It is set in a modified 1880’s Seattle, which has been walled off because a gas drifting out of the ground turns people into zombies. The 1999 Will Smith film Wild Wild West featured a flying bicycle and a giant robotic spider, firmly placing it in the camp of steampunk by most accounts, but containing many weird west elements.īoneshaker takes many of these staples, puts them in a blender, and sets to mix. While technology is usually central to steampunk, the weird west is often defined by some sort of monster (frequently zombies), but these elements can cross genres. The weird west mythos, on the other hand, represents the frontier. And steampunk almost always includes airships (or at least flying bicycles)… often with air pirates in tow. Steampunk is traditionally set in a Victorian urban environment, with a veneer of gentility that covers a darker underbelly. I don’t normally go to zombie movies, but I’ll definitely make an exception for this one, which may well be the most visually-stunning zombie film ever. I compared it to a George Romero film … and it turns out that someone took that to heart, because it’s being made into a film. In this review from Black Gate #15, I commented that the book was a little action-heavy, full of zombie chases that didn’t always translate well on the printed page. One of the most popular steampunk books of the last few years, Boneshaker ( Amazon, B&N) melded some of the most popular genre elements of steampunk and the zombie apocalypse wave of fiction.

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest