Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales by Crysta K. Coburn The Crystal Queen. Lion-O has to brave an ice palace to rescue an endangered bird from the clutches of a cruel and greedy queen. Summary. While driving through the forest in the ThunderTank one night, Lion-O and Panthro see a glowing object streaking through the night sky. They try to keep pace with it but the tank stops abruptly. Upon inspection, Panthro finds that the Thundrillium module on the tank ran down, even though Snarf was supposed to recharge it. Panthro heads off to the Cats Lair to fetch a spare module, leaving Lion-O to guard the tank. Panthro reaches Cats Lair shortly, where Snarf is serving dinner to the rest of the ThunderCats, and asks him about the spare module. Snarf can't find it at first but eventually remembers where he kept it. As Panthro is leaving, Snarf asks to join him but Panthro refuses, saying that there is no need as he will return with Lion-O very soon. However, Snarf gets a bad feeling that Lion-O is in danger and sneaks out after Panthro. Meanwhile, Lion-O hears strange music coming from the nearby Berbil Village and heads off to investigate. Upon reaching the village, he sees the source of the music is a beautiful bird, who Ro-Bear-Bill tells him is the rare Arietta Bird. The birds singing ripens the Berbils' fruits and ensures that they will get a good harvest. Suddenly, the streaking object that Lion-O had seen earlier returns and it turns out to be a rocket powered sleigh. Ro-Bear Bill explains to Lion-O that the occupant of the strange flying vehicle is Queen Tartara of the Crystal Kingdom and she is always trying to steal the Arietta Bird so that it may sing for her alone. As the vehicle makes a second pass, one of the drivers manages to nab the bird. Lion-O springs into action and grabs onto one of the runners of the sleigh as it flies off to the Crystal Kingdom. When Panthro arrives back at the tank and does not see Lion-O, he goes to the Berbil Village where Ro-Bear Bill explains all that had happened. Panthro then gets in the tank and drives off towards the Crystal Kingdom but is unaware that Snarf had stowed away in the tank. Halfway up the mountain, Panthro comes to a fork in the road and as he gets out of the tank to investigate, he hears Snarf and discovers the stowaway. He then tells Snarf to wait there as he checks out the two paths. Snarf, however, notices Lion-O's footprints in the snow and races off following the trail. Lion-O who had fallen from the flying sleigh near the Crystal Kingdom, sneaks into the palace by disguising himself as one of the guards. He makes his way into Queen Tartara's treasure room where the Arietta Bird is being held but before he can do anything, he is discovered by the queen who encases him in a giant crystal. Snarf follows Lion-O's footprints all the way to the Crystal Kingdom and then burrows under its walls. He surfaces in the treasure room and uses the Arietta Bird's high pitched voice to break the crystal encasing Lion-O who immediately summons the ThunderCats. Panthro arrives in the ThunderTank, breaking through the wall of the palace. Lion-O and Snarf hop in the tank and the trio drive out destroying another wall. This causes the entire palace to start collapsing and the Arietta Bird escapes by flying out through a hole in the roof. Moral. Ro-Bear Bill: "She never learned that the greatest pleasure comes from sharing". Snarf: "Old Snarf just gets better with age." Characters. Species. (1st appearance) Vehicles. Notes/Trivia. The entire episode takes place at night. The word "arietta" is Italian for a short aria, which is a piece of operatic music for a solo voice. Queen Tartara, her palace and the outfit of her guards are loosely inspired from old Russian designs. It is revealed in this episode that Snarf is tone deaf. The Arietta bird managed to break the crystal that imprisoned Lion-O, but it is not known if it broke the crystals that held the knights' statues. The floor in Queen Tartara's throne room is supposed to be made of wood even though the pattern indicates stone. Animation Mistakes and/or Technical Glitches. Near the beginning, when Lion-O and Panthro are in the ThunderTank, Lion-O's belt is missing. In the scene in which Ro-Bear Bill is telling Liion-O about Queen Tartara, the silver parts of his ears are missing. When the yak is starting to charge at Lion-O, the hair on his forehead is erroneously painted the same color as his face instead of being brown like the rest of his coat. Lion-O obtains only a coat and a hat from one of the guards but when he enters the Crystal Kingdom, he is wearing the guard's boots as well. Inconsistencies/Continuity Errors and/or Goofs/Oddities. Quotes. Lion-O: Did the engine break down? Panthro: No way. When I build 'em, they don't dare break down! Lion-O: He's getting a bit absent minded. Panthro: Well, he's not getting any younger. Lion-O: Snarf getting old. I never thought of that. Lion-O: Jaga says there's always a benefit in misfortune. Hard to see what benefit that poor devil got out of this. But at least I won't freeze. Queen Tartara: My treasure chamber is my pleasure alone! Even those who guard it are forbidden to look at it! Any who have seen it are doomed to remain here forever! Fairy Tale Friday: Spotlight on Thomas Gregory, a Fairy Tales Punk’d Author. Welcome back fairy tale fans! I’ve got another author spotlight for you today from my new anthology project, Fairy Tales Punk’d . What is the title of your story in Fairy Tales Punk’d? Tell us a little about it! Black Dog, Wild Wood is the story of a race to the death across a post apocalyptic landscape between the Prince of the Western Road and the