I'm interested in learning more about steampunk, especially so I don't just "glue some gears on it and call it steampunk" (cue Old Grump's music). Does anyone have a list of recommended reading (especially anything considered canon)?

Steve

I will be watching this closely. I keep meaning to do the same.

One that was recently suggested to me was "The Difference Engine."

Jules Verne and H G Wells are the truly classic steampunk. There are a few other authors from around that era, but they are harder to find. Michael Moorcock's "Nomad of the Time Streams" trilogy from the early 70's is the next that I know of. There are a few others over the next two decades but I've not tracked them down. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's "The Difference Engine" is the one that I think really kicked steampunk into gear in the mid '90s.

Recently I've really enjoyed Steven Hunt's Jackelian series - best fun I've had reading for a while, and full of wide range of steampunk memes in an world that somehow makes these all make sense.

p.s. Ninja'ed on the Difference Engine.
p.p.s. Googling 'Classic Steampunk' turns up a few useful lists - might have to track down some of their recommendations myself.

Thanks all for the suggestions so far. I don't remember Verne or Wells as being very steam-punky as I think of it. So maybe that's a first lesson.

But I thought Steampunk entailed large societal change based on different technology development. What I recall of Verne & Wells were one-off technical inventions that had immediate/story effects, but made little change to the overall society.

Maybe I need to read more!

Steve

Starting off with a movie rather than a book: Metropolis (1927). Predating the genre by the better part of a century it has all of the tropes.
Dystopian society.
Rigid social castes.
Rising dissatisfaction in the working class.
Steam powered technology maintained at great human cost.
Abominations of SCIENCE!
Even prosthetics.

I have used Rotwang in one of my steampunk games, as the creative mind behind the Moloch engine.

Many of those same themes were explored in Herbert George Wells 'The Time Machine'.

As for gluing gears on it, sing along!



On books.... Vernesian fantasy is more popular, I think, than steampunk proper - often, the addition of magic adds a bit of hope in what is more accurately a very bleak paradigm.

The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series by Tee Morris and Phillipa Ballantine is fun espionage adventure, somewhat light fare:


The actors in these two trailers bear a strange resemblance to the primary authors of the series.... (There are a large number of short stories by myriad authors available as e-books, as well as the two novels.)

The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger is also fun, light, and amusing, with the main protagonist being one in whom the spark of a soul was not ignited - the first book is Soulless:

I sold my first printing of the first book for $50 - it had a small print run, and then sold very well. The author's blog is well worth exploring.

The Lord Darcy series by the late Randall Garret is not proper steampunk, nor even proper Vernesian fantasy - the setting is the 1970s in a world where magic has been explored by many of those same people that explored science in our world. Technology has been retarded by the loss of scientists, so that steam is stilldriving the world but magic has broken down into disciplines much as science has. One of the two main characters is a forensic sorcerer. This series predates the coining of the term 'Steampunk'.

Then there is the Flash Gold series of Yukon steampunk.

Not as well written as the above, the author would have been well served to see what technology had already accomplished by the time of the stories - in particular the steam powered snowmobile was cutting edge in the book, but had already seen a decade of use in the Maine woods in the real world. (Also from Maine is the steam powered monorail that I have mentioned on past occasion. The steam shovel, meanwhile, was invented in Vermont.)

Likewise, the steam powered bicycle had already come into existence, including a steam powered trike with twin Maxim guns.... The term 'self automated' in the books sets my teeth on edge - 'auto' means 'self'!

James Blaylock has written both true steampunk and Vernesian fantasy. Well written, solid characters, I have been reading his books for decades.

Land of Mist & Snow by Debra Doyle - more nautical fantasy than steampunk, involving the filibuster William Walker as the villain of the piece.

Jeter's steampunk... well written, tightly plotted true steampunk. That I dislike in the extreme. Much like most cyberpunk I just do not sympathize with his characters.

But it is well written.

Need sleep, so rounding off... for now, but as I do so, I once again link to that wonderful bit of steampunk animation: The Mysterious Geographical Explorations of Jasper Morello -
....

The Auld Grump

Have a look at the reading lists for Marcus Rowland's Forgotten Futures rpg, especially the "sci-fi" stuff.

I like the Steampunk setting, but I've enjoyed little fiction that really fits the setting.

One not yet mentioned.

