Clankers, darwinists, and criticality encouraging sociological imagination vis-à-vis historicity with the steampunk novel leviathan

Abstract

This chapter explores the critical literacy potential of the steampunk literature genre by examining Leviathan, the young adult steampunk novel written by Scott Westerfeld. Often subsumed under the genres of science or speculative fiction, steampunk is a genre all its own that takes as its point of departure the Victorian era when steam technology ruled. By reinterpreting history, steampunk literature demonstrates that what we think, what we do, and how we act, right now in the present as in the past, matters and contributes to the creation of an unforeseen future.