Infernal Devices

Infernal Devices #1

by K.W. Jeter

HE INHERITED A WATCHMAKER'S STORE - AND A WHOLE HEAP OF TROUBLE. But idle sometime-musician George has little talent for clockwork. And when a shadowy figure tries to steal an old device from the premises, George finds himself embroiled in a mystery of time travel, music and sexual intrigue. A genuine lost classic, a steampunk original whose time has come.

Genres: Steampunk, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Time Travel, Alternate History

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1986

About the author

Kevin Wayne Jeter (born 1950) is an American science fiction and horror author known for his literary writing style, dark themes, and paranoid, unsympathetic characters. He is also credited with the coining of the term "Steampunk." K. W. has written novels set in the Star Trek and Star Wars universe, and has written three (to date) sequels to Blade Runner.

Series:
* Doctor Adder

Series contributed to:
* Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
* Alien Nation
* Blade Runner
* Star Wars: The Bounty Hunter Wars
* The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
* The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror

Reviews

[Cass · Rating 1 out of 5]

Things I learned from K. W. Jeter in this book:

1) ALL women are only thinking about one thing. If they are Sexy, then they are sex-crazed animals who will rip off a man's clothes as soon as look at him (this is Logic) no matter how loudly he protests the indignity and begs her to control herself, madam! Alas!

2) If a woman is Not Sexy (i.e., middle aged and/or overweight) then they are on a mission fueled by jealousy and frustration to stop ANYONE EVER even THINKING about sex, ever again.
Either that, or kidnapping young virgins--a la Missus Meers--and selling them to satisfy the depraved desires of a corrupt elite class. Or both.

3) The plight of said kidnapped damsels doesn't actually need to be seen or discussed anywhere in the story. It doesn't matter how often they are referred to, how central they are to the plot; it is more than enough to have a single scene in which their enraged fathers and brothers try to beat the stuffing out of one of the corrupt elite, to truly convey the horror of the situation.
(After all, the men-folks are the ones who actually matter. You don't even need to rescue the girls; gaining a personally satisfying moral victory over their pimps is just as good.)

4) Any brown person one meets--no matter how polished and refined their dress and manners; no matter how 'friendly', 'helpful', and subservient they are--will turn out to be harboring a secret hatred of White Man, which he is willing to put aside in favor of his own animalistic need to procreate.

5) It's totally OK to consistently call other races ugly, if you do it in big words like "piscine physiognomy".


I'm sure there must be good 'Steampunk' somewhere... but from now on I'll look for recommendations from [real] people whose judgement I trust. That is the last time I take reading suggestions from a "Best___ Ever!" list on the internet.

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

Steampunk, ahoy!

And hey, did you know that Jeter coined that term?

Remember when those fantastic adventure tales whose main goal was to tell a fast-paced story with some interesting ideas used to clock in under 250 pages and could be enjoyed in one long afternoon? Probably not and I'm probably dating myself. It is nice to be reminded that such things were once fairly common. Maybe authors these days are afraid of being seen as somehow disposable or too lightweight. And what's wrong with being lightweight?

Infernal Devices is a great example of swiftly-paced, lightweight entertainment. It is a retro-chic thriller full of tricky clockwork mechanisms, cobblestones and foggy nights, demented aristocrats and dodgy lower class types, inhuman creatures from the sea and their barely human half-breed spawn, creepy flights into darkness and sudden escapes, and two brassy mercenaries who are strangely familiar with 20th century slang. Best of all, there is also an automaton who comes equipped with all of the wit, intelligence, and sexual drive that his original human model - our strangely bland hero - appears to lack. Two peas in a pod, except one pea is infinitely more tasty.

Imagine a clockwork version of this:



Note the eyes! Spoiler?

The writing is luscious and rather gleefully sardonic. It winks at you while delivering its narrative thrills in a delightfully vivid, semi-archaic purple prose package. And it almost feels like Jeter is even sending up his own traditionally enigmatic heroes. The answers to many of the questions swirling around the oddly placid protagonist lie within his very stolidity; his unimaginative blankness and prim limitations are actually the key to Infernal Devices' central conundrums and contraptions. Clever. And the climax is a literal climax. Ha!

Also featuring... The End of the World! Maybe.

A version of this review is part of a larger article on Jeter posted on SHELF INFLICTED

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Good:
There were some cool ideas here, and the Victorian setting is a firm favourite of mine. The first person voice – an extremely proper English gentleman – is very well done.

The Bad:
Some of the ideas are a bit childish and stupid. Plus the characters are just unbelievably one dimensional, and their dialogue is bad. The only two women in the story are two different kinds of nymphomaniac; one is the street smart, gung-ho nympho while the other is the rich, nasty type. I guess that makes them two dimensional.

'Friends' character the protagonist is most like:
George Dower is intelligent, thoughtful and seems to get rescued from all his problems by the actions of others. He is like Ross, only without the vast sexual experience.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5

I keep bouncing back and forth on whether to give this one or two stars - though I'm pretty much sticking with the 1.5 either way. My dilemma is that while I didn't really like it, per se, I didn't actively dislike it, which is what I usually use 1-stars for, but I didn't like it, either.

I guess, for the most part, it was "ok", and I was going to give it a 2-stars for most of the book, but the ending left me feeling kinda "wtf?", which is why I was thinking of dropping it down. But it did have some things going for it... and also 'cause I feel like maybe I wasn't reading it in the right frame of mind... thus the consideration of keeping it at 2.

