![]() First edition | |
Author | James P. Blaylock |
---|---|
Cover artist | James Warhola |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Ace Books |
Publication date | 1986 |
Media type | Print (Paperback) |
Pages | 247 |
ISBN | 0-441-34258-2 |
Preceded by | The Digging Leviathan |
Followed by | Lord Kelvin's Machine |
Homunculus is a comic science fiction novel by American writer James P. Blaylock. It was published in 1986. It was the second book in Blaylock's loose steampunk trilogy, following The Digging Leviathan (1984) and preceding Lord Kelvin's Machine (1992). The book was originally published as an Ace paperback by the Berkeley Publishing Group and is included in the Adventures of Langon St. Ives collection.
Blaylock used the book London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew to research the period setting. [1]
A dirigible with a dead pilot has been passing over Victorian London in a decaying orbit for some years, arousing the interest of the Royal Society, as well as scientist-explorer Langdon St. Ives and the evangelist/counterfeiter Shiloh. Shiloh is convinced that the dirigible carries his father, a tiny space alien, but withholds this knowledge from vivisectionist Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, who he is paying to reanimate Shiloh's dead mother, none other than Joanna Southcott. Narbondo and the evil millionaire Kelso Drake have their own interest in the alien; Drake possesses its spacecraft, which he uses for perverse purposes in one of his chain of stop-and-go brothels.
St. Ives and his friends of the Trismegistus Club are more concerned with the inheritance of Jack Owlesby, a fine young fellow affianced to Dorothy, the beautiful daughter of toymaker/inventor William Keeble, who builds jolly boxes for space aliens, oxygenators, and gigantic emeralds. Jack's late father bequeathed him just such a gem, but also left behind dark knowledge developed in association with the evil Narbondo. St. Ives and the heroic tobacconist Theophilus Godal suspect that Narbondo and his assistant, the pimply Willis Pule, are using this knowledge to raise the dead, possibly for nefarious purposes. When poor Bill Kraken steals what everyone assumes to be Owlesby's emerald in a fit of alien-induced delirium tremens, the ambitions of Shiloh, Narbondo, Drake, and Pule collide with the heroism of St Ives and Godal and the scientific greed of Parsons of the Royal Academy as Hampstead Heath turns into a carnival of flying skulls, crumbling ghouls, crashing spaceships, and the sparking perversity of the dreadful Marseilles Pinkle. [2]
Homunculus was awarded the Philip K. Dick Award in 1988.
James Paul Blaylock is an American fantasy author. He is noted for a distinctive, humorous style, as well as being one of the pioneers of the steampunk genre of science fiction. Blaylock has cited Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens as his inspirations.
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American "Wild West", where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.
Timothy Thomas Powers is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare. His 1987 novel On Stranger Tides served as inspiration for the Monkey Island franchise of video games and was optioned for adaptation into the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Robert Fleming Rankin is a prolific British author of comedic fantasy novels. Born in Parsons Green, London, he started writing in the late 1970s, and first entered the bestsellers lists with Snuff Fiction in 1999, by which time his previous eighteen books had sold around one million copies. His books are a mix of science fiction, fantasy, the occult, urban legends, running gags, metafiction, steampunk and outrageous characters. According to the biography printed in some Corgi editions of his books, Rankin refers to his style as 'Far Fetched Fiction' in the hope that bookshops will let him have a section to himself. Many of Rankin's books are bestsellers.
Stephen Hunt is a writer best known for a series of fantasy novels with steampunk elements known as the Jackelian series, whose central setting is a nation somewhat resembling Victorian England named the Kingdom of Jackals. Influences on his work include: Jack Williamson, Stephen Goldin, David Gemmell, Bruce Sterling, Larry Niven and Michael Moorcock.
The Sparrow (1996) is the first novel by author Mary Doria Russell. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis and the British Science Fiction Association Award. It was followed by a sequel, Children of God, in 1998. The title refers to Gospel of Matthew 10:29–31, which relates that not even a sparrow falls to the earth without God's knowledge thereof.
Quicksilver is a historical novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2003. It is the first volume of The Baroque Cycle, his late Baroque historical fiction series, succeeded by The Confusion and The System of the World. Quicksilver won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for the Locus Award in 2004. Stephenson organized the structure of Quicksilver such that chapters have been incorporated into three internal books titled "Quicksilver", "The King of the Vagabonds", and "Odalisque". In 2006, each internal book was released in separate paperback editions, to make the 900 pages more approachable for readers. These internal books were originally independent novels within the greater cycle during composition.
Book of Thoth is a name given to many ancient Egyptian texts supposed to have been written by Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and knowledge. They include many texts that were claimed to exist by ancient authors and a magical book that appears in an Egyptian work of fiction.
The Anubis Gates is a 1983 time travel fantasy novel by American writer Tim Powers. It won the 1983 Philip K. Dick Award and 1984 Science Fiction Chronicle Award.
Gillian Honorine Mary Herbert, Baroness Hemingford,, known professionally as Jill Paton Walsh, was an English novelist and children's writer. She may be known best for her Booker prize-nominated novel Knowledge of Angels and the Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mysteries that have completed and continued the work of Dorothy L. Sayers.
Weird West is a term used, often collectively, for the hybrid genres of fantasy Western, horror Western and science fiction Western. The term originated with DC's Weird Western Tales in 1972, but the idea is older as the genres have been blended since the 1930s, possibly earlier, in B-movie Westerns, comic books, movie serials and pulp magazines. Individually, the hybrid genres combine elements of the Western genre with those of fantasy, horror and science fiction respectively.
Timewyrm: Apocalypse is an original Doctor Who novel, published by Virgin Publishing in their New Adventures range of Doctor Who novels, and is the third volume in the Timewyrm quartet. It features the Seventh Doctor and Ace, as well as brief flashbacks and a telepathic message of the Second Doctor.
Love and War is an original novel written by Paul Cornell and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Seventh Doctor, Ace and introduces a new companion, Bernice Summerfield. A prelude to the novel, also penned by Cornell, appeared in Doctor Who Magazine #192.
Lord Kelvin's Machine is a science fiction novel by American writer James P. Blaylock. It was released in 1992 by Arkham House in an edition of 4,015 copies. The author's first book published by Arkham House, the novel is the third in Blaylock's Steampunk series, following The Digging Leviathan (1984) and Homunculus (1986). A substantially different novelette version first appeared in the Mid-December 1985 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.
The Digging Leviathan is a science fiction novel by American writer James P. Blaylock. It was first published in 1984 by Ace Books. The source was Blaylock's first novel The Chinese Circus, which was never finished.
The Stone Giant (1989) is a fantasy novel by American writer James Blaylock, a prequel to his first published book, The Elfin Ship, and thus the end of a loose trilogy of comic fantasy novels including The Disappearing Dwarf.
Shiloh Thomas Fernandez is an American actor. He is known for his roles in the television series Jericho and United States of Tara, and the films Deadgirl, Red Riding Hood, and the 2013 remake of Evil Dead.
Lady Mechanika is a steampunk comic created by comic artist Joe Benitez.
“Seventy-Two Letters” is a science fiction novella by American writer Ted Chiang, published in June 2000 in the Ellen Datlow's anthology Vanishing Acts. The novella can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 6 (2001), edited by David G. Hartwell and Steampunk (2008), edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. It is included in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others (2002).