Steampunk'd — Jean Rabe

MICHAEL A. STACKPOLE * DONALD J. BINGLE * WILLIAM C. DIETZ * JODY LYNN NYE * BRADLEY P. BEAULIEU * DEAN EGGETT * STEPHEN D. SULLIVAN * MATTHEW P. MAYO * C. A. VERSTRAETE * PAUL GENESSE * MARY LOUISE EKLUND * MARC TASSIN * SKIP & PENNY WILLIAMS * ROBERT E. VARDEMAN

Science fiction is the literature of what if, and steampunk takes the what if along a particular time stream. What if steam power was combined with future tech in the Victorian era? How would that era change, and how would it change our present and future?

From a Franco-British race for Kentucky coal to one woman's determination to let no man come between her and her inventions... from an attempt to turn lead into gold to a reporter's cross-country airship journey to cover the story of a scientist out to tame the desert's heat...from the hunt for a near-extinct creature to an attempt to rid Europe of the fey... from "machine whisperers" to a Thomas Edison experiment gone awry, here are fourteen original tales of what might have been had steam powered inventions in new directions in an earlier age.