One of the fun things steampunk has been known to do is change history. Some history doesn’t seem to lend itself to a steampunk touch, or so Michael Swanwick  said on a 2009 steampunk panel with Everfair’s author, Nisi Shawl. You don’t have to know the history of the Congo Free State to appreciate the rich complexity of Shawl’s first novel, Everfair. But it certainly enhances it. Thus, let me begin with a an edited...

This cover. OMG, this cover. Don’t you want to know more about this world? So did I. If you can read what Maurice Broaddus says about his mother, duppy stories, and this world and not buy this novella immediately? Then you are not me. Seriously? Steampunk in an alternate history Jamaica, where Jamaica is a world power? [Because that’s the way his mother would want it?] Let me say that again. Jamaican Steampunk! And as if that...

For Your Delectation, a Sample from My Short Story So. This was Professor Rufus Cornelius Abercrombie-Stubbins. She curtseyed stiffly before the Englishman. Gentleman, truth be told, for gentleman he surely was, despite the smear of oil on his cheek and his steamed-over spectacles. He whipped them off and wiped them on a filthy silk handkerchief. “You are from Mr. Claggmarten, I take it?” “Yes,” she lied. “My name is...