Review
Title: All Made of Hinges, Being an Anthology of Mormon Steampunk
Editor: James Wymore
Publisher: Immortal Works LLC, Salt Lake City
Genre: Speculative Fiction
Year Published: 2018
Number of Pages: 278
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 9781731161703
Price: $14.99
Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters, March 4, 2019
Mormon Steampunk. When I announced this name as a real genre to a couple of close friends, it elicited peals of laughter. Such a concept, it appears, had never occurred to them, despite both of them being intimately familiar with the culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and science fiction as a genre. I will have to admit myself to some surprise when I first heard the term a few years ago. As soon as I heard it, though, I recalled a phrase from the Book of Mormon, Jarom 1:8.
“And we multiplied exceedingly, and spread upon the face of the land, and became exceedingly rich in gold, and in silver, and in precious things, and in fine workmanship of wood, in buildings, and machinery, and also in iron and copper, and brass and steel, making all manner of tools….”
That sounds like steampunk to me.
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that a speculative genre such as steampunk should take root in the fertile Mormon literary tradition. After all, Orson Scott Card, David Farland, Brandon Sanderson, and other Mormon authors have risen to the upper tiers of science fiction and fantasy. It may be that having an open canon and a tradition of continuing revelation lends itself to considering what may be or what may have been, with just a slight twist of fate.
Entering into this world of “retro-futurism,” as one friend described steampunk, are a trio of short story anthologies from Immortal Works press, a Utah based publisher of speculative and YA fiction. An initial call for submissions to create a single volume of Mormon steampunk stories turned into a three-volume series, mostly due to the high number of responses that the editors found worthy of inclusion. Editors James Wymore, John Olsen, and Dave Butler divided up the stories and each editor then took responsibility for one volume. This review is of the first in the series, All Made of Hinges, the title adapted from a beloved Primary song. (In the interest of full disclosure, this reviewer has a story included in the third volume, due out in March.)
The elements of steampunk are simple. What would happen if technology had taken a different turn at some point in the past couple of hundred years, with steam-power usually as a driving force? It is not much of a leap from there to airships, automatons (robots), artificial limbs, highly innovative metal alloys and mechanical adaptations. In some cases, elements of alchemy and folk magic also play a part. It is easy to see how many of these elements fit nicely into a Mormon culture of the 19th century.
In All Made of Hinges, edited by James Wymore, the reader is presented with a variety of stories, most by previously published LDS authors, such as Steven Peck, Scott Tarbet, Elizabeth Mueller, Amanda Hamblin, Lee Allred, and others. Dave Butler imagines a flesh and machine Brigham Young, kept alive beyond his death as part automaton, clothed in President Young’s body. John Olsen recounts a Mormon Battalion marching by airship across New Mexico. Elizabeth Mueller’s entry, “Avenger’s Angel,” places a masterful female bounty hunter competing against Porter Rockwell in pursuit of rewards for finding and ending the careers of dangerous criminals. Lee Allred, in the volume’s longest entry titled “Tracting out Cthulhu,” envisions a fully formed and formidable Nation of Deseret, using missionary tactics and alchemy to find and neutralize an ancient evil and the historical figures who would try to harness it. These are fun, intriguing, and entertaining stories, often with a bit of an edge. These are not necessarily children’s stories, yet fully embrace some of the foundations of Mormon Church history and theology. A Correlation Committee that operates more like the CIA? Check. An electrically enhanced Urim and Thummim? Real angels continuing the war in heaven in Nauvoo? This is the stuff that makes this volume work best.
Some of the other stories are more steampunk, and less Mormon in culture, as if they were destined for another publisher, but had Mormon elements introduced just to qualify them for inclusion. Imagine a book of scripture in a vest pocket that stops bullets, but is never named, or an automaton airship built around a human host, that once passed through Great Salt Lake City, but whose adventures mostly center around British occupied India. These are still interesting, but with less of a foundation in Mormon theology or history, I found them less satisfying as part of this volume.
The strength of these stories is in the familiar elements of our shared culture and history, twisted and turned in ways that are perhaps fantastic, but still recognizable. As always, the best speculative fiction uses technology or fantasy to turn mirrors on our own world, forcing us to look at ourselves and our communities from a different perspective. A collection like this can serve to stir our own imaginations to see what choices we make today might look like a few years in the future. Or in the past. Take your pick. The future, and the past, are as flexible as we dare in All Made of Hinges.