This month, the selection for the sci-fi/fantasy book club my husband and I belong to was Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, a steampunk novel set in Civil War-era Seattle.  Of course, since it's steampunk, it's a very different Seattle than anyone of that era would have known -- not only is Priest not totally true to the city's history (which is fine with me; it's fantasy and revisionist history, after all), but the novel also has all the kinds of things we love to see in good steampunk -- interesting weapons, steam-powered mechanical wonders, and even (in this one) zombies.

Zombie steampunk.  Really, how much better can you get than that?

This month my mom read the book and came to the meeting, but since she'd never read any steampunk before, she had a lot of questions about what steampunk is.  If you haven't read any before either, here is what we told her.

Steampunk is essentially revisionist history fantasy where the technology of the time -- primarily steam-powered -- gives rise to all kinds of amazing inventions and contraptions.  Steampunk is a new name, but not really a new concept -- H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and even a little Robert Louis Stevenson (think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, not Treasure Island) are all held up as fathers of the subgenre.

Some movie examples of steampunk include The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.  (The latter happens to be one of my all-time favorite movies.)

Another example of a steampunk book is the YA novel The Girl in the Steel Corset, which is essentially X-Men with corsets and set in the Victorian era.  It's also a very good book.

It's not a requirement, but a lot of steampunk these days seems to be taking place in series, rather than standalone books.  Boneshaker is part of the Clockwork Century Series, of which the fourth book just came out; The Girl in the Steel Corset is supposed to be the beginning of a new series; and I can think of another popular steampunk series called the Parasol Protectorate.

I'm just getting started reading steampunk, but so far I'm really enjoying it!