Steampunk Gilgamesh: The Annotated Version (tagged: Gilgamesh history alternate versions steampunk ) A cultural thought experiment Charlie Stross on understanding the hyper-rich through the lens of tomorrow's history. (tagged: future wealth politics money society essay todo ) Improving Rhino CLI utility performance at NCZOnline: "That’s 3 seconds, down from 45 seconds before the change. Not […]
Challenges of Writing Alternate History Set in Other Cultures Interesting piece on alternate history and other misc. steampunkery, over at Tor.com: And unlike a novel set in a secondary (imaginary) world, there is no useful way of working this information into the book: alternate history explicitly relies on readers’ pre-existing knowledge. There’s simply no place […]
In lieu of an actual review (short version: it was good but a little challenging and took at least 2 reads to “get it”), a couple of observations about China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station: (1) On the appeal of steampunk: I remain convinced (and in large part because of this book) that the big appeal […]