Infernal Devices (35 page)

  This next wave is also largely dominated by women, including Gail Carriger, Cherie Priest, Karin Lowachee, and Ekaterina Sedia, and has begun to move away from being purely Victorian or English in setting or culture. In another generation, the true energy behind steampunk may have moved away from Anglo settings and perspectives altogether.

  But a term can also become a trap, and although there's a certain element of ghosts and séances in the way that Infernal Devices has been called back into print by the new-found popularity of modern-era Steampunk fiction, it's also a kind of irritation that I feel in having Jeter conjured up this way. Jeter wasn't a Steampunk before the publication of Infernal Devices (and Morlock Nights) and he wasn't really a Steampunk afterwards. Instead, he was, and is, a subversive agent in the service of dark science fiction

  Jeter's fiction, throughout his career, has been intelligently idiosyncratic and literary, with similarities to writers like Richard Calder and Philip K. Dick (who named a character in his novel Va
lis
after Jeter). In short, he's always given readers his dark take on the world. It's with great fondness that I remember reading novels like Jeter's cult classic
Dr.
Adder
,
The Glass Hammer
,
Mantis
,
Farewell Horizontal,
and
Noir
. Hopefully,
Infernal Devices
will serve as a gateway drug for readers who want more of Jeter's unique vision.

  As for Steampunk, it's in the process of re-investigating itself, as publication of
Infernal Devices
proves, but also of going beyond what's come before. The commercial success of Steampunk fiction is gradually opening up possibilities for lots of strange and interesting stuff to be published under that term. In addition, more and more international and multicultural steampunk is being written, and Steampunk may even eventually move out of the 1800s, exploring other periods while applying a similar aesthetic.

  Will Steampunk eventually eat itself and die out? Perhaps, perhaps not. But at least we'll always have
Infernal Devices.

Quotes attributed to Jeter are excerpted from
The Steampunk Bible, 
Abrams Image, copyright 2011.

 
 

ANGRY ROBOT

 

A member of the Osprey Group
Midland House, West Way
Botley, Oxford
OX2 0HP
UK

 

www.angryrobotbooks.com
 

Tick. Tock.

 

Originally published in 1987
This Angry Robot edition 2011
 

Copyright © K W Jeter 1987

 

K W Jeter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

 

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

 

EBook ISBN: 978 0 85766 098 5

 

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

 

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.