living curse that haunts his family, the Fell Rider. Did you start with an existing story and punk it, or create something from scratch? Did you discover any cool resources along the way? The story is based off of a Welsh Romani story called “The Black Dog of the Wild Forest.” I originally found it in the Internet Sacred Text Archive . I knew I wanted to do something unconventional rather than one of the more common fairy tale writers/recorders like Anderson, Perrault, or the Grimms, and the archive was a great reference. This story was both a bit of a blessing and a curse as the narrative (and many of the Romani tales I found ) were looser and more abstract than most readers are generally used to so there was both a lot of leeway and a lot of filling in that needed to be done. Have you always been interested in fairy tales, or was this your first time working in the mythpunk genre? *looks at the bookshelf of fairytale collections* Nope. Have you dabbled in any of the punk sub-genres before? I’ve published a number of punk stories before, the most recent being the steampunk themed “The Queen of Clocks” from Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales , and the dieselpunk “The Death of Koschei 1178” in Harvey Duckman Presents: Volume 4 . They were based off of “The Miller’s Boy and the Queen of Cats” and the Russian tales of Koschei the Deathless respectively. What is your absolute favorite genre to write and why? I don’t really have a favorite genre to write. Certainly cyberpunk has been one of the biggest influences on my writing, however, both thematically and stylistically. Where can people find out more about you and your previous writings? You can follow me on Twitter (@gregorypizzino) and Facebook (@thomasgregoryofficial). All of my books are currently available on Amazon and many can be requested from your local independent bookseller if they do special orders. I also host and produce the bizarre film podcast Cinema Guano with my wife and fellow writer Crysta K. Coburn, available on most podcasting platforms. Intrigued? Come on over to the campaign page for Fairy Tales Punk’d until October 19 to get in on the action! Fairy Tale Friday: The Origin of Crysta K. Coburn’s “Treasure” in Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales. I’ve known Crysta for a few years now, and we are currently working together to put out a Steampunk short story anthology called Cogs, Crowns, and Carriages. But before we became co-editors, she was the brains behind Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales ($1.99 during the month of June!). I invited her to tell us about the inspiration behind her contribution, “Treasure.” Take it away, Crysta! Once upon a time, I read in a book that the origins of the fairy tale Snow White lay with real fairies. Snow White was a fairy child—a kind of changeling—not a baby born of a human queen at all. The queen in question and her king are riding in a carriage through the woods one snowy evening dreaming and talking of the child they would one day have together. They describe the baby as having skin like the snow falling outside, raven-black hair, blood-red cheeks, et cetera (you know the drill). Well, what do you know, but alongside the carriage appears a child of just such a description. The king is delighted and invites the girl out of the snow and into the carriage. As the girl admits to no parents, the king adopts her as their daughter and names her Snow White. The queen is horrified, and rightly so! Nature—the forest—is, as everyone knows, magical. The king and queen, unsuspecting of the danger, have just conjured from the forest a child. The queen knows that rarely does this turn out well. Magic is unpredictable, and magical beings are capricious. Is it any wonder, then, that she wants this creature—this Snow White, that has charmed her husband, the king —out of her house ASAP? But she can’t simply ask it to leave or show it the door. That might bring down the wrath of the fairies. What to do…. Digging Deeper into Snow White. I can’t recall the name of this book, despite years of searching (and if you know it, or think you know it, please tell me!). I did come across this entry on SurLaLune Fairytales that describes a count and countess riding on a sledge and finding the conjured Snow White, but little is given of its background, and the child is quickly kicked out of the sledge by the countess. In my research of this tale, I uncovered several versions of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification 709, so my inspiration for my King, Queen, and Princess Treasure (what I have called Snow White in my story) is drawn from more than the recollection of this earlier version. Punking the Tale. Of course, with the theme being steampunk, I quickly hit upon making Snow White into an automaton, and I renamed her Treasure because naming her after snow no longer made sense. Here, I was actually inspired by an anecdote I once heard about Mama Cass and her daughter Owen Elliot. As the story goes, when Cass was asked about her baby’s father, she responded “She’s my own,” hence naming her child Owen. Thus I have the King in my story naming the automaton Treasure because “she was his dearest treasure.” (Incidentally, Hester in The Scarlet Letter names her baby Pearl for the same reason.) In some tales, like “The Vain Queen” from Portugal, Snow White doesn’t stay with dwarves, but a single person with special powers. This was the inspiration for my tinkerer Ana, who can fix the Princess Treasure’s maladies until the fateful moment that she can’t. This borrows from the Grimms tale as well as others, such as “The Crystal Casket” and “Bella Venezia,” both from