I can’t discuss my influences without mentioning Diana Pho (or Ay-leen the Peacemaker), who runs the excellent blog project Beyond Victoriana – a wonderful blog dedicated to steampunk in its non-Western incarnations. Multiculturalism in genre has picked up the pace in the last couple of years, but Diana has been leading a similar discussion within the boundaries of the steampunk sub-genre and movement, which to a point has been associated more with cosplay and a sense of artistry rather than a set literary tradition.

What Diana Pho succeeds at is to take the conversation about multiculturalism to a new depth by drawing on history as a context to explore the genre within. History buffs will find the content on her site to be incredibly addictive, because it treats a sub-genre with a reputation of being light as an experience and ground it within a very real background. It’s certainly interesting to see how a seemingly restricted in scope setting (Victorian times with steam technology superior than what the world had a time) can spread a cultural movement, which has manifested off and on page.

Diana Pho is one incredibly intelligent and well-read woman, which makes any discussion with her on an intellectual topic highly stimulating. I have to list her as one of the big influences in my creative life, because if it wasn’t for her and her call for contributors, I wouldn’t have known I’d had it in me to write a serious essay, which at the time was a huge departure from what I did and still do – review books. No, what I did for Beyond Victoriana in 2010 was arm myself with a pen and notebook, a reading list and set out to find out whether Jules Verne did father steampunk or not. The answer is yes and no – yes, he did it as the aesthetic of his work translated well into the current understanding of steampunk, but also no, because from a historical standpoint he wrote science fiction. Continue reading »