Free the Princess

2011-11-11T06:24:00.002-05:00

Getting the News Out and Friends Being Awesome

2011-10-20T06:39:00.000-04:00

I've been surprised lately by the sheer awesome of the Steampunk community at large. Being that I've written about the scene for awhile now, you'd think that wasn't possible. Except in this case it is, because more than a few people have written their own blogs about the project (at my request, but it still shocked me). And then there's two fellow Steampunks -- Andrea McDade and O.M. Grey -- who really surprised me because they offered further incentives for people to donate to the magazine.

Sarah Hans, one of the magazine's writers, offers her reasons why you should donate: http://sarahhans.com/2011/09/26/dr-fantastiques-needs-you/

Nancy Overbury of Overbury Ink, a fellow Steampunk journalist, featured the Kickstarter in her weekly Steam Tuesday article: http://overburyink.com/?p=2688

Nicholas L. Garvey, a Steampunk friend, blogged about the fundraiser: http://nlg-steampunk.blogspot.com/2011/10/doctor-fantastiques-kickstarter.html

Andrea McDade is offering up a 6x9 watercolor portrait if you donate $20 or more and email her a screenshot as proof. Donate $50 or more and she'll even send it to you: http://goodshipsappho.tumblr.com/post/11614943911/doctor-fantastiques-show-of-wonders-steampunk-magazine.The best part is that even if the Kickstarter doesn't succeed, you still get the painting.

Olivia Grey, Steampunk authoress, is offering up a free e-copy of your choice between her novels Avalon Revisited or The Zombies of Mesmer if you donate $25 or more to the Kickstarter and comment on her blog post that you did: http://omgrey.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/steampunk-spotlight-doctor-fantastiques-magazine

As if helping us launch this magazine into the stratosphere through donating wasn't enough, you've now got even further incentives from Andrea and Olivia to pass along your donations.

If you're uncomfortable donating, and I know some people might be, check out my blog post over at Free the Princess (my personal blog) for more ways you can support the magazine.

Doc F's Kickstarter update

2011-10-18T07:35:00.000-04:00

So the Kickstarter for Doc F's is nearly halfway done, and we haven't even reached $1,000 yet. I'm starting to get a bit worried, so on suggestion of a friend of the magazine, I'm reposting here what you get when you donate:

Pledge $1 or more -- A thank you on the website, a shoutout on Twitter, and mention on Facebook

Pledge $10 or more -- Everything above, plus a thank you in the magazine and a free business-card sized advertisement

Pledge $15 or more -- Everything above, plus a copy of the January/February 2012 issue signed by Doctor Fantastique

Pledge $25 or more -- Everything above, plus a unique hand-painted pin from Merchandise Consultant Kristin Berwald

Pledge $50 or more -- Everything above, plus a copy of the July 2011 print issue (Volume 1, Issue 1) signed by Doctor Fantastique

Pledge $100 or more -- Everything above, plus a Doctor’s Note editorial written thanking you. (The first editorials will appear in the January/February 2012 issue).

Pledge $250 or more -- Everything above, plus all four 2011 issues and a two-year subscription.

Pledge $500 or more -- Everything above, plus a special letterpress item done by Calliope Strange, author of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective: A Serial Novel

Pledge $1,000 or more -- Everything above, plus a feature article on a topic of your choice to run in an issue of Doctor Fantastique’s Show of Wonders. (Feature articles will first appear in the January/February 2012 issue)

So please help us launch into offset printing -- you get some cool stuff!

Support Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders and you Support the Community

2011-09-30T07:18:00.000-04:00

By now, y'all are probably aware that I'm the Publisher/Executive Editor and Founder of Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, an online and POD print magazine. Our mission statement there is to be "Reporting on the Steampunk world, one cog at a time." As a result of this, we've managed to get some very awesome writers and artists to volunteer their time into creating articles for the website and print magazine and in actually designing the print magazine.

We’re currently selling the print issues through MagCloud, a print-on-demand service offered by Hewlett-Packard. The problem with this approach is that we have to sell each magazine for $15 (plus shipping of $2.63) in order to make any revenue off the print copies of the magazine. The e-version is sold at $3.99, incidentally, which offers roughly the same margin.

Since the post title says "Support Doctor Fantastique's," you're probably off and wondering now what the heck that's actually about.

Here's the thing: we want to start printing the magazine on a traditional offset press. This will allow me and my volunteers to do a whole mess of fun things as it regards the magazine, including turning the print copy into what amounts to a Victorian magazine printed using 21st Century technology. This would be ridiculously cool, and we really want to go this direction to bring you the best product possible.

To do that though, we need funding because currently ... well ... we have none. Everything as it regards Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders has been coming out of my own pocket since June 2010 when I launched the website. I've funded it myself because I believe in the project, and though we've broken even and made a bit this year it's all gone back into funding the magazine or the website for one reason or another. My volunteers and I are doing this all in our spare time (in my case what little of it I have), and love every minute of being able to promote the Steampunk community and write about the amazing people involved in this subculture that we all love.

We want to provide the best product we can to all of our readers, but to do that we need to be able to switch to offset printing for the magazine. Once that happens, the price per copy drops significantly. I'm talking $6.99 in the U.S. and $8.99 in Canada as opposed to $17.63 (with shipping). We can also then offer subscriptions to everyone who wants one and be able to fill them at a significant cost savings to both Doctor Fantastique's and to you the reader.

Yes, we could go with just an electronic edition to save some serious money, but Steampunk is about bringing the past into the future and the print medium just has so much more to offer than electronic right now. (At least in my mind it does.) It taps more into the true spirit of Steampunk. We don't have the capital to make offset printing happen for Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, and so that's why I'm coming to you to ask for help.

There's a number of ways you can make a difference:

Tell people about us. I know it’s ridiculously simple, but whether you Tweet about what we’re doing, our kickstarter fund, mention us on Facebook, blog about the publication, take a copy to a conference with you and show it around, it all makes a difference. And costs you nothing!
Buy a subscription – While the Kickstarter funds us for the first 3 issues, buying a subscription, on the other hand, will fund us for the entire year if we get enough people to sign on. It costs $40 for a full year of Print or Print/Electronic, and $20 for a full year of Electronic. One year is 9 issues by the way. And there's also a subscription drive going until the end of 2011 with some cool prizes.
Donate to our Kickstarter fund – Our goal is $12,000 by November 23rd. This money will allow us to print the first 3 issues (January/February, March, and April) on an offset press and sell them at conventions/ship them out to subscribers. There's some killer rewards, including hand-made pins from jewelry designer Kristin Berwald and a special letterpress item from Nicole Sylvester (aka Calliope Strange, author of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective). Whether it’s $5, $10, $50, $100 or more, every bit gets us closer to the goal.
Buy an advertisement -- We've got some very attractive advertising rates, including web rates as low as $10 and print rates as low as $35 for 3 lines of text listing your product or service. Email me at matthew.delman@doctorfantastiques.com if you're interested in advertising and I'll pass along the pricing information.
Buy an entertaining read -- We've currently got Chapter One of Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective and Chapter One of Steamsteel available as eBooks through the Amazon Kindle store. They're only $2.99 and every sale benefits Doctor Fantastique's. Alternately, you can pick up a copy of our (admittedly expensive) magazines at MagCloud. We're going to be releasing four issues this year total and a total of 14 eBook installments of our serialized stories. I'll keep announcing the releases, and if you like them please purchase a copy. Honestly you’ll spend more on a cup of coffee in a single morning at Starbucks, why not support a fantastique Steampunk magazine instead?

