For the last three years, fans of steampunk culture have gathered just north of Baltimore, Maryland, for The Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival, which has panel discussions, authors, and something called “Tea Dueling.”
The gathering also comes with a short story anthology from the good people at eSpec Books.
In the following email interview, eSpec’s Danielle Ackley-McPhail, who edits these anthologies, talks about what went into this year’s volume, An Assembly Of Monsters (paperback, Kindle).
In science fiction, subgenres often give birth to other subgenres. Solarpunk, for instance, begat lunarpunk. It’s also how we got dieselpunk out of steampunk.
But what exactly is dieselpunk? That’s one of many questions I put to Danielle Ackley-McPhail and John L. French, co-editors of the new short story anthology Grease Monkeys: The Heart And Soul Of Dieselpunk (paperback, Kindle), in the following email interview.
In first contact stories, writers explore what might happen when we first meet aliens. But in the new sci-fi short story anthology Footprints In The Stars (paperback, Kindle), the focus is instead on what might happen when we first get evidence that aliens exist.
In the following email interview, Footprints editor Danielle Ackley-McPhail talks about how this collection came together, what subgenres of sci-fi are included, and why it features a bunch of writers with Star Trek novels in their oeuvres.