Steamlust By Kristina Wright
FOREWORD
Meljean Brook
Even if you haven’t encountered the term steampunk before picking up this anthology, you’ve probably read or seen something that fits the genre: an episode of “Wild Wild West,” perhaps, or a story in which a time-traveling hero uses his knowledge of future technologies to create a weapon to save the day, or a novel by one of the two forefathers of modern steampunk, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Typically set during the Victorian era and featuring advanced steam engine or clockwork technology, steampunk is historical fiction with a speculative twist; it’s silk and steel, corsets and gears, parasols and airships. Tales of alternate histories, extraordinary inventions and their fascinating creators abound in steampunk, all driven by a hands-on, do-it-yourself attitude that is beautifully represented in this collection of erotic steampunk romances.
Do it yourself. In an erotic anthology, such a phrase might signal a writer gearing up for a pun, but that hands-on approach has been a lynchpin at the heart of steampunk’s rising popularity. The aesthetic provides enormous appeal—who can resist the amenable collision of industrial grit and the elegance and refinement of upper-crust Victoriana?—but one glance online or at a steampunk convention reveals that this is a genre and subculture powered by do-it-yourselfers: those who have fitted brass and gears to their slick computer cases and music players, clothiers and jewelry designers who craft one-of-a-kind items for sale, and those industrious individuals who build their own steam-powered machines from the ground up.
In the literary field, authors have taken that attitude and built a steam-powered rocket with it. The very act of writing is, of course, hands-on creation, but steampunk takes it a step farther and throws in a little (or a lot of) do-it-yourself history…and erotic romance gives that history a focus.
Unlike science fiction writers who speculate on the future, steampunk authors have the unique perspective of being able to view the historical period they are writing in—and they are looking at it through twenty-first-century goggles. As beautiful as the dresses are, as civil as the manners were, steampunk writers can’t ignore the constrictions of corsets and gender roles, the effects of imperialism and colonization, the barbaric labor practices and the rigidity of the class system. That do-it-yourself history often becomes a revisionist history that either alters the boundaries of societal structures or keeps those boundaries and includes more voices. In this collection, we see that revisionist history in many forms, but one recurring theme is the liberation of women, the rejection of a defined role and a celebration of their sexuality. These heroines might be wearing beautiful clothes, but the women inside those dresses are much more fascinating.
In “Sparks,” Anna Meadows’s heroine opens her tale with, “I would have been the first to concede how much better things were for me back when I behaved myself.” The same could be said for most of the women in these stories: life would be easier if they didn’t step outside society’s proscribed boundaries. Life would be easier, safer—but constrained, and steampunk heroines aren’t the type to remain still when told to. They seek their freedom and independence, and although that freedom exacts a price from them, it’s one they are willing to pay…particularly when the rewards are so pleasurable. In Elizabeth Coldwell’s “A Demonstration of Affection,” a young woman apprentice knows that her choice to pursue her education voids any chance of a proper marriage, but who needs a proper marriage when one can have the professor? In Christine d’Abo’s poignant “The Undeciphered Heart,” the melding of invention and body means being cast completely from society and life, but also heralds the reunion of lovers parted by war.
In these erotic tales, release becomes more than just a physical event. It propels characters beyond the constraints of social class and gender. As the stories open, some of the heroines have already found that release and broken free of their bonds, as did the fascinating Maddy from Sacchi Green’s “Fog, Flight and Moonlight,” whose sexual history would have a proper miss reaching for her smelling salts, but a steampunk heroine takes in stride.
Nothing is handed to these steampunk heroines; they, too, must do it themselves. Most of the women utilize their hands or intellect, and the celebration of steampunk’s do-it-yourself spirit lies within the stories, as well. These women aren’t afraid to get their fingernails dirty, though their work leads to rather unusual occupations, such as in Andrea Dale’s “Lost Souls,” where a heroine invents devices that serve as otherworldy distractions in a greater game, or the time-traveling thieves in Vida Bailey’s “Undergrounded.” They don’t have to work alone, however; the partnerships in these stories are critical to success, and allow them to find ecstasy—both physical and intellectual—along the way.
Steampunk allows for a revised and reimagined history, but not everything from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is tossed away. It was an era of exploration and conflict, and that spirit lives on in steampunk, even when it leads our heroines into dangerous and unexpected territories, as when Lisabet Sarai’s Caroline Fortescue-Smythe seeks to persuade a young Siamese man to her side of a raging war in her unique way in “Green Cheese.” It was also an age of invention and discovery, and the celebration of ingenuity. That is aptly demonstrated in Sylvia Day’s “Iron Hard,” in which the finely wrought craftsmanship of a man’s prosthetic arm arouses the heroine’s intellect before a touch from that mechanized hand does the same to her flesh.
Gadgets and inventions often play a large role in steampunk tales, providing conflict with or a reflection of the society—providing freedom or oppression, depending upon who uses them—but they cannot fulfill every need. In a subtle turn on Victorian doctors and their treatment of women’s hysteria, the heroine of Nikki Magennis’s “Make Your Own Miracles,” orders a machine to be built that will ease the need within her, but finds that a connection with a living being, albeit partly clockwork, was all that she required.
In other tales, it is through a machine that the connection is made. Saskia Walker’s clever inventor and formidable engineer come together inside “The Heart of the Daedalus,” and in Lynn Townsend’s “Golden Moment,” an invention which measures the auspiciousness of a particular moment leads the heroine to the right lover at exactly the right time. In the grips of “Mr. Hartley’s Infernal Device,” Charlotte Stein’s wonderful heroine’s eyes are opened to beauty and wonder, and the revelation that “I have real freedom here, for the first time in my life…” That is a sentiment that might also be echoed by the automaton heroine in Mary Borsellino’s beautifully written “Liberated,” who works to fix a broken world and seeks connection and life in the arms of a lover.
Turn the page with me, and step into the new worlds these authors have built—worlds where airships rule the skies, where romance and intellect are valued over money and social status, where lovers boldly discover each other’s bodies, minds, and hearts.
This is steampunk…written extra hot, for double the steam.