Steampunk!

Book Clubbers and those of you in study who don't tune me out when I drone on about my latest interest will have heard me talking about steampunk. I just received some great links to images in an anonymous comment under my Sarah Dessen post and thought I would devote a post to it.  It's a genre in books and film where (as I understand it) the idea is that the Victorian era had access to our technology, or that those advances took place at an earlier time. Sort of an alternate history where steam power would still be widely used. Now, any of you who are closet steampunkers may want to elaborate or correct me on my interpretation.

Is this stuff cool, or what?  The movies Wild Wild West and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are considered to be examples of steampunk, as is the book Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (which we have in our library.)  Saskatchewan author Arthur Slade has written The Hunchback Assignments, pictured here with the American cover (Canadian cover has a guy with goggles) which he describes as a  "a new Victorian-era, fantastical steampunk series."  Hopefully coming soon to our library - if you girls are interested.