Review: Cold Magic, by Kate Elliott

When one hears a book described as "Afro-Celtic icepunk fantasy," it is imperative that one reads said book at some point in time, especially if the description came right out of the authoress' mouth into one's ears directly. And thanks to a kind soul who responded to my Amazon Book Wish List, I have this lovely book in my physical hands. Thank you, book buyer! This review is for you!

The Steampunk Postcolonialist is DONE SCHOOL!

I rarely post here these days, and it's not from a lack of desire to do so. I've had multiple reasons not to:

- I've had to focus on writing my dissertation and other such papers. Writing blogposts for a public audience is very different from writing for an academic audience: the discourse differs, the language loosens. I would start writing a chapter the way I hoped I would write about for this blog, and my adviser would remind me that when I write a dissertation, I can't write it as I would a blog. And fair enough! However, it became very difficult for me to switch gears regularly and write posts that I would be happy posting. But writing is also so very difficult, and expending energy on more than one thing seemed unproductive. Graduate school (and academia generally) is an anxiety-producing space and I would feel tremendously guilty for wasting my time thinking about blogging than writing my dissertation. Now that I am free, I am going to take my time re-discovering my ideas in a fast and loose fashion, and re-acquainting myself with you, my audience. 

- This blog gets cited, sometimes. While I believe in the freedom of ideas, I am also deeply cognizant of the power dynamics involved in the ways that ideas are circulated: that certain people are given credit for saying things already said by others. Other people are in a much better position to lift ideas and while citation should be a form of giving credit, the non-academic often loses out. When Diana and I began writing on multiculturalism in steampunk, our critiques fueled other people's work. Unlike many other people, I don't tend to get terribly excited about being cited; it's nice, but the chances of misinterpretation, especially by white academics, are high. And I hold nothing against these white academics--often they are doing this because it's important to acknowledge the racialized elephant in the room when it comes to steampunk. I don't have to be comfortable with something I acknowledge. (And, of course, neither do you.) And because I am also a jealous person, I didn't want my ideas, half-formed and incoherent, out there to be picked up upon before I was ready.

- Most of the things I've had to say about steampunk and race have already been said, are in my archives, and I don't like repeating material. I get that people need things hammered into them but honestly I'm not anybody's parent, and there are only so many ways to say "stop being a racist." New material would require me to remain plugged into the steampunk community, and I had to withdraw because of graduate school obligations: I've attended very few steampunk conventions due to lack of transit options and connections; I sort of stopped buying books because there is only so much white steampunk I can tolerate (works featuring non-white protagonists written by white authors fall into this category); there is so much work to do to share things with you.

- And I just.... got tired. And I didn't feel like blogging as much anymore. I left this blog up as a general repository, and also because every so often someone on Twitter whinges about how come there is no POC in steampunk and I need to deploy a list of links at them. Folks don't know what they don't know but I don't need to see people who are new to steampunk talking about POC in steampunk as if we were a new idea. This is not a "get off my lawn" sentiment; this is a "welcome to the party, the bar is there, the washrooms are at the back, please stop talking about improving the club when you literally stepped in five minutes ago and aren't more than five feet from the door." (I am not a very gracious person, as you may have noticed.)

Either way, this bitch is back in the club. I would really like to get back to steampunk, to blogging about steampunk. I've seen some really marvelous things, read some really marvelous books, met some really marvelous people. This blog will remain about postcolonialism and steampunk. You can read a more general view of my academic journey at my other blog, and I will go into further detail here. I'm also hoping to put up the whole of my dissertation here on Silver Goggles in some fashion, so that it gets wider dissemination. (This will be a different blog post.)

Happy new Gregorian, steampunks. I look forward to getting to know you again. 

Transcript: "Claiming Narratives, Re-Telling History: Bringing Southeast Asian Steampunk to the World Stage"

Recently I went to a conference held by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley, entitled "Making Southeast Asian Culture: From Region To World." Thanks to Dr. Gui Weihsin, I was on a panel on literary transformations in Southeast Asia.

I wouldn't really say I'm a Southeast Asianist. In my main blog, I describe myself as being involved with UC Riverside's SEATRiP program not by research, but through my creative pursuits. I DO study Southeast Asian history and cultures, but that is because I write stories that are meant for a Southeast Asian audience. So when Dr. Gui invited me to submit an abstract for this conference, I wracked my brain trying to think of a good usable topic (that could, in the interests of an academic career, transform into a publishable paper) and thought of something completely different, but completely untenable, and he said, "why not just talk about your book? You edited it, you know the field, you'd be the only steampunk specialist there, and it's Southeast Asian literature."

