Thursday 22 April 2010

'The Dream of Perpetual Motion' - Loads of cool Steampunk stuff online!


I remember the days when the only way I'd know if a book had been released was if I went to the bookshop in town and had a look for it on the shelves... Doesn't that make me sound old? :o)
These days it's all about emails telling me that a book has been released and that is cool on more than one front. Not only do I save myself pointless trips into town but every now and then these emails point me in the direction of other things connected with the book, always a great way to kill time when I'm not reading.

And that's where Dexter Palmer's 'The Dream of Perpetual Motion' comes in to this post. Check out the blurb,

Imprisoned for life aboard a zeppelin that floats high above a fantastic metropolis, the greeting-card writer Harold Winslow pens his memoirs. His only companions are the disembodied voice of Miranda Taligent, the only woman he has ever loved, and the cryogenically frozen body of her father Prospero, the genius and industrial magnate who drove her insane.

The tale of Harold’s life is also one of an alternate reality, a lucid waking dream in which the well-heeled have mechanical men for servants, where the realms of fairy tales can be built from scratch, where replicas of deserted islands exist within skyscrapers.. As Harold’s childhood infatuation with Miranda changes over twenty years to love and then to obsession, the visionary inventions of her father also change Harold’s entire world, transforming it from a place of music and miracles to one of machines and noise. And as Harold heads toward a last desperate confrontation with Prospero to save Miranda’s life, he finds himself an unwitting participant in the creation of the greatest invention of them all: the perpetual motion machine.


I'd already read Robert's Review of this book and decided to keep an eye open for it. I don't read a lot of Steampunk stuff but I'm a fan of the sub-genre and enjoy what I do read. There's a copy headed my way, bring it on!

I'll be posting my review once I've read the book. In the meantime though, thanks to the aforementioned email, I get to do stuff like check out the Steampunk Gallery and download a cool looking screensaver, that should keep me busy during my lunchbreak :o)

I'm looking forward to giving this one a go, has anyone else here read 'The Dream of Perpetual Motion'? If so, what did you think?

3 comments:

DiapsonDealer said...

Reading it now and absolutely loving it! It's like Shakespeare and Willie Wonka teamed up and wrote a steampunk mystery.

It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm not everyone.

JamesY said...

this book sounds kinda cool.

Graeme Flory said...

Cheers DD :o) I've got a copy headed my way, I'll let you know how it goes...