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y separately published work icon The Icarus Plot single work   novella   romance   fantasy  
Issue Details: First known date: 2014... 2014 The Icarus Plot
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Ivana March runs a very special toy shop in the heart of Victorian London. The last person she expects to see enter it is an earl. Not that she has time to entertain him. Someone is stealing children, and the street kids whisper tales of a “Metal Man”. Ivana must find the monster, rescue the children, and if the earl really wants to help, he can come with her. Only, no one warned her she’d have to venture to places better left unexplored. A good thing, then, that the new Earl of Somer is a noted explorer. When the two of them join forces, what could possibly go wrong?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Exhibitions

10702549
10692851

Notes

  • Steampunk note: in an alt.Victorian London, Ivana March runs a toyshop that is primarily a front for the distribution of labour-saving household devices and self-defense tools for women. Ivana's motivation is the violent murder of a school-friend by the young aristocrat who claimed to be courting her. The story also involves a 'Metal Man' who is abducting children: he turns out to be a veteran badly damaged in the war, whose trauma has given him an obsession with prosthetics, especially a desire for wings.
  • 'The Icarus Plot' follows a character who made her first appearance in 'The Lion and the Mouse'.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • c
      Australia,
      c
      :
      Jenny Schwartz ,
      2014 .
      image of person or book cover 2519785668724329438.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 63p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 30 December 2014.

Other Formats

Works about this Work

No Stairs in the Bush? Disability and Australian Steampunk Catriona Mills , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , vol. 36 no. 1 2023; (p. 34-48)

'With a combination of fantastical and anachronistic technologies and neo-Victorian settings, steampunk emerged from a niche genre to a widespread phenomenon. But this, in turn, raised urgent questions about the "punk"-ness of steampunk and the extent to which it can critique, avoid, and repurpose the Victorian trappings that it adopts. This article examines one such query: whether steampunk can interrogate its ableist underpinnings and, particularly, whether Australian steampunk writers do so in a way that is distinctly Australian. Beginning with a brief overview of Australian steampunk and the genre's conflicted approach to disability aesthetics and roleplaying, the author examines three case studies: the invisibility of disability in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century proto-steampunk stories, prosthetics as a vehicle for imperial trauma, and the recurrent motif of the clockwork heart. As Australian steampunk exists outside the genre's mainstream, so too is it able to speak to the marginal elements, such as underlying ableism, that the mainstream too often ignores.' (Publication abstract)

No Stairs in the Bush? Disability and Australian Steampunk Catriona Mills , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , vol. 36 no. 1 2023; (p. 34-48)

'With a combination of fantastical and anachronistic technologies and neo-Victorian settings, steampunk emerged from a niche genre to a widespread phenomenon. But this, in turn, raised urgent questions about the "punk"-ness of steampunk and the extent to which it can critique, avoid, and repurpose the Victorian trappings that it adopts. This article examines one such query: whether steampunk can interrogate its ableist underpinnings and, particularly, whether Australian steampunk writers do so in a way that is distinctly Australian. Beginning with a brief overview of Australian steampunk and the genre's conflicted approach to disability aesthetics and roleplaying, the author examines three case studies: the invisibility of disability in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century proto-steampunk stories, prosthetics as a vehicle for imperial trauma, and the recurrent motif of the clockwork heart. As Australian steampunk exists outside the genre's mainstream, so too is it able to speak to the marginal elements, such as underlying ableism, that the mainstream too often ignores.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 30 Jan 2017 13:15:52
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