Cherie Priest does a series of books that are an odd mix of post civil war era steampunk with a bit of horror or thriller genre thrown in. I've read some of it with mixed fellings. Its all light, easy reading. I was attracted to the books based on the first one bringing in zombies to the steampunk world.

there are sub settings for steampunk, victorin era, weird west, africa colneal, each brings a differnt feel and texture.

Thank you everyone. I now have lots of places to start...if I can ever stop watching "just glue some gears..."

Steve

Don't hate me, but I never read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I got it on my Kindle and plan to start it tonight.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was the first novel that I ever read. I tell you, Fun With Dick & Jane is a real come down when you have already started reading before entering the class room. Gods above and below, how I hated Fun With Dick & Jane.

The Auld Grump

There are some nonfiction books that are good to accompany steampunk as well:
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson - the very start of modern disease tracking.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - the meat packing industry in Chicago.
The Victorian Underworld by Kellow Chesney - crime and criminality in Victorian England
The Victorian Underworld by Donald Thomas - crime and criminality in Victorian England
Two books, same title, same subject, two different authors, both worth reading!

The London Underworld in the Victorian Era (series) by Henry Mahew - an exhaustive period exploration of London's underworld in the Victorian era, based on primary sources. Many books, all very much worth reading, and many rather disturbing. Henry Mayhew (1812 - 1887) was a social reformer, journalist, and humorist. Co-founder of the magazine Punch.



H. G. Wells is a better example of the social side of steampunk than Verne - Verne was writing adventure fiction, and was having a grand old time doing so (including a sequel to a story written by Edgar Allen Poe). Wells, on the other hand, was a social reformer - using analogs to illuminate social conventions of his day - the separation of the upper and lower classes being a primary example in The Time Machine. The devastating effect of disease both upon invading and by invasive introduction in War of the Worlds.

Dickens did not write science fiction, though some of his works border on fantasy - he also covered much of the dark side of his culture.

And, again - Metropolis is steampunk! There is a new edition that restores some twenty five minutes of previously lost footage - for a long time the only existing copies were thought to be prints of the American theater run. A full reel was butchered out of the work.

Buster Keaton's The General is comedy, but has some of those same dystopian views.

(Full movie.)

The Auld Grump

I was reading rather young too. I just never read that particular classic. I read a ton as a kid (well, a book every week or two). Most of my reading was things like Goosebumps and Hardy Boys, but I fit in the ocassional novel from my Dad's fantasy, Sci-Fi or thriller collection.

If you are reading 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, make sure you go with one of the newer translations, not the standard english version.

The original translation (by Lewis Page Mercier 1873) cut approx 1/4 of the book (including sections critical to the understanding of the characters and story) and is full of mistranslations that mess up the science. The result is to turn a superb piece of 19thC science fiction into an inconsistent and scientifically shabby schoolboy level adventure story.

W J Miller & F P Walter did a great translation from the original in the early 90s. I think there is a 1991 version by F P Walter that is in the public domain. (p.s. Found it in a range of ebook versions at Project Gutenberg.)

I remember reading The Hobbit (hidden in my lap) and the teacher called on me to read. I didn't know where we were in the textbook so I couldn't follow her direction. Then she commented that I would never learn to read if I didn't follow along.

That is rather humorous.

A similar story is one that my grandmother tells about my father. She was called in for a parent conference to discuss how my father was incapable of reading and that it was a major concern in second grade. She then informed the teacher that refusal is not the same as incapable and that he had been reading the morning newspaper since he was three (among other things).

The copy that I read was part of the Educator Classic series - illustrated and annotated books with sidebar glossary. Originally ten books, a later run added two more volumes. My copy is currently in storage. Not my original copy, which was lost in a fire, but one I purchased a few years ago.

Another book I read while way too young was Paulus and the Acornmen by Jean Dulieu - a book that I very much wish would come back into print.

The Auld Grump

Personally, if I were reading 20,000 Leagues again, I'd read an abridged version. Admittedly I read it several years ago (so possibly it was a bad translation), but I found the "full" book tedious beyond belief!

However, I've been on a Beaver Scout sleepover for most of the weekend, so I could just be more tired and cranky than usual...

We read these things for enjoyment, so it's far better to go with the version that you'll enjoy the most. Personally, I found the full translation of 20000 Leagues to be a far better read than the first translation.

p.s. My first school teacher called my mother in to the school and then told her off for teaching me to read before I got to school - apparently that wasn't a good thing!