On steampunk

Parfois, je suis en parfait accord avec une interview. C'est le cas ici, et comme cela concerne des sujets qui nous intéressent tous, je viens lui donner le plus grand écho possible.

L'auteur s'appelle Lavie Tidhar et il est l'un des next big thing in steampunk. L'interview qu'il a donné à propos de son dernier roman "The bookman" est là, et en voici un extrait, courtesy of ActuSF :

"Technology has always been a kind of magic. And our lives today are suffused with a magic we can rarely fully comprehend. The Internet, mobile phones, reusable launch vehicles (RLVs), jet planes and stealth bombers, GPS and smart bombs, Google and Twitter and Facebook, PCs, satellites and a forty-year old flag on the moon... technological advances expand exponentially, and Victorian London represents the moment when technology exploded beyond a single person’s ability to understand the mechanisms underlying it. The lone scientist of Victorian romance has been replaced with a multinational corporation’s research centre. Dr. Frankenstein has given way to Xerox PARC.

Steampunk allows us to revisit the magic of technology and again to take ownership of it. When we view our world through the lens of the Victorian era we can better understand it - and our place in it. The politics, the technology, the turbulent forces of colonialism and nationalism of the Victorian era are still present in our own - as are the fiction and the magic and excitement of the period."

Signalons que Lavie Tidhar est aussi l'auteur d'un recueil de nouvelles fantastiques mélant traditions hébraïques et pulp action intitulé "Hebrewpunk". Un titre pareil, je dois me le procurer. So, more on the way.