After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of Silicon Valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him.

Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past.

To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world.

Find contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net

Frock Coat Dreams by J. Daniel Sawyer

The author of Down From Ten and The Clarke Lantham Mysteries brings you delicate, humorous, and brutal visions of a future that never was and a past that might have been. From the dawn of cryonics, to an irascible zombie, to a magical vineyard, this collection of Steampunk tales ranges far and wide through the genre, bringing you faerie stories, dark humor, and moments of beauty to stoke your most treasured desires.

Contains:
New Essays and Poems
Train Time
Sleep, Walk
Angels Unawares
Cold Duty
On Matters Most Austere
A Goblet of Fifty-Three

CURATOR'S NOTE

The subtitle of this book mentions steampunk's fringes. That's where Dan likes to hang out. The fiction here will challenge and enlighten you, and make you realize what's possible in a steampunk universe. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

REVIEWS

  • "Includes one of my favorite steampunk shorts of all time."

    – Gail Carriger, New York Times Bestselling Author of Etiquette & Espionage

  • "Cold Duty is probably the single best steampunk short story I've read."

    – Mike Perschon, The Steamunk Scholar

  • "A fantastic mix of sadness and joy. Made me laugh and made me cry. So very well written. I adore these short stories. They all make you think, a few made me laugh and A Goblet of Fifty-Three made me cry. Oh so worth it."

    – reader review from Flitterkit, prolific reviewer at Amazon and Goodreads
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Introduction

If you're a longtime steampunker, welcome! It's probably safe for you to skip this introduction. If this is the first time you've picked up a book with the word "steampunk" on the spine, you might find a bit of explanation in order.

Like you, I was mugged by steampunk. Someone sprang it on me out of the blue, and it seemed a completely nonsensical term (even with its obvious connection to cyberpunk). In my case, it all started with a party. A Steampunk party. In fact, the first time I ever heard the word was on the invitation. When I asked what the hell "steampunk" was, the sender of the invitation—one Gail Carriger (whose Parasol Protectorate books have since caused something of a sensation for their singularly delightful sense of fun and frivolity)—explained with a single phrase: "Captain Nemo in the future." The explanation might have been imprecise, but it got the message across to this longtime student of the Victorian era.

Thus, I thought I was well-prepared for the experience of hanging around with a bunch of retrohistorical re-enactors.

I really wasn't.

I was expecting to find a Victorian analog to Civil War re-enactment, but steampunk culture bears the same relationship to Victorian history as Disney's Sword in the Stone bears to the 6th-8th century British Isles. It took a bit of getting used to.

But once I found the groove (and added "pretty nifty fashion statement" to my mental map of corsetry evolution, which previously ran from "over-elaborate structural underwear" through "fetishwear" to "Klingon battle armor") I had a marvelous time.

Steampunk has as many definitions as there are people with affection (or antipathy) for it. It's a Live-Action-Role-Play culture. It's a club for enthusiasts of historical science fiction. It's a brass finish on cyberpunk goth rebellion. It's left-wing libertarianism mixed with right-wing militarism and spiked with a sense of individualistic communism. It's a fashion statement. It's a literary genre. But for my money, Mike Perschon (who holds the world's first Ph.D. In Steampunk Literature) summed it all up with his simple definition: "Steampunk is an aesthetic."

Five years later, I'm a confirmed devotee. Steampunk gratifies my desire to return to that world of emergence and complication that was the Victorian era. The aesthetic is a marvelous gateway to the fantastical, and the fan culture is an even greater mass of contradictions than was the era itself. Particularly, I find myself struck again and again by the poignancy of a culture caught between agrarian feudalism and industrial modernity—the sense of loss and promise, the oppression and freedom, the poverty and opportunity jammed up side-by-side in a world unfolding both too quickly and too slowly for all concerned.

You'll find those concerns reflected in these six stories that range from the mundane to the fantastical, the tragic to the comic, the personal to the satirical. Step into my parlor and have some tea, and allow me to regale you with these tales from a past that never was, a future that might have been, and worlds just two steps to the left through the cupboard door.

These are my Frock Coat Dreams—may they send you to yours with visions of possibility playing behind your eyes.

-J. Daniel Sawyer
San Francisco, California
January 2013