I can do that?

And turns out, of course I can, which put me into the position of speaking as an academic about a book I personally edited. I was very uncomfortable because on the one hand, Dr. Gui was right, it IS Southeast Asian Literature (we've got one white woman in the entire Table of Contents; white women are very diverse these days) and I AM an expert on the field and it IS a great opportunity to tell people about the book, but on the other hand, I have been taught, in so many ways, that being proud of my work and what I've done and talking about it is kind of big-headed, arrogant, and kinda rude. But I have the support of many lovely people here at UCR, including my adviser, so I wrote it, and made a very nice Powerpoint (which I'm not actually putting up here). 

So here is the transcript!

Con Report: AnomalyCon

About a year ago, Kronda Seibert, chair of AnomalyCon, invited me to an Author Spotlight, with the bonus of me getting a free flight and hotel out. This is pretty great! Of course I'll go to a con that gives me a flight out! Since it also happened during Spring Break, that was a no-brainer. The flight was reasonable, the hotel was comfortable. 

Denver also snows! 

This is a feature, not a bug. People who have spoken to me about this have found that I am one of those strange people who do not like the long California summers and I've been craving for a reason to go back to some snowy place for some time. (Most of the conventions I've been hitting up aren't really that far north, save WisCon, and that's after the snows have melted.)

Since AnomalyCon was at the end of March, it snowed! 

Kronda had slated me to give a brief spiel at Opening Ceremonies, which didn't really sink in until like a week before. Looking through my archive of messages, she definitely had asked me several months before, but apparently my brain has become a sieve. And I thought, "Oh, I'll write my thing on the train ride out to the airport!" Then it was "oh, I'll write my thing on the plane ride there!" And then it became "oh, I'll write my thing right before (even though I'm horrifically underslept), it'll be fine."

So I did.

And then I didn't get to read it because the sound guy got stuck in the snow so the Opening Ceremonies started like 45 minutes late.

It was fine. I got to hang out with friends in line and talk to random people. 

The Steampunk Postcolonialist @ AnomalyCon!

This is a little late because I've been busy writing my dissertation and avoiding trying to wade through the program Excel sheet that is AnomalyCon's program grid. I'm doing it now because I am at ICFA and trying to avoid working on my dissertation for now. 

I'm generally pleased, though, to announce that I am an Author Spotlight at AnomalyCon 2016! Here is my schedule of things:

FRIDAY:

4pm OPENING CEREMONIES

SATURDAY:

Language, Dialect and Code-Switching

11am

Windstar A

Representing code-switching in fiction, but also how it relates to a miltilingual and diverse geek community.

Science Fiction and the Future of Childbirth

12pm

Mesa Verde C

Childbirth is often glossed over--even in Star Trek where they "beam" the kid out. But in futuristic worlds, what can reproduction look like, and beyond the cis-normative?

With All Due Respect: Multicultural Fashion

2pm

Mesa Verde B

Steampunk isn't just about Victorian England! Dive into costuming from every angle and discuss cultural respect without appropriation. 

How To Fail Gracefully

7pm

Windstar A

As you write, you're likely to mess up, or hurt someone without realizing it. How to take steps to learn gracefully instead of turning a mistake into a FAIL and grow from the experience.

Queer Identities After the Apocalypse

8pm

Wind River B

Trans healthcare and queer reproductive choices in post-apocalyptic worlds.

SUNDAY:

The Future of Racism

11am

Mesa Verde C

The past's virulent racism against the Irish has now faded to language artifacts like "red-headed stepchild" and "paddy wagon." What traces will present-day racism leave behind, and what new forms of racism will emerge?

Colonialism of Fairytales

12pm

Wind River A

Many people only know of tales by Grimm and other Western authors, sometimes only the versions revamped by Disney. A discussion on colonialism in fairy tales and mention of those outside the "mainstream."

We Have Always Fought

2pm

Mesa Verde

The History of women in warfare, and how women have never been so demure as history would have you believe. 

Considering how many panels I'm on, I'll probably stagger to school the Monday after. But I hope you all come! You may not like what I have to say, but you should come anyway.

