Adventurotica just posted a rave review of The Innocents Progress & Other Stories:
It’s been said that steampunk is more of an aesthetic than a literary genre, that aside from “machines and mad science are awesome; also, it’s brown” it has no underlying ethic, nothing to say. I disagree, and books like this are why. Tupper reaches for something more than atmospheric and sexy, and comes away with a handful of exceptional tales that illustrate what steampunk as an evolving genre is all about.
It is theme, not merely set dressing, that makes something steampunk. The expected accoutrements – distant airships, strange devices, rare manuscripts, goggles – are present here, sometimes centrally and sometimes only peripherally, but what really makes these stories a part of the genre is the pervasive feel of a world on the brink of massive social and technological change.