Pimp My Airship

With its associations with Victoriana and all the implications for real-world colonialism and oppression that the period evokes, developing a well-realised Steampunk world is an activity that benefits immensely from a critical standpoint that engages with the historical oppression and racism embedded in the genre rather than simply glossing over and thereby almost certainly reproducing it. Joining work like The Black God's Drums by P. Djeli Clark and Everfair by Nisi Shawl, both of which posit alternative histories in which Black polities form and are able to challenge the technological and political dominance of white colonialism, Pimp My Airship by Maurice Broaddus takes a different approach, centring Black narratives in a world where white supremacy and marginalisation has taken a recognisable, but alt-historical turn.

The world of Pimp My Airship has already been explored fairly extensively in Broaddus' short fiction, including a story of the same title, and the Tor.com novella Buffalo Soldier (a full chronological reading list is available in the acknowledgements of this book) but the novel is accessible even if, like me, you haven't read Broaddus' prior work. It takes place in an alternate Indianapolis where the American Revolution failed: the USA is instead the United States of Albion, having never officially split from the British Isles despite having moved its capital from London to Washington D.C. This alternate history means that the Civil War also didn't take place, though slavery has been quietly abolished through the creation of machines which can work more efficiently than slaves. As you'd expect, racism and sexism are still very overtly part of the landscape and all of the main characters are grappling in some way or another with marginalisations which seek to limit the shape of their lives and ambitions.