SHAW 2016: Keep Calm and Caper

I was gonna share a bit of my dissertation with you but changed my mind, because I realized I wanted to share something funnier. Steampunk has brought some incredible moments to my life, some hilarious stories, some good anecdotes, and trivial lessons. My favourite lesson is this: keep calm and caper.

What does that even mean? It means that when all else fails, do a little dance. In costume, out of costume, probably especially after you take off your costume because unless you dress Super Steampunk Casual you might be a little stiff. Do a little caper. It can have marvelous effects.

I end this Steampunk Hands Around The World here with a couple of my favourite stories: 

SHAW 2016: Tipu Sultan's Tiger

And today, a poem:

SHAW 2016: Syncretic Balinese Treasures

I went to Bali in 2010, before starting my M.A. degree, with my family for Lunar New Year. Bali is a state of Indonesia, at the far-eastern tip. (It also shares the same timezone, which makes it a bit confusing when you wake up at 5am and it's already pretty light out and you're not used to that.)

Balinese culture is a combination of different cultures, and it's pretty easy to trace where each element in their architecture and aesthetics are from, while still appreciate it all as singular wholes unique to the region. The Hindu and Buddhist influences stand out strongly, coagulating into the local folk aesthetic.

And boy are there some steampunky things there!

SHAW 2016: The 4 Most Steampunk Places of Riverside

Yes, Silver Goggles is once again participating in Steampunk Hands Around the World!

Folks may or may not be aware that currently, I live in Riverside, California. I'm not a fan of Riverside, exactly: the sun is aggressively hot and bright for too many months of the year; it's too dry; Southern California does not believe in public transportation; affordable housing apparently does not exist. That there are palm trees everywhere also gets on my nerves: they don't belong here, they're here only for the "exotic" feeling which is pretty pointless, and the desert could use more good desert-loving trees that provide shade to its inhabitants. I am not, however, the architect of this region.

Fortunately! Not all is lost on me here in Riverside. Today, I give to you my four favourite spots in Riverside that I try to make people aware of. Two of them are right downtown, and if you visit, I will make sure to take you there.

#SEAsteampunk news!

I haven't really been posting here much about the IndieGoGo Campaign for The SEA Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia. Mostly because I've been pretty obnoxious about it on other social media platforms (sorry, Twitter and Tumblr followers and Facebook friends). Also because in the first couple of weeks of the campaign, I was emotionally exhausted by the whole thing. 

It is now twelve hours to the end of the campaign. We hit the ground running, and we actually reached the base goal of $8,000 on Day 15. There was a lot of weeping involved. Since then we have been aiming for the first stretch goal, and we hit that the other day, too. 

Joyce and I will be working on a teacher's edition for the anthology. We hope to have it done by early next year, and it will be available for download, probably with a pay-what-you-like fee. 

The book has now been sent off to the printers, and it will be ready for the shelves on November 30. It's a delay from the originally stated November 1 date, because our publisher, Bill, recently suffered a tragic loss in his family. 

Bill himself will be going to Europe for the next few weeks, and when he gets back, he'll be making many, many, many trips to the post office. (Customs for international shipping takes about 5 minutes each parcel, aaaaaaaaand he does it on top of a day job! No, don't ask me how he does it, yes, lean back and stare in wonder.) 

Thanks to everyone who's been supporting us so far, and looking forward to your reactions when you get the book!!

Hamilton: The Musical

Do you like musicals, friends? I do. I don't get to see them often, and the last one I went to see was Allegiance. I'm not good at reviewing theater, but I do like it. Have you heard Hamilton, the Broadway musical about Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America? I heard the original cast recording when it first dropped on NPR, and it made me weep, but last night, I sat down to listen to it more closely on Spotify, accompanied by lyrics and commentary from Genius, and I wept harder. I do not recommend the experience of doing it while grading papers. 

And after it was done and I was considering the genres it had been written in, its themes of history-making, its subtle digs at today's climate of anti-immigration and economy, I thought to myself, this musical has a most steampunk sensibility!

The SEAsteampunk IndieGoGo Goes Live!

In the midst of the quarter starting, one more round of prospectus revisions, and further research, plops into my lap the IndieGoGo campaign for The SEA Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia! We need to raise $8000 to pay everyone involved. (The anthology will go to print whether we reach this goal of not, but it would be really nice to get paid.) The campaign ends in 30 days, and while we've got a strong start right now, we really need to keep it going.