What I mean about being in the right frame of mind is that, for one of my status messages, I'd said that it would be better having been written as a comedy because of the absurdity of the situations the bumbling Dower kept getting himself in, and it crosses that threshold of believability after one thing after another after another after another keeps getting piled on top of the idiot.

The 'feeling bad' part comes in because, reading the afterword, is mentions the humor and the absurdity as being purposeful, as a sort of homage to the over-the-top Victorian adventure stories.

So I'm thinking that, maybe, if I'd read it in that light, maybe I would've found it more enjoyable and less annoying?

Though I can't say my expectations were skewed going in 'cause, honestly, I didn't really know what to expect, and I usually try and let the style of writing and the seeming mood of the book come across in the writing. So I'm not going to take blame, or anything, if I wasn't in the right frame of mind because I would say the writing, in the beginning, lead me to believe it was going for a more serious tone - so if it's meant to be more humorous in an absurd kind of way, then I would say the author failed to convey that intention via the tone.

So there.

Anyway -

That's a whole lot of semi-ranting without touching that much on the book, yet, aside from the fact that it seemed like it wanted to be serious, but ended up being absurd, which I found more stupid and irritating than amusing or endearing.

So a bit about the book and some of the good things:

This book first came onto my radar when I was involved in a sort of genre debate about steampunk, and I discovered that Jeter coined the term. Being a fan of the genre - or, at least, the idea of the genre - I wanted to read some of the proto- works and this seemed like an interesting place to start.

Of course, while I've often argued that steampunk is a form of sci-fi, generally, Jeter, himself, coined it in reference to "Victorian fantasies", and the science in this is very, well, fantastical. With few exceptions, there doesn't seem to be any attempt to stick within the confines of possible, or even plausible, science, what with the fishmen type things interbreeding with humans, and clockwork automaton working on principles of a metaphysical sort of resonance...

That aspect of it, actually, made me think a bit of Perdido Street Station, but whereas China Miéville's work - though wordy and overly dense in place - had flashes of brilliance and awe-inspiring profundity for me, this book's attempt at metaphysical philosophies came across as mostly waffle.

But, really, my biggest complaints were as I said before - Dower is one of those protagonists who is never pro-active, who constantly gets buffeted this way and that, and never really comes into his own at any point, and the sheer level of stuff that gets thrown at him from every angle is just beyond the pale.

I never really connected with any of the characters - though I did enjoy Creff and Abel - and the various twists and surprise reveals at the end were just... *smh*

I guess it makes a kind of sense, if it's meant to be an absurdist kind of tale, but, for me, it just came across as kind of asinine and I was thankful when it was done because I could say it was done...

Blech.

So - 1 or 2 stars? I still can't decide...


ETA: I forgot to mention all the type-setting issues. There were quite a few of them and they were pretty distracting at times.

What I mean is things like missing quotation marks, missing periods at ends of sentences, and random periods in the middle of sentences. Since things like punctuation can alter the meaning of sentences, or how you read them, I often had to go back and reread bits 'cause I was thrown by their random placement.

[pampampampampam]

I marked this as did not finish a few nights ago, and then I looked at how many books I had marked "DNF." Shamed, I woke up my Kindle once more and attempted to keep going.

I should have listened to my gut.

For most of my life, even if I hated a book, I would read it. The whole goshdurned thing. Then I would say, "THAT WAS SO AWFUL WHAT A WASTE OF MY TIME NGHAAAH!" or some such incoherent gabbling indicative of anger. Strangely enough, when I started working in a library, I started abandoning books with abandon! Originally, it was almost a moral issue for me, i.e. "Well, I started it, so in order to be fair and just to the author, I must finish it." Then I saw how many new books we received every week (I worked at a branch library then), and I saw the plethora of books already on the shelves, and my strange compulsion to finish books slowly died away. I couldn't possibly read all of those books, and even if I tried, I wouldn't like many of them. Then, I went to library school, where we learned a bit of theory (yes, Virginia, there is Library Theory for us library folk). We learned S.R. Ranganathan's 5 Laws of Library Science:

1. Books are for use.
2. Every reader his [or her] book.
3. Every book its reader.
4. Save the time of the reader.
5. The library is a growing organism.

So, 1-4 basically told me that I didn't have to like everything, because I wouldn't use what I didn't like, and I would be wasting time, because I was not the reader for the book, nor was the book for me.

What's all this drivel got to do with Infernal Devices? Well, for one thing, you've just experienced the basic plot device of the novel, which generally consists of: What plot? Oh, that thing over there? *pokes with stick* Gee, it's pretty thin. Um, hey, look, it's a fish person!

Secondly, it's my personal justification for not finishing this.

As we all know by now, Jeter coined the term "steampunk." Hooray. Give the man a cigar! Elements that we've come to identify with steampunk--icons, if you will--are either absent or only very slightly present. For example, steampunk goggles are popular for various activities (riding in airships being the most practical use), and indeed one character I encountered (as far as I read) did have distinctive eyewear, but they were blue-tinted glasses. This is really more of a trippy quasi-Victorian mashup of detective story and Lovecraft. I mean, seriously, the inhabitants of Wetwick (Wetwickians???) come flopping straight out of "The Shadow over Innsmouth." The main character/narrator (whose name I already forget, except that he's a junior) is a bit of a Gary Stu. Things just happen to him, man! Like strange women from the future attempting the sexytimes! Like getting thrown into a river but somehow reviving! George! His name is George!

There were, I admit, some amusing parts. The whole scandal with the church (although I didn't read far enough to get the whole story), was pretty funny in a slapstick sort of way.

