This week I’m reading Felix Gilman’s The Rise of Ransom City, a steampunk fantasy Western that is a quasi-sequel to The Half-Made World, which is of course also a steampunk fantasy Western.
Whereas THMW was mainly concerned with players in the war between the Line (demonic railroad engines running what amounts to a fascist and expansionist corporate dystopia) and the Gun (demonic weapons waging a murderous guerrilla campaign against the Line), TRoRC mainly follows inventor Harry Ransom as he attempts to create a city beyond the reach of either of those two malevolent powers. So far, it’s not going all that well, and Our Hero has been forced to go incognito and take refuge on a paddlewheel riverboat, where he pretends to be a piano player.
The Damaris was a tall red affair, with a great white wheel, and a profusion of lanterns. She looked like an opera house or a whorehouse escaped from the big city streets and gone looking for adventure.
She went looking for adventure and boy, does she ever find it! However, the Damaris is not to be confused with either the Rex or the Not for Hire. For one thing, she hasn’t got a complement of cannons, although she sure could have used them.
Speaking of people or things that could use a complement of cannons, this round of editing of Father’s Books is nearly complete! Although there will, of course, be at least one more. There’s always at least one more …
He gave their surroundings a disdainful look. “Richard did not tell me it was a goddamn dirt road in the middle of nowhere, or I wouldn’t have taken the Corvette.”
“We didn’t know it was a goddamn dirt road in the middle of nowhere until we got here,” she said.
Next time, take the Subaru!
Viscosity 
Does the steamboat go to Riverworld, or Disneyland?
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