Making Mortal Engines Run: An Analysis of Philip Reeve's Steampunk Fantasy

驅動《致命引擎》：解析菲利普．雷夫的蒸氣龐克幻想世界

張麗萍(Li-Ping Chang)

《高雄師大學報：人文與藝術類》 50期 (2021/06) Pp. 61-79

摘要

In his award-winning YA novel Mortal Engines (2001), Philip Reeve posits a post-apocalyptic future where predatory Traction Cities prowl a Hunting Ground wasteland, ＂devouring＂ each other in the name of Municipal Darwinism. Reeve uses the steampunk genre to create this futuristic world, but few critics have examined the steampunk aspects of the novel. In this paper the style and features of steampunk are regarded as metaphorical ＂cogs＂, the elements in the machinery that make Mortal Engines run. Mortal Engines runs on four cogs: the steampunk philosophy, the Victorian era, a fictional technology, and a coming-of-age quest plot based on the conflict between progressive and reactionary politics. This paper aims to describe these elements of steampunk in Mortal Engines and see how Philip Reeve creates a space where readers can inhabit an alternate past and future, in order to perceive and critique familiar aspects of their own present, contemporary society as it appears in a futuristic world.

關鍵字

steampunk ； Victorian era ； fictional technology ； coming of age ； environmental crisis

並列摘要

菲利普．雷夫在其獲獎的青少年小說《致命引擎》中描述一個未來世界的末世景象，掠奪性的移動城市徘徊在荒原狩獵場上，假城市達爾文主義之名互相併吞以求生存。雷夫運用蒸氣龐克文體創造這個未來世界，但是甚少有評論家探究該小說的蒸汽龐克特色。本論文採用「齒輪」概念闡述蒸汽龐克的風格與特徵，並以蒸汽龐克哲學思維、維多利亞時代背景、虛構的技術與成長歷程故事等四個齒輪驅動《致命引擎》的運轉，旨在探討《致命引擎》中蒸汽龐克的元素，並檢視雷夫如何創造一個可以穿梭於過去與未來的空間，使讀者能在此虛構的未來世界中感知及批判當代社會。

並列關鍵字

蒸氣龐克 ； 維多利亞時代 ； 虛構的技術 ； 成長歷程故事 ； 環境危機

參考文獻

Auerbach, Nina. Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982,

Bradford, Clare. “The Sky is Falling: Children as Environmental Subjects in Contemporary Picture Books.” Ed. R. McGillis. Children’s Literature and the Fin de Siecle. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003, 110-20.

Bradford, Clare, Kerry Mallan, John Stephens and Robyn McCallum. New World Orders in Contemporary Children’s Literature: Utopian Transformations. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American Culture. London: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Bullen, Elizabeth and Elizabeth Parsons. “Dystopian Visions of Global Capitalism: Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines and M. T. Anderson’s Feed.” Children’s Literature in Education 38 (2007): 127-139.