Um, I think that was actually the only funny part. George is pretty hopeless at everything. He has a job for which he's not qualified, he's kept on a man of questionable sanity as his valet/butlet/assistant, and he bestows exceptionally prosy monikers upon people he's met. For example, his first client, who has dark brown skin, becomes Brown Leather Man. What are you, like, two? Also: racism. Also, as noted in another review, the BLM speaks in anastrophe (i.e. Yoda-speak) which is not cool unless it's Yoda! George must repair a clockwork mechanism of his father's, but he has no skills in this area (I'm cutting to the chase, here), receives a strange coin from Brown Leather Man, is subsequently approached and then robbed by two ne'er-do-wells who are well versed in American slang, one of whom is a woman with a BOSOM (as women are wont to have) and who is determined to have the sexytimes with the main character.

NOTE: Let it be noted that I here went and read the Wikipedia entry on this novel and WOW that explains a LOT. Kind of. Go over there to read if you want to see what I mean.

Okay, back to the "story." I love madcap. I love it a lot. Bertie and Jeeves, anything by Jasper Fforde, screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s--those are all awesome! However, they also have plots and consistent humor.

NOTE: I felt guilty. Again. So I went back to the book and skipped to the end. I have no words. I also now have no regrets about not finishing the whole thing.

This is a case where the reputation of the book (first steampunk, etc.) is better than the actual book. For a much better steampunk, try the book of the same name (Infernal Devices) by Phillip Reeve. Actually the whole Hungry City Chronicles is worth a read--even though it's typically labeled YA. It's very mature and dark.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Infernal Devices as a steampunk novel is not nearly as famous as its author is for coining the phrase steampunk. I think Jeter may have simply said the first thing he thought of, not realizing that the term would stick.

This new edition of the novel attempts to capitalize on the recent popularity of steampunk fiction and well it should in my opinion. The novel is a prime example of a genre I love but tend to nitpick over, so do not let my rating discourage interest. I continue to float between 3 and 4 stars and will probably settle upon 4 stars if only to not risk dissuasion. As Jeff VanderMeer points out in the epilogue of this new edition, Jeter is not a writer of steampunk fiction. He is a writer of dark science fiction who happened to write something now considered steampunk. I have no experience with Jeter's other works but I hope to change that. Essentially, the issues I had with this book had nothing to do with the steampunk characteristics.

At the top of my list, I felt zero connection to the main character. I could not have cared less what happened to him. He sounded so put out through most of the story.

I also felt buried in the wordiness of the book. I could have skipped whole paragraphs and my knowledge of the story would not have been lessened.

I am also not a fan of the story within a story technique used more than once in this book. I have often been indifferent to this but it felt as simple information-dump and lacked finesse.

What I did love were the majority of the secondary characters. They were all quite crazy and unique. My favorite was Scape. I loved how Jeter managed to convincingly portray a character in Victorian times who spoke American vernacular. And the image of Scape and his flying machine will stick with me.

The Brown Leather Man, well, I can not say anything about him without providing spoilers. Suffice it say that I tally his character in the plus column as well.

This is a must read for anyone who enjoys steampunk fiction, whether as a first foray into the genre or for avid fans. This novel deserves greater recognition and the reissue.

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had this book vaguely on my mental list of books that might be interesting for a long time, but I picked it up on pure whim. I'm interested in how many low reviews it has: I think the problem is that people expect something great and marvelously written from the book that inaugurated such a huge cultural phenomenon as steampunk. It's not that. It's fun, silly, often ridiculous, and in no way intended to be taken too seriously, I think.

It's a juxtaposition of ideas, written very much in the tradition of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and with a protagonist that reminds me very much of the common mental image of bumbling, unintelligent John Watson. (Which usually ignores that he is a doctor, an army man, and capable of handling fire arms, not to mention trusted by Holmes who is obviously no idiot. He has a certain lack of imagination, yes, but he's not as stupid as the stereotype would have you believe -- and certainly not as stupid as the protagonist of this novel.)

I thought it was fun, and actually pretty absorbing. Not convincing as anything serious, but fun. I'm glad Angry Robot republished it, it's been a nice diversion from waiting for the slow wheels of the NHS to turn.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun early steampunk book. The character seemed to just reel from disaster to disaster with no time to adjust. It was fun.

[Amy H. Sturgis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of the pioneering works of steampunk, and I'm glad I read it. It has many of the staples of the subgenre, from the Victorian setting to clockwork men, from time travel to not-so-mythical creatures (in this case, selkies). There are several well-crafted moments of ironic social commentary. It's easy to see how this wry and imaginative tale helped to set precedents for what followed.

That said, I didn't really enjoy this as a reading experience, despite Jeter's always-elegant prose. The narrator, who inherited his father's watchmaker's store but not the man's talent for imaginative clockwork inventions, remains passive and rather baffled throughout the action. The parade of characters he encounters are colorful, but none are exactly sympathetic enough to evoke an attachment. The tone was a bit too flippant for my taste, as well; it's hard to take the danger seriously when the story doesn't take itself seriously.

For most of the novel, the episodic adventures/perils are unexplained and meant to be mysterious, but they didn't engage me quite enough to leave me wondering how they fit together. Ironically, in the eleventh hour, when the "infodump" portion of the novel connected all the dots, I discovered the underlying story was far more interesting than I'd realized. By that time, of course, the novel was drawing to a close.

I love Jeter's Morlock Night, and I'm sure I'll reread it in the future. I appreciate Infernal Devices for its impact and legacy, but I doubt I'll revisit it for anything more than the insights it provides into the history of steampunk.

