Nonfiction Steampunk

The Steampunk User’s Manual: An Illustrated Practical and Whimsical Guide to Creating Retro-futurist Dreams

Name: The Steampunk User’s Manual: An Illustrated Practical and Whimsical Guide to Creating Retro-futurist Dreams
Rating: 3.84 (200 reviews)
Author: Jeff Vandermeer

Jeff Vandermeer

3.84 200 Ratings

Ongoing Status

14 Views

Start Reading

Synopsis

Steampunk, the retro-futuristic cultural movement, has become a substantial and permanent genre in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction. A large part of its appeal is that, at its core, Steampunk is about doing it yourself: building on the past while also innovating and creating something original. VanderMeer’s latest book offers practical and inspirational guidance for readers to find their individual path into this realm. Including sections on art, fashion, architecture, crafts, music, performance, and storytelling, The Steampunk User’s Manual provides a conceptual how-to guide that motivates and awes both the armchair enthusiast and the committed creator. Examples range from the utterly doable to the completely over-the-top, encouraging participation and imagination at all levels.

Books similar to The Steampunk User’s Manual: An Illustrated Practical and Whimsical Guide to Creating Retro-futurist Dreams

The Steampunk Bible

★ 3.91

Jeff Vandermeer

Steampunk—a grafting of Victorian aesthetic and punk rock attitude onto various forms of science-fiction culture—is a phenomenon that has come to influence film, literature, art, music, fashion, and more. The Steampunk Bible is the first compendium about the movement, tracing its roots in the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells through its most recent expression in movies such as Sherlock Holmes. Its adherents celebrate the inventor as an artist and hero, re-envisioning and crafting retro technologies including antiquated airships and robots. A burgeoning DIY community has brought a distinctive Victorian-fantasy style to their crafts and art. Steampunk evokes a sense of adventure and discovery, and embraces extinct technologies as a way of talking about the future. This ultimate manual will appeal to aficionados and novices alike as author Jeff VanderMeer takes the reader on a wild ride through the clockwork corridors of Steampunk history.

Praise for The Steampunk Bible:

"The Steampunk Bible is an informed, informative and beautifully illustrated survey of the subject."
-The Financial Times

"The Steampunk Bible is far and away the most intriguing catalog of all things steam yet written."
-The Austin Chronicle

“It’s hard to imagine how VanderMeer and Chambers could have put together a stronger collection. Its publication marks a significant, self-conscious moment in the history of the movement.”

—PopMatters.com

Art of Steampunk, The: Extraordinary Devices and Ingenious Contraptions from the Leading Artists of the Steampunk Movement

★ 3.98

Art Donovan

Dive into the world of Steampunk where machines are functional pieces of art and the design is only as limited as the artist's imagination.

Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016

★ 4.01

Ursula K. Le Guin

"Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality. . . ."

Words Are My Matter collects talks, essays, introductions to beloved books, and book reviews by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of our fore- most public literary intellectuals. Words Are My Matter is essential reading. It is a manual for investigating the depth and breadth of con- temporary fiction — and, through the lens of deep considerations of contemporary writing, a way of exploring the world we are all living in.

"We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.” *

Le Guin is one of those authors and this is another of her moments. She has published more than sixty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction, children’s books to poetry, and has received many lifetime achievement awards including the Library of Congress Living Legends award. This year her publications include three survey collections: The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas; The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories; and The Complete Orsinia: Malafrena, Stories and Songs (Library of America).

* From “Freedom” A speech in acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories

★ 4.21

Charlie Jane Anders

Things are scary right now. We’re all being swept along by a tidal wave of history, and it’s easy to feel helpless. But we’re not helpless: we have minds, and imaginations, and the ability to visualize other worlds and valiant struggles. And writing can be an act of resistance that reminds us that other futures and other ways of living are possible.

Full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish during the present emergency, Never Say You Can’t Survive is the perfect manual for creativity in unprecedented times.

Dishonored: The Dunwall Archives

★ 4.40

Dave Marshall

The artworks, manuscripts, and scraps of information gathered throughout Dunwall are collected at last. It has been a long and difficult journey to archive these tales of our cursed city, but it is my hope that you, reading this now, will take heed, and learn from those gone before you to forge your own destiny. The Dunwall Archives are now yours--what will you do with them now that you know the truth in these pages?

Walking Your Octopus: A Guidebook to the Domesticated Cephalopod

★ 4.54

Brian Kesinger

A beautifully produced and richly illustrated book that showcases the day-to-day adventures of independent girl-about-town Victoria Prismall and her pet land octopus Otto. Thirty panoramic, full-page illustrations humorously chronicle the duo's home and social activities that include (among other things) bathing, biking, dating, cooking, playing croquet, and pumpkin carving. Accompanying text explains the "do"s and "don't"s of living with a large land octopus. The book's art is extremely detailed, and each illustration tells its own visual story. The Victorian era characters and period-influenced design elements combine to create a wonderful, collectible art-object for those who still value the classic elegance of ink-on-paper. The hardcover binding is plussed with two-layer embossing and spot varnish, and the interior is printed on extra heavy paper. An exquisite volume for lovers of books, art and pets.

Steampunk: The Art of Victorian Futurism

★ 4.10

Jay Strongman

A Jules Verne world of extraordinary visions and contraptions as portrayed by the top 30 artists in the genre.

Steampunk is a resurgent art, cult, and lowbrow movement celebrating the romantic elegance of the Victorian era and blending in modern scientific advances—synthesizing imaginative technologies such as steam-driven robots, analog supercomputers, and ultramodern dirigibles. Celebrating the elegant and the strange, the visually arresting steampunk works collected here include sculpture, installations, graphics, bizarre oils, and mind-warping contraptions—from skull cameras to rocket-fueled diving bells.

Featured artists: Tom Banwell, Wayne Martin Belger, Greg Brotherton, Frank Buchwald, Chris Conte, Doktor A., Eric Freitas, Dr. Grordbort, Stéphane Halleux, Mike Libby, Pierre Matter, Kevin Mowrer, Kazuhiko Nakamura, James Ng, Sam Van Olffen, Nozomu Shibata, Haru Suekichi, Brian Poor, and Daniel Proulx.

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography

★ 4.66

Rob Wilkins

'People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.'

At the time of his death in 2015, award-winning and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett was working on his finest story yet - his own.

At six years old, Terry was told by his headteacher that he would never amount to anything.

He spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. At sixty-six, Terry had lived a life full of achievements: becoming one of the UK's bestselling writers, winning the Carnegie Medal and being awarded a knighthood for services to literature.

Following his untimely death from Alzheimer's disease, the mantle of completing Terry's memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the author's literary estate.

Drawing on his own extensive memories, along with those of Terry's family, friends, fans and colleagues, Rob recounts Terry's extraordinary story - from his early childhood to the literary phenomenon that his Discworld series became; and how he met and coped with the challenges that 'The Embuggerance' of Alzheimer's brought with it.