T Aaron Payton is a pseudonym of author 
The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton
T. Aaron Payton’s The Constantine Affliction (2012) is a witty gender-bending romp through Victorian London as it never was. Most of us will call this “steampunk.” Payton prefers “gonzo-history.” I say, “whatever works.”
Ellie Skyler, who is assumed to be male, makes her living as a journalist using the pen name “E. Skye.” She plans to go in male attire into one of the city’s clockwork brothels, where the prostitutes are nearly perfect simulacra of human women, to write an expose. Clockwork “comfort houses” have become even more popular since the rise of the Constantine Affliction, a sexually-transmitted disease that changes the gender of those who survive it. Even though Albert, the Prince Consort himself, has survived the disease and been transformed into a “horse-faced woman,” London has made surprisingly few social changes as a... Read More