Because at the end of the day, we serve you the Steampunk community, and any investment you make the magazine, and the wonderful volunteers is an investment in making the community better. So please help however you can, and know that I appreciate it.

A day of days ...

2011-09-13T07:08:00.000-04:00

Three years ago, I proposed to Her Highness the Missus in the gazebo of the Port Orleans French Quarter resort in Walt Disney World. Naturally, she said yes, and we began on a whirlwind adventure that culminated in the middle of September 2009.

That day in 2009 was Sunday, September 13.

At 2 pm Eastern time that day, I said "I do" to the most amazing, funny, and smart woman I'd ever met. She's since become my best friend, my partner in the crazy, and a source of constant amusement.

Today marks two years since that fateful day, and I love her more each day that passes. She's done nothing but push me to take leaps I hadn't thought of before.

So Happy Anniversary to my gorgeous wife .... and here's to hoping I get to say that for a lot more years.

Subscription Drive at Doctor Fantastique's

2011-08-26T14:26:00.002-04:00

Faithful readers! I'm quite proud to announce that Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders is officially offering SUBSCRIPTIONS!

Click on the Subscriptions page in the left sidebar and fill out the form for us to get your information. Once you do that, we'll be in contact with payment details.

Tell your friends! Tell your neighbors! Tell your dog to subscribe!

Oh, and we're also offering some impetus to tell your friends. For every 10 people you convince to subscribe, you'll get a $25 gift card to a retailer of your choice.

If you convince 100 people to subscribe, then you'll get a personal phone call from Chief Editor Matthew Delman and a copy of the 2012 Great Plains Steampunk calendar, signed by James Conrad Agin and his team. All proceeds of the calendar go to charity, so this is for a good cause!

Get 1,000 subscribers to sign up and you'll select a prize of your choice. Your prize has to be $500 or less though; that's the only rule.

The best part about this? Is that you can win these prizes MULTIPLE times.

The Rules

Only paying subscriptions are counted. An email newsletter sign-up, while good, is not counted toward your referral number.
All referrals must be submitted by December 31, 2011.
The person you refer MUST LIST YOU AS THE REFEREE in the "Who Referred You?" box on the sign-up form.

Happy referring!

This was originally posted at DoctorFantastiques.com

The Summer of Steampunk

2011-08-25T09:25:00.001-04:00

The Summer of Steampunk

By Matthew Delman, Chief Editor

Abaddon Books is declaring the next two weeks The Summer of Steampunk in honor of their Pax Brittannia series of novels, the world's longest-running series of Steampunk novels.

Starting today, they're launching the promotion that'll mark a new direction in the series at the dedicated Pax Britannia Facebook page. Michael Molcher, the PR coordinator, also mentioned that "the event will culminate in a major announcement about a surprising new book which throws away the rulebook of how genre publishing works."

If you haven't heard of Pax Brittania, it's a series of stories set in the late 20th Century where Queen Victoria is kept alive by Steampunk technology and the British Empire never fell. With characters like Jonathan Green's swashbuckling agent of the Empire, Ulysses Quicksilver, and Al Ewing's ultra-violent El Sombra, Pax Brittannia is sure to excite Steampunk readers.

There'll be free eBooks and competition giveaways as well as debate and word from the Abaddon authors about what makes steampunk so much fun.

According to Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Abaddon Books, “Pax Britannia is one of the longest running steampunk adventures in publishing, and our Summer of Steampunk will bring a host of goodies bound to appeal to new and old readers of the series alike.”

Editor's Note: This originally ran on www.doctorfantastiques.com

An important event

2011-07-28T07:36:00.000-04:00

A very, very important event happened today a number of years ago. An event without which I would've been significantly lessened as a person (despite my contention that I survived 25 years just fine).

This "event" to which I refer is the birth of Her Highness the Missus. Like Harry Potter, born at the end of July, she's become a special fixture in my life. And though she doesn't have a lightning bolt scar on her forehead, she's got a bit of magic of her own.

So here's to the woman who was brave (or foolish) enough to agree to marry me. Happy birthday, sweetheart.

Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders in Print

2011-07-27T06:26:00.002-04:00

Wow it's been a long time since anything new's gone up here, hasn't it?

Life in the World of Matthew has been incredibly busy as of late. Between my losing a fairly lucrative part-time job, Her Highness the Missus and I hunting for a new place to live (we're moving out of the current place due to a whole host of reasons), and my own self attempting to launch both a freelance writing career and make Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders into a proper going concern ... you can see why I haven't really had much chance to spend here with all you fine folks.

That all said, a momentous occasion has occurred than I want to share with you. You see, for the past two months or so, myself and the team over at Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders have been working hard to bring the magazine into a brand-new medium (for us at least, not brand new for everyone else). So it's with great pleasure that I announce we've put out our very first print edition for purchase from the fine folks at MagCloud.com. Click on the link below and you'll get taken to the purchase page.

Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders Issue 1: Volume 1, Issue 1

Come Join the Show! Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders is a steampunk magazine chock-full of features on movies, comic books, conventions, and stellar short fiction. This month we serialize two novels for the first time!

I'd greatly appreciate y'all heading over there and buying a copy, but failing that if you could please re-blog the fact that we now have a print issue for sale I'd be extraordinarily happy. To re-blog, click the Repost.Us button down at the bottom of the post and you'll get an embed code that you can use.

We're going to be releasing this as a monthly publication, and I'll be announcing the issues over at DoctorFantastiques.com as they're available for sale.

An additional note: If you have a Steampunk story you want to see covered, drop me a note at matthew.delman@doctorfantastiques.com and I'll assign one of my amazing correspondents to cover it.

