On the 19th and 20th June this year, SteamPunk Magazine are taking over the Little Marlborough Theatre in Brighton for a weekend of live music (courtesy of Bitter Ruin and Trousseaux), comedy, dancing, burlesque, stalls and competitions at the SteamPunk Magazine Seaside Spectacular.
There will also be the oppertunity to learn Victorian waltz and polka, and even a Regency set dance.
See www.steampunkmagazine.com/events for tickets and more details!
We shall keep this short because there’s always a bloody mad rush at the last minute whenever a new issue of SteamPunk Magazine is released, and to be perfectly honest we’re knackered! However, it may be of interest to some of you to know that you can now purchase a copy of the brand-spanking-new Issue #7 from our order page.
Within its pages you will find: island-building, hot air ballooning to the moon, 19th century Europe, steampunk fashion, politics, articles on race and gender, poems and many, many pretty pictures.
As ever, SteamPunk Magazine can also be downloaded free of charge from the SteamPunk Magazine website, where there is also a special buyable pdf that is optimised for iPhone/eReader for all of you who are more up-to-date than we are.
Vagrants are very happy to announce that we are now taking pre-orders for the limited, wax cylinder edition of Now That’s What I Call Steampunk! Volume 1, the debut album from The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing. As the only band we’ve found who can truly be said to be putting the punk back into steampunk, we’re delighted to have had the opportunity to get together with The Men and bring you something very special.
As far as we are aware, this special edition (limited to a run of only forty cylinders, painstakingly recorded by Poppy Records in Bath) is the first commercial album to be released (at least partially) on wax cylinder for the best part of a century. Unfortunately we weren’t able to fit the entire album onto cylinders (it would have taken a whole box of them, as each cylinder is only capable of holding two minutes of music), however each of these boxed sets does include a CD copy of the album, special lyrics ‘newspaper’ (with illustrations by our very own Doctor Geof), one of the tracks from The Men’s album recorded onto wax cylinder, and instructions from Professor Offlogic on how to build your own phonograph so that you can play it!
The cylinders will be dispatched to coincide with the main (CD) pressing of The Men’s album on the 24th May, however you can now pre-order them through the ‘Purchase’ section on our website. Anyone who wants one is advised to get in quick, as we are expecting these to sell out very quickly indeed!
As a lot of you will know, last year we raised the price of the SteamPunk Magazine (from £2.50 to £4 here, and from $3.30 to $5 in the US through Strangers). Since that time we’ve resisted the need to increase the cost to you of issues #1 through #4, but unfortunately the point has come where we can’t really put it off any longer.
The decision is the result of three things: the higher production costs in the UK vs. those in the US; the increased cost of paper, which has forced our printers to raise their prices in turn; and the fact that we are just plain trying to do more and more stuff.
Since Vagrants was first founded in the second half of 2009, the idea has always been to expand the wealth of steampunk, historical fantasy and otherwise retro-futurism beyond the limits of SteamPunk Magazine. We have laid plans for coffee-table-style art books, newspapers, guides, short story collections, novels and even music. However, doing all of these beautiful, wonderful things requires something that, as a non-profit-making organisation, we don’t have very much of: money. We want to be able to pay the people who write these books, record this music and draw all this lovely artwork for all the hard work that they’re putting in. We want to be able to both encourage and support the members of our own community in making their own money. We also want to bring out as much new material as we can, and make all of our publications of the best quality that we can make them – and this requires setting down huge amounts of money by way of printing and production costs.
The upshot of all of this is that, from the release of issue #7 of SteamPunk Magazine at the end of March, we will be increasing the price of issues #1 through #4 to £4 in line with the newer issues. This will allow us to continue to get reprints (thereby keep them available for purchase), and also to fund all of the wonderful things that are coming your way over 2010 and beyond.
As ever, SteamPunk Magazine will remain free for you to download.
I’m happy to announce that the Vagrants website now has some actual stuff on it!
We have added some information on members of our collective and friends to our Links page, have told you a little bit About ourselves and given you all a little bit of information as far as Submissions go.
Most excitingly of all, we have added a page called ‘Upcoming‘ where you can take a sneak peek at some of the things that we have in the pipeline, find out when they’re likely to be released, and whether they’re currently accepting submissions or not.
We hope that you’re as exited about this as we are.
Good news!
We have just taken delivery of a brand new shipment of SteamPunk Magazine, and now have copies of issues #1 through #6 back in stock.
Also, keep an eye out for issue #7, which you can expect to see hit the shelves at the end of March.
The good news is that Vagrants is now really starting to do brilliantly! The bad news is that for now, this means that we have sold out of absolutely every single copy of SteamPunk Magazine that we have. Honestly, we don’t even have any left on our own shelves any more.
But fear not! In around a month’s time we will be getting a huge shipment of reprints along with copies of the brand new issue #7.
Until then, you shall just have to content yourselves with downloading the magazines for free. Alternatively, most of them are still available from our sister-operation in the US, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.
We have currently sold out of copies of Issue #1 of Steampunk Magazine.
We expect to be getting more copies printed at around the end of March, but until that time you can still purchase the issue through the mail order page at Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, or download it for free through the Steampunk Magazine website.
The art in the banner and footer of this website was created by the wonderful Brigid Ashwood.
Go and check her out!
We’ve been having a few teething problems with our online store which have resulted in a number of people being overcharged for postage.
Rest assured that we’re pretty sure that this matter has been resolved, and we have refunded the excess postage to everyone who purchased copies of Steampunk Magazine before we were able to fix the problem.
Many thanks to you all for the wonderful support you have already shown us since we started taking orders from the UK!
You can now get your grubby little hands on a copy of SteamPunk Magazine #7, which is filled with articles about politics, fashion, and forging your own island. As ever, it can also be downloaded from the Steampunk Magazine website.
Printed copies can be ordered through the Vagrants order page, from where we ship stuff to anywhere and everywhere outside the Americas. Those of you in the Canada, Central and South America and the United States can still order the magazine through our sister publishing collective, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.
