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!

THE SEA IS OURS roundtable: zm quynh #SteampunkHands

zm quynh I first met at WisCon, tapping away at her laptop during downtimes between panels. She was working on a larger project, she told me. This is her first ever short story sale, and I'm pleased to introduce you to her work. 

THE SEA IS OURS Roundtable: Paolo Chikiamco #SteampunkHands

I am so so so so pleased to be able to say that I've published Paolo! I first came to know of him through his work at Rocket Kapre, and then at Usok. He told me about his steampunk comic, set in Spanish-era Philippines, High Society (purchasable on Kindle!), and the prequel, "On Wooden Wings," which has since been published in Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution. The story he has written for us, "Between Severed Souls," takes place between these two works. 

Table of Contents for THE SEA IS OURS: TALES OF STEAMPUNK SOUTHEAST ASIA

It's been a while! What with grading and assisting teaching and writing my dissertation proposal and going to conventions and whatnot! 

But! The manuscript of THE SEA IS OURS is done and handed to my publisher, and I am pretty confident that nothing else will be changed, so here is the table of contents!

On The Consequence of Sound - Timothy Dimacali

Chasing Volcanoes - Marilag Angway

Ordained - L. L. Hill

The Last Aswang - Alessa Hinlo

Life Under Glass - Nghi Vo

Between Severed Souls - Paolo Chikiamco

The Unmaking of the Cuadro Amoroso - Kate Osias

Working Woman - Olivia Ho

Spider Here - Robert Liow

The Chamber of Souls - Z. M. Quynh

Petrified - Ivanna Mendels

The Insects and Women Sing Together - Pear Nuallak

We have have first-timers and some more established writers, and all except one writer are of SEAsian descent, which I'm very proud of. Some of them you may know from the Philippine Spec Fic Annuals which is rather difficult to get outside of the Philippines, so I'm pleased to be able to have them here. They are all really talented, and I'm 100% certain that this anthology will have a particular voice that no other steampunk anthology (or anthology using the word "steampunk" in its title) has. You will have to read it to decide whether you agree with me.  

We are finalizing the AMAZING cover and I will announce that soon too! It is very similar to the postcard that Khor Shing Yin made for us to promote ourselves a while back.

SteamFUNK at Cal State U! May 8, 2014

Fabulous steamfunkateer founder Balogun Ojetade, of the Chronicles of Harriet, will be coming to Southern California next month! He will be part of EagleCon 2014's programming on indie comics, superheroes, critical thought and the creative industries surrounding them.

Balogun will be screening the new steamfunk movie "Rite of Passage"!

Thursday, May 8, 2014 (2:30 – 3:05p)
1st Floor | U-SU | Theatre

Trailer:


He will also be on a Steamfunk 101 panel discussion afterwards:

Thursday, May 8, 2014 (4:30 – 4:20p) 3rd Floor | U-SU | Alhambra Room
Steamfunk is an increasingly popular style of art and writing and a rapidly-growing area of study that combines the existing world of “steampunk” with the history and context of the African and African-American cultures.  This introduction to the world of steam funk is presented by two of the foremost leading authorities on the subject. 

Check out EagleCon's other programming and buy tickets from their website! I'm hoping to get a ride out that day so I can finally meet the man, fingers crossed!

"London Waka" by Robert Sullivan

I have just finished reading Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, edited by Grace Dillon, and Dr. Dillon ended the anthology with a superb poem by Robert Sullivan, a Maori poet (Ngā Puhi). In her introduction to Sullivan's piece, Dillon shares the gist of another of his poems, called "London Waka" which briefly lays out an alternate history in which Maori warriors take over England, ransack its museums returning the loot stored in them, and free the British colonies, thereby creating alliances with basically a quarter of the whole world. 

Steampunk POC: Psyche Corporation (Chinese-American)

HAPPY NEW LUNAR YEAR! I, er, did not actually purposefully delay putting up this interview so it would fall on the first Friday of the lunar new year, but I thought about it afterward and really liked the idea. Anyway, this month I present to you that fabulous singer known to the steampunk community as Psyche Corporation! When I first met her, I was pretty impressed by her music and singing. And then I found out she's a med student and went, "hmmm." When I met her again at CNSE, I tried to hang out with her more, but she had to go write a paper, and I went, "oh, she's one of those Asians." You know, those overachieving Asians who embody that model minority stereotype?