GUEST POST: The Perilous Prophecy Haunted London Blog Tour with Leanna Renee Hieber

2011-05-09T09:42:00.000-04:00

About the Haunted London Blog Tour: The Haunted tour has become tradition to celebrate release week of my Strangely Beautiful series of Gothic Victorian Fantasy novels. Here I introduce the real, documented London haunts who “ghost-star” in the latest book. Special thanks, as always, to Richard Jones, www.haunted-london.com, for being my foremost ghostly resource! About this prequel novel: The Perilous Prophecy of Guard and Goddess features a young Beatrice Smith grappling with her duties as leader of The Guard of spectral police, while a faltering Goddess of beauty and light sacrifices all for a snow-white child of destiny to be born into the gilded Victorian Age. For all involved in the making of delicate Prophecy, the answers to divine questions lie in passionate, imperfect mortal hearts. -- I write Gothic novels, so prepare a capital D for Drama, set your sights on ghosts and myth, prophecies and fraught perils, all manner of intense characters, and come along for the ride!

Today’s ghost: The Ghostly Duelist of the Camden Arms

In the 1840s Colonel Fawcett died in a bloody pool at the Camden Arms Inn, the fallen loser in one of London’s last historical duels. Presently there’s a Brewing Company on the site of the Camden Arms. Many a patron said he was seen in a rear staircase of the building, thought to be near his exact place of death. He hasn’t been seen some time, but pub expert Mike Lewis was reported as saying about the matter; “Just because he hasn’t been seen for a while doesn’t mean he’s not there.”

Here’s how I allude to this story in a latter chapter. From The Perilous Prophecy of Guard and Goddess:

Back in London, Alexi and his Guard were ghost hunting. It was a rough case. The Pull had brought them to a grand inn outside the city proper, a stone edifice ringed with lush rose bushes and a tended lawn.

The storm was merciless, rain soaking them as they worked. Alexi wound fire around the irascible spirit of a man who’d died in one of London’s last legal duels, but his was not the only spectre braving the storm. The sky was lit with a horde of luminous dead, all swaying, mouths open, as if offering proclamations or warnings. Not that the Guard could hear their wailing cries.

“Alexi,” Rebecca called in alarm. She stood under a portico with an open notebook. She furiously scribbled down every particular of the situation, as was her custom.

“Yes?”

She pointed to the stone foundations lined with red rosebushes. “The roses.”

“What about them?”

Her face was ashen. “They were white. When we arrived, these roses were all white.”

Throwing a definitive punch of blue fire to stun the duelist spirit into submission, Alexi bent to touch the deep red blossoms. They were wet. He brought his fingers to his nose and took a step back. All the roses were covered in blood.

Josephine the Artist cried out. “Is this a sign of Prophecy?”

Alexi set his jaw. “Everything in our age is a sign of Prophecy.”

He touched his blue fire-kissed palm to the open bloom, and the blood streaked to reveal a still-white petal beneath. As he made contact, the crimson began to roll away as if repelled. Too oily to be human, the gore dripped to the earth.

“So shall we heal the world,” Michael intoned, staring at the subtle miracle. “Through blood and fire.”

“So long as the world is not too awash in blood,” Alexi retorted. “Every power has its limits.”

He glanced at the sky filled with clustered dead and wondered at the Guard’s ability to maintain balance. They felt dangerously close to a fulcrum. With such omens, he couldn’t be sure of long-term success, even though the duelist’s spirit appeared mollified. He used his cerulean fire to kiss clean the bushes.

-- (End of Excerpt)

Leave a comment for your chance to win either a download code or a print copy of one Strangely Beautiful book from the series (winner’s preference)! Follow along the rest of the tour for more ghost stories and chances to win! Tour schedule available via the Haunted London Tour page of my website: http://leannareneehieber.com where you can also find the archives from Haunted Tours past! I also hope you’ll join me for the launch of my new MAGIC MOST FOUL saga of Gothic Victorian Paranormal novels set in 1880s NYC with Sourcebooks Fire. DARKER STILL (Magic Most Foul #1) hits the shelves 11/11!

Thanks so much Free the Princess for hosting me! Happy Haunting!

Leanna Renee Hieber

Twitter: http://twitter.com/leannarenee

FB: http://tinyurl.com/lrhfbfan

Blog: http://leannareneebooks.blogspot.com

Special Omnibus of Doctor Bill Shakes Anthology Announcement

2011-04-27T05:29:00.001-04:00

All right, so you may or may not recall that a few months ago I announced the The Omnibus of Doctor Bill Shakes and the Magnificent Ionic Pentatetrameter: A Steampunk's Shakespeare Anthology, which I'm co-editing with Lia Keyes and Jaymee Goh.

I mention it again now because we've been getting some questions lately about when we're going to announce which stories have been accepted and which ones have been rejected. We've discussed this question, naturally, and we decided that we're going to wait until after the submission deadline has passed before we start announcing the line-up of stories that will be included in the anthology.

As you'll recall, said submission deadline is 12 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time on 30 May 2011. That means everyone who's submitted thus far has roughly another month until we start announcing who we've chosen to include in the anthology.

I know this is a long time to wait, especially for those who submitted something to us earlier in the year. However, the consensus is that this is the best for everyone involved, because we want to give all the writers who expressed interest in submitting a fair chance to send their story in.

Mind you -- we're reading all submissions as they come in, so the announcement of the list may come pretty darn quickly after the submission deadline passes. So watch this space, and the one over at SteampunkShakespeare.com to see the final story list sometime in June or July.

GUEST POST: The Dangers of Steampunk – Don’t Forget the Punk

2011-04-15T09:49:00.003-04:00

Sophie Playle is living the impoverished aspiring writer’s dream. She is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing and works as a freelance editor to pay her library fines. Her writings can be found at http://sophieplayle.com. This article originally appeared on Sophie's website.

Steampunk celebrates the aesthetic goodness of the Victorian era – and herein lies the problem. When steampunk becomes all about the way things look (a pretty parasol here, a cog-powered machine there), and the theory of advanced technology is applied to the creation of a superpower/empire, the genre is in danger of losing the most important part of its namesake: punk.

Paul Jessup addresses this danger in his article ‘The Future of Steampunk‘ which can be found on his excellent blog, Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf & Book Review:

Novels not only give us a bit of escapism, but are also inspirations and blueprints to our thought process and our moral centers. [...] Steampunk as escapism that tells us Empire is grand! [...] We need to see more books with an anti-Empire bent, about anarchists trying to overthrow the evils of Colonialism and the wrongs of a Monarchy. Or even more books taking place in worlds that don’t have Empires.

Steampunk has been criticised for ignoring the bad elements of the Victorian society, such as child labour, slavery, extreme poverty, imperialism, racism… etc, simply because of the want to romanticise the era.

C Scott Morris adds to the discussion:

I don’t think Steampunks romanticize imperialism. One of the key features to the genre/subculture is ‘punk’. Rebellion.