Italy, in which Snow White is brought to the palace, and the unsuspected thing that made Snow White fall as if dead is removed, and she awakens. Another key aspect of my story that I took from similar versions of the Show White tale is the Queen’s fate, which is a much kinder ending than having her dance herself to death in super-heated shoes, or any other of a number of gruesome ends that come to such wicked women in traditional stories. In “The Young Slave,” another Italian fairy tale (Italians really like fairy tales), the baron’s misbehaving wife is sent back to her relatives. I came across this again and again in stories, which made me wonder if a woman being rejected by her husband and returned, like a defect to the manufacturer, was seen at the time as a fate comparable to—or worse than—death. Many of our popular fairy tales are ancient in origin (those by Hans Christian Andersen are a notable exception), and there are countless different versions of them spread across Europe and its descendant countries. While it’s tempting to use the Disney versions, I find it so much more satisfying and inspiring to draw from these much older, much more varied stories to create something with solid roots but is new. I hope readers find my story “Treasure” to be interesting and unique in this well-trod landscape. Further Reading. If you’d like to read more Italian fairy tales, Giambattista Basile collected some of the earliest recorded forms of popular European tales in the early 17th century. The 2015 film Tale of Tales was based on his work. SurLaLune Fairytales is a fantastic resource for many well-known fairytales from Grimms to Andersen and beyond. Learn the original stories, similar stories from around the world, and purchase collected anthologies. If novels are your thing, Goodreads has amassed a long list of Snow White retellings. Thanks, Crysta! I’d also like to add that I recorded an excerpt of “Treasure” during OWS CyCon 2019, so you can give it a listen, too. I used all of my best “fairy tale voices” to give it a life of its own (not unlike Treasure herself). The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., a Guest Review by Crysta K. Coburn. Back in 1993, two of my favorite shows of my middle school years debuted, airing back to back on Fox: The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and X-Files . Only one is sitting on my DVD shelf today, and it is not X-Files. (That show jumped the shark for me around season 4.) The star of Brisco County Jr. is none other than Bruce Campbell, who—fun fact—attended my alma mater Western Michigan University. Which has nothing to do with why I love him. Brisco is why I am a Bruce Campbell fan. Let Us Turn The Clock Back 100 Years. The year is 1893, and the setting is the Wild American West. United States Marshal Brisco County, Sr. is murdered by infamous outlaw John Bly and his gang. Vowing revenge, his son, a Harvard-educated lawyer turned bounty hunter Brisco County, Jr. (henceforth referred to as Brisco), is hired by the Westerfield Club. They want him to hunt down Bly and gang, who have been putting a damper on their robber baroning. The Westerfield Club is based in San Francisco, California, and much of the action takes place in this state. Brisco rides a horse named Comet whom he holds conversations with while adventuring. Though Comet is not voiced, he does show intelligence. Brisco’s assigned liaison to the Club is the nerdy and significantly less adventurous lawyer Socrates Poole. (Played by Christian Clemenson, who went to Harvard himself). Poole relays instructions and compensation to Brisco as well as becoming a friend and helper. Lord Bowler (Julius Carry) initially serves as Brisco’s rival, later his partner. Bowler (as he is called in the show) is a no nonsense bounty hunter and master tracker. He has been compared by Carry and others to historical figure deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves, the first black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River. Dixie Cousins (Kelly Rutherford) is a recurring and enduring love interest for Brisco, as well as saloon singer and con artist. She is often saved by Brisco when she gets in over her head. But Dixie can also hold her own and is far from innocent. John Astin portrays the recurring character Professor Albert Wickwire, whose inventions are often anachronistic. In this way, Wickwire brings in a lot of steampunk elements, using technology of the time to create items we might recognize today. “The Coming Thing” Brisco is a forward-looking, intelligent guy—remember, he did attend Harvard. When it comes to solving problems, Brisco would much rather rely on his wits than his gun. This is what draws him to Prof. Wickwire and what makes the more physical Bowler the perfect foil and compatriot. He often speaks of the wonders being invented in the world and what the new 20th century will bring. It’s a purposeful mirroring of what was happening in our own 1993. In Brisco’s own words, this is “The Coming Thing,” though it is not one thing, but a collection of many things—it’s the Future. Speaking of the future, the show’s McGuffin is the Orb. AKA a big metallic-looking ball with rods sticking out of it that exhibits various supernatural powers. Bly wants this Orb desperately. The Orb is never quite explained in the show, but series creator Carlton Cuse has said that the Orb represents faith. It responds positively or negatively to the intentions of those who attempt to use it. The Orb can kill on contact. But also heals Brisco when he is injured and allows him to time travel in order to save a friend. Brisco isn’t the only time traveler in the show, though I won’t say more