I say that with affection, of course, because she really is one of the sweetest and coolest people on the scene. She comes up on stage, does her thang, and then goes off to do further business without much ado. She also has a quirky sense of humour. Evidence:

Myself, PsycheCorpwith a moustachioed
banana she painted with a Yam Yam stick, and Allison Curval  

Also, she has a song about zombies.

PsycheCorp is extremely prolific; the newest album, Crypts and Codes, recently came out, and is the fourth album since 2006. The music is about as weird as the world it was created for, and I caught up with the singer recently to talk about that music, her life in general, and her involvement in steampunk!

Steampunk POC: Balogun Ojetade (Black)

It's 2013! I surprisingly have not run out of POC in steampunk to interview! How about that. And kicking off this year is Atlanta-based Balogun Ojetade, a strong proponent for Black steampunk like no other steampunk I've ever come across. Balogun has a long history centering blackness in other genres of writing, and he burst onto the steampunk scene with Moses: the Chronicles of Harriet Tubman, a steampunk take on the legend herself.

Since publishing The Chronicles of Harriet, Balogun has gone on to host the Mahogany Masquerade, a Black-centric steampunk event, and co-edit SteamFunk!, a Black-centric steampuk anthology. So I poked him recently to see if he'd be down with an interview, and he was.

Spanish-language Links of Interest: Antologia Retrofuturisme and Aristofagia

So, two awesome things! Araceli Rodriguez of the Mexican steampunk magazine Mercenarios de DIOS pinged me to have me expect the upcoming anthology Planes B: Antologia Retrofuturisme! With an all-woman design crew, Mercenarios de DIOS has produced an anthology featuring Latin@ writers, with special guest Jeff Vandermeer (his story "Fixing Hanover" has been translated for this anthology).

If you're a Spanish-language reader, you can pop on over to Ricardo Montesinos' blog to read the first chapter of his story "El Hombre Que Invento Libertalia"!

Secondly, on Steampunk Chile's Twitter feed was this link to Artefactum Vapore's song Aristofagia on SoundCloud, complete with lyrics for you to sing along. Further clicking leads to their previous track Victoria. 

Link of Interest: Cosplaying James Ng's Imperial Sheriff

Over at Beyond Victoriana, the Steampunk Panda decided to make his debut into cosplay with an ambitious project: James Ng's Imperial Sheriff: 

I don't know why anyone would want to start off in steampunk with this much work, but if you got the ovaries for it, go for it, you know? Did he succeed? Well, pop on over to read his essay and check out the pictures, and judge for yourself! It is good to see more Asian dudes in steampunk actually being Asian.

We Interrupt Srs Blog Bzns to Bring You a Signal Boost!

A friend of a friend is creating a new game about colonialism and the consequences of imperialism. From the Kickstarter description:

Dog Eat Dog is a game of colonialism and its consequences. As a group, you work together to describe one of the hundreds of small islands in the Pacific Ocean, defining the customs of the natives and the mores of the outsiders arriving to claim it. One player then assumes the role of the Occupation force, playing their capable military, their quisling government, and whatever jaded tourists and shrewd businessmen are interested in a not quite pacified territory. All the others play individual Natives, each trying in their own ways to come to terms with the new regime. The game begins when the war ends. Through a series of scenes, you play out the inevitably conflicted relationship between the two parties, deciding what the colonizers do to maintain control, which natives assimilate and which run amok, and who ends up owning the island in the end. The game will come in the form of a book, with the full rules, author's notes that explain the design process, and a brief historical overview of colonization in the Pacific.

Liam Liwanag Burke talks about his fun and creative way to create conversations about the consequences of colonialism and educate people on the history of the Pacific Islands, his background and motivations that led him to create this game, and the plans for the Kickstarter monies.

If you have any spare monies, please consider backing this history-based POC-created project that is designed to communicate how colonialism systemically affects people psychologically. 

Link of Interest: Article on "The Convert," by Danai Gurira

NPR has an article interviewing Danai Gurira, a Zimbabwe-American woman who spent most of her childhood in Harare, and whose latest play The Convert explores the psychological impact of colonialism. 