Steampunk does not ignore the negative side of the period, nor does it embrace it. With Steampunk, and it’s sister Cyberpunk, there is a feeling of dystopia, of tyranny and repression, and Steampunk rebels against it. Steampunk is away of saying that all those negative things from the past are still going on now, and we don’t like it.

So where is this impression coming from? Could it be that by revelling in the aesthetic elements of Victorian times, people are essentially romanticising the era? Can such a leap be made, from the appreciation of artistry to the acceptance of out-dated values? Perhaps Jessup has a point: despite the innocence of escapism, are steampunks inadvertently attaching themselves to these values?

But wait. As Morris says, we mustn’t forget the ‘punk’ in all of this. There is a difference between Victoriana and steampunk.

Steampunk is not there to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at the prettiness of the 19th century. The whole point of setting the genre in the past is to highlight the same terrible issues that are still relevant today. Just as dystopian fiction is usually set in a parallel future society to hold a mirror up to our own, steampunk is set in a parallel historical society to say ‘learn from the mistakes of the past – look what could have happened. Look what is happening now.’ If the steampunk book you’re reading doesn’t have this element to it, perhaps it isn’t steampunk.

(image from ectoplasmosis)

Dark Days in Bright City at Nevermet Press

2011-04-08T08:27:00.000-04:00

I was surfing Twitter a few weeks ago, as I'm apparently doing every day now, when I happened across an account for Nevermet Press. Now, this was interesting to me because Nevermet Press had put out an open call for a collection they call Stories in the Ether, which is going to be a series of short pieces posted on their website and then collected into a multi-format eBook in 2012.

I asked Nevermet Press editor Jonathan Jacobs if they accepted reprints, and upon his confirmation that they did, I sent him along "Dark Days in Bright City." If you've been hanging around this blog for some time, then y'all already know that "Dark Days" is the story I sold to FISSURE Magazine back in November and also serialized on the blog a few months after that.

However! I got the word two weeks ago that Nevermet Press planned to include "Dark Days in Bright City" as part of the Stories in the Ether series, and guess what? It's live on the Nevermet Press website today! Go over there and read it, everyone -- there's also going to be ART with it.

I'm very, very excited about this because the folks at Nevermet Press are amazing to work with. They've also got their finger on the pulse of RPG gaming, which is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Look out, because I might write some stuff for that part of their site in the future. I'll let you all know!

CROSS-POST: HOW DO I WRITE A STEAMPUNK STORY?

2011-04-06T19:26:00.001-04:00

Dru Pagliassotti is a professor in the communications department at California Lutheran University, whose research interests include the Western reception of boys love fiction from Japan; however her interests are currently in a shift toward studying the rise of the male/male romance as a niche genre among women writers. However, Dr. Pagliassotti is better known for writing the Fantasy Steampunk tale Clockwork Heart. You can visit her website at http://drupagliassotti.com and follow her on Twitter (@drupagliassotti).

Matt's Note: This is cross-posted from STEAMED with the gracious permission of Suzanne Lazear.

HOW DO I WRITE A STEAMPUNK STORY?

by Dru Pagliassotti

Steampunk fiction consists of two elements-the steam, or gaslamp aesthetic, iconography specific to the genre — and the punk, a critical ideology orpolitical stance that satirizes, challenges, or subverts societal trends.

Each element is a necessary but not sufficient condition for labeling a story steampunk: steampunk needs both the aesthetic and the critique. Much fiction is labeled steampunk that is all steam and no punk; these works are more accurately called steampulp. So, how do you write steampunk?

THE STEAM:

The steam refers to technology that runs on steam power, of course, since classic steampunk is based or draws upon 19th century culture. Steampunk has been extended in both historical directions, however, and as often as not it mixes several historical periods in a single work, such as a 19th-century England that includes both practicing alchemists and rigid airships. Writers have the freedom to choose which technologies and settings they want to use, although the farther the historical setting is from a 19th century equivalent, the more fantastic and complicated the technologies will have to become to capture the spirit of the genre.

Steampunk’s gaslamp aesthetic reclaims the future that 19th century writers dreamed we would be living today but that never came about — a bright, shiny, elegant future of fine craftsmanship and exquisite sensibility powered by awe-inspiring, world-improving technologies. (Never mind the fact that, in the 19th century, this world wouldn’t have been meant for everybody; we’ll get to that in the punk part of this essay.)

Thus the classic 19th century gaslamp aesthetic, from A to Z, might look something like this: Airships, brass goggles, canes-corsets-cravats-chronometers, difference engines, electromagnetism, factories, gaslights, hired help, iron men, juggernauts, keypunch machines, lords and ladies, military service, newspapers, orientalism, poverty, queens, railroads, society affairs, tea, urbanization, velocipedes, workhouses, xenophobia, young anarchists, and zeppelins.

Writers can find a longer list of iconic elements at Writing.Com. Victorian technologies are overviewed in an occasional but useful series at Free the Princess and here at The Age of Steam. Descriptions of character archetypes can also be found at those two websites, Free the Princess offering lengthy discussions of each and The Age of Steam offering a more succinct list.

The challenge is that a number of these elements have become clichés — the airship pirate sporting brass goggles and long leather coat, for example; the mad scientist sporting a nifty prosthetic or two who is about to commit an act of technological or chemical mayhem; upper-class items such as watches and umbrellas that mechanically morph into lifesaving or lifetaking gadgets; the use of real people as supporting cast, such as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Charles Babbage, and Queen Victoria; and England, especially London, used as a setting. I have also seen enough vampires, werewolves, and faery in steampunk settings to dub them clichés, as well.

So while I’m sure it would be pathetically easy to sell a story in which H. G. Wells has been turned into a vampire and travels around the world in an airship as a spy for Queen Victoria … please, don’t.

One way to avoid clichés is to start by thinking about what the punk in the story will be, and then work backward to decide which steam elements best frame that punk.

THE PUNK:

The ’70s punk rock movement embraced individualism, anarchy, and rebellion. Disaffected youth defied the ‘truths’ drilled into them by society, distressed and repurposed material objects as a form of anti-consumerism, and created satirical, angry, and subversive works of art ranging from poetry to music to film.

This spirit became attached to the -punk suffix and applied to genres such as cyberpunk and splatterpunk. It is the same spirit that should lie at the core of the superficially more genteel and polished steampunk genre. Steampunk fiction embodies this spirit by presenting the sort of sharp, politically astute contrasts one finds between the worlds of the Eloi and Morlocks in H.G. Wells’ protosteampunk work The Time Traveller. It acts like a beautiful mahogany-and-brass screen that reflects, in its high gloss, the social failings and human weaknesses it was intended to hide.