[Kat Hooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

George Dower's father was a watchmaker, but he didn't just make watches. Some of his special customers knew he was a genius with all sorts of gear work. When his father died, George inherited the watch shop. Unfortunately, he didn't inherit his father's genius. He can sometimes manage to fix a customer's watch if he sees that a part has worn out, or something else obvious is wrong, but that's about it. He's completely flummoxed when a strange brown man brings in something he's never seen before -- something George's father made. George has no idea what this infernal device does, but when he agrees to help, he's soon embroiled in a wild adventure that involves a secret London district with fishy-looking citizens, the Royal Anti-Society, the formidable woman who heads up the Ladies Union for the Suppression of Carnal Vice, a robot doppelganger, and a man and woman who speak 20th century American slang. George is starting to realize that his father may have been involved in some rather shady business.

K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy, first published in 1987, has been reprinted by Angry Robot because of the recent resurgence of Victorian literature. In fact, K.W. Jeter was the man who actually coined the term "Steampunk." As he explains in the forward, he meant it as a joke (referring to the term "cyberpunk") but it stuck.
As promised, Infernal Devices is indeed a mad steampunk fantasy; it's filled with flying machines and other mechanical devices, Victorian moral and scientific societies, 19th century fashion and music, anachronistic technologies, and even some Lovecraftian monsters. The prose, dialogue and humor also feel appropriately Victorian, and Jeter's London atmosphere, with its clean shop fronts and grimy back alleys, feels authentic.

Though there's a lot going on in Infernal Devices, it's light. There are no deep themes, moving relationships, profound insights, or brilliant images, but there are plenty of surprises and laughs. The protagonist, mild-mannered and bumbling George Dower, is not particularly interesting or dynamic, but I felt sympathetic towards him anyway. The other characters are amusing, but they're rather two-dimensional. This novel is a good example of "Mad Victorian" -- it's just fast chaotic fun. And it's a classic of the steampunk genre, so I consider it a must-read for serious SFF fans just for that reason.

I listened to Brilliance Audio's version of Infernal Devices, which was read by Michael Page, who's got the perfect English accent for this novel -- he sounds slightly fanatical and frenzied. I loved his narration. The audiobook also includes a foreword by K.W. Jeter and an afterward by Jeff VanderMeer who explains the importance of the novel in the history of the steampunk genre.

[ᴥ Irena ᴥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Infernal Devices is a dark and humorous account of events which almost destroyed the Earth. The story is then told by George Dower in retrospect, going back to the moment his faithful manservant Creff entered his room and told him he has a visitor, a "crazed - a murderous savage!".

Dower inherited a shop from his genius father and he is trying to get by repairing what he can. A surprise visit from that strange man marks the beginning of Dower's adventures. Next thing he knows there are burglars after the things he owns, murderers are after him, he receives a coin with an unknown saint on it, secret societies and very ugly and weird villagers are bent on killing him and that is not all.
Dower's unexpected curiosity leads him to a London district nobody wants to talk about only to get him in even more trouble. We are not spoon-fed information, you don't get everything explained all at once. Even when the characters retell the same events, those events somehow retain the novelty. There are stories within the stories which is wonderfully written.

This is a dark science fiction steampunk mystery with a lot of weird humour and a very unlikely hero. He doesn't get excited easily and most of things he does are somehow out of the character.

So why not higher rating? I started reading this book more than once. The beginning is really slow. I am glad I read it finally, but the beginning definitely doesn't show what kind of story is waiting past the visit of Brown Leather Man. I really liked this book, but then again I am sort of biased when it comes to steampunk, so take this with a grain of salt. Even now I am really not sure what I want to say about it except that I liked it. The other reason is I am not a big fan of "Little Did He Know" writing.

[Ringman Roth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked parts of this book, but overall there wasn't enough steampunk in it. The main character's personality was rather boring, and the pacing was all over the place. Furthermore, there were some really silly, "out - of place" elements in this book.

Warning Spoilers ahead!

I'm talking about the fish people. At first I thought this was some kind of lovecraftian(Shadow over Innsmouth) element, but the fish people serve no real purpose to the story. Most of them are part of a prostitution ring. You heard right, they are fish hookers! The woman running the ring is actually posing as the leader for the Ladies Union for the Suppression of Carnal Vice. God knows why they were shoe-horned into the plot. I think the author just has a fish-fetish.

Furthermore, a mystery character "The Brown Leather Man" also ended up being a fish person, who actually aided the main character through out the story, but then at the very ending revealed that he was one of the villians, by literally popping into the scene, and saying "HA!" Then he disappeared and was never heard from again? What kind of "twist" is that? I usually avoid spoilers, but I'm trying to prevent people from reading this silly waste of time. The book has the honor of being the first one to be "called" a steampunk, coined by the author himself, so many may pick it up for that reason. There a much better classic steampunks, however, that existed before the label. Pass up this for some HG Wells or Jules Verne instead.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

K W Jeter was one of the first writers of steampunk and the man who coined the term itself. Infernal Devices is an enjoyable romp written in a pastiche Victorian style with tongue firmly in cheek a lot of the time, it gently mocks it's pompous formal and stolid narrator who is put through a series of bizarre encounters featuring scenarios and characters who have since become tropes of the genre. The science and the explanation of the story events are a bit preposterous but it doesn't take itself at all seriously and that's what I really loved about it.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Infernal Devices is the first novel I've read in the now well-defined steampunk genre. Steampunk, as I understand it, is set exclusively in a Victorian setting, but contains many of the tropes of standard science fiction, including advanced technologies (though most rely on steam for energy, as opposed to electricity), time travel, alien beings, mysterious plot twists, and juvenile sexuality. While it has its roots in classic proto-sci-fi writers such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, it was refined in the 1980s by William Gibson, Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and K.W. Jeter. Jeter coined the term steampunk as a lighthearted response to the growing popularity of certain works outside of the more prevalent cyberpunk movement.

