Clockwork Canada is an anthology that’s the first of its kind—steampunk stories set in Canada and entirely written by Canadians.
Steampunk fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy that is characterized by its distinct aesthetic of steam-power and clockwork technology and machinery.
Despite Canadian history being rife with events that are perfect to explore through a steampunk narrative, steampunk fiction predominantly focuses on British Victorian history. Clockwork Canada aims to change that though, with stories that examine and reimagine Canadian myth and history across the country.
Rather than merely replicating traditional steampunk narratives, Clockwork Canada explores darker sides of Canadian history. It covers a broad range of steampunk in different places across the country and in different time periods, imagining how Canada’s colonial history, from British, French, Indigenous, and immigrant perspectives, would have changed with an industrial age of brass and steam.
“La Clochemar” by Charlotte Ashley opens the collection with a fantastical story where mythical clockwork creatures roam the landscapes of New France and terrorize settlers.
“Buffalo Gals” by Colleen Anderson continues the blending of clockwork, fantasy, and death, where a young North-West Mounted Police constable gets caught up in a mystery about mechanical buffalo women while trying to solve a string of murders in white and Indigenous communities.
“The Seven O’Clock Man” by Kate Heartfield goes darker, drawing on a French Canadian myth about a bogeyman who kidnaps children. He does so to tell the story of a community who lives in terror of a living clock that will take their children if they’re not in bed on time.
“Bones of Bronze, Limbs Like Iron” by Rhea Rose blends together historical fiction, steampunk, and science-fiction, in a story where a small town in northern Saskatchewan becomes an immigration point for people from an overcrowded future Earth.
Fast paced adventure drives a number of stories, from treasure-hunting in “The Curlicue Seahorse” by Chantal Bordieu, to blackmail, kidnapping and a fight to keep a gas bomb from falling into American hands in “The Tunnels of Madness” by Harold R. Thompson. In “The Harpoonist” by Brent Nichols, an unexpected superhero finds his calling in order to protect workers trying to start their own factory in Vancouver’s Gastown.
In contrast to the action-packed nature of some stories, a number of stories use strong characterization to drive the plot. Set in the same time period and a different part of Vancouver as “The Harpoonist,” “East Wind in Carrall Street” by Holly Schofield is set in Chinatown and tells a story about a young boy trying not to shame his father as a secret starts to unravel. “Gold Mountain” by Karin Lowachee is a beautifully-written story about a woman’s grief after her prospector husband’s death in an avalanche.
Throughout Clockwork Canada, authors play with alternate histories as they imagine how steam and clockwork technology would have transformed Canada. A couple stories go even further, taking their inspiration directly from historical events. “Let Slip the Sluicegates of War, Hydro-Girl” by Terri Farvo writes about a world where the war of 1812 doesn’t end, but morphs into a continual battle between the British Empire and the United States.
As is the nature of anthologies, not all stories stand on equal strength. But Clockwork Canada is a solid anthology, with a number of excellent stories and other decent stories that round out the collection.
There’s a story for every reader, from fast paced adventure to character driven, where fantasy meets mechanical, industry, science, the occult, war and colonization.
