Combustion Books

Antonio’s Answer as a podcast!

admin — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 22:41:16 +0000

We’re quite excited to announce our first audio release, a free reading of the Catastrophone Orchestra‘s story Antonio’s Answer. It’s a tale of animal rights and nihilism in 19th century New York City. Read by Ben Church, produced and released by the Mike Cannon Show.
44 minutes long.

Antonio’s Answer

SteamPunk Magazine is open to submissions!

admin — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 18:23:55 +0000

After a year of waiting, SteamPunk Magazine #9 is nearly completed and SteamPunk Magazine #10 is open to submissions! They’re looking for fiction, essays, manifestos, how-tos (both fashion and tech), illustrators, and interviewers, so please check it out and submit your work!

In addition to the previous editors, longtime contributor and web editor Katie Casey has stepped in as managing editor and longtime mad scientist Professor Offlogic will be taking over the how-to section!

TempleCon 2013!

admin — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 03:50:02 +0000

Combustion Books is quite excited to announce that we’ll be showing up in force for TempleCon 2013 in Warwick, Rhode Island from February 1-3. This year we’ll be taking over an entire hotel room on the ground floor to bring you Combustion Books’ Traveling Show of Vice, our parlor of cons, swindles, games of luck and chance, accordion music, tintype photography, crime, and of course books.

We also have a full schedule of presentations:

Friday, 5pm, con suite 2: Biopunk Panel Discussion: Biopunk in Other Forms. With Paul Di Filippo and Margaret Killjoy.
Friday, 8pm, con suite 2: A Steampunk’s Guide to Sex. With Professor Calamity, Screaming Mathilda, and Margaret Killjoy.
Saturday, 12pm, Barrington: Biopunk Panel Discussion: Biopunk and the Paranormal. With Anderson O’Donnell, Paul Di Filippo, Leanna Renee Hieber, and Professor Calamity.
Saturday, 5pm, Barrington: Bunkum, Cons and Swindles of the 19th Century. With Professor Calamity and Screaming Mathilda.
Saturday, 6:30, Barrington: Bucking the Tiger: 19th Century Games of Skill. With Professor Calamity and Screaming Mathilda.

Interview with Margaret Killjoy on Combustion Books

admin — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:06:53 +0000

Combustion Books collective member Margaret Killjoy was interviewed by White Cat Publications about the history and structure of SteamPunk Magazine and Combustion Books:

Nowadays, Combustion Books is a collective (we work without bosses) of four people. We make a lot of our decisions collaboratively, but each person takes on a certain amount of responsibility for themselves and we try to stay out of their hair. Personally, I do a lot of the editing and I do almost all the book design. We’ve got people who work on managing submissions, doing PR, keeping books, etc. as well.

AK Press’s holiday sale

admin — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:25:12 +0000

Our distributor, AK Press, is offering 25% off everything they carry from now until Dec 9. Which includes all of the Combustion Books titles!

A Steampunk’s Guide to Sex is being kickstartered!

admin — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 02:08:55 +0000

We’re happy to announce our first crowdfunding project, A Steampunk’s Guide to Sex. We’re hoping to raise $2200 to help us get this book to the printer.

The book is a mix of Victorian history and contemporary subculture, with authors like Professor Calamity and Alan Moore contributing.

Solidarity statement against grand jury repression

admin — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 06:00:38 +0000

Today Combustion Books was proud to sign on to the following statement:

On Wednesday July 25th, the FBI conducted a series of coordinated raids against activists in Portland, Olympia, and Seattle. They subpoenaed several people to a special federal grand jury, and seized computers, black clothing and anarchist literature. This comes after similar raids in Seattle in July and earlier raids of squats in Portland.

Though the FBI has said that the raids are part of a violent crime investigation, the truth is that the federal authorities are conducting a political witch-hunt against anarchists and others working toward a more just, free, and equal society. The warrants served specifically listed anarchist literature as evidence to be seized, pointing to the fact that the FBI and police are targeting this group of people because of their political ideas. Pure and simple, these raids and the grand jury hearings are being used to intimidate people whose politics oppose the state’s agenda. During a time of growing economic and ecological crises that are broadly affecting people across the world, it is an attempt to push back any movement towards creating a world that is humane, one that meets every person’s needs rather than serving only the interests of the rich.

This attack does not occur in a vacuum. Around the country and around the world, people have been rising up and resisting an economic system that puts the endless pursuit of profit ahead of the basic needs of humanity and the Earth. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement to now Anaheim, people are taking to the streets. In each of these cases, the state has responded with brutal political repression. This is not a coincidence. It is a long-term strategy by state agencies to stop legitimate political challenges to a status quo that exploits most of the world’s people.

We, the undersigned, condemn this and all other political repression. While we may have differences in ideology or chose to use different tactics, we understand that we are in a shared struggle to create a just, free, and liberated world, and that we can only do this if we stand together. We will not let scare tactics or smear campaigns divide us, intimidate us, or stop us from organizing and working for a better world.

No more witch-hunts! An injury to one is an injury to all.

For a full list of signers and more background on the issue, see the aptly-named No Political Repression blog.

