Steam Punk Lesbians

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

kat8therude:

queerpeopledoingstuff:


The cover of Steam Powered

I finished Steam Powered, a collection of lesbian stories in steam punk settings edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft, about a week ago and I’m not sure I can give it a fair review. I bought it because it has lesbians (always a plus) and has steam punk, something I’ve been meaning to look into. It turns out that I don’t especially like steam punk for the same reason I don’t usually like sci-fi. I am a fantasy nut. I like my fantastic settings to be completely devoid of semi-scientific explanations. Plus I tend to prefer the trees in the archetypal nature/technology conflict. Sci-fi has space ships and I’d rather read about the witch that lives in the forest.

Steam punk has the same issue as most sci-fi of being techno-heavy with the bonus of being really dirty. Most of the settings in these short stories were in filthy cities with stinking air and polluted water. It’s just not the sort of setting I like reading about.

But what about the writing? Are the plots engaging? Do the lesbians do entertaining Stuff? By and large, I’d say yes. Several of the stories, particularly the early ones in the book are very well done. Because of the under-developed nature of the steam-punk genre there was a bit of annoying repetition of character types. There were a lot of thieves, pilots of fantastic inventions, and plucky determined inventors. I also got a bit tired of the overused “You’re a woman so you don’t get to have a life and do cool stuff!” trope. If steam punk is all about alternative history then why can’t it also be an alternative history with more enlightened gender conventions?

There is a nice diversity to the locations in the stories. Stories take place in a poor, Jewish community, New Orleans, India, and on a transcontinental train across Africa. The romances are also nicely diverse. There are the usual tales of two women meeting, falling in love, and living happily ever after, but there’s also stories where they don’t really get together, or one woman dies, or they break up. (Yeah, be aware there are some stories with sad endings.)

In terms of having strong, well-rounded lesbians doing Stuff it’d be hard to do better than this book. It isn’t one that left me feeling uber happy inside, but that’s mostly because I’m a sucker for happily ever afters and not a huge fan of steam punk. If those things aren’t a problem for you, then go pick up a copy and enjoy!

I have, in fact, read Steam Powered and it is quite good. Steam Powered 2 is not so good, in my opinion, but I really enjoy Steam Powered.

Steam Punk lesbians?

I AM GONNA READ THE HELL OUT OF THIS :D

I have this on my Kindle (and also with my Kindle app on my phone).

(via dr-archeville)