K W JETER attended college at California State University, Fullerton where he became friends with James P Blaylock and Tim Powers, and through them, Philip K Dick. Jeter coined the term "steampunk", in a letter to Locus in April 1987, to describe the retro-technology, alternate-history works that he published along with his friends, Blaylock and Powers. As well as his own wildly original novels, K W Jeter has written a number of authorized Blade Runner sequels.

K W JETER attended college at California State University, Fullerton where he became friends with James P Blaylock and Tim Powers, and through them, Philip K Dick. Jeter coined the term "steampunk", in a letter to Locus in April 1987, to describe the retro-technology, alternate-history works that he published along with his friends, Blaylock and Powers. As well as his own wildly original novels, K W Jeter has written a number of authorized Blade Runner sequels.

Infernal Devices 1: Infernal Devices by K. W. Jeter

A steampunk classic from the father of the genre ­ a classic tale of time travel, clockwork and sexual intrigue.

When George's father died he left George his watchmaker's shop – ­and more.

But George has little talent for watches and other infernal devices. When someone tries to steal an old device from the premises, George finds himself embroiled in a mystery of time travel, music and sexual intrigue.

The classic steampunk tale from the master of the genre.

CURATOR'S NOTE

The Godfather of Steampunk, KW Jeter not only helped create the genre – he named it! This is a genuine classic of the genre – so what are you waiting for? – Lavie Tidhar

 

REVIEWS

  • "This is the real thing – a mad inventor, curious coins, murky London alleys and windblown Scottish isles… a wild and extravagant plot that turns up new mysteries with each succeeding page."

    – James P Blaylock, author of Homunculus

  • "What we see in Infernal Devices is not just the presager of what steampunk is, but what it could have been, a marvellously self-aware and inventive attack on the obsessions and degradations of the present."

    – Strange Horizons

  • "Suddenly I can see exactly what the whole fascination with Steampunk is all about. Jeter sets the Victorian scene here so skilfully, it's absolutely perfect. I could easily have been reading a novel written in 1840. He's impressively deft and accurate in his language of the time, making the novel completely believable, and yet he still writes in a style that is effortlessly readable. His Victorian London is dark, menacing, and compelling."

    – Fantasy Nibbles

  • "A delicious and quite insane romp through the gas-lit streets of London. Absolute must-read!"

    – SFRevu
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

ON JUST SUCH a morning as this, when the threat of rain hangs over London in the manner of a sentence neither stayed nor pardoned, but rather perpetually executed, Creff, my factotum, interrupted the breakfast he had brought me only a few minutes earlier and announced that a crazed Ethiope was at the door, presumably to buy a watch.

Reader, if the name George Dower, late of the London borough of Clerkenwell, is unfamiliar to you, I beg you to read no further. Perhaps a merciful fate – merciful to the genteel reader's sensibilities, even more so to the author's reputation – has spared a few souls acquaintance with the sordid history that has become attached to my name. Small chance of that, I know, as the infamy has been given the widest "circulation possible. The engines of ink-stained paper and press spew forth unceasingly, while the even more pervasive swell of human voice whispers in drawing room and tenement the details that cannot be transcribed.

Still, should the reader be such a one, blessedly ignorant of recent scandal, then lay this book down unread. Perhaps the dim confines of the sick-room, or the wider horizons of tour abroad, far from English weather and the even darker and more permeating chill of English gossip, have sheltered your ear. There can be only small profit in hearing the popular rumours of that dubious scientific brotherhood known as the Royal Anti-Society, and the part I am assumed to have played in its resurrection from that shrouded past where it had lain as mythological shadow to Newton's Fiat lux.

Such happy ignorance is possible. Only the sketchiest outline has been made public of Lord Bendray's investigations into the so-called Cataclysm Harmonics by which he meant to split the earth to its core. Even now, the riveted iron sphere of his Hermetic Carriage lies in the ruins of Bendray Hall, its signal flags and lights tattered and broken, a mere object of speculation to the attendants who listen patiently to the tottering grey-haired figure's inquiries about his new life on another planet.

The discretion that sterling can purchase has saved the heirs of the Bendray estate further embarrassment. Not for the purposes of spite, but to remedy the damage done to my own and my father's name, will I render a complete account of Lord Bendray's fateful musical soirée in these pages.