Steampunk presents the aesthetic of a bright, shiny, elegant future of fine craftsmanship and exquisite sensibility powered by awe-inspiring, world-improving technologies … and then subverts it with the cynicism of the 20th and 21st centuries, pointing out the cracks and flaws in the Victorian dream that parallel the cracks and flaws in society today. Steampunk identifies racism, sexism, and other prejudices embedded in much scientific discourse; it describes the devastation caused by technological development carried out without a sensitivity to the environment or the indigenous culture; it highlights the problem of progress that is really a form of cultural imperialism. Even that most optimistic of steampunk genres, the steampunk romance, often presents sexual, racial, class, or religious prejudices as the obstacle the couple must overcome to achieve a happily ever after.

Steampunk writers should consider what rebellion or defiance lies at the core of their plot. In general, two types of problems are found in most steampunk fiction: (1) A material, external environmental problem caused by or solved by a technology, or (2) an ideological, internal social problem that is being strengthened by or that can be circumvented by technology. The involvement of technology is key (steam), although it can play a central or peripheral role, depending on the type of story being told.

Typical steampunk plots include the following, each of which offers an opportunity for social critique:
invention, in which Our Hero/ine is involved in creating or trying to prevent the creation of some new technology; exploration, in which OH is using technology such as an airship or other mechanical, vehicle to explore new countries, lands, or worlds; international warfare, usually involving an attempt to stop the infernal machines that threaten to wreak havoc on OH’s country; anarchy or revolution, in which case OH is either pitted against the terrorists or working with the freedom fighters and uses or opposes technology to do so; and social rebellion, in which OH is enabled by a technology to throw off cultural or social restrictions related to race, class, religion, gender, disability, sexual propriety, and the like.

Many steampunk writers situate their stories in the same places much Victorian fiction was situated — versions of London, primarily, or New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. That makes writing a little easier, because the shelves are full of writers’ guides to those cities. However, it also makes the fiction a little more predictable.

In recent years, the U.S. frontier and Australian colonies have received some attention, as have various colonial outposts in India and China. Note, however, that most of these stories are still told from the colonizers’ point of view — relatively little steampunk has been written from viewpoint of the colonized or enslaved. Yet technology did not just affect upper-class white Europeans and Americans in the 19th century. What stories haven’t been told yet? How might technologies have advantaged or disadvantaged those other groups, had history gone a little differently? If steampunk is largely set in 19th century England, what crumbling at the edges of the British Empire might reflect crumbling at the edges of today’s great economic empires? Writers seeking to extend the genre’s social critique might want to start looking at differentcountries, cultures, and ideologies for inspiration.

AND PULP?

What if you don’t want to offer social criticism with your fiction? No problem – steampulp combines the gaslamp aesthetic with pulp fictionÕs over-the-top, fast-paced adventure and excitement. It may offer occasional cultural critique, but its emphasis is on entertainment, and as often as not itÕs categorized with steampunk, anyway.

In the end, the important thing is to tell the story you want to tell. Leave it to the critics, reviewers, and academics sort out the genre’s details — your job is to write!

~Dru Pagliassotti
http://drupagliassotti.com/

Worldbuilding Considerations Part One -- Setting

2011-04-06T17:19:00.001-04:00

Cross-posted from The Secret Archives of the Alliterati.

I've been thinking about the world a lot lately.

Wait, you thought I meant our world? Oh no no no -- see I've been thinking about the fictional world that I helped birth as part of the Steampunk Round Robin story that I posted about the other day. Thinking about the culture of that world, and their history, and their technology, and their language. See, one of the things that always thrills me about writing speculative fiction is the fact that I can craft entire worlds out of my mind's eye and populate them with unusual people and animals.

I'm loathe of course to say that one way of building a fictional world is any better than another, so this won't be a huge pedantic lecture where I tell you "This is the right way and this is the wrong way." (I'm such a huge believer in guidelines over rules anyway that it would be supremely hypocritical of me to do so.) That said, this series will deal with a few things that I consider when building a fictional world. The first thing of course is:

SETTING

Where is your story set? In a city? In the countryside? Some other place?

This consideration is important because the setting of your story will determine how much worldbuilding you may or may not do. It'll also determine how much detail you go into. Consider my as-yet-unfinished novel CALLARION AT NIGHT. That story is set in and around the city of Callarion. Because of this setting, limited to one specific city, I went into a whole lot of detail about the streets, buildings, districts, etc -- about to the level that you'd expect from a heavily detailed map of the Upper West Side of New York City.

On the other hand, if I only spend a chapter in Callarion and then moved to a different city or country entirely, I wouldn't need to spend the same amount of time on the city.

In the other story I reference all the time, SON OF MAGIC, the characters visit essentially every part of their world at some point or another. So, because they go all over an entire planet, I needed to determine how many continents there were, what geographies they had, land forms, oceans and other bodies of water, so on and so forth. It may seem to involve more detail, but this is surface stuff rather than hardcore mapping.

Building a full-on world also involves delineating the boundaries of nations, city-states, and placing mountain ranges and lakes depending on your chosen geography. If, however, your story takes place inside a city then you might not have to center on the physical geography of the natural landscape unless your setting has a park of a significant size.

So you can sort of see here that the smaller, or larger, your setting gets the less or more detail you comparatively have to deal with. Set your story inside a house and you only have to build the house. Set it as a world- or galaxy-spanning tale and you have to build a whole heck of a lot more.

What other worldbuilding considerations do you think your setting requires?

GUEST POST: The Rising Phoenix Takes Flight! Help Japan Fundraiser Update

2011-03-31T11:24:00.000-04:00

Cross-posted with permission from Beyond Victoriana.


Click image to purchase from Button Me Up’s Etsy Store.

A week and a half into our fundraiser, and the steampunk community has really been out there pushing our cause. Thank you to everyone who’ve signal-boosted our fundraiser on their blog, Twitter, Livejournal, website, through word of mouth, etc. I also want to thank the good congoers of Nova Albion who opened their hearts and their wallets to buy a button for Japan when I visited California last weekend.

Wondering about our progress so far? See that nifty button on the left-hand corner with the golden Phoenix? That leads to our Rising Phoenix Circle page, which features a list of participants and the amount raised thus far.

Not only that, but I can start dropping some hints about the FREE STEAMPUNK GIVEAWAYS that are open to anyone who gets a button. Read on after the jump.

I’m very happy to announce that we will have THREE PRIZE PACKS that will be raffled off to a trio of lucky donors at the end of the fundraising period in September.

These gift packs will have some wicked cool stuff donated by these fine folks—

Jake von Slatt
Cherie Priest
Phil & Kaja Foglio
Paul Guinan & Anina Bennett
Gail Carriger
Scott Westerfeld
James Ng
Vernian Process

…and more to be announced later this summer!