We ourselves are purveyors of anarchist literature, among other things. But the demonizing of people based on their choice of literature is not the only reason we oppose grand juries. Combustion Books author Margaret Killjoy posted about the grand juries on his blog and points out:

A grand jury is a strange creature. If you’re called to testify in front of a grand jury, you have to talk. Your constitutional protections don’t apply. Your right to remain silent doesn’t exist. You become legally required to snitch, to provide whatever information they ask of you, about whomever they ask. If you don’t talk (which, for the record, you should not), the judge can arbitrarily put you in prison for contempt of court. It’s not a criminal charge, so you’ve no right to those wacky things like “a trial.” You just go to prison because some bastard in a suit or a robe or whatever decides s/he doesn’t like that you won’t tattletale. If they put you in prison, it’s usually for six months. And when you get out? They can make you testify again. And if you refuse, right back in you go for another six months. Somewhere, Kafka and Orwell are fighting it out in some afterlife to decide who gets to use that idea for a book.

Suggested courses of action include:

Thursday, August 2. Come to Seattle to stand against the Grand Jury witch hunt! There will be a demonstration in solidarity with those affected by the raids and subpoenas starting at 7:30am and throughout the day. The demonstration will be at the federal court house, 700 Stewart St., in Seattle.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Plan another event or demonstration in solidarity! Please email us at nopoliticalrepression@gmail.com to tell us about your event.

Please donate! There is a “Donate” tab on our website http://nopoliticalrepression.wordpress.com/. We are trying to raise legal fees for all of those affected. We also are trying to provide material support for those that are resisting the grand jury.

ConnectiCon 2012

admin — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 03:31:00 +0000

Combustion Books rolled into Hartford, Connecticut this weekend to speak about steampunk and the apocalypse and sex. At different panels.

There’s a whole writeup, plus embedded videos of our A Steampunk’s Guide to Sex panel, over at Margaret’s blog Birds Before the Storm.

New site is live!

admin — Fri, 18 May 2012 06:05:02 +0000

We switched over to new e-commerce software, hopefully making for an easier experience for everyone. Broke some links in the process, sadly, but it couldn’t be avoided.

Anyhow, hope you like the new design!

Review of White is the Color of Death from Comrade Black

admin — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:19:00 +0000

Came across a review of White is the Color of Death by Comrade Black from Camas Books & Infoshop in Victoria, BC. Since the review was on facebook, it wouldn’t do much good to link to it directly, so we’re reposting it below. Note that it includes some plot synopsis and therefore mild spoilers.

I just finished reading White Is The Color of Death published by Combustion Books. it is a collection of 3 short stories including one by Margaret Killjoy, editor of Steampunk Magazine and Graceless: A Journal of the Radical Gothic, and author of What Lies Beneath The Clock Tower.

All 3 stories in this collection are authored by different people, yet there is a strong continuity between them. The stories are set in an apocalyptic version of Victorian England where snow and ash has covered the entire world transforming it into a perpetual winter shifting between twilight and night. A mysterious group known as The Afflicted terrorize and hunt the remaining communities of human survivors in this dark, desolate gothic landscape. All the stories have spiritual, & philosophical elements combined with a bit of madness on the part of the characters. As well most of the characters appear to be queer, yet this is treated in a way that rather than fetishizing their sexuality, instead normalizes it as if it just is and is not actually of any importance to the story or anyone in it.

The first story sets the tone magnificently, making the reader long to know what could possibly be going on. Designed to read as a transcription of a lecture presented by a distinguished Victoria professor of psychology to a audience of scientists, the author manages to create an emotional backdrop without giving away anything. The speech reads wonderfully encapsulating the arrogant colonial language of the enlightenment, in a way that doesn’t actually perpetuate the racist beliefs in universal his-story and cultural hierarchies of that period. Rather it felt like I was reading the views actually held by people who were writing for academic audiences of that era.

The second of the stories, this one written by Margaret Killjoy was perhaps my favorite. Following the path of a loner who travels with his dog killing other people he encounters to later use them as a food source for survival in the barren wasteland of winter. Then shifting to a second narrative of 2 womyn who live alone as lovers on an airship wanting to help the surviving human settlements to fight the Afflicted, but don’t out of fear from past attempts. These seemingly unrelated stories come together in an end that is both fitting and surprisingly uplifting. Perhaps my favorite aspect of this story is how the character of the dog is really given importance and personality, not degraded into being just the mans companion or a prop for the story.

The final story titled The Mushers and authored by The Catastrophone Orchestra takes up well over half of the entire booklet. Here we follow the lives of a group of traveling nomads, trying to create a unified resistance movement through the mode of a traveling circus. The main characters are part of the scouts for the circus, who use dog sleds to travel across the icelands watching for signs of surviving human settlements. This story is by far the most obviously political, yet still subtle as it introduces various elements of anarchist theory. Full of beautifully layered subplots of charachtors dealing with aging, familiar ties, cultural expectations, with a strong emphasis placed on the relationship developed between the scouts and the dogs that they need for their survival. More than anything this is a story of the will to survive in the face of oblivion and the power of community to overcome fear.

This entire booklet is beautifully packaged in a cover that perfectly captures the emotional energy depicted throughout. Every detail is well thought out right down to the design and page layout. If I had to complain about any of it, I really would have liked the font size to be a little bit larger for my poor eyes. Overall, this book is a testament to the power of self publishing and the value of creating cultural materials.

I highly recommend reading it if you can get a copy. White Is the Color Of Death was an all around excellent read.

For $5 new you won’t find a better read.