SteamPunk Magazine

Right now in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, marked and unmarked police cars are raiding private homes and buildings (and cars and garages) on a witchhunt for anarchists. [more from Bruce Sterling’s blog] Next week, the Republican National Convention is taking place in St. Paul, and the police are intent on preventing protestors their say. Of note is that they’re mostly confiscating media—zines, books, CDs, computers, mp3 players—, and gathering peoples identities. Of course, they are looking for “bombs” and of course, they won’t find any. This isn’t the 19th century; today, anarchists organize under the banner “food not bombs” as often as not.
Why does this matter to you? Because, if you live in the USA, it matters when the government makes preemptive strikes against dissidents. It matters when they are gathering names and taking literature. Anarchists have long been the canary in the birdcage. That canary is choking and coughing and spitting, and it behooves all of us to make this public, to not let people suffer behind closed doors. Oh, and as for what is “anarchist literature”? Well, everything in your house by infamous anarchists Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock, for starters. Plus that copy of SteamPunk Magazine #1 you’ve got sitting around your house/harddrive.
When anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti waited on death row for a crime they didn’t commit, HG Wells and many other non-anarchist literary folk stood by them publicly. Because back in the day (you know, back in the day that we steampunks interest ourselves so greatly in), the literary world wasn’t afraid of getting mired in politics. We shouldn’t be either. It’s our world and those are our freedoms they’re trampling.

DragonCon, which is a mighty-big-deal convention in Georgia, will be host to a great deal of wonderful steampunkiness. SteamPunk Magazine is sponsoring our friends and contributors in Ego Likeness at the event, who will be tabling the magazine and the newly-reprinted Guide to the Apocalypse. [Note that Ego Likeness is not a steampunk band, but is composed of regular contributors of art and literature to our publication]. Also playing are steampunk mainstays Abney Park, as well as favorites Voltaire and The Hellblinki Sextet. I’ve seen all these acts live and recommend each.

Our publishers, Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, will be tabling at the Portland Zine Symposium, August 23rd & 24th. We’ll have a ton of free stuff, plus the magazines on sale for cheaper than you can find them in stores or online. In addition, I (margaret killjoy) will be teaching a workshop entitled “alternatives to copyright” that explores public domain, anti-copyright, and creative commons licensing for self-publishers! The event is a ton of fun and is a giant room filled with all sorts of DIY published literature.

We’re dreadfully sorry, we had forgotten to add A SteamPunk’s Guide to the Apocalypse to our orders page! This error has since been corrected. We’ve also added a collection of steamypunk (for mature readers only), another patch, and two grab-bags of free zines that you can add to any order.

Plus the Guide to the Apocalypse has been reprinted!
After too long of a break, we’ve gotten all our reprints together and are ready to continue sending out copies of the magazine. We’ve moved the orders page to our publisher’s page, Mail-Order at Tangledwilderness.org, and from there you can continue to shop via paypal!

In other good news, a site-redesign is underway that will include a ephemeral ton of steampunk content and goodies! And yes, we’re hard at work at issue #5!