Two of our Special Guest Rewards have been snapped up, but we have more forthcoming! So keep an eye out!

The Steampunk Postcolonialist @ CONvolution 2015!

I just got my schedule for CONvolution 2015: LEGION OF FANDOM! Unfortunately I will miss the Friday, because TA duties occur then, but I'll leave Riverside as soon as possible to hie myself to Burlingame! The schedule is now live, but here are the ones specific to me:

Saturday 10:00 - 11:15, Harbor B

South East Asian SFF

Science-Fiction and Fantasy are global. Our panelists discuss the works and perspectives of South East Asia.

Panelists: Jaymee Goh, ZM Quynh, Bryan Thao Worra, Emily Jiang

Saturday 11:30 - 12:45, Sumac 

Non-European Steampunk

Pat MacEwen (M), Jaymee Goh, Bryan Thao Worra

Saturday 14:30 - 15:45, Pine

Diversity in Speculative Fiction

Gregg Castro (M), Jaymee Goh, Thaddeus Howze, Bradford Lyau, Balogun Ojetade, Sumiko Saulson

Sunday 11:30 - 12:45, Pine

Asian Ancestresses

Jaymee Goh (M), Emily Jiang, Bradford Lyau

Sunday 13:00 - 14:15, Oak

Reading 3

Kyle Aisteach, Sumiko Saulson, Ms. Amy Sterling Casil, Bryan Thao Worra, Jaymee Goh

I have no idea what I'll be reading for Sunday yet! But hopefully you'll stick around and come see me and my fellow readers anyway. I'm especially excited to be on panels with fellow steampunk POC Balogun Ojetade and Bryan Thao Worra! You will also meet zm quynh, who will be in The Sea Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia!

Emily Jiang and I have been on Asian Ancestresses before, when it debuted at WisCon a few years ago, and  it was a blast! I am also looking forward to renewing acquaintance with Bradford Lyau, long-time fan-scholar and one of the first researchers using the Eaton Special Collection at UCR!

See you soon, Bay Area!

Some #SEAsteampunk news!

So while I get back on track with my PhD adventures (which I will definitely post more about in a bit!) I had some news to share about The SEA Is Ours: Tales Of Steampunk Southeast Asia!

Firstly, we have a Facebook page, and a blog! That is where I've been posting most of the news. You'll also find me nattering about it on Twitter under the #SEsteampunk hashtag, of course. If you go Twitter-searching, or tweeting, use the hashtag, because when you search "the sea is ours" on Twitter you get some really strange results--mostly maritime border declarations, U.S. Navy merch, and folks taking selfies on the beach. 

Secondly, ARCs have gone out! If you are a reviewer and would like to review The SEA is Ours for your media site, please fire me an email! I will have you know that this anthology is built to appeal to all sorts of audiences. Except for racist white people who can't handle stories that are not about white people. (We don't have very many stories with white people in them.) 

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, you can pre-order The SEA Is Ours on Amazon now! 

Fourthly, the fundraiser will be in September! I'll post more details when I can. Save some money for us! And keep with us--Joyce and I recorded some goofy videos when I last went to Singapore to see her. You'll get to see and hear us in all our accented glory.

PhD Adventures: Inscrutably Oriental--Some Sartorial Observations on Intention and Reaction

Some of you readers may be familiar with my steampunk magistrate outfit that I've worn to conventions across North America:

This is not me; this is the designer, Jeanette Ng.
I look like this, as well you know, or should.

I commissioned this in 2010 from the Costume Mercenary, a history-graduate-student-moonlighting-as-designer for Live Action Roleplaying (LARP) outfits. The idea was this: the character I was gestating would be a magistrate for one of China’s colonies in Maritime Southeast Asia, most likely one of the Malay sultanates (present-time Malaysia, where I am from). Chinese traders had established their own port communities since the 1400s at least, and until China closed its borders after the Zheng He expeditions, clearly had imperialist ambitions abroad. The character would be a lead in a LARP game Ay-Leen the Peacemaker and I had thought up. 

The game would involve my character accusing Ay-leen’s partner of smuggling opium into the colony, and Ay-leen would lead the players through the game, collecting clues to both clear her partner’s name, and educate the players about the extent of the Opium Wars that led to the establishment of a British colony in what is now Hong Kong. 

