Nathaniel Williams

I’m Nathaniel Williams, lecturer and researcher at University of California, Davis and editorial member at The Mark Twain Annual and i19: The Incredible Nineteenth Century. Beyond the requisite authorial “online presence” stuff, this site provides an informal (i.e., not exclusively academic) look at the areas I research.

I’ve written a scholarly book on nineteenth-century science fiction’s impact on American empire (Gears and God, University of Alabama Press, 2018) and a number of speculative fiction short stories. I’ve taught several courses at the University of California, Davis and University of Kansas that cover pop music and science fiction tropes. My You Sell Wonderment?? blog, which can be searched on this page, ran from 2013 to 2021 on this site and covered the following topics:

• connections between science fiction and popular music
• thoughts on steampunk, retro-futurism, and other nostalgia-related speculative fiction
• info from my research on 19th-century American science fiction (Edisonades, technocratic dime novels, “steampunk prime,” or whatever we’re calling it)
• insights from my UC Davis students about nostalgia, steampunk, and fantasy literature
• occasional posts about my own music-related nostalgia
• updates on writer’s workshops and other travels between 2013 and 2021.

Thank you for visiting.