The San Francisco-based science fiction publishing house Tachyon Publications sponsors monthly readings by SF authors, and last week’s event focused on steampunk, the hot “new” subgenre, with appearances by Joe Lansdale and Rudy Rucker, the latter of whom helped create the field eighteen years ago with the novel The Hollow Earth. (Lansdale read from his 2006 novel, Flaming London, in which Mark Twain and Jules Verne team up with a genetically enhanced seal for a rousing adventure; man, we would have loved to have seen that.)
The evening also featured a presentation by the exquisitely dressed Richard Bottoms, one of the lead organizers of a weekend-long steampunk convention that will take place at the end of the month.