Although the LARP Game never happened (I'm still holding out that it will, though), I still wore the outfit to steampunk conventions across Canada and the United States, firstly out of a sense of satisfaction with how fantastic the whole outfit is, secondly to kickstart conversation in which I talk about the Opium Wars and of Chinese diaspora communities, and thirdly to embody what steampunk could look like when divorced from the Victorian aesthetic. 

Now, if you read this blog, you presumably know a bit about steampunk, so you know that roleplaying a steampunk persona, or a “steamsona,” is very popular, because it gives newcomers a thematic idea around which to start building their costume. One goes in or out of character to steampunk events, and theoretically, if all else fails in finding things in common to talk about, we can always ask each other about our steamsonas. 

Theoretically.

PhD Adventures: An Anecdote Apropos of Nothing

During a presentation of Steam Around The World, when I was taking questions, a young woman, white woman, wearing a robe of some sort, stood up, to explain her costume, which went something like this: "this is the costume of an Orientalist. I'm purposely dressing wrong just like how they would have done it back in the day. It's supposed to show how ignorant the colonizers were back in the day that they would appropriate clothing from the natives like this. So it's not that I'm dressing to be a racist, just to look like how they would have done it back in the day."

I didn't really know how to respond to it back then, but this moment, among many other such moments, has stuck with me to this day. The more I think about it, though, the more I'm filled with secondhand embarrassment for this girl, so I guess it's good that I didn't really have an answer for her back then, because I think today I might have just burst out laughing in her face. 

PhD Adventures: A Brief Bibliography of Articles About Mad Scientists

A while ago I posted my transcript for the paper I wrote on mad scientists, and promised to post the articles I found and used (not all cited). Some of them are easily found on JSTOR, others on Project MUSE. 

The bib is also annotated in case you cared to know what the articles are about, from my perspective at least. I really enjoyed reading them, especially the Allen piece, so I hope you find them too!

Transcript: "Steampunk Mad Scientists: Exclamation, Effect, Affect" @ ICFA 36

Recently I had the chance to present a paper at the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts, which is like a major East Coast Science Fiction conference, and rather than save myself some trouble and present a paper I'd already written, I decided to write a whole new thing! Because after all this could get folded into my dissertation project and get me thinking about more coherently. This was the abstract I submitted:

In steampunk, the figure of the mad scientist looms in the background, either benign inventors who enable the technofantastical imagined setting, amoral villains threatening the world, or the space in between as morally-ambiguous sympathetic enactors of change with questionable methods. Literarily, they provide an avenue to explore the darker side of human choices; theatrically, they offer a chance to chew the furniture. This paper will survey how the figure of the mad scientist has been taken up in various steampunk media—Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan series, music by steampunk bands Vernian Process and The Clockwork Quartet, and the webcomic Girl Genius. Though the narratives and the scientist figures are wide-ranging, they retain similarities in the depictions of their methods and psychological profiles even as they are deployed self-reflexively. The paper will then compare these mad scientists with one of the original mad scientists, Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein and evaluate the influence of the trope on the steampunk subcultural values and aesthetic.

However, as I developed the paper, I realized that this abstract was full of lies and I didn't actually want to do a survey of steampunk mad scientists, because that sounded totally boring! I betook myself to the databases to learn everything I could about mad scientists (which was, actually, a lot of fun, will post my annotated bibliography if anyone is interested) but just couldn't figure out an angle with which to tackle the subject.

Then I had to fix something in my apartment, and it needed some problem-solving skills and some other knowledge, and when I was done, I threw my hands in the air and shouted, "SCIENCE!" I am sure everyone in this room has done this. If you have not, I 100% recommend this experience. 

#SteampunkHands: Steampunk as Unlearning

For those of you who are new to me, my blog, and my work, you should probably be forewarned that I have a reputation for being hyper-critical, rather ornery, impatient with fools, and dissatisfied with the way most steampunk works. 

When I first discovered steampunk, it seemed like a whole new world of thinking about history had been opened to me. I emailed my friend Ay-leen the Peacemaker incessantly. Our emails kept getting longer and longer. My writing had new life, new purpose. 

