Steampunk has come to Boston. The Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham is currently exhibiting steam punk-inspired inventions and Boston-area fans have been coming out in full Victorian era regalia. The trend, which has picked up media coverage in The Boston Globe, has become largely popular in this area. As graduate student Kimberly Burk said in an article from November, "Boston lends itself to steampunk. You have the MIT tinkerers, the co-ops in JP, the eco-minded folks.’’
For the Bostonians not quite ready and willing to squeeze into a corset or strap on a gas mask there is the aforementioned exhibit and increasingly popular steam punk literature. Scott Westerfeld's young adult novel Leviathan is an exciting and easy read for those who are curious about this latest fad.
Leviathan, the first book of the series, takes place in a alternate-reality Europe at the beginning of the First World War. In this book the continent is split into two parties – The Darwinists and the Clankers. Charles Darwin, as explained in the novel, did not simply set out on a famous cruise and write a game-changing book but also discovered the very building blocks of life, what we today know as DNA. In this world all creatures have life strands which can be combined with others to created fabricated animals, called “fabs”; the ship that gives the novel its name is a whale fabricated into a zeppelin. The Clankers, on the other hand, live by machines similar to the walkers in the Star Wars movies. The U.K. and its allies are Darwinists, while Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary are Clankers.
Westerfeld obviously takes creative license in dealing with a historical time period but also takes care to include snippets of truth. Charles Darwin’s real-life niece, Nora Barlow, appears as a major character; Alek, one of the two central characters, is the fictional son of the real-life murdered Archduke Ferdinand and his common wife. Westerfeld does not throw tradition and fact out the window but instead weaves it seamlessly in with the fantastical, just like one of the fabricated beasties of his universe.
The novel is aimed at young adult readers but is a delight for anyone interested in speculative fiction. The story follows two young teenagers, the aforementioned Prince Alek and a common girl named Deryn who disguises herself as a boy to join the Darwinist military; the characters are likable yet imperfect and the readers watch them grow and learn; they see Alek and Deryn at their lowest lows and highest highs, and for readers of the same age this roller coaster of emotions and changing opinions is relatable. Older readers, too, will appreciate the adventure and may be interested in the moral issues the novel raises about using science to manipulate life and the effect of machinery on the environment. While these areas of current debate are not central to the plot of the first novel, aware readers will notice them, though it remains to be seen whether or not these issues are raised later in the series. These issues are particularly prevalent for the people of Boston, who are made up of populations of those concerned with the environment, science and technology students, and traditional Catholics. Whether the book is read for pleasure, to incite conversation, or to foray into the world of steam punkLeviathan does not disappoint.
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