Steampunk Prime: A Vintage Steampunk Reader Review

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(More customer reviews)Steampunk, for the uninitiated, is the literary marriage of Victorian-era sensibilities, sci-fi storytelling, and contemporary and futuristic technology. It is a deliciously anachronistic playground for modern novelists.
But //Steampunk Prime// poses a captivating twist by presenting stories actually written in the era, offering a unique and irresistible sense of enthusiasm and authenticity to the proceedings. Some of the stories are straight science fiction, and some fit neatly within the confines of the horror genre--which stretches the premise a bit--but all of them are interesting glimpses into the mindset of a different time.
Chess-playing robots, a hollow Earth, an electrical apocalypse, engineered foodstuffs, extended lifetimes, and a train tunnel beneath the Strait of Gibraltar are just some of the fantastic visions played out in the pages of //Steampunk Prime//, featuring stories as fresh today as they were a century ago. The synchronicity doesn't end there, as the simultaneous dread and excitement evoked by scientific advancements and the unknown alike embodied here feel just as familiar today.
//Steampunk Prime// is an exercise in terrific storytelling and a time-spanning parallel of creative sensibilities, proving the genre not only has a bright future, but a brilliant past.
Reviewed by Glenn Dallas

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The Adventures of Captain Hatteras Review

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(More customer reviews)For those of us of a certain age, not that we lived in the 19th Century, the name Jules Verne always conjures unforgettable images of people, places and things that remain indelibly etched in the mind long, long after we've turned the last page. Jules Verne is an endless adventure; we end one, then start another and another, until we realize that we've virtually traveled to almost every place on this planet and the heavenly bodies that surround it. The fifth of his magnificent Extraordinary Voyages, The Adventures of Captain Hatteras is a breathtaking novel set in the frigid regions of the Arctic Circle and the North Pole itself, though we know now that finding an active volcano there strains credulity. It was widely believed at the time that there was an opening at the top of the world which led to the very depths of the earth. A concept that inspired Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. And Captain Hatteras is Jules Verne at his prime, at his most imaginative stage, at his thrilling best. Its plot is simple yet intriguing: In Liverpool, a seaman named Richard Shandon, First Mate, receives an anonymous letter asking him to construct a reinforced ship and assemble a reliable crew for a rough voyage to the Northern regions of North America, and everyone, Hatteras promises, will be richly rewarded. Once up in the Arctic labyrinth one of the crewman reveals himself as Captain John Hatteras, and his mission is to be the first man to reach the North Pole. So off they go into one of the most horrendous adventures imaginable, even by today's standards.
These are just a few of the images alluded to above: sailing and trekking through sub-zero temperatures amid gigantic icebergs; cutting wind; mutiny; near starvation; bold huskies; sudden storms; castaways wintering in an ice house; a floating iceberg packed with ravenous polar bears about to leap down onto the ship and devour the bold explorers, and a breathless ending to satisfy the fastidious reader. This Oxford University Press edition is a new translation with an introduction and notes by the Jules Verne scholar William Butcher, giving this particular Verne work all the attention and justice it merits.


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The novel, set in 1861, describes adventures of British expedition led by Captain John Hatteras to the North Pole. One of Jules Verne's lesser known stories. As with many of Verne's imaginative creations, his description of Arctic geography was based on scientific knowledge at the time the novel was written (1866) but foreshadowed future discoveries.

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