But we’re starting to work out how we can keep the magazine going, because we believe in it and because we believe in steampunk. We believe that steampunk can be more than fancy clothes because we’ve seen it be more than fancy clothes.

So keep an eye on this blog and steampunkmagazine.com in general. We’ve got new bloggers and soon we’ll be putting out a proper call for contributions to SteamPunk Magazine #8.

It always gives us great pleasure to announce the release of a new issue of the magazine, and this one more so than most as we genuinely believe that Issue #7 is our best ever.

There are articles on steampunk’s relationship with politics, the future of steampunk fashion and the melting pot of 19th century Europe, poems about Alice in Wonderland, fiction about airships and hot air balloons (how very retro!) and instructions on how to raise your own island out of the deathless oceans. On top of all of that, there are interviews with Sunday Driver and The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, and a good helping of all the other wonders that you have come to expect from SteamPunk Magazine.

As you should all know by now, SteamPunk Magazine is available in print through Strangers in the Americas and Vagrants for the rest of the world, and can also be downloaded for free from (unsurprisingly) our downloads page.

Another piece of exciting news: as of this issue you can also go to our downloads page to purchase an ultra-cheap (one English pound) pdf version of #7 that has been optimised for viewing on your iPhone or other associated eReader, should you have one. We don’t (our phones still have Roman numerals on them), but we’ve heard rumours that some people like them a lot.

However. This should by no means stop you from taking select parts out of context and circulating them as fact. Remember: All our work is Creative Commons licenced, so you can do that just so long as you don’t make any money from it. To be honest, I would love to have a Snopes.com page on this. Hell, given most of the crap that gets put in email circulars shouldn’t be too hard, right?

In other news, submissions for issue #8: New and Future Worlds are now open. Check the ‘ DownloadsDeadlines and Submissions’ link at the top for more details. As soon as our regular web-wrangler comes back from her balloon trip to Sirius Major, we’ll fix the bit that says we’re not currently open to submissions. Because we are.

So get creating!

The next reading period is 1st April 2010 to 31st May 2010, when we will be accepting submissions for Issue #8 of SteamPunk Magazine, which is due out in October. The theme for Issue #8 will be The Myth of History, studying the relationship between the impact that stories and legends have on us, and the fallacy of the concept of ‘truth’ in the way that history is recorded and remembered.. Some ideas for fiction and articles on this theme are:

• Legends in steampunk
• Popular misconceptions in history
• Steampunk as historical myth
• Allegorical poems and tales
• The importance of stories over ‘fact’
• Invented history
• Lost and forgotten inventions
• How history is constructed in order to obtain and maintain power

As always, we will accept both themed and unthemed material, so please don’t be restricted by the examples above.

Follow this link to read them in full, as well as get details of how to submit your stuff.

Please note, we are not open to submissions yet!

Issue #1 – Putting the Punk Back into SteamPunk — March 2007
Issue #2 – A Journal of Misapplied Technology — June 2007
Issue #3 – The Sky is Falling! — September 2007
Issue #4 – Our Lives as Fantastic as Any Fiction! — March 2008
Issue #5 – Long Live Steampunk! — April 2009
Issue #6 – The Pre-Industrial Revolution — September 2009

The Steampunk’s Guide to the Apocalypse — October 2007

As to the latter, well, since we re-vamped and revived the magazine in April of last year, it has always been our intention to try and get it onto a regular release schedule. It’s taken us a little while to be in position to do that, but fortunately we are finally there!

And so it gives me great pleasure to announce the release dates for the next couple of issues of SteamPunk Magazine, as well:

Issue #7 – New and Future Worlds — March 2010
Issue #8 – The Myth of History — September 2010

From this point onwards, we are hoping to release two issues a year – one of which will come out in late March and one of which will be out in late September. We’re not going to go so far as to set actual dates – we’re still far too disorganised for that. However, by now, we guess that you’re probably used to that.

On the matter of the exactly publication date for #7, we expect to have the magazine ready for download and order on or around 26th March. However, if you happen to be at the Makers Faire in Newcastle this weekend, you will be able to get your hands on a copy a couple of weeks before everybody else. You lucky, lucky things.

Finally, on a similar note, the next submission window will be from 1st April to 31st May. No further details just yet, but there will be very, very shortly indeed, so keep your eyes peeled on that one.

However, the past few months have seen a bit of a drought in emails that we can include in our ‘Correspondence’ section, which is why I am here talking to you now!

Have you read the last issue? (Or any of the other issues, for that matter)

Is there an article that you liked? Didn’t like? That made you think? That didn’t?

Do you wonder where we get the lovely little cogs that we put on the front covers from?

Do you have any interesting thoughts/feelings/ideas/cheese sandwiches to share with us?

Or any questions that you want to ask?

Now is your chance! Do not delay!

Email collective [at] steampunkmagazine [dot] com this instant. If we like you, we shall immortalise your words in print for all eternity.

Or something.

(PS – if we are sounding more unhinged than normal, please see the first sentence of this message for an explanation)

And with this redesign, we must offer an open invitation to all: please go away and try to break our website. We don’t mean “Ask that shady hacker that you met the other night to assault us with spambots”, instead, just take a look around the website, click on the links, leaf through the content, and let us know if anything goes horribly wrong while you are doing so. While we have done our very best to make the new website as beautiful and perfect as we can, we aren’t professional designers and the chances are that there are a few bugs here and there that shall have to be ironed out over the coming weeks.

We are also happy to announce the launch of the website for the Vagrants Among Ruins publishing collective. From here on in, Vagrants will be co-releasing Steampunk Magazine alongside Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness as well as publishing all manner of steampunk books and zines besides.

Finally, with the foundation of Vagrants Among Ruins, you are now finally able to purchase copies of Steampunk Magazine from the United Kingdom, for dispatch to Europe and the Rest of the World.

Residents of North, South and Central America are still able to order the magazine through the mail-order page at Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.

You can find these on our downloads page which we have re-designed in preparation for the complete website re-launch which you will be seeing within the next couple of days.

Thanks Frazer!

Having taken a look into it, we’re pretty sure that the problem is being caused by a new feature that PayPal have added to their order page to estimate shipping costs. Basically, when you click on the ‘Purchase’ button, you are taken to a shopping cart page where you can enter your ZIP code to get an idea of the shipping costs, or select a country outside the US. Unfortunately, for some reason a lot of countries are not on the list.

The good news is that the step is optional. If you just ignore it, and instead click ‘Proceed to Checkout’ then you will be prompted to log into PayPal as normal. You can then enter a shipping address anywhere in the world, and the total cost including shipping will be displayed before you confirm payment.

Hopefully this will help! If not, let us know and provide as many details/screenshots as you can, and we will get on it.