So just remember, with every donation on Etsy or in-person, please let us know these two things:

1) Do you want to participate in the giveaway?

2) Do you want to have your name added to the Rising Phoenix Circle?

We are psyched that we have been incredibly successful so far, and we’re looking forward to seeing where this fundraiser will go in the next coming weeks!

And hint, hint, I will be selling buttons at The Anachronism at Webster Hall this Sunday. Be sure to find me at these two locations that day:

The Anachronism Literary Brunch!
Sunday, April 3rd at 11 AM – 1 PM
Le Pain Quotidien on Broadway and 11th
801 Broadway
NYC, NY 10003
Corner of Broadway & 11th Street

Webster Hall for The Anachronism!
Sunday, April 3rd at 3 PM – 11:30 PM

RSVP on Facebook

Click hear to read our initial announcement with direct links to Button Me Up.

BBC America Features Steampunks!!

2011-03-24T11:03:00.000-04:00

A few weeks back, I was invited to attend Steampunk Stylin' in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, I couldn't get away in order to make it down to the wondrous City of New York. This disappointed me because it meant I couldn't hang out with awesome Steampunk pal Ay-leen the Peacemaker or any of the other NYC area Steampunks.

It's also bothersome because BBC America filmed a story on the event, which was all kinds of cool. I mean, I could've been on the same network that I watch Doctor Who on! Awesome right?

Anyway, I have to be content with watching this video on the story instead:

STEAMPUNKS 2011 from Andy Gallacher on Vimeo.

Call for Submissions: Cottonopolis: Steampunk Manchester

2011-02-28T11:02:00.000-05:00

Matt's Note: I got alerted to this by Twitter friend @SheWolfManc, and said I'd post it here for you wonderful folks to see.

Call for Submissions: Cottonopolis: Steampunk Manchester

Submissions wanted for a new anthology of steampunk fiction set it Manchester. In the Age of Steam, Manchester ruled – the world’s first industrialized city; the first passenger railway station for new steam-powered transport; multi-millionaires pouring their money into Gothic libraries and trying to ignore the sprawling slums.

One 19th-century commentator wrote of Manchester: “A thick black smoke covers the city. The sun appears like a disc without any rays. In this semi-daylight 300,000 people work ceaselessly. A thousand noises rise amidst this unending damp and dark labyrinth ...the footsteps of a busy crowd, the crunching wheels of machines, the shriek of steam from the boilers, the regular beat of looms, the heavy rumble of carts, these are the only noises from which you can never escape in these dark half-lit streets”

What if these days had not come to an end? What if Cottonpolis, the Warehouse City, had gone from strength to steam-powered strength? We’re looking for new and established writers to contribute dark fiction tales for a new collection of stories that imagines that this ‘damp and dark labyrinth’ really was ‘unending’.

Editor: Hannah Kate
Publisher: Hic Dragones

What we want: Edgy dark steampunk fiction set in a fictionalized future Manchester. Some familiarity with the city and its history is advisable. Any interpretation within these bounds is welcome. Queer, trans, cis, straight are all welcome. Pure Victoriana is discouraged, as we are looking for stories set in an imagined future. (And, I should warn you, we are unlikely to be publishing any celebrations of imperialism!)

Word Count: 3000-5000

Submission Guidelines: Electronic submissions as .doc, .docx, .rtf attachments only. 12pt font, 1.5 or double spaced. Please ensure name, title and email address are included on attachment.

Email to submissions [at] hic-dragones [dot] co [dot] uk.

Submissions are welcome from anywhere, but must be in English.

Submission Deadline: Monday 6th June 2011

Their website: http://www.hic-dragones.co.uk/#/publishing/4546989763

The Roots of Steampunk Research Project

2011-02-24T21:20:00.000-05:00

If you've been following my writings here for awhile, you'll remember the Roots of Steampunk series that I put together in April of last year going through the development of the genre from the early 1800s to roughly the 1930s. Those blog posts turned into an academic research article, which also turned into a 90-minute presentation given at Upstate Steampunk in South Carolina.

The article I wrote, by the way, is going to be published in a forthcoming anthology from Cambridge Scholars Press, an academic press based in England. No idea when the antho is coming out, but believe me you'll hear about it.

Anyway, I tell you all this because my research into the literary roots of Steampunk is going through yet another expansion. This time, my intention is to craft an entire book examining the roots of the Steampunk subgenre, including both literature and film as part of the mix.

This presents a new problem for me though: I only know of a limited list of works that constitute the roots of Steampunk. And that is where you all come in. Leave me your suggestion for a book, author, or film that you'd like me to examine as part of my research and I will make certain I consider it.

This is your chance to be part of a research project. How about it?

GUEST POST: You can Steampunk Revolution, but Revolution will Never be Steampunk

2011-01-28T17:30:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted, with author Jaymee Goh's permission, from Silver Goggles.

That will be tonight's #steampunkchat topic: steampunk and revolution.

Let me explain this title.

Revolutions and rebellions are, by their nature, painful things. They come about from oppressive environments. They are started with discontent people who band together to overthrow their conditions.

Wikipedia defines revolutions as "a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time," which I don't have to tell you is an incredibly flawed perspective. Revolutions turn power structures upside-down, but often, it means a replacement of one elite with another elite.

But revolutions must occur, because the alternative is to be silent and sit still while an oppressive regime erodes the rights of the community.

Steampunk as technofantasy, steampunk as retrofuturism, steampunk as eco-critical position, steampunk as alternate history, steampunk as roleplaying subculture -- could never truly encompass all that revolution entails.

Right now there are revolutions happening all over the place. I'm not entirely keen on discussing revolution, particularly with relation to steampunk, because I'm not interested in applying a Western gaze to the revolutions happening now in Tunisia and Egypt (if steampunk isn't Eurocentric, then Beyond Victoriana and this blog wouldn't exist). You are wholly encouraged to educate yourself and keep abreast of the happenings.

In steampunk literature, however, there can be an undercurrent of discontent and unrest, in terms of class, if not also race. Sterling and Gibson's Difference Engine, for example, has an atmosphere for political unrest (which I'm not going to claim to understand). Westerfeld's Leviathan illustrates how the Serbs were scapegoats for starting WWI, building off the unrest that was building between the governments of Europe at the time, and in Behemoth shows the protagonists working with revolutionaries in Turkey (referencing the unrest with the Ottoman Empire that, in real life, manifested in the Young Turks Revolution).

Perhaps on a more familiar ground, Stephen Hunt's Court of the Air depicts a revolution of Carlists, paralleling Marxism-inspired movements, overthrowing the Jackellian government. The Carlist movement, however, proceeds to re-create the citizens, "equalizing" them forcibly -- an example of how revolutions, even with the best goals, re-create the same oppressive conditions that the previous hierarchy enforced.