Infernal Devices deals with the bumbling adventures of George Dower, the son of a brilliant watchmaker and developer of advanced automatons. Dower has no specific will in the story, and the outrageous characters he meets and the outlandish events unfolding around him throughout the novel seem more of a brief and frightening interlude to an otherwise purposeless existence. Dower is visited in his father's shop by the mysterious Brown Leather Man who drops off a mechanical device and a strange coin that send Dower down a path leading him to strange piscine boroughs of London and the alien landscape of the Scottish Hebrides. He meets a coin forger, a pair of hustlers with strange futuristic accents, fishmen, elderly mad villains, temperance leaguers, whores, the Godly Army, and real-life selkies. There are several sudden reveals throughout the novel which change our perspective of all the prior events. None of these reveals seems earned by Dower, but only forced on him by a manipulative secondary character. Dower might be the key to destroying the earth, or he might be the key to saving it. The reader is not sure until the last ten pages.

Jeter's greatest strength is his deftness with the Victorian setting. He uses a breezy writing style which is eminently readable, but manages to imbue each scene with the grit and smoke of Dickens or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When Dower walks through Wetwick, we see the shadowy alleys and the lurching denizens. We smell the rot swept into the gutters. Also, concerning the mechanical automatons, Jeter writes with verve. The Paganinicon, which resembles Dower in all ways except for his skill with a violin and another important tool (where lies Jeter's juvenile treatment of sexuality), enforces the fantastic and comedic tone of the novel.

While Infernal Devices is a greatly entertaining read, I feel it's maybe not the best introduction to the steampunk genres. Jeter hits all of the superficial cues. There's magical mechanical technology, flying machines, weird underclasses, secret societies, myths come to life. But one of the most important aspects of the genre, as I understand it, is the punk spirit underneath its most important works. We see no liberating of non-western individuals from the obscurity the Victorians doomed them to. Jeter only briefly addresses the perils of the technologies of the future. I'm not suggesting every novel should involve these themes, but Jeter's novel seems to be on the lighter end of the spectrum of this genre. It's still a pleasant read. I'd just call it more steamgentry than steampunk.

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd give this a 3.5 if it were possible because there is a lot to admire about this book - the first steampunk book literally (Jeter coined the term in an interview) and that fact alone is enough to get the stars rising. You can see where several authors got inspiration from this book - pseudo-Victorian language mixed with some far out ideas and mechanical devices both ahead of their time and unnaturally effective in their abilities. Plus fish folk and puritanical movements dedicated to rubbing out anything remotely blasphemous - yes I said fish folk! Icthyomorphic countenances and all! All in all a very enjoyable book to read. It lacks the depth of it's progeny - it's a short book compared to the steampunk offerings more recently, Hunt etc. but I'd recommend it to fans, plus their is a foreword from Jeter and an afterword from Jeff Vandermeer.

[RG · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although short in length and not a difficult read, it just didnt work for me. Some of the dialogue and scenarios Mr Dower were involved in just seemed overly comical. Steampunk has never been my favourite genre and having heard this was considered the founder novel of its kind, I gave it a shot. There seemed to be alot of waffle.

[Benjamin]

If you need to fake your way through a Steampunk cocktail party, here's what you need to know about Infernal Devices and K. W. Jeter:

a) Jeter jokingly coined the term "steampunk" in a 1987 letter to Locus to describe "Victorian fantasies," which he predicted were going to be the next big thing (unclear whether that prediction was a joke);
b) this book involves the mechanically inept son of a clockwork inventor, who has inherited dear old dead dad's London shop, full of mysterious clockwork pieces; and those clockwork pieces lead him into a clandestine war between secret societies and mad inventors;
c) there is a clockwork automaton, which fits what we think of as steampunk;
d) and there are human-fishmen hybrids and hints of other Lovecraftian beasties (or possibly hoaxes), which does not fit what we usually think of as steampunk (with some notable exceptions, like The Steampunk Trilogy).

When I think "steampunk," I think of something very much like the formula Vandermeer gives in the afterword to this book:

mad inventor + invention (steam x airship or metal person/robot) x [pseudo]Victorian setting + progressive/reactionary/neutral politics x adventure plot

What's curious about this older steampunk novel how closely it fits that formula... And also how it includes many other elements that don't fit into that formula but do fit in very well with the idea of it being (pace the subtitle) "A Mad Victorian Fantasy." For instance, and most obviously, the fishmen sure seem Lovecraftian, but we could also see them in the lineage of animal-people (Wells/Moreau) or lost-race stories (Haggard). Also, while secret societies aren't rare in today's steampunk (I think), Jeter comes close to the feverish Victorian interest in social organizations, from public anti-vice society to secret scientific society. (And as Vandermeer notes, it's easy to put the fishmen-hybrid slavery/prostitution ring into conversation with certain "decadent" writers, like Wilde--easy to imagine Dorian Gray patronizing one of these establishments.)

It's interesting to see what this book gave to other writers (and the makers who enjoy steampunk material culture) and what those later workers in the genre didn't take. That's all blah blah historical growth of the genre stuff that I love to think about and you--I don't know how much you care about it. But if nothing else, take this away: there may be interesting steampunk work being done now that expands beyond the white male main character/Anglo-imperial setting--but this isn't it.

