From Steam to Steel

As any fans of Flame Tree will know already, we pride ourselves on being a publisher of speculative fiction. We’ve covered the founding genres of SFF on this podcast already but perhaps we’ve given slightly more attention to our horror and fantasy short stories, but not today. Today we’re journeying to the future on the back of two of our Science Fiction stories. Brace yourself for worlds where technology has slipped beyond human control, and crime reigns in the skies.

Content Warning: This episode contains depictions of sexual violence.

Featuring

‘Aphrodite T-100’ by Anne Wilkins (01.57), read by Nathan Chatelier. A future where robotoids rule and select human subjects for fertility experiments. This story can be found in our brand new collection: Robots Past & Future Short Stories. 

‘The Aerial Burglar’ by Percival Leigh (25.15), read by Bea. Often regarded as the first Steampunk short story, this tale blends Victorian aesthetics with ‘futuristic’ steam technology. Borrowed from our Swords & Steam anthology. 

Biographies

Anne Wilkins is a sleep-deprived teacher in New Zealand, who writes in her spare time (which she has very little of). Her love of writing is fuelled by copious amounts of coffee, reading and hope. Anne is supported in her writing journey by her ever-patient husband, her two wonderful daughters and two feline writing assistants.

Percival Leigh (1813–89) was an English comic writer born in Haddington. He studied medicine at St Bartholomew’s before abandoning this profession to engage in a writing career.

Nathan Chatelier is a British voiceover artist with almost fifty audiobooks recorded alongside thousands of other projects, from videogames to the Mean Girls West End trailer. Check out his demos.

This episode was hosted by Olivia. 

‘Aphrodite T-100’ is ©2025 Anne Wilkins and appeared in Robots Past & Future Short Stories (Flame Tree Publishing, 2025). 

‘The Aerial Burglar’ by Percival Leigh was first published in The Comic Album: A Book for Every Table (1844), but more recently appeared in Swords & Steam (Flame Tree Publishing, 2016).

#robots #ai #steampunk #shortstories #dystopian

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Music is an extract of Sunbeams by Allen Stroud, from his Fractal Series album, licensed courtesy of fpl-digital 2025.

This podcast is hosted and sometimes narrated by Beatrix Ambery (also audio editor), Olivia Jackson (also podcast coordinator), Shilpa Varma and Nick Wells (also producer).

Chosen from hundreds of wonderful tales, short stories such as these are selected by our short window open submission process, giving opportunities to writers of all levels of experience, culture and location. Look out for our submission announcements, and see the full list here: flametreepublishing.com/gothic-fantasy-book-series-list.html

Our full range of thematic short stories, epic tales, mythology and folklore titles are available at all good bookstores, online and in retail, and at flametreepublishing.com

Flame Tree Publishing, Independent Publisher of the Year 2024, British Fantasy Society. Beautiful Books, Timeless Storytelling, Fresh Perspectives.

The Flame Tree Myth and Fiction podcast is created and © copyright 2025 Flame Tree Publishing Ltd.