Steampunk POC: Stephanie Lai (Australian-Malaysian-Chinese)

I do not actually remember how I got to know Stephanie! We have, however, frequently exchanged words about being Malaysian, and being Malaysian-Chinese. We both vied for a spot in Crossed Genres' Eastern issue (she won with The Last Rickshaw!) and now we both have stories in Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories! She hails from Melbourne's SFF scene, which I know pretty much nothing about, so I will let her talk about it.

Stephanie! How did you get into steampunk?

Jaymee! I just kind of fell into it. I’ve always been into SFF, and I love alternate realities, and science and technology, and steampunk appealed to me as a way of combining all of my favourite things, so I started dabbling in it. Then I think I found your blog and it sucked me all the way in to steampunk.

What is steampunk like over there in Australia? Is it big? Is it small? Growing? Is it a literary trends, are there gatherings for me? Tell us o stranger from an arcane land!

Let me tell you, it is HARD WORK being an antipodean, way distant from everyone else, and needing to get people to proof and say whether my story is too Aussie to be understood. HARD WORK INDEED.

Steampunk is growing in Australia. There are a lot of readers and writers, and as a community we are definitely growing, if the number of panels being run  at cons (and the number of people attending) is

anything to go by. There’s nothing separate happening, mostly it’s just a handful of panels at Swancon and Continuum, but I think we’re moving towards maybe a specialised gathering or two.

I think within the SFF community it’s gaining greater traction, but I’m not super sure it’s growing at all outside the community.

However there is not a lot of Australian steampunk set in Australia, and that’s something I’d like to see change.

Interview: Steampowered Globe Editor Maisarah Abu Samah

A while back, I posted the Table of Contents for the Singaporean steampunk anthology, The Steampowered Globe, and I got to chatting to its editor, Maisarah Abu Samah, about putting it together. And I thought ya'll might find it interesting, especially any of you in Asia (and I know some of you are from Asia), to read a very frank interview from Maisarah about the anthology and spec fic generally.

Tell us a little bit about yourself! How did you get interested in steampunk?

I'm one of the current municipal liaisons for Nanowrimo in Singapore and I try to make people see that people in Singapore do write fiction. Which means, I try to invade literary events or make our presence known online since locally, the only fiction we see published most is ghost stories, erotic ones or erotic ghost stories. That and sad woe is me literature. Which wouldn't be bad (they can be well written) but that is all for the fiction published here.

On the subject of steampunk, I got interested in it conventions. There had always been lolitas dressed up at the cosplay conventions I go to but there wasn't that much people in steampunk fashion. Looking at online pics and shops, I feel like you could make up a back story of a character dressed in what or what kind of situation they'd be in. And past the fashion, there's always been anime like Full Metal Alchemist or books like Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate...


What was your working definition of steampunk for this anthology? What steampunk works / media did you look towards to inform your own vision of steampunk for your anthology? 

Pretty much an alternate history of "what would happen if technology advanced way faster than they would in real life for that era" was my definition.

I have a different set of references that don't actually include steampunk works when doing this anthology though, such as historical time travel romances, the Read or Die anime since it had interesting use of technology and was a "modern" alternate history, and the current books that are out this season that even included Terry Prachett's I Shall Wear Midnight. All these stretched my imagination to see what would be possible in steampunk since it would be a genre that would be more saturated in possibilites in technology advancement yet with a culture and timeline that was utterly Victorian or thereabouts anyway.

Steampunk POC: Monique Poirer (Seaconke Wampanoag)

Some of you already know Monique Poirier, either from her Beyond Victoriana essay, or from Tumblr, or you know her from cons and stuff. So it seemed a pretty natural thing to get in touch with her for this series of steampunk POC interviews. I first met her at Steampunk World's Fair 2010, and found her again through K Tempest Bradford's musings about wearing steampunk fashion (Tempest said she couldn't imagine wearing the usual corsets and bustle stuff, then point to Monique as wearing very wearable, everyday stuff). We occasionally chat late into the night, and when I first thought about doing a series of interviews with steampunk POC, it made sense to get in touch with her.

So without further ado, gentlefolk, I present, Monique Poirier:

I know you covered this in your BV essay, about how you come to start doing Native Steampunk, but how did you first get to know about steampunk? What were your impressions of it? Were you like me, as in the "it looks pretty but but but white people and colonialism" sort of way? Or were you a participant in your own way?

