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'It is the cusp of World War I, and all the European powers are arming up. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition. The British Darwinists employ fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet.
'Aleksandar Ferdinand, prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battle-torn Stormwalker and a loyal crew of men. Deryn Sharp is a commoner, a girl disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered. With the Great War brewing, Alek's and Deryn's paths cross in the most unexpected way ... taking them both aboard the Leviathan on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure. One that will change both their lives forever.' (From the Penguin website.)
'In this article, we offer an explanation of steampunk and theorize the genre and its functions within Scott Westerfeld’s YA series Leviathan. In order to do so, we examine the “cogs” of the genre machine and its use of nostalgic longing for a revised past/future to rebel against present day cultural norms. Critics note that steampunk takes an historical past and either reimagines it or repositions it in the future. This literary form, then, is shaped through a confluence of history, cultural memory, and fictional technologies. In mechanical fashion, the cogs of steampunk move with and against each other to produce and revise an imagined “What if?” We posit that steampunk’s complexities might be better understood by examining the parts of the machine, those cogs that make the engine of steampunk work. We identify three major elements—Victorian history, the workings of cultural memory, and the modification of and recombining of past technologies and literary forms into the genre of steampunk—and then apply these to an analysis of Westerfeld’s trilogy.'
'In this article, we offer an explanation of steampunk and theorize the genre and its functions within Scott Westerfeld’s YA series Leviathan. In order to do so, we examine the “cogs” of the genre machine and its use of nostalgic longing for a revised past/future to rebel against present day cultural norms. Critics note that steampunk takes an historical past and either reimagines it or repositions it in the future. This literary form, then, is shaped through a confluence of history, cultural memory, and fictional technologies. In mechanical fashion, the cogs of steampunk move with and against each other to produce and revise an imagined “What if?” We posit that steampunk’s complexities might be better understood by examining the parts of the machine, those cogs that make the engine of steampunk work. We identify three major elements—Victorian history, the workings of cultural memory, and the modification of and recombining of past technologies and literary forms into the genre of steampunk—and then apply these to an analysis of Westerfeld’s trilogy.'