What does revolution look like in a steampunk setting, in which industrialization has begun? Why would revolutions happen then? How would such a revolution differ from the revolutions we have seen happen in the past? How would accelerated technology be harnessed, either by governments suppressing revolts or the masses pushing back against oppressive regimes?

Terms for Discussion:

This is not the space to ask "how can we steampunk revolution?" without asking the accompanying questions of, who's revolting? Why? What are the systems in place?

This is not the space to draw real-world parallels without critically engaging the importance of their happening, their significances to today's geo-political landscape, and their effects on the real people that lived then.

This is also not the space to play conflict resolutions officer. Show some respect for real events and tread with care.

What's happening right now in Egypt and Tunisia is important, because it behooves us, as writers and consumers of steampunk cultural product, to be mindful of how large-scale changes in just a few aspects of life can affect whole societies. It is imperative that we not create a spectator sport of painful events that are borne out of oppression, even as we speculate on how we might reproduce such events.

See you all tonight.

Victorian Era Recycling

2011-01-20T11:00:00.001-05:00

The men and women of Victorian England were one of the most sustainable generations in British history.

Surprising statement, huh? Especially because we equate the Victorian Era with choking smog and dank city streets rife with poverty and waste. Or at least that's what much popular media has shown us of the Victorian Age in Britain.

What's closer to the truth is that social historians have a hard time finding examples of Victorian clothing because the fine dress of an upper class British woman might be passed down to the maid when the lady was done with it. Then the maid wore it for awhile, and then sell the dress at a second-hand shop or pass it down to her daughter. The next level would then use the dress until it fell to pieces. Then they'd either convert the dress into a duster or sell it to a rag-and-bone man who might sell it to a paper-maker to turn into paper.

Take a look at a piece of good quality paper from the Victorian Era and you can probably still see the ink in perfect condition. Paper made from rags doesn't shrivel and decompose the same way paper made from wood pulp does. But of course the contemporary way of making paper is a whole heckuva lot cheaper than making paper from rag content was. Especially because you needed a consistent supply of rags in order to make the paper.

Rags were also used as backing for rugs, or even to make the rugs themselves according to a Birmingham Post article from 2008. The Post interviewed Traci Dix-Williams, manager of the Blists Hill Victorian Town in Ironbridge, Telford. To say the least, Ms. Dix-Williams enumerated a whole mess of ways the Victorians reused materials. Here's a smattering:

“Items made of glass and metals were returned to merchants and ash was turned into building material.”

"... a Victorian kettle with a leak would be resealed, thinning bedsheets would be sides-to-middled, worn collars and cuffs turned, and old coats and trousers which were threadbare transformed into rag rugs.

“People would go to bakers and brewers, begging for old sacks to form the backing for the rugs, which were made from short inch-wide strips of material.

“The brewers in turn would buy old clothes and wool which they dug into hop fields to improve the quality of the beer.”

And we think the 21st Century is the age of recycling!

Henry Mayhew, who writes about the Dustmen of London in his work London Labour and the London Poor, talks about the collection of chimney ash and the dust swept out from homes across the city. According to Mayhew:

The dust thus collected is used for two purposes, (1) as a manure for land of a peculiar quality; and (2) for making bricks. The fine portion of the house-dust called "soil," and separated from the "brieze," or coarser portion, by sifting, is found to be peculiarly fitted for what is called breaking up a marshy heathy soil at its first cultivation, owing not only to the dry nature of the dust, but to its possessing in an eminent degree a highly separating quality, almost, if not quite, equal to sand...The finer dust is also used to mix with the clay for making bricks, and barge-loads are continually shipped off for this purpose.

Ms. Dix-Williams had also mentioned in the Birmingham Post article that a layer of dust would be put between the inner sole and outer sole of a boot so as to make it more comfortable. So there you have at least two industries that need dust -- cobblers and brick-makers.

Thrift was a way of life in Victorian England, and one that the Victorians became quite good at. They had to, seeing as the average Victorian man's salary barely covered rent and food. They had nothing even approaching a disposable income or the types of credit cards that the Western republics exist on today. If you lived in Victorian England, then you made darn sure you used what you had until it fell apart. Now that's a recycling program.

Dark Days in Bright City, Part Five

2011-01-04T13:19:00.000-05:00

All right faithful readers, I am proud to present to you the final installment of "Dark Days in Bright City." Enjoy!

Swallow of Butcher is loud in room. Fear shines in eyes when I step back. Gun hammer clicks twice. Cacophony of gunshot vibrates air; smoke fills space between. I wave smoke away. Butcher is slumped in chair, bullet hole in forehead leaking blood. I step close to inspect wound. Brain matter decorates floor in spray pattern from force of shot. I lift head of Butcher and look in dead eyes.

“May soul burn in Appolyon’s mouth.” I spit in face of dead man. Eyes open and staring in shock forever. Butcher did not expect arrival of death. Now I dispose of body. Is not good to leave evidence of vengeance.

Warehouse door explodes inward. I roll away from body and come to feet running. Shouts of Gendarmes carry from front of building, but I do not stop. Only stupid man engages superior numbers when no advantage is had. I slam through back door into alley.

Footsteps clatter against cobblestones. Engines roar to life somewhere nearby. I run three blocks before turn. Second door down alleyway is open, precisely as I left. I slam door shut on moonlit night. Place is hidden well from Gendarmes. Now I wait for cease of pursuit.

Warmth blooms in me at memory of fear in dead eyes of Butcher. Plea in his voice was symphony. Face of Sonya rises in memory, and sadness grows in heart. Death of Butcher important, but does not bring back love of life. No more will I hear laugh, or name called in lilting voice. Darkness sits over grief; satisfaction is not forthcoming like I expect. I caress rough edge of poison pill with tongue again. Perhaps I will see Sonya again if I bite. Idea has merit. I cannot say how much.

THE END

Parts One to Four can be found over at this handy link. Remember this story originally appeared in Fissure Magazine's November issue (available for sale through Shadow Archer Press). Hope you liked the story!

Dark Days in Bright City, Part Four

2011-01-03T10:22:00.000-05:00

For those tuning in today, I'm posting my short story, "Dark Days in Bright City," in five easy-to-read installments. The story originally appeared in Fissure Magazine's November issue (available for purchase through Shadow Archer Press). Catch up on the story here before you read Part Four below:

“Gloopoye dyer'mo.” I run down street. If I can catch carriage, then plan could still work. Carriage turns corner ahead. Rain-slick road makes it hard to run well, but I reach carriage when it slows through puddle. I grab hold of bar on back and jump to roof. Carriage halts. I nearly fall off, but hold tight.

Man’s face appears. “What in the —?” Swift kick knocks him to ground.