I first became aware of teampunk through costuming sometime 2008-2009, and when I came into it I wasn't really involved in the non-European aspect. I originally loved steampunk for the pretty pretty clothes; not gonna lie, I am a sucker for lace and bustles and corsets and brass bits and top hats and waistcoats. I love cello music. I love clockwork. I was a goth in high school and college (this is what a Native steamgoth looks like). It hadn't even occurred to me then to incorporate my ethnic identity into my costuming, or to even notice the colonialism aspect because I was so USED to being invisible as an NDN person, in whiteness and European identity being the only explored aspect, that the problematic white mono-culture aspects just seemed normal to me – but then I started reading about Steampunk online to dig for costuming ideas, and came across your articles at Tor, and started reading Beyond Victoriana, and generally thought more about incorporating my indigeneity into my Steampunk attire. After the Beyond Victoriana panel at the first Steampunk World's Fair, where I (as an audience member) brought up the fact that colonialism effects NDN folks in that our colonizers never left, I was totally ready to make my outfits much more recognizably indigenous.

"On Wooden Wings" by Paolo Chikiamco

So once in a while something interesting pops into my inbox, about POC, by POC, and Paolo Chikiamco's short story from the Philippine Speculative Fiction 6 anthology happens to be one of them. Paolo runs Rocket Kapre, a spec fic imprint dedicated to Filipino speculative fiction, and edits Usok, RK's webzine.

"On Wooden Wings" is one of those interesting stories I like to read, because while it has an accessible plot, there are nuances to the story which are best appreciated by local readers. And I'm not a local reader, so there're probably things I'm not picking up, and which are inaccessible to me, and that is cool, too. 

The action takes place not in a landed city per se, but on the ships of the Fleet of Wisdom, a floating academy of sorts that moves from port to port, educating students, providing them with workshop space and allied to the Qudarat Sultanate of Jolo (which I can't suss whether it's a fictional Sultanate based off the Sulu Sultanate or actually real. It's actually a very interesting problem because if you give a shit about historical tidbits at all, you Google and Google to find out and learn other things along the way. Besides which, Chikiamco being Filipino himself has the lateral advantage of representing his people from his perspective, not from the White Gaze, which has the qualitative difference of who controls what the reader is viewing. Given the continued history of colonization the Philippines still deals which, this is pretty significant in terms of power differentials).

The main characters are Clarita Leschot Esteybar, a Moro of mixed descent and the best student in the Fleet, and Domingo Malong, a Tagalog artist. And here we see an interplay of the conflict that comes about from the history of Spanish colonization in the Philippines, made complex with issues of mixed heritage:

Christmas Present from Allison Curval

This is a random plug! 

Allison Curval of the Clockwork Dolls has put up an entire collection of instrumentals that went into the making of the band's album Dramatis Personae.

This is a free download until Jan 1, 2012. Holiday message from Allison runs thusly:

--EXCERPT FROM THE BOOKLET--
Looking back at the past four years of The Clockwork Dolls, I can’t help but think to myself: "Wow, I was a part of this." To imagine that it all began with two kids outside of a theater taking a smoke break between shadow casting a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and led to performing in front of packed audiences from World Steam Expo, Steamcon III, and other conventions of which we could only have dreamt.
A personal milestone of my own was gracing the stage of the beautiful Gaylord National Resort at Katsucon and high fiving the audience as we marched triumphantly up the side of the stage to perform in front of the gathered masses. Not to gloat or anything, but it was pretty rockstar.
As the year 2011 winds down and the band is on a much needed break, I can’t help but look back at where we came from and remember just how innocent and humble our beginnings were. We were just a two kids with a cheap midi keyboard, a handful of borrowed gear, and a heck of a lot of moxie.
It’s with these thoughts that I’d like to share with you the full instrumental collection of The Clockwork Dolls. That’s right, you’ll hear everything from the first demo I pitched Helene to the full instrumental cuts in Dramatis Personae, and finally a the latest track that’s hanging around the old studio - appropriately called “The Finale Mix” of Maiden Voyage.
I hope you enjoyed listening to those tracks as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. In order to preserve the full “demo” experience, and because I’m a lazy person, the tracks have undergone minimum mastering. Regardless, I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say, “Wow we’ve grown ... a lot.”
-Allison Curval

Congrats on a great four years, Clockwork Dolls, and cheers to more years of wonderful music! 

