Is it just me, or does there seem to be a wave of "intersecting lives" novels lately? I'm talking about novels which are structured around characters and place and which move forward episodically, rather than via a driving, suspenseful plot, a genre which is also sometimes called "a novel in stories." Two of the most decorated books of recent years fall into this category: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Other recent entries include A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert, Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, and the forthcoming The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse.

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Steampunk: It's not as new, confusing, or weird as you may have heard. In fact, this sub-genre of science fiction is actually quite warm and welcoming - and it's loads of fun. So let's take a minute to talk about what it is, and where it came from.

"Steampunk" is a style (of books, video games, comic books, movies, and more) that hearkens back to the fantastic/adventure literature of the nineteenth century. Jules Verne's stories about exploration and mayhem, H.G. Wells and his tales of alien invasion and time travel, and Mary Shelley's tome about science gone awry ... in these famous works you'll find the seeds of the modern steampunk sensibility.

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Many moons ago, in another country and a former century I worked in an advertising agency in London and "lorem ipsum" was a familiar part of my life.

This was a time, barely 20 years ago, when London's Fleet Street was still home to most of Britain's major newspapers and the typesetters worked feverishly to lay down the type for the next day's papers using a process not that far removed from that used by William Caxton's former apprentice, Wynkyn de Worde, when he set up shop in a lane close to Fleet Street almost 500 years earlier; and probably recognizable by the printers of The Daily Courant, London's first daily newspaper, that published its first issue in Fleet Street in March 1702.

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