as that would be spoiling things. What I Love About Brisco County, Jr. What sets Brisco apart from other Wild West shows is not only its science fiction leanings, but the emphasis on using smarts to solve problems. The show’s other creator, Jeffrey Boam, had also workedocoutyjr on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Brisco is often, inevitably perhaps, compared to Indiana Jones, another college-educated adventurer who often relies on brains rather than brawn. Not being particularly brawny myself, I loved all of the cleverness of Brisco. What really caught my imagination as a young storyteller, however, was the mash-up of genres. The movie Wild Wild West wouldn’t come out for another six years, and when it did, it reminded me of Brisco. So, this was my first exposure to a blending of scifi and westerns. The latter is a genre I largely ignored prior to Brisco because I found it shallow and tedious. Last Crusade was one of my favorite movies as a kid. So, having that same feel mixed with a bit of humor and put into a weekly TV show was fantastic. Another series that I would compare Brisco to is the Canadian TV show Murdoch Mysteries (2008—present), which is also set in the 1890s (it begins in 1895) but across the continent in the city of Toronto. Title character Murdoch is also a brain-over-brawn law man (a detective) who is enamored with the potential of the future century. His dabbles in inventing also result in anachronistic creations. It’s almost a shame 15+ years separate the shows in our time, because I am so here for a crossover in which Brisco and Murdoch team up to solve a murder! As I said before, I own and continue to watch Brisco on DVD, an inheritance from my father, who was a fan of both scifi and westerns, so this was the perfect show for him. When I was first introduced to steampunk as an adult, Brisco was one of the first things to come to my mind, and it is perhaps one of the reasons that I don’t connect easily to the London, England dominance of the steampunk genre. Despite lasting only one season, there is a complete story with rich, likable characters. If you are looking for a genre-expanded adventure mixed of cleverness and humor, Brisco is a must-see. Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales – Anthology Review by Guest Writer Danielle Miller. Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales. Guest Review by Danielle Miller. What would the fairy tales and legends of a steampunk world be? Danielle Miller investigates this collection of retold tales. What is Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales About? This collection of seven short stories was the brainchild of Crysta K. Coburn. She came up with the idea to compile steampunk versions of classic fairy tales and legends. Enough fellow authors took the bait, and this book is the result. The first of the tales is “The Clockwork Nightingale” by Bess Raechel Goden, a retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen story. “Sleeping Steaming Beauty” by Victoria L. Szulc follows. Both stories warn of the dangers when nature is replaced by industry and mechanization. “Odyssey?”, by Aaron Isett, reworks Homer’s tale into an alternative Victorian era. Can returning soldiers from the Crimea survive the dangers of the Mediterranean? “The Marionette”, by Phoebe Darqueling, is based on Pinocchio, but with a sinister twist. The artificial boy has no strings, but also no heart nor soul. After this comes “The Little Wind-up Mermaid” by K. Gray. An undersea princess goes through horrors to gain access to the land. “Treasure”, by Crysta K. Coburn, is a steampunk automaton take on Snow White. How does the beautiful queen compete with an unchanging beauty? The last of the stories is “Queen of Clocks” by Thomas Gregory. An unappreciated clock maker’s apprentice finds work in a strange world of clockwork. What I Thought of Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales. First; do steampunk fairy tales and legends work? The answer is an emphatic yes . All the stories have an olde worlde approach, which works for this type of tale. Second, what did I think of the tales? Before I answer that, just to say I enjoyed reading all the stories, but as with any collection some appeal to you more than others. Another reader would disagree with my choices, but that is only right and proper. All seven authors drop us into alternative worlds as you expect in both steampunk and fairy tales. With short stories there is no room for intricate world building, but all are familiar enough. The characters all engage and work well. My favourite was the Inventor from “The Little Wind-up Mermaid”; so steampunk, and such an interesting creation. As you would expect, the mood varies between the stories. None are light, with all the fairy tale standards of loss, betrayal and revenge within. But the darkest was the dripping, Poe-like horror of “The Marionette.” That exquisite structure made this story my favourite. But these are all well- crafted and none left me unmoved or uninterested. As with all short stories, one or two of the endings felt a little rushed. But that again is a matter of taste and choice. Final Thoughts. So, would I recommend this collection? Absolutely! It is like classic fairy tales in being aimed at children of all ages. I, for one, look forward to another collection. You can find Queen of Clocks and Other Steampunk Tales on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Danielle Miller is a cabaret artiste and sometime steampunk author based in Cornwall, UK. Raised by engineers in East Anglia, she ran away to London as a teenager and never looked back. Find her on Facebook at or her author page.