Hope ya'll're having a wonderful holiday season =)

We Interrupt Very Srs Blog Bzns to Bring You A ToC: The Steampowered Globe

So, there hasn't been that big a buzz about this everywhere, because firstly, The Steampowered Globe is a collection of steampunk short stories from Singapore, and secondly, it's published by Two Trees, a tiny little press in Singapore itself, with the succint description, "Two-person family business making books that we want to make because we can." These people are already out for my heart after making me burst out laughing with its website's layout.

The anthology is the result of a collaboration between the Happy Smiley Writers Group, edited by Maisarah Bte Abu Samah and Rosemary Lim. And here is the table of contents! oh my goodness will you look at that nary a white surname in that list.

"Ascension" by Leow Hui Min Annabeth
"No, They Dream Of Mechanical Hearts" by Claire Cheong
"Morrow's Knight" by Viki Chua
"Colours" by Yuen Xiang Hao
"The Morning Glory Incident" by Mint Kang
"Help! Same Angler Fish's Been Gawking for Eight Minutes!" by Ng Kum Hoon
"Captain Bells and the Sovereign State of Discordia" by JY Yang

Maisarah tells me that she has very much to say about the selection process, so stay tuned!

You can order the Steampowered Globe from Two Trees. Dead-tree versions only, it seems, alas, BUT, they WILL do international shipping! Prices are SG$ 18 for locals, SG$20 for folks in Asia, and SG$25 for those of us in the rest of the world! I know, I know, not enough time for stocking stuffing, but! You can order them anyway.

Singaporean writers, Singaporean editors, Singaporean press. Yes, technically I'm supposed to hate on them, since they're on the wrong side of the Causeway, but they are kind of on the other side of the Pacific anyway, so, bagi chance lorrr.... ;D

"The Path Without End" by Elizabeth Lameman, Anishinaabe/Mètis

The Path Without End from Elizabeth Lameman on Vimeo.

Elizabeth Lameman, an Anihinaabe/Mètis creator of the graphic novel "The West Was Lost," made this video after she was "fed up with the inability of words to capture [her] interpreation of Native Steampunk." You should pop over to her blog to read about the process behind making this animation, which is a retelling of Anishinaabe stories about Moon People. The soundtrack to the video, "Prosperity," is by Cris Derksen, a Cree cellist.

The result combines multi-textured visuals, made with familiar objects such as beads, with a narrative about interplanetary travel that could take place in any time period, a story that has been handed down for generations, and a soundtrack that also does its own work of combining different kinds of sounds.

Please go check out Beth's commentary on making this video, and leave her comments on Vimeo if you have an account! When I first watched it, I... I had no idea what was going on, and she explained to me, that it's about "travel back and forth between worlds and the Wetiko chasing us wherever we go." And it was amusing for her, because her kid, who's three, knows exactly what's going on, but an adult who didn't grow up immersed in Anishinaabe culture, like yours truly, has a much harder time understanding what's being depicted.

It makes me tip my hat all the more, actually, that it is so recognizably steampunk, and yet so culturally specific. It makes me really happy to see more of this kind of work out there!

Elizabeth Lameman, Anishinaabe/Mètis, everybody! 

Review: Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell

I'd been excited to read Tobias Buckell's Crystal Rain for a while, for several reasons: 1) It's got a pretty bitchin' cover, with a dark-skinned man with a hook for a left hand and a flying ship; 2) it's a POC-centric novel, and I was curious to see how it worked out; 3) Tobias Buckell identifies strongly as POC, as Caribbean, despite passing as a generic white American dude.

I did not get around to reading Crystal Rain for several reasons: 1) grad school; 2) I somehow couldn't find a way to get my mitts on it on Amazon (Buckell's store only offers a hardcover); and 3) grad school (seriously, moving to a new city and getting used to grad school sucks up your time. Things nobody tells you). Also, priorities and all that meant that I had to pick other texts to read that more strongly coded as steampunk, and I wasn't sure whether Crystal Rain did.

Well, it kinda does and doesn't.