After finishing first, Terminal World, by Alistair Reynolds and then, All the Windwracked Stars, by Elizabeth Bear, I realized that both novels are much of the same. Meaning... In the aftermath of apocalypse (or several, as in the case of Bear), on a foregone, poisoned planet (a pseudo Earth), humankind, or a mutated semblance of such, clings wretchedly to life in concentric rings around the epicenter of remaining civilization, a polyglot construction of such towering proportion, hubris, and deterioration, that any comparison registers only, of course, to Baruch's Babel. Reynolds and Bear tend to view their city (not the only, but the only one remaining) as a retreat from the devastation of man, though obliquely because such devastation is always wrought by man as god rather than mortal. God, Him/Herself, is reliably absent and his punishment is meted out as provident punishment.

Thus, Bear's world is haunted by fallen angels, models of perfectly flawed human beings and broken reincarnations of their former selves, condemned to wander the poisoned planet in a self imposed exile for their sins. In contrast, Reynold's angels live at the very top of the city, a symbol both of aspiration and oppression to their less fortunate peers at the bottom. The location of their aerie in the stratosphere both metaphorically and technologically mirrors the belief that evolution equals superiority equals the status quo. Both stories emphasize the disparity of the haves and have-nots from a determinist view of biology, location, and circumstance trumping personal endeavor. There's a top down approach to the devastation, recalling the totalitarian social programs of the Modernists gone awry, the imperfect results of a major social experiment gone out of control.

The inevitably scourging of both worlds is credited to the well intentioned but ultimately inadequate plans of those that decide (makers with small M), an apology of sorts for cultural hubris, as well shabby execution by the rest of us ignorant plebes. However, despite the allure of technological innovation and starting from square one to set things right, the narratives' main allure originates from an evaluation of what advancing socially and technologically actually means to us. Accordingly, I'm coming to see Steampunk (or in Bear's case, Steampunk-esque) as more than simple revisionist fantasy. Rather it is important that the fallout of our industrialization is conveniently wiped away and the memory of describing Asians as Oriental have been erased. Those holes in the narrative fabric of Steampunk act as gauge, measuring what "progress" actually means; which human programs have come out intact, why we ever needed them at all, and what we regret of our history. While there is a sense of willful nostalgia that exists like a layer of ornamental tarnish over the basic mechanism of Steampunk, these two authors have obviously picked up on the importance of that tarnish as an opportunity to evaluate social decay as malaise. If the victors get to rewrite history, they can never completely erase it. Steampunk gives the survivors an opportunity to address the interstitial space that cannot quite be explained away.