Quill and Ink
A World of Gaslight and Gadgets
By Cindy Spencer Pape
Steampunk, to me, began not as a lifestyle or cosplay, but in fiction. I’d read it, loved it, and
couldn’t wait to write it. The freedom the genre offers for an author is limitless. Any technology,
any magic, any social commentary you want to use can all be fit into a steampunk world. Then I
met some other steampunk folks. Finally, I understood why I’d saved vintage hankies and
antique jewelry, loved lacy blouses and sturdy boots. I’d been waiting for steampunk all my life,
as well as for all my career in fiction.
In March of 2011 Carina Press launched a book that was very near and dear to my heart. Steam
& Sorcery, first book in the brand new Gaslight Chronicles hit the shelf, and it’s been a roller
coaster ride of fun ever since. Earning a 4.5 Star Review from Romantic Times and the EPIC
award for Science Fiction Romance, it’s been, by far, my most successful book to date. In April
of that year, we released a Gaslight Chronicles novella, Photographs and Phantoms, which is a
FREE download from all major e-tailers.
Later, a longer novella, Kilts & Kraken, takes the Chronicles to Scotland in June. It will be
available in print as part of Carina Press’s second anniversary celebration, in the Editor’s Choice
anthology. Next, a second full-length novel, Moonlight & Mechanicals, and for anyone
following the series, told Wink and Liam’s story. Ashes and Alchemy is a shorter story, looking a
little more at the middle class in my world, and Dragons & Dirigibles is a novella that has a
touch of the Gothic in it. The eighth book, Ether & Elephants, will release in autumn 2015.
When I set out to build a world for the Gaslight Chronicles, I knew a few things. I wanted to start
early in the steampunk era, and build the technology over the successive books. Therefore in the
first, we’re only a decade or so after the introduction of Babbage engines changed the world, and
event a lot of traditional SF alternate history also hinges on. Computers, or engines, are still big
and bulky and limited. By book 4, you’ll start seeing terminals connected to a larger machine—
sort of where we were in the 1980s. Transportation and communications—airships, steam cars
and telephones, are also changing, and as the series progresses, the difference from reality and
my steampunk world becomes greater. Other aspects of the Victorian world haven’t changed.
Dickens’ London is still a dark, bleak place to be poor. The gap between wealthy and poor is still
enormous. Women are still forced into wearing corsets and hoops, and being chaperoned
wherever they go. By book 3, though, we’re starting to see some changes as the first few classes
of women graduate from Lovelace College, a school my fictionalized version of Lady Lovelace
established at Oxford for women in the sciences. The air in London has gotten worse due to all
the coal smoke, and now those who can afford them wear gasmasks when they walk outdoors.
The poor often die of black lung disease.