The Seattle Times gets a grip on Steampunk:

The cover art of Seattle author Cherie Priest's novel Boneshaker grabbed me when it came over the transom -- the sepia-tinged visage of a woman wearing golden goggles, scanning a sky filled with antique flying machines. "A steampunk zombie-airship adventure of rollicking pace and sweeping proportions," said the cover blurb.

Steampunk, I thought for the twentieth time. What's that? This month Priest won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association award for Boneshaker. So I called her up to find out.

Priest, 34, is a well-spoken Capitol Hill resident whose idea of fun is a stroll in Seattle's Lakeview Cemetery, gathering 19th-century names for her characters. She has spent time and thought constructing the internal logic of the steampunk world of Boneshaker.

"Steampunk is a style, of books, of clothes, of video games and movies, that draws its inspiration from old science fiction stories of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Mary Shelley," she said, "set in a place and time where steam is the dominant form of high technology. It's a retro futurism." (More...)