Short Story Saturday: Resurrection Engines

Scott Harrison's Resurrection Engines (which features my steampunk-inspired take on Moby Dick, entitled There Leviathan) has been reviewed by James Lovegrove in the FT! Yes, that's right, the actual Financial Times! And here is the review in question.


Resurrection Engines sees an assortment of authors reimagine literary classics through the prism of steampunk (a subgenre of science fiction that celebrates Victorian invention and technology in a knowing, retro-futuristic style).

Robots abound. Dr Jekyll’s monstrous alter-ego is a sentient military exoskeleton, Peter Pan creates his own scrap-metal Lost Boys, and Silas Marner, in a moving tale by Alison Littlewood, adopts an artificial Eppie.Resurrection Engines sees an assortment of authors reimagine literary classics through the prism of steampunk (a subgenre of science fiction that celebrates Victorian invention and technology in a knowing, retro-futuristic style).

The contributors who stray furthest from the brief bring back the richest rewards. Juliet E McKenna’s feminist rewrite of She is cunning and funny, and Philip Palmer adds aliens to The Woman in White to great effect. Adam Roberts’s delirious “The Crime of the Ancient Mariner” replaces Coleridge’s sea voyage with time travel, and works a treat.

A foreword from the editor, contextualising the stories, would have been welcome. Nonetheless, this anthology is both varied and consistently entertaining.


Go us!

You can pick up a copy of Resurrection Engines here.