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Jeff Mach's Reviews > Infernal Devices
Infernal Devices (Infernal Devices, #1)
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When I was thirteen, I was in that huge Barnes and Noble (was it a Barnes and Noble then?) in New York City, and I was looking for some sort of 'different' science fiction.
Jeter's Mad Victorian Fantasy created Steampunk--it's obvious, if you read the book, that almost every major Steampunk trope descends from it--but that's not what makes this one of the great science fiction novels of all time.
This book showed us a hidden London inside of London, and did it better than Gaiman, and long before.
K.W. Jeter is a master of worlds which are not (as far as we know) really there but which could be, and which certainly should be...
One of my top ten scifi books of all time.
Jeter's Mad Victorian Fantasy created Steampunk--it's obvious, if you read the book, that almost every major Steampunk trope descends from it--but that's not what makes this one of the great science fiction novels of all time.
This book showed us a hidden London inside of London, and did it better than Gaiman, and long before.
K.W. Jeter is a master of worlds which are not (as far as we know) really there but which could be, and which certainly should be...
One of my top ten scifi books of all time.
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Quotes Jeff Liked
“Creff, my factotum, interrupted the breakfast he had brought me only a few minutes earlier and announced that a crazed Ethiope was at the door, presumably to buy a watch.”
― Infernal Devices
― Infernal Devices
Reading Progress
July 31, 2019
–
Started Reading
July 31, 2019
– Shelved
August 2, 2019
–
7.81%
"....maybe this is the time to come out and say it:
I still think this is the second-best Steampunk novel ever written, and I think "The Diamond Age", which I'd consider to be the best, is in a genre all its own, not quite competition.
But...
It's impossible to un-read "Fiendish Schemes", or un-know that, somewhere along the line, K.W. Jeter was going to really, really start to hate what Steampunk became."
page
30
I still think this is the second-best Steampunk novel ever written, and I think "The Diamond Age", which I'd consider to be the best, is in a genre all its own, not quite competition.
But...
It's impossible to un-read "Fiendish Schemes", or un-know that, somewhere along the line, K.W. Jeter was going to really, really start to hate what Steampunk became."
September 8, 2019
–
78.13%
"Steampunk's pleasant, but Mad Victorian Fantasy rules the waves."
page
300
March 30, 2020
–
78.13%
"Brilliant Steampunk before Steampunk existed; but now it's time to move on to Villainpunk."
page
300
September 14, 2020
–
100.0%
"K.W. Jeter's absolute hatred of Steampunk is a warning: He never claimed to own Steampunk, but he never wanted it to go into this monstrous direction, and his strange, compelling, horrifying giant robot-like, human-controlled cosplay machines, having sex, is a powerful metaphor for the destruction of his vision by politics.
I love K.W. Jeter, but I understand that I need to help carry on his legacy of dreams."
page
384
I love K.W. Jeter, but I understand that I need to help carry on his legacy of dreams."
November 21, 2024
–
Finished Reading
