchers. From these answers, the researchers concluded, “Converting the text’s world to science fiction dramatically reduced perceptions of literary quality.” “Science fiction readers reported exerting greater effort to understand the world of the story, but less effort to understand the minds of the characters. Science fiction readers scored lower in comprehension, generally, and in the subcategories of theory of mind, world, and plot.”
According to the study, the SF story readers “appear to have expected an overall simpler story to comprehend, an expectation that overrode the actual qualities of the story itself…the science fiction setting triggered poorer overall reading.”
What should we make of this? Are readers of literary fiction smarter than readers of SF? Does reading SF make you stupid?
Perhaps the study was flawed. Were the participants truly random? Did the texts bias readers against SF? Were the post-reading questions biased in some way?
For the moment, let’s assume the study results are true. They imply the public regards SF as a lowbrow genre in comparison to literary works. There’s a valid reason people believe that. Many early SF stories and a lot of SF movies and TV shows were not high quality. In the early years, not many authors were writing science fiction, but the demand for stories was large, and readers weren’t as sophisticated or discerning as they are now. Science fiction fans of the time focused on settings—the weirder and more outlandish the better—not characters.
Given that history, it’s unsurprising that the public views SF as an uncultured mass-market genre for philistines, despite a huge advancement in the quality of writing in recent decades
Another factor is relevance to the reader’s life. Of the sample texts provided in the study, a reader is far more likely to relate to the scene in the small-town diner than the one in the alien-populated space station. Because of that, the public views science fiction as escapist in nature. SF writers strive to say something relevant about the human experience. Despite that, readers will always feel more distant from SF characters than they do from characters in contemporary literary fiction.
In my view, the study didn’t prove science fiction is for dummies, let alone that it makes people dummies. It showed people are different from each other; that’s why so many genres exist. As science fiction improves in quality, it will delight more readers. Delighting readers, and helping to make them smarter, is the main mission of—
Here’s a dystopian YA novel you’ll want to check out: Star Touched, by A.L. Kaplan. It contains fascinating characters, a challenging future world, and themes sure to interest teens and adults alike. Isn’t the cover intriguing?
The book immediately immerses you in Tatiana’s world, eight years after a meteor has wiped out much of the Earth’s population, and civilization is back to Nineteenth Century technology levels, without electricity. People struggle to grow food and survive in scattered cities, now walled to keep out invaders. While some work hard to restore good relations and a semblance of civilized society, others scheme at ways to take advantage of the weak.
The meteor did more than kill; it also left a small minority of people and animals “star-touched” with strange powers that are difficult to control. Eighteen-year-old Tatiana is one such person, along with her small dog, Fifi. Tatiana has lost her family and gone roving, finally settling in the town of Atherton, hoping to be accepted and to work for her food and lodging. Since most people fear and distrust the star-touched, she tries to keep her special powers hidden.
Author A.L. Kaplan
She finds work at an inn run by a kindly owner. But not everyone on the staff treats Tatiana well. Moreover, the corrupt town leaders are forming terrible plans for the future of Atherton. To make things worse, a new religious order is seeking out the star-touched, and Tatiana doesn’t know why.
Burdened by all these difficulties along with a ton of internal guilt over a long-ago death she couldn’t prevent, Tatiana will need to confront all her problems and find out if she has the strength of character necessary to endure.
Aimed at the Young Adult market, this novel touches on themes of being different from others, acceptance, maturity, and friendship. Readers will be perceptive enough to deduce the novel’s real message, a powerful and relevant one: we may not have superhero powers like Tatiana, but each of us is different, with our own special abilities and talents. We shouldn’t have to hide our gifts, and we shouldn’t hate the gifts of others. In a sense, each of us really is star-touched.
When the novel launches in October, I urge you to buy and read your own copy of Star Touched by A.L. Kaplan, published by Intrigue Publishing, LLC. How did I get an advance copy to read for this review? That’s a secret to be kept by—
The signs are there; steampunk is waning. Gear rotation is slowing; goggles are fogging; airships are losing gas.
Don’t get me wrong. Steampunk will always be. An enthusiastic minority will forever celebrate it. I’m not saying it’s dead and gone.
I just mean the mainstream public’s fascination with steampunk is declining as it moves on to other things. We’re riding the downward side of the curve now. Steampunk had its day, and we’re watching its sunset.
You want proof, I know. But the passing of a movement is hard to quantify. Others have proclaimed steampunk dead before and been wrong. All I’m going on is my general observation of the world. Internet searches of the term ‘steampunk’ turn up fewer new mentions each day. The number of steampunk movies, video games, and books appears on a downward slope.
So far I’ve been referring to the story-telling side of steampunk, the part that started the movement. That’s not all there is. There’s a side of steampunk that’s as popular as it ever was—fashion. When it comes to costumes, jewelry, and custom-made gadgets, that aspect remains in full swing, still going strong.
As a writer, I pay more attention to the literary side of steampunk and, frankly, it’s sputtering. Within the steampunk realm, there will always be stories left to write and movies left to shoot, but authors have explored the wide expanses of the territory pretty well. The map is there, the boundaries drawn, areas surveyed, most of the acreage settled. A few caves and swamps remain uncharted, but for the most part, it’s difficult to come up with a truly new steampunk story idea.
Personally, I’ve never cared for the magical, fantasy side of steampunk, with its vampires and werewolves. Still, that’s just about all that remains of literary steampunk. You want to write a steampunk story people will read?—think Bram Stoker, not Jules Verne.
I say all this with a tear rolling down my face. There’s no joy in reporting steampunk’s downward trend. I write steampunk stories and wish the genre could remain popular forever. But that’s not the way of things. A genre can only fire the public’s attention for a few years before fading into the background noise.
That raises the question about what’s next. What picks up where steampunk leaves off? My hope was that steampunk’s ‘children’ and ‘grandchildren,’ namely dieselpunk and atompunk, would strut their hour on the stage next. After all, these waves of nostalgic interest in retro settings seem to follow 20-30 year generational cycles. Like steampunk, both dieselpunk and atompunk come complete with a look, a style, a feel for the age. Plenty of ideas for the jewelry and costuming crowd.
Don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen it yet. Maybe we’re heading for a crest in Diesel Age or Atom Age fascination among the mainstream soon, but the signs aren’t apparent to me.
Maybe the term ‘punk’ itself is wearing out. Perhaps folks are tired of punking everything. Slapping ‘punk’ on a thing no longer makes the thing cool.
It could be that if dieselpunk or atompunk are to take off, they need renaming. They need a different descriptor, a better term to evoke the feeling of their times.
That’s where you come in. In the comments, let me know your suggestions for renaming dieselpunk and/or atompunk. Let’s find some catchy and appropriate tags for those movements—names free of ‘punk.’ How about it? Are you feeling creative and up to the challenge?
In the meantime, some of us soldier on. Still bravely writing steampunk stories, hoping that genre can beat the odds and return to past glory, I’m—
The old stereotype was that male authors wrote hard science fiction, plot-driven stories that were true to science; and female authors wrote soft science fiction, character-driven stories that verged into magic and fantasy without a firm backing in scientific principles. Moreover, some considered the former true science fiction and the latter not SciFi at all.
Don’t get me wrong. Steampunk will always be. An enthusiastic minority will forever celebrate it. I’m not saying it’s dead and gone.
So far I’ve been referring to the story-telling side of steampunk, the part that started the movement. That’s not all there is. There’s a side of steampunk that’s as popular as it ever was—fashion. When it comes to costumes, jewelry, and custom-made gadgets, that aspect remains in full swing, still going strong.