ISBN 1-56858-028-2 (US hbk)

"Victoria" by Paul Di Filippo
(short story... originally published in Amazing Stories , Volume LXVI, No.2, June 1991),

"Hottentots"
(novella),

"Walt and Emily"
(short story... originally published in Interzone , Nos.77 & 78, November and December 1993).

"First there was cyberpunk, pioneered by the likes of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Now comes steampunk, the twisted offspring of science fiction and post-modernism, a sassy, unpredictable tongue-in-cheek style of which the incomparable Paul Di Filippo is master.

"Inside the wide realm of science fiction or out, there is nothing like the three short novels in The Steampunk Trilogy . Set in a very alternative 19th Century, they feature a mix of historical and imaginary figures. In Victoria , a young and lissome Queen Victoria disappears from her throne and is replaced by a sexy human/newt clone. The race is on to find the original Victoria and hide the terrible secret from the nation. In Hottentots , Massachusetts is threatened by H.P.Lovecraft-style monsters from the deep and, of course, Hottentots; in Walt and Emily , Emily Dickinson hooks up with a robust and lusty Walt Whitman, loses her virginity, and travels to a dimension beyond time where she and her companions meet the future Allen Ginsberg.

"With remarkable linguistic and historic precision, Di Filippo recreates a people and era fascinating to our late 20th Century sensibilities precisely because of their strict sets of social rules -- and shatters the perfect picture with an outrageous premise." [jacket blurb, US hbk, 1995]

"Paul Di Filippo's manic variations on 19th century cultural history The Steampunk Trilogy -- probably the single most unalloyed delight of the year." --Gary K.Wolfe (in Locus , Issue #421, Vol.36 No.2, February 1996).

"Paul Di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy is the literary equivalent of Max Ernst's collages of 19th century steel-engravings, spooky, haunting, hilarious." --William Gibson.

"Deeply funny and richly informative. History will never be the same." --Rudy Rucker.

"I regard the publication of The Steampunk Trilogy , which not only makes history come alive but also invests it with a cockeyed verisimilitude, as long overdue. Di Filippo, paradoxically, allows us to confront the world face-on by depicting it refreshingly anew. His skill with both words and concepts rivals that of Michael Jordan with a basketball." --Michael Bishop.

"Di Filippo is the spin doctor of SF -- and it's a powerful medicine he brews." --Brian Aldiss.

• Books by Paul Di Filippo