Saturday, August 22, 2009

Is 'Gods in Jungle' Steampunk?

After reading Cherie Priest's blogpost 'Steampunk: What it is, why I came to like it, and why I think it’ll stick around', I've suddenly realised that my tome has a lot of similarities to Steampunk:

- technology mainly based on clockwork and steam, though there is electricity (and part of one chapter deals directly with how power is generated in this world); also a weapons technology which goes little further than muskets, with a preference for hand-to-hand combat

- clothes, accessories, fetishes (in the non-sexual sense) that are distinctly pre 20th century; the wards people wear in particular tend to be home made from bits and pieces that have personal, not commercial, value

- an inclusiveness in the range of characters; the only character who is defined as having a 'white' skin is Maeduul, with all the others having a range of brown skins; Maeduul is also explicitly 'deformed' and 'bred for a purpose'; furthermore, as I was revising the book I came to the conclusion that a number of characters veered away from the classic heterosexual stereotype without bothering to define themselves as gay/lesbian/bisexual - sex just 'is'; also the age range of the key characters (7 different POV characters and another 3 central to the story) goes from teenage innocents to old wiseheads

- a wealth of societal stuff, including three distinct classes (Clansfolk, Commonfolk, Servants), each of which has a stereotypical misunderstanding of how the others operate, behave, believe in - some huge clashes of world views which are the key driver for the storyline

- intensely rich mythologies, and some very real non-terrestrial critters which play a (passive yet important) role in the story.

... in fact the only thing I got wrong was to stage the story on a world which is most definitely not Earth, To-to!

But still, another potential audience for the book. Wish I'd thought of this before I sent out all those queries.

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