“Davidson!” Butcher says. Door opens and closes. I jump down. In clock’s tick I have Butcher pinned against carriage and revolver shoved in face.

“Into seat of driver,” I growl. Butcher’s eyes cross at gun. I shove him toward front of carriage. He scrambles into seat of driver, and I climb into back. Levers and gears click when engine engages. We trundle toward three-story building on corner.

“Turn left at next road.”

Butcher turns. I keep pistol aimed. Is good to make clear I control events.

“I can give you anything you want,” Butcher says after right turn at second street. “Money. Power. Women. I have the ear of the Lord Premier.”

“Bribe attempt is unappreciated.” I click hammer of gun. First click removes safety. Second primes bullet. Knuckles turn white on wheel of steering. “I will shoot if offer repeated.”

Three more turns. I order halt.

“Out of carriage.” I gesture with barrel of gun. Butcher runs when door opens. I leap from carriage. Capture is easy; I tackle Butcher before one block. I jerk him to feet and shove toward building. “Inside,” I say. “Now, before I shoot.”

“In there?” Butcher frowns. Warehouse looks ready to fall down. Windows near roofline are bereft of glass. Graffiti decorates lower portion of structure. Butcher hesitates. I fire shot at feet. He jumps away like legs on spring.

“Inside warehouse. Road will not be next target.”

Butcher walks to building. He pushes door beside huge gate of iron slats. Door creaks open and he enters half-step ahead. I direct past rat droppings and leavings of homeless men to metal chair in center of warehouse. He starts turn. I slam butt of pistol into head. Butcher crumples to floor. I holster gun, and lift under arms. He is heavier than I expect, but still I prop up in chair.

I chain him to arms and step back. Now he is secure, and will not rise until I release. Good. Is time for working. Vial of smelling salts cracked under nose shocks Butcher awake. Chains rattle when he tries movement.

“What are you doing?” Fear fills voice. Slap across face echoes through room.

“I will ask questions, Butcher.”

“What did you call me?”

“Name is Henri Desmarais, Butcher of Kirvan Mountains, yes?”

“I am a doctor.”

“Nyet.” I slap again. “Doctor heals people. You turn into mechanical abominations.”

“Please do not hurt me.” He pleads now. Perhaps he sees in eyes anger that heats blood. Perhaps he fears chains. Is unimportant which one. “I will give you anything,” he says. “Anything at all.”

I draw gun, and lean in until we are eye to eye. He gulps at pressure of pistol on his temple. “I want my wife back.”

Tomorrow: The thrilling conclusion to "Dark Days in Bright City."

Dark Days in Bright City, Part Three

2010-12-31T12:33:00.000-05:00

For those of you just tuning in, I'm running my recently published short story "Dark Days in Bright City" in five installments for your perusal. The story appears in the November issue of Fissure Magazine, along with a host of other fantastic Steampunk tales. Don't forget to read Parts One and Two before you read Part Three below:

“Y-yes sir.” Hands of bartender shake when he serves me bottle. I try for disarming smile, but he scurries away quicker than greased clock gears. He probably thought he hid gun better. It will be if he follows advice. I stare at Butcher while I sip beer. If intelligence correct, Butcher and associate should leave soon. Associate is unimportant. If he resists I kill. If he runs I let free. Butcher is only one I care about.

Hand claps onto shoulder as smell of cigarette smoke fills air. I slowly turn on stool, and look into face of man in black coat. He takes two puffs from cigarette before removing from mouth.

“Are you Dmitry Radimov?” man says. I sip from beer instead of replying. Inside I curse lack of foresight. Of course government would know my face; high-level clearance for ten years meant Premier had record of my appearance.

“Who asks?”

“Come with us, Commander.” Man brushes coat aside to reveal long-barreled pistol on hip. I grin. If man read file, he would know threat is big mistake.

“Nyet.”

“Then I am forced to arrest you by command of His Excellency the Lord Premier.” Man turns to comrades. “Take him.”

“I think not.” I slam bottle into man’s face. He stumbles into other soldier. I jump off stool and punch another man. He crashes onto table of dockworkers. Burly men leap to feet and throw man aside. I bound onto table of sailors in mid-song. Sailors reach for me, but I jump to next table in line. Men in longcoats follow as I stir up bar. By time I reach door angry shouts of sailors and dockworkers fill room.

I land at door and look back. Men in longcoats are behind crowd. One tries to explain he wants through, but line of sailors lunges. Burly sailor lifts nearest soldier by collar. Someone fires gun and bar patrons scatter. Bartender stands at back with repeating rifle pointed to ceiling. I tip hat to man, and step outside.

Fight got my blood flowing; cold night does not feel as bad anymore. I curse at loss of Butcher. Plan was so close to happening. Sinov'ya shlyooh soldiers had to interfere. I stride across street to alley. Butcher still prowls city without fear. This should not be so; not while Sonya exists as mechanical monster.

I creep through moonlit night. Rain still pours from sky, while thunder rolls overhead. Nearest sewer entrance is two streets over. From there I return to shop and await next chance at capture of Butcher. Chug of carriage engine on next street gives pause.

Steam flows from beneath high-mounted vehicle. Rubber wheels bounce slow along cobbles as carriage drives near. Is smart driver; streets not good in this section of city for many years. Black-lacquered body of vehicle gleams ebony in moonlight, while brass decorations burn gold under lightning. Clean lines and sleek body impress craftsman sensibility. Machine is gorgeous example of proper design.

Callarion eagle is emblazoned on carriage nose. I step back into deeper shadows. Eagle means government employee, which means trouble if I am seen. Carriage passes, and I glimpse Butcher’s face through window. I stare after carriage.

Monday: Part Four of "Dark Days in Bright City." Stay tuned!

Dark Days in Bright City, Part Two

2010-12-30T11:05:00.005-05:00

For those just tuning in, I'm running my recently published short story, "Dark Days in Bright City," in installments over the next few days. The story originally appeared in Fissure Magazine's November issue (available for purchase through Shadow Archer Press). And now I present to you Part Two of "Dark Days in Bright City:"

“Ah, Herr Doctor!” Burly man’s voice booms, but thunder covers rest of voice. I quickly unfold Collapsible Listening Cone and press to ear.

“… enter this fine establishment?” Butcher’s nasal voice grates on ears. “It is far too cold out here for any lengthy discourse.”

“Ja, of course. Fair warning the beer is piss here.” Big man leads Butcher into bar. I stuff cone back in pocket, and stride across street. Men outside bar stare at me, and I touch throat in unconscious salute. Men repeat gesture, and I know they were once Navy. Thought of former comrades here warms me. Perhaps I will have allies tonight.

I enter bar and push goggles onto head. Loss of sight from fogging glass is not