Scott Westerfeld cut his teeth on the popular science fiction series, The Uglies, describing a not-quite-perfect future in which adolescents are surgically modified to be beautiful, but stupid. Demonstrating that he is definitely not afraid to switch gears, Westerfeld has leapt from the future to the past for his next creation, commencing with Leviathan, which the author describes as “Edwardian biotechnology versus Teutonic machinery. With airships.”