Seconding the recommendations upthread for:
- Phil & Kaja Foglio's Girl Genius (as a comic; I haven't read the novelizations, but the 1st in series was a freebie a few years ago), which is a very nifty run-by-mad-scientists universe. The Transylvania Polygnostic University motto is "Know Enough To Be Afraid", a sentiment with which I heartily agree.
- Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate quintet; it's more "historical" urban fantasy w/supernatural romance elements set in a steampunk-y universe than what I'd personally consider to be a dedicated steampunk where the emphasis would be towards exploring how the tech elements changing the retro-society, but very fun and enjoyable and not heavily weighted towards the romance-y, IMHO.
My old non-spoiler reviews and a bit of follow-up discussion from others who'd read the 1st in the RR WAYR thread here: #1, #2, #3 & 4
For those of you wanting to check out Cherie Priest's series I recommended above and who aren't averse to online reading instead of having a downloadable format, Subterranean Press magazine published a 2008 tie-in short which is available in full for your perusal here (standalone with no spoilers for the novels as far as I can tell; and also no zombies, but a bit of a supernatural horror element for those Gentle Readers who like that kind of thing) with a helpful little intro blurb to the overall setting:
Tanglefoot: A Tale of the Clockwork Century
Some other former official publisher freebies which long-term MR members may have picked up in the past and care to try now:
- The Hunter by Theresa Meyers, a supernatural western steampunk from Kensington
- Photographs & Phantoms by Cindy Spencer Pape, a novella in her Gaslight Chronicles series of "steam & sorcery"-type romantic suspense from Carina Press. The 1st in series was a 99 cent deal at one point, so some people might have also picked it up then. I did and read both, and while they're weighted heavily towards the romantic, from a no-romo reader perspective I did consider them to have a decent balance of actual mysterious investigation in the stories: my old RR-WAYR reviews here and here for those who might have similar reservations regarding the amount of relationship drama content
This is actually still free in many stores but I'm linking to the publisher-direct version since the old MR thread was a while ago and still has a bunch of lingering affiliate links from before the rules at both MR and Amazon changed, so too many people clicking for the freebie might mess up some of our bargain-finding members' current affiliate setups, if I understand the Amazon changes about subtracting freebies from the value of the referral or whatever.
- Like Clockwork by Bonnie Dee, a tech-and-social-issues oriented romantic suspense also once offered by Carina Press, and another one that I tried reading back in the day and mildly enjoyed: you know which thread this link leads to
Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Do works have to be written by modern authors to be considered steampunk? or are authors like Jules Verne and HG Wells also considered steampunk?
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Myself, personally, I'd consider that since Verne & Wells actually lived back in the time that they were more-or-less straight sci-fi writers of the day envisioning what might be using extrapolations of their current level of tech and scientific understanding just as today's writers are have been nanotech and singularity and gengineering/AI cyborging it with our current levels.
Whereas steampunk to me has a dedicated retro-consciousness element of examining what-might-have-been back in the day with our current understanding of the tech and knowledge they had back then, to introduce an achronous level of induced artifice (in the sense of the proliferation of clever advanced devices) resulting in a historical AU, if that makes any sense.
Of course, there's somewhat borderline cases like what Terry Pratchett has been doing in Ankh Morpork lately with the recent books (and to a lesser extent, what Mercedes Lackey had kind-of explored in the "Storms" trilogy of her Valdemar setting) introducing the Industrial Revolution into a formerly mostly-magical dedicated fantasy setting.
So, TL;DR: YMMV.