Raise Your Hand If You’ve Always Wanted to Read a Steampunk Fantasy Featuring Nikola Tesla
A review of ‘Teslanauts’ by Matthew Donald
I’ve been working my way through Teslanauts by Matthew Donald and I have to say, I like the book.
I don’t know if this exactly qualifies as steampunk, but I feel that term provides potential readers with a good idea of what you’d be getting into.
Instead of complex contraptions that run on steam or elaborate clockwork mechanisms, Teslanauts is a book that features highly-trained secret agents equipped with electric devices that are essentially manifestations of Nikola Tesla’s considerable genius.
I find there’s always a particular form of joy that springs up in stories set in these kinds of worlds. There’s something at play that I can only call the appeal of the “tinkerer.”
Consider the invention scenes in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang where we see what a crackpot Dick Van Dyke’s character is (he plays an inventor aptly named Caractacus Potts). His complex apparatus that delivers breakfast on wheeled trays can’t help but make you giggle:
