io9 
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San Francisco, 10:21 PM
Mon Dec 14
25 posts in the last 24 hours
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One of my favorite things about Leviathan (after the freaking awesome warships) is the utter lack of romance, which is particularly hard to find in young adult novels. There is a tiny hint at attraction between Deryn and Alek, but I find it refreshing that both characters clearly have more important things to do than worry about crushes. Westerfeld is also particularly good at writing strong female protagonists who are not schmoopy romantics or damsels in distress.
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Of course, this could be mere coincidence, but I know that the podcast existed.
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10/14/09
Hint: GW ain't Steampunk.
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10/14/09
I actually miss when Steampunk was stylish and Victorian and was richly textured in settings that evoked the romance and dangers of both our technological progress and historical traditions. I miss Jules Verne and Georges Melies and Walt Disney and Karel Zeman. Damnit, I'm even wistful for the Wild Wild West movie, which at least LOOKED good.
Now get off my damn lawn!
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Some of the images are really really cool though, my only issue with Steampunk is that it tends to focus so heavily on Victorian and Edwardian culture and time-reference that it almost ignores the rest of the world. I'd love to see some creative people come up with what a Steampunk Asia or Africa or South America would have been like - or by extension, would be like now.
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Interestingly, in terms of looks, what you would see in something like Sakura Wars isn't substantively different from what you would see in something like Wild Wild West. The difference is context, which is fascinating enough in it's own right.
One of the problems with exploring Steampunk in non-Euro-American cultures (Meiji! Qing! Tanzimat!) is that unless it's actualy done BY people from those cultures, it's just cultural apropriation... More white people's Orientalism. It would require getting more non-white, non-European people interested in it, which is not the sort of thing you can force.