Around the same time, I discovered postcolonial theory. I didn't know what it was, exactly, only vaguely knew about it from conversations surrounding RaceFail. I was finally coming to terms, years after leaving home, with what the word "identity" meant, and what ignoring it meant for my writing. While visiting a friend at St. Francis Xavier University (the Nova Scotian one), I grabbed a book off a shelf that caught my eye, an introduction to postcolonial theory (because Nova Scotia has a delightsome inter-library loan system that is prompt, timely, and flexible, and I still miss it). 

I fell in love with it, and fell in love with myself in a more full way, neither of which would have been possible without discovering steampunk. 

A lot of people think of steampunk as a subgenre. Some call it an aesthetic (finally!), because it moves between mediums easily. In 2011, I cited Martha Swetzoff, calling steampunk a conversation with the past, a conversation with ghosts who cannot be laid to rest, because they are not addressed. I wrote about the ghosts that relive the violence of the past, and how cultural appropriation is the demand for access to these ghosts, in order to inflict further violence on them under the guise of benign consumption. 

There are other ghosts one must be in conversation with. 

When I began writing steampunk stories, I created a new world in which the British never took over the Malay sultanates, while they certainly have a presence. In this world, the Golden Age of Islam never ended, and has developed all kinds of technologies at a sophisticated level, enough to create an airship that can cross great distances. The Malay peoples have learned how to breed birds that carry messages from depot to depot. The kingdoms of what we now call South Asia too have seen inventors rise despite the boundaries of the caste system. 

Like my fellow writers, I have suffered from anxieties of authenticity. I quietly scream pain at how much of my ancestors I don't know, and how little access I have to them. By dint of colonial history, my primary language is English, and by dint of personal history, I have access only to a language of the majority of my home country, which is not the language of my ancestors either. (Note that I do not lament knowing this language, which I have made bend to my will.) There are stories I will never have, never recover, there are gaps in the alternate history I have written.

It is too easy to say that into that aphoria we write new things, because it is an alternate history, not true history. However, to say that is to ignore whole histories of erasure, of writing over, of having been written over. Those of us who write today know well we write from lenses tinted by the knowledge of the colonizers. (There are those who would defend those anthropologists and explorer for having "preserved" knowledge of these lost peoples and stories; to them I say, why could they not have stopped their own from performing the genocide?)

In writing steampunk, I must carefully consider that which I know, and how I know them. I must think about how I know and speak of the knowledge I have. I must be careful to consider whether I do an injustice to the histories I am writing of. If I craft something new into this empty space, I must think: does this reproduce what I know? Does it push back in such a way that it reinforces colonial structures, rather than move beyond them? Do I reproduce stereotypes? Am I writing characters who are full, complex human beings, with varying intentions and drives in life? Is this a logical way for this history to develop, given the resources, values, and priorities of these particular communities and characters?

Through steampunk, I commit to a process of unlearning a lot of things that have shaped my life, my views of history and of different peoples and cultures, even my own. I commit to listening to other people reprimanding me if I write their people in a way that reinforces prejudicial views of them. I commit to finding new ways of telling stories, of re-discovering, of re-shaping, and commit to the knowledge that to find out what would be truly new, truly transformative, I must know what has passed.

In this workshop and classroom of steampunk, where the mainstream idea is to learn learn learn and absorb as much knowledge as possible, I ask that we carefully consider letting go of certain things we have learned, self-consciously, carefully. In this way, we can say, we are truly re-writing history, in a way that reflects the values and ideals of the present that we wish to adhere to, that upholds a standard of being we aspire to.

Because, especially for those of us with these gaps, we must write, we must fill those gaps with our own visions rather than the ones we have been fed. If we do not do it for ourselves, someone else will, someone with blithe disregard for the history of the gap.

We must unlearn that which continues to shape the present that harms peoples.

Otherwise, the steampunk we perform is all steam, sound and fury, signifying nothing. 

THE SEA IS OURS Roundtable: Olivia Ho #SteampunkHands

Olivia Ho hails from Singapore, and writes to us from Scotland (ah, we fine expatriates) a story that rather fits the theme that informs many other stories in this anthology: COMPLETE LADY-FEST. Cranky ladies, angry ladies, confused ladies, curious ladies, smart, smart-mouthed, ladies ladies ladies. Here she gives us an anecdote of explaining steampunk to her father, whose response is 10000x more awesome than my own dad's: