This week's winner is Nick Brook, of Dunedin. He receives a copy of The Long Earth (Doubleday), a collaborative novel by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. The letter about steampunk was published yesterday.
John Pillidge (ODT, 15.10.12) would do well to shovel his dusty encyclopedias into his coal furnace and invest in one of these newfangled electronic internet receivers. He would soon discover that steampunk began with Victorian visionaries Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
Indeed, were it not for steampunk's celebration of that glorious age of smoke-blackened skies and ruthless machination, many of us 21st-century youngsters wouldn't even know what the steam age was.
Nick Brook
Dunedin