Jeter's most interesting thematic doesn't have to do with race or gender, but with the inevitable march of time--the death of a species due to technological progress, the loss of sexual and economic innocence in two characters who have absorbed future moral-stances, the replacement of hand-made artifice by the loss of work. Jeter kind of indicates this in his new foreword, talking about how today's technological design is meant to look smooth, whereas Victorian technology is an irruption, impossible to mistake for the mass-made and the human.

But I have to be honest, as fun as the story is, and as much as a point Jeter may have (eh, maybe, so-so), Jeter makes a couple of strange choices that hold this novel back from being great. The main character narrates the story, and his voice is great; but he's also an unimaginative and uneducated, so doesn't really understand most of what's going on around him. Which means that he spends a great deal of this book being lectured to about what's really going on. On top of that, the book is very episodic, with characters changing sides in ways that make sense, but don't necessarily help the pacing.

[Melissa McShane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I went into this knowing that it was a very early example of steampunk fiction, so if the science/steampunkiness was lacking, I wasn't going to mark it down for that. And it turned out that the science/steampunkiness was very good! Lots of clockwork things and people, and you can tell that Jeter came out of the same primordial puddle as Tim Powers. The plot was also pretty good. It was the characters that killed it for me.

Basically, the hero, George, is a gormless panty-waisted wuss of the first order, complete with spine of jelly and brain of pudding. He spends most of the book stumbling into all sorts of trouble because he can't learn from the past. I can understand him being out of his depth at first, but he continues to be confused and useless whenever something weird happens. I was also frustrated that his adventure was a long series of misunderstandings in which he could never explain the truth. When it happens to Bertie Wooster, it's funny, because Bertie at least tries to act on his own initiative, but George is just as dumb as a bag of hammers. And this is more or less the entirety of the story--George stumbles into a situation in which he is either accused of something he didn't do, or is manipulated by someone else, and hilarity doesn't ensue.

There's a bit of authorial manipulation near the end, when we learn that Sir Charles, who's been a major antagonist for most of the book, is actually one of the good guys. In at least two instances, if he'd really been a good guy, he would have behaved very differently than he did, but then we couldn't have had the big reveal at the end. I don't have any respect for this kind of story manipulation.. Between this and George's complete wussiness, I couldn't enjoy the book, though I'm not enough turned off that I won't read any of Jeter's other books if I happen upon them.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of imagination went into this book, but not enough discipline or storytelling craft. For the majority of the book, the author shoves the first-person narrator through inexplicable and astonishing events, and then crams their eventual denouement into a few pages via telling instead of showing, when other characters explain to our befuddled protagonist what was happening.

For most folks, that would probably be enough to shove this down to a one- or two-star rating, but I'm more generous. What really irked me about this book was the complete disdain for the laws of physics. Steampunk is, ideally, a subgenre of science fiction, which means it is supposed to show respect for as much of science as is possible within the bounds of the story. Want time travel? Faster than light travel? Or maybe teleporting "transporters"? Sure; but choose what you're going to mangle and keep it to a minimum. Steampunk in general doesn't deal well with this kind of parsimony, and this one is worse than most.

And how can you have a Victorian England steampunk story that appears to be completely missing railroads?!?

This is pretty vintage for steampunk — in fact, the author gets credit for inventing the term, however, since it was published in 1987. I found the couple that was from the future (kind of) quite entertaining, although the explanation of their origins (another of those annoying "tellings") was disappointing.

Recommended only for steampunk completists. Sorry.

(This was the book of the month for the SciFi and Fantasy Reading Group for April 2013. It was discussed here).
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[Rhea · Rating 5 out of 5]

More properly referred to as "steampunk" than sci-fi, and written in Jeter's kinetic style, it follows the hapless son of a famous victorian mechanical inventor. He's constantly mistaken for his rather more talented father, which ultimately puts him in the middle of a plot to destroy the planet (to clean things up of course) while riding it all out in a pneumatic carriage or some such.

More than almost any other book I've read I'd love to see this made into a feature film.

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mr. Dower gets chased. A lot. The end.

[Bronwyn Knox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic steampunk from an author who originated, not the steampunk style itself, but the term.

The naive narrator, George Dower, inherits a clock and watch shop from his genius father and tries to make a living with less skill than his father had. A mysterious customer comes into the shop and launches George into an adventure that has steampunk technology, time travel, Lovecraftian human hybrids, automatons, and lots of people trying to kill him for no fault of his own.

There's a lot of humor, especially in the narration, because of George's clueless, guileless nature and how he views the dangerous and weird people he’s gotten involved with, which includes con artists, evangelists, and one megalomaniac.

George is at the center of many storylines as a passive target. I would have liked him to have more drive of his own other than solving the mystery of his father’s life and work. Once he discovered his father's ulterior motives in having a son, the story felt anticlimactic, and not much happened with the answer to that particular question. I expected more of a confrontation between him and his “brother.”

The book was fun overall, action-oriented, and pure entertainment. I enjoyed reading it as an example classic steampunk genre stories. It’s a shame that it shares a title with a more recent and much more popular YA book. I think that makes it harder for new readers to discover this one.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Infernal Devices is the story of George, an unremarkable man with no major talents who has inherited his father’s watchmaker shop. Various zany characters show up and drag him into an intricate conspiracy reminiscent of H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft, and mostly, in my mind, Jules Verne. K.W. Jeter propels George through increasingly dangerous, nonsensical, over-the-top adventures powered by steampunk, bravado, and sheer imagination. This is an adventure in the classical sense, and as a work of literary fiction it’s quite fascinating. As a story, I’m not sure I’m as enthralled.

