29 May, 2001: The Steampunk Trilogy
File this one under "guilty pleasures." To give you an idea, the first of the three novellas that make up Paul DiFilippo's The Steampunk Trilogy deals with a Victorian mad scientist creating a highly-sexed newt-woman. The villain of the piece is named Lord Chuting-Payne. DiFilippo is that kind of writer. And even though he's not a great prose stylist, I find his work fun, if not particularly memorable (with the possible exception of a story I think was by DiFilippo, involving a courier who was having problems with Police lyrics slipping into his consciousness; that story was a peach). The second of the three novellas, featuring a historical figure, Louis Agassiz, teeming up with the Venus Hottentot's daughter in an effort to find a powerful (and vulgar) fetish that various magician types wish to use for Great Badness, is amusing, featuring a few nods to New England folklore and Lovecraftian pseudo-folklore; the third novella, starring Emily Dickenson and Walt Whitman in a voyage through the afterlife, mostly left me flat. I can't recommend The Steampunk Trilogy as any kind of quality literature -- I'm sure I'll remember nothing about it, not even the atrocious puns, a few months from now -- but it'd make a fine beach or airplane book.