SILKPUNK! (It's the Silkiest)

Silkpunk is an offshoot of steampunk (sort of), similar to clockpunk, candlepunk, gearpunk, cyberpunk, dieselpunk, solarpunk, and decopunk. But silkpunk takes things waaay, waaay back in time and to a different part of the world than where -punk usually goes. It was invented/established by the author Ken Liu, who wrote The Grace of Kings.

“The technology aesthetic I’m going for is what I call ‘silkpunk,’ which is of course analogous to steampunk,” he says. “[There are] battle kites, giant airships that are propelled by oars through the air instead of propellers, and even underwater boats.”

And though the book features much that’s pure fantasy—sea monsters, meddling gods, and telepathic books—all the silkpunk technology has a basis in real history.

“All of these are based on direct East Asian analogs or extensions of what was done,” says Liu. “So it’s a fun tech fantasy world that I think people will enjoy.” (x, emphasis added by me)

Hopefully this takes off because it sounds freaking awesome.

For more information:

INTERVIEW: Ken Liu Discusses Silk Punk Fantasy and THE GRACE OF KINGS

Tired of Steampunk? Try Silkpunk on for Size

‘Silkpunk’: Redefining Technology for ‘The Grace of Kings' 

Silkpunk - Playing Engineer in an Imaginary World

TIGRESS SHARK (Summary)

Ren Fa snaps awake in a back alley in Kaitei City with no memory of how he got there or where is he is or even who he is. He only knows three things: his name, the name of the man who woke up in the alley next to him, and that he has to get out of the city before a nebulous someone from his forgotten past tracks him down and kills him. In order to escape a city in the grip of a tyrannical governor, he and the equally amnesiac Li Jiang sneak aboard a merchant vessel taking books to the far-off city of Gaôzu.

Only it's not a merchant vessel. It's a disguised nauto-aeroship—a ship fueled by alchemy that can travel by sea and air—and it's captained by one of the most notorious pirates in the Yè Xiàn Ocean or the Yún Sea of Clouds above it. The government calls her a necromancer and a criminal. The oppressed citizens of the empire call her a hero. Her men, ghost-warriors rescued from the empress's slave camps, call her simply Captain Mŭlăohŭ, the Tigress.

A dethroned princess with an unusual connection to the sea, Mŭlăohŭ has more important things to worry about than two stowaways on her ship. She has a little sister to overthrow and an empire to take back. But Ren may hold the key to doing just that, if his secrets and his past don't get them killed first.

In an alternate steampunk world resembling a dystopian Imperial China, where condemned men are sentenced to eternity in terra cotta prisons and mermaids have razor teeth and a thirst for blood, where sky pirates are the good guys and smuggling books is a capital crime, this is the story of two sisters vying for a throne and the man caught between them…who may or may not be an enemy. TIGRESS SHARK will take you from the Beijing-like city of Kaitei to the depths of the Yè Xiàn Ocean, from the Valley of the Emperor's Necropolis to the heights of the Jade City floating in the Yún Sea of Clouds as Mŭlăohŭ and Ren lead the first wave of a rebellion five years in the making.