Airships & Automata: A Steampunk Compendium

by C.S. Wright

A collection of new and original steampunk short stories

Tommy's Game by LM Cooke

A young man is drawn into an unusual - and lethal - game of chance.

Celestine by Steven C Davis

A sophisticated automaton awakes in a confused state in a laboratory; how did she arrive there and what is her purpose?

Spinners by Ian Caldwell

A strange group of friends and their broken-down automaton attempt to escape a life of drudgery at the bottom of a city that has seen better days.

The Sad Clockwork Boy by Jon Hartless

Gabrielle is trapped and lonely in a loveless marriage--but finds companionship and more with a new addition to her household.

The Incredible Airship Circus by SJ Menary

When an old friend turns up at the Airship Circus, beaten and dying, Pierre, a young tinkerer, is led into investigating a dark and dangerous secret.

Flugmaschine (or How Germany Conquered the Skies) by Danielle Miller

A young woman fascinated by engineering and the sciences is forced by her father to become a governess and must find another way to fulfil her dreams.

A Day at the Scrapyard by SG Mulholland

A disreputable group of scrap men have to deactivate a powerful military automaton and can only hope that they survive the job unscathed.

Dayne by Angela Tysver

An inventor's greatest creation now has plans to remake the world but what can he do to stop it?

Looking for a New England by CS Wright

Two travellers between worlds crash land in a dirty and unpleasant version of 19th Century London and must work with a bumbling inventor if they have any chance to return to their own universe.

196 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2016

About the author

C.S.Wright has been writing science fiction and fantasy short stories for many years whilst pursuing a career in engineering, reading voraciously and playing guitar in moderately unsuccessful rock bands. In recent years he has published a couple of stories in small press anthologies and this small success (and pushing from friends and loved ones) has encouraged him to take writing more seriously. After deciding in 2014 to embark on writing novels, he began the process of writing what became his steampunk novel, To Burn An Empire, for which he is currently seeking representation. Having completed this work in May of 2018, he is now well into writing his next novel, an Urban Fantasy set in the Black Country (and other places) as well as working on a series of military sci-fi short stories.

Reviews

[Steven Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an odd one for me to review, because it contains one of my pieces of work. Ignoring that for the moment, for the debut of a new small press publisher, this is a nice piece of work. There are occasional typos and minor issues like that, but nothing worse than I've seen from bigger, longer established small press publishers. As to the stories themselves, they're an interesting and varied mix, and well worth the cover price.

[Diane Holland · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable book with a wealth of different stories all, however, within the steam punk genre (I must admit to not having a clue what steam punk was until picking up this book). C S Wright has done a sterling job in editing most of the stories (although one of the stories - "Dayne" [I think] - needed a little more editing to iron out some of the grammatical and typing errors). I particularly liked his contribution "Looking for a New England" - as someone who would like to see the UK a republic rather than a constitutional monarchy, the idea of a republic of England is quite appealing. I found S G Mulholland's "A Day at the Scrapyard" a lot of fun to read with the idea of a religious robot (who, it has to be said, saves the day) immensely amusing. Other stories of note included "The Sad Clockwork Boy" by Jon Hartless and "The Incredible Airship Circus" by S J Menary. So, thank you to all you clever people for writing your wonderful stories that took me out of myself - and a really BIG thank you to Craig Wright for all the hard work in putting them together and raising the money to bring them all to the page. Well done!