Wild Things: YA Grown-Up discussion

So, I'm not sure if you'd rather chat about this here or in historical fiction, but steampunk is getting bigger and it's a meld of historical fiction and fantastical elements - usually involving machinery.

I just finished a book that fit this criteria called The Clockwork Three by Matthew Kirby and it was a great read - it involved an automaton that comes to life in the 1800s.

Other titles you may be familiar with:
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Have you guys read anything like this lately? I'm really enjoying the small subgenre.

Most of the Steampunk I've heard of was adult fiction like Soulless. I actually haven't read any myself but everybody everwhere is freaking out over it.

I've read Soulless and Leviathan and liked them both. These two books are really apples and oranges, but they both have aspects of steampunk in them. Leviathan more than Soulless. I'm going to read the sequel to Leviathan. The word steampunk is relatively new to me.

Really? Is The City & The City steampunk?

I have just bought Soulless and want to read Leviathan.
I have also received The Wind-up Girl but there is some debate as to whether it is really steampunk.

And I have just started Northern Lights which is also considered steampunk.

The new Cassandra Clare trilogy, The Infernal Devices is steampunk also. I think she is the one who has a nice description of steampunk on her website. I had never heard of it until I read about it in her description of the new trilogy. The first book in that series is called "The Clockwork Angel" and it comes out on August 31st.

It's still such a new category that the definition is still evolving, I think, but I like Wikipedia's definition of Steampunk the best:

"Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction and speculative fiction, frequently featuring elements of fantasy, that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used — usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era Britain — but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date.

Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" for such technology as dirigibles, analog computers, or digital mechanical computers (such as Charles Babbage's Analytical engine).

Steampunk is often associated with cyberpunk and shares a similar fan base and theme of rebellion, but developed as a separate movement (though both have considerable influence on each other). Apart from time period and level of technological development, the main difference between them is that steampunk settings usually tend to be less dystopian than cyberpunk."

I don't think that China Miéville's works really fit the bill for steampunk - I've heard his stuff described as "Magical Realism" and he describes it as "New Weird", but it seems to be very dark fantasy to me.

The Windup Girl is not steampunk, as it's set in a very dystopian future where biotech warfare has devastated the planet. I think that the low-tech nature of the society has people thinking 'steampunk', but since it's set in the future, that doesn't really work.

The biggest factors for me in determining whether a book is steampunk or not is that it needs to be set in a historical time period and it needs to have a significant technological difference from that actual historical era. So, Boneshaker works, but Wind-up Girl doesn't.

Steampunk seems to bridge the gap between Historical Fantasy and Alternate History (considered to be science fiction.)

I think also that Magic Under Glass could be considered steampunk, have any of you read this one?

I'd say Kenneth Oppel's Matt Cruse series (Airborn, Skybreaker, and Starclimber) are steampunkish.

Also Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass) definitely have a steampunk feel to them, at least starting with the second one.

I just reread Airman by Eoin Colfer. It has a definite steampunk vibe to it.

EDIT: And it's a FABULOUS book!

Great link Heather!

I also finished reading Clockwork Angel which could be though of as Steampunk as well. :)

I'd say The Boy With the Cuckoo-Clock Heart can be considered as steampunk fiction as well.

I'm currently putting together a proposal for a thesis focusing on automatons, dolls and other mechanic bodies and it's surprising that there are actually not many steampunk novels for adolescents out there that feature prominently representations of moving, sentient automatons and dolls. Or maybe I just haven't looked hard enough.

Other steampunk novels for young adults

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade

Hi Phoebe, you may want to look into reading The Vyne: Mystery of the Hidden Ember, which is a new YA that came out that involves moving dolls of sorts. It was quite an interesting novel, one that I didn't think I'd enjoy as much as I did. It's set in a steampunk world and really was quite an intriguing read.