Steampunk: It's not as new, confusing, or weird as you may have heard. In fact, this sub-genre of science fiction is actually quite warm and welcoming - and it's loads of fun. So let's take a minute to talk about what it is, and where it came from.

"Steampunk" is a style (of books, video games, comic books, movies, and more) that hearkens back to the fantastic/adventure literature of the nineteenth century. Jules Verne's stories about exploration and mayhem, H.G. Wells and his tales of alien invasion and time travel, and Mary Shelley's tome about science gone awry ... in these famous works you'll find the seeds of the modern steampunk sensibility.

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Many moons ago, in another country and a former century I worked in an advertising agency in London and "lorem ipsum" was a familiar part of my life.

This was a time, barely 20 years ago, when London's Fleet Street was still home to most of Britain's major newspapers and the typesetters worked feverishly to lay down the type for the next day's papers using a process not that far removed from that used by William Caxton's former apprentice, Wynkyn de Worde, when he set up shop in a lane close to Fleet Street almost 500 years earlier; and probably recognizable by the printers of The Daily Courant, London's first daily newspaper, that published its first issue in Fleet Street in March 1702.

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Davina, BookBrowse editor

A couple of people have emailed recently to ask whether The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based on, or at least inspired by, Andrew Sean Greer's 2004 novel The Confessions of Max Tivoli, and if so, why the movie title was changed?

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