Fandom Primer Post (aka Pimp Your Fandom)
Now that nominations are done and sign-ups are just on the horizon, here's a post where you can advertise your fandoms to the rest of yuletide. Tell us about your fandom(s) and link to sources you think will help a new fan interested in checking it out or an old fan looking for canon refreshing. And if you're looking for new (or old but forgotten) fandoms
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Category: Books and Literature
Comments:
There can't be too many lesbian Steampunk stories in a setting other than Europe, right? :-)
This is one particularly fine example. It's a beautifully written short story about Hessa, a young woman who works in the art of creating dreams for paying customers. Crafting dreams from imagination, gem stones, amber and copper is an awesome concept. To make it even more wonderful, the dream-crafter has to find the beauty in everything to make the dream seem real. So when Hessa desperately needs to find the beauty of waves for a prestigious dream project, she turns to the dark hair of a woman she's just seen once in a a coffee shop... "To Follow The Waves" is a love story, too, but a pretty twisted one. It's about longing and obsession and while I'd call the ending happy, it remains a bit ambiguous.
The characters are compelling, especially Hessa. She's a young geeky woman who knows more about her craft than about life in general or love in particular, but she's really good at her work and people respect her for that. With her geeky set-up, it's very understandable when she doesn't know how to deal with her sudden infatuation with the strange woman. Still she manages to grow quite a bit until the end, even though it's only a short story.
The setting is pretty interesting, too. While there are certainly standard steampunk elements like dirigibles and automatons, they remain in the background as the story focusses on the original idea of dream crafting. I also found Damascus a very intriguing choice of setting - it felt exotic and at the same time completely real. Certainly a refreshing alternative to steampunk London.
Well, I can't tell you much more without giving the whole story away... But if you're interested, just listen to it! It's for free and only about 40 minutes long. And did I mention lesbian steampunk? ;-)
Links:
1. You can listen to the short story for free here on PodCastle.
2. On their forums, you can also find the author discussing various aspects of this story.
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(Now I'm reminded of the Steam-Powered story with the Haitian woman and the New Orleans woman and the clear indication that the history of Haiti was quite different because steampunk, and I'm wishing I'd nominated that instead of Cabinet Noir.)
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Personally, I've only listened to the story's podcast, so I don't know any of the other Steam-Powered stories, but the one you mention sound pretty awesome, too! Maybe you can nominate it next year and till then I'll have read it, too. :-)
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