Jeter’s style explicitly apes that of late-nineteenth-century narrators. For this reason it reminds me a lot of Wells and Verne, more so Verne, maybe, for the sheer grandiosity of imagination here. We have long-lost civilizations of merpeople, vibration engines that can destroy the Earth, holy armies ready to defend England against the scourge of fish-people, and so on. The technology is just beyond the reach of what you’d expect for the time period, much like we would see in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but Jeter, like Verne, is careful to offer up pseudo-scientifical explanations for these devices.

As a literature lover, I’m intrigued by the narration and writing style. George is verbose and writes with the same kind of florid hyperbole one might encounter in Dracula or The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s very different from contemporary storytelling techniques, and it wears on one. I can’t say that I like it, and it’s one thing to wade through it because that was how people wrote “back in the day” and another thing to have to do it because of a conscious stylistic choice by a modern-day writer…. Additionally, Jeter also portrays George as an infuriatingly passive narrator: he is always reacting to what is around him rather than taking action; he just lets the story happen to him. That being said, I’m not sure how much I can criticize Jeter here, because this is exactly what he’s doing: he’s not attempting to emulate this style out of a misguided sense that it will sound better, but rather, he’s trying to emulate the entire experience of a nineteenth-century science-fiction novel, strange narrative and all.

Moreover, George is just such an unlikable person. I wanted him to get run over by a cab after about the first chapter, and my opinion only worsened as the story developed. He is a complaining, judgmental narcissist. This is totally intentional, again, but I still don’t necessarily enjoy watching him, if only because he seems like he’s supposed to be a sympathetic (if unlikable) protagonist.

That’s why I called Infernal Devices an interesting piece of literary fiction. It doesn’t strike me as steampunk and science fiction except only incidentally. In this way, Jeter is playing a kind of game of meta-genre, wherein Infernal Devices doesn’t so much transcend genre as use genre as a tool for storytelling. That’s an interesting and worthwhile goal.

But that doesn’t make me like it any better.

Experiments are all well and good, but at the end of the day, I like story. You might love Infernal Devices just as a story if Verne and Wells, et al, float your boat. For me, though, it’s underdeveloped and underwhelming, and Jeter’s writing doesn’t help. It’s just not my cup of tea.

Oh, and really, what is it with the male protagonists having to have sex with a woman as a necessary part of the plot? No thank you.

[RascalKing · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was fine.

The more I think about "Infernal Devices" and its protagonist the more I can come up with things to complain about, but in the end I still enjoyed the book. It reminded me a of other books like "The Crying of Lot 49" or "The hitchikers guide to the galaxy" in that the main character is supposed to be an affable every-man who keeps getting bounced from one madcap set piece to the other and is never not in way over his head. Or even really knowing what is happening. Now just because I compare it to those books you should not put it on their level. Its not that good. But its fine.

Our hero, George Dower, is basically the same at the end of the book as when he started. He doesn't go through anything like a hero's journey. He doesn't change or seem to learn anything or progress as a character.

The book's brevity is simultaneously its best and worst feature. We don't get a lot of time to explore the fun locales and insane circumstances the author has created. There are a lot of fanciful and fun ideas that only ever get half explored. I would like to have seen more of the Anti-Royal society explored, as I would have wished the same for wetwick/dampford and their residents, women's league for suppressing carnal vice (not their actual name, I have already forgotten it), or Mollie Maud/Mrs. Trabble. All of this seems to be sacrificed to keep up the manic pace and leave us as confused and in the dark as Dowser. Maybe not everything needs to be explained (or perhaps KW Jeter isn't capable enough to explain). But still, the book was fine.

The more I think about it the more I can find to pick at it. It reminds me of the book that Fry writes in Futurama to capture the Big Brain, riddled with plot holes and spelling errors. Truthfully I just wanted to bring that up because the revealed big bad just pulls a "NOW I AM LEAVING FOR ABSOLUTELY NO RAISIN" and jumps through a window.

The book was not without wit. It amused. I think it may have even been a good satire, I'm just not sure what the source of satire was.

Yeah. Its bad. But I still enjoyed it. That may say more about my tastes than anything.

It was fine.

[Sheri · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is not worth reading. It showed up on one of my recommendation lists from goodreads, but it was garbage. Clearly, any book that ends with the hero saving the world (yes, the entire world will crumble unless he does this) by sleeping with the minor character that has been attempting to seduce him the whole time is absurd. The best I can come up with is that the author was trying for ridiculous and embedding all these cultural references throughout just for his own silly entertainment. However, I found the whole thing too much to stomach.

After having recently read Vonnegut's player piano, I was enticed by Jeter's introduction in which he claims (apparantly truly) to have coined the term steampunk and he says: "A fascination with Victorian tech is at its heart a salutary accceptance of the machine-ness of machines--and correspondingly an acceptance of the humanity of human beings." Really, I was quite excited going in and so just that much disappointed by the whole idiocity.

At times it reminded me of my beloved Sherlock Holmes (all the chasing across the marshes reeks of Hounds of the Baskervilles), and the creation of these creatures on an island off the coast of Scotland reminded me of Frankenstein's secluded lab, but those references, rather than making me like Jeter simply fueled my disappointment. The plot was just random chase scene after chase scene, the characters all keep running into each other over and over and of course they all escape from each predicament just in time so that they can meet again a few pages later and do it all over again.

Besides all this it was way too convenient that the Paginincon woke up knowing everything (and so was able to enlighten Dower Jr), that the Brown Leather Man (yeah, what a character and so annoying that he talks like Yoda...there is really only one Yoda and Jeter cannot have him) turns out to be a vengeful force after all., and that Sir Charles is always the spy who has inflitrated an organization and ends up being the good guy in the end, Yuck.

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

As expectativas eram muitas antes de ter começado a ler aquela que é considerada uma das obras pioneiras do steampunk original. Certamente, ler as obras de K.W. Jeter, autor responsável pela criação do próprio termo (vide carta à Revista Locus, 1987) é algo que está na lista de qualquer fã da literatura do género. E em termos de adequação ao género, o livro não desaponta. Infelizmente, em termos de estilo, história e personagens, deixa algo a desejar.

A história segue George Dower, filho pouco talentoso de um cientista genial, arquétipo dos inventores vitorianos, que morre sem explicar os segredos das suas invenções, deixando ao seu filho uma loja de mecanismos de relógio. Por muito que se esforce (mais por motivos monetários do que por vocação), George não consegue ter com os mecanismos a mesma sinergia que o seu pai tinha. Quando um homem misterioso e exótico o visita no sentido de consertar uma máquina, George começa a aperceber-se que a ocupação real do seu pai não eram os relógios. Com uma intriga que mistura autómatos, sociedades secretas, bordéis, progresso tecnológico e as suas consequências, criaturas sobrenaturais, e viagens no tempo, com muita ironia à mistura, é fácil ver como este livro se tornou influente na história do steampunk.

No entanto, George é uma personagem principal passiva e pouco carismática, o humor é forçado e alguns dos plot twists fazem pouco ou nenhum sentido, falhando na tentativa de trazer algum interesse final à narrativa. A história empalidece em comparação com outros clássicos do género, sem qualquer característica que a torne memorável.

De leitura recomendada para os fãs do género, nem que seja apenas pela sua importância histórica (e a introdução, escrita recentemente em tom de reflexão). Para os que gostam de uma boa história, este livro entretém, mas não satisfaz.

[Ubiquitousbastard · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, this book basically invented steampunk, I'm a bit of a fan of steampunk and yet I had never thought it necessary to read this. Part of me thought it would be like the tripe that is most of the genre these days, but I really should have given the inventor a bit more credit.

I didn't have the issue that other readers have had with the language and the confusing science. Having read Jane Austen, the language in this book was comparatively easy, and the confusing science I just sort of went with it. The resonance thing I understood right away, since I've read about accidents caused by such resonance. Then there's the fact that I just read the book Resonance. I also don't agree with the plot being slow or boring. I read the whole book in one sitting because it managed to keep my attention throughout.

However, I was sort of shaky on whether this book deserved four or five stars. I honestly can't remember the last time that I gave out a five star rating, so I was more than hesitant to do so here. But then, I really enjoyed this book and I loved the originality (because, despite being steampunk, it isn't about a plucky heroine on an airship drinking tea). This book made me happy and didn't irritate me in any significant way...I think that's enough to finally warrant five stars.

[Lel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took me a little by surprise. When I hear the term 'steampunk' I image trains, elaborate dinner parties with mad inventors, a duel with pistols, things along those kind of lines. What I found in this book was fun. There were mad scientist type characters, a sex crazed thief, a strange race of fish people, a mechanical violinist with human aspirations and a lame little Jack Russell. Needless to say I will be searching out more of Jeter's books.

This book centres on the son of a genius mechanic that builds crazy contraptions while maintaining a business as a watch maker. The son has none of his fathers flair for mechanics and gets himself embroiled in a plot to save the world from one of his fathers inventions. The book reads like a comedy version of Sherlock Holmes. Whether that is down to the time period that it is set, the fact that he has a man servant or the fact that he tries to do some investigating of his own I don't know.

I couldn't put this down once I started it, the characters were amazing. I loved the fact that Dower just stumbles from one crisis to the next with no clue of the reason for any of his problems. Each crisis a little more amusing and exciting than the last. This book won't win any awards for literacy brilliance but it made me laugh out loud and hope that someone see's their way to making this a film/tv series or even comic.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Supposed to be the first "steampunk" novel and the author is supposed to have been the one to coin the phrase.

Set in Victorian London, a man inherits his father's "watch shop". Turns out that his father actually made very intricate mechanical devices. These devices have an unsavory history which leads the main character on a wild adventure.

I wanted to love this book but for many reason, I just could not. The writing wasn't all that great and the story line was uninteresting. The characters and scenes didn't make sense for the time period this was set in. Lots of bits and phrases were thrown in that caused numerous eye rolls.

And the big finish of this book, where the main character has to have sex in order to save the world was beyond ridiculous.

My version of the book also had numerous typos and editing mistakes. Periods where there shouldn't have been, misused words, and commas that didn't make sense.

Definitely not a good read at all.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I admired the author's ability to emulate the tone of a Victorian author and paint the story's images in my mind, that was unfortunately countered by a lack of characters I cared about and a plot I couldn't buy into. I had the feeling that the only character for whom the author had any compassion was the dog -- in fact I wonder if the author would have preferred to have written an ending where the Brown Leather Man actually succeeded in his final goal.

Other negatives for me: the idea that one man had developed so many different ground-breaking inventions, the general lack of any true science behind any of those inventions and other pseudo-science aspects in the story (in effect making this a fantasy book, not a sci-fi book), and I didn't care for the constant use of long monologues by various characters to explain the plot, making me feel like I was watching a campy B movie.