Balzac wrote dozens of novels. I've read Zola, which was good.

That's what I was thinking of!

Or maybe I was thinking of the Emile Zola, who had something to do with Rousseau...

Contradicting that, one of the most famous steampunk work is The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk's most famous writer and most dedicated propagandist respectively, which is set in a 19th-century Britain undergoing an accelerated Industrial Revolution because Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace were able to come up with workable computers and computer languages. It's got many historical personages and characters from period novels wandering through.

Is it worth me digging through? I own it, on the rec of a peep I knew with a math PhD.

I've (twice) made it through the first two or three chapters before work tasks have eaten my head.

Is it worth me digging through?

Yes, it's wonderful, although if Steampunk is your bag start with the motherlode - Moorcock's Bastable and (kinda) Jherek Carnelian books.

Danny, Champion of the World is my favourite Dahl, and I must buy it for my nephew. I love The Magic Finger, too.

Has anyone here read any BALzac?

I'm pretty sure the novel Consuela is referring to is actually Old Goriot! As far as I know Balzac didn't write a novel called Zola (which is also of course the name of another French author).

Anyway, of Balzac I've only read Old Goriot and Lost Illusions; the former is very good and the latter is unquestionably one of the best novels I've ever read, although you do have to slog through about 200 pages about nineteenth-century printing technology before it starts getting exciting! One of the interesting things about Balzac is that you always know exactly how much money his characters owe and to whom. Also, characters from his novels make cameos in other novels; I guess these days we'd call it the Balzacverse.

It's kind of strange how little Balzac is read by English-speaking readers; he's arguably the most important French novelist of the nineteenth century.

I'll second Angus's mention of Goriot but rave over Cousin Bette, the gripping story of the Revenge of the Old Maid Cousin.

And yeah, definitely a Balzacverse. Think Trollope (especially the Barsetshire or the Palliser novels) multiplied a few dozen times.

I read Pere Goriot in college (ha! Didn't know the title been translated in other editions! I read it in English, but the title stayed French). I don't remember a lot about it, except the general impression that Balzac was the same kind of finely-tuned, shrewd observer of social custom as Henry James, only observing people who weren't as rich, and using much shorter sentences.

I've read one or two Emile Zola novels, and he's much more of a muckraker than Balzac. Also, 30 years later? A little later. Zola was the one who wrote the open letter "J'Accuse!" in the newspapers over the Dreyfus Affair at the turn of the century. (And I played Clue with much older kin for years using that phrase, completely unaware of why we had to bellow it out in French at the revelatory moment.)

I've been 100 pages into Perdido Street Station for about 2 years. (I will pick it up again some day.) It's a book where everyone seems very sensuous and gustatory, and the city itself is portrayed as a wild, marvelous, inspiring hellhole -- the way people write about New York in the 1920s, I think, except this (fictional) city involves sapient bugs and critters with wings and alchemy and illegal offset printing presses. One word of caution: I found it so very British that it was sometimes a little tough to follow. Not incomprehensible, but hard work trying to decipher the colloquialisms and place the references.

Well some of Balzac's characters are rich; he writes about everyone from down-at-heel landladies to duchesses, so from that point of view he's like the French Dickens, but I think the Henry James comparison is apt too, because he's much more sceptical about people's motivations than Dickens is; he doesn't really do good guys and bad guys.

Zola is the absolute bomb. I'd recommend him to anyone who says they find 19th-century fiction too polite.

Perdido St Station is one of those books that builds an incredible world and then can't think what to do in it.

...yes, I'm only responding to the trashy fantasy discussio because I've never read the clever French books. I saw Les Mis once, if it helps. It was pish...

Other significant works of steampunk are K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices, most of Tim Powers' early work (esp. The Anubis Gates), some of James Blaylock's early work, and possibly Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter, depending on how flexible you are in your definitions.

I loved The Anubis Gates and pretty much every other Tim Powers book. Does that mean I like steampunk?

Reportedly, Mieville's plotting improves in The Scar and The Iron Council.

I come with pre-formed knowledge of books I've never read. This used to trouble me.

I like The Difference Engine, Plei, but I was annoyed they didn't try for more authentic period language. I also suspect it would have meant more if I'd ever been able to slog through Disraeli's fiction, since the protagonist of one section is Sybil. If recommendation will win out over the convenience of actually owning the book, I'd recommend The Anubis Gates instead, as it's a rip-snorting adventure, which is usually not even My Type of Thing -- but it's done with such enthusiasm and vigor I got swept away anyway.

Oh, I got it: The film version of steampunk is probably Wild, Wild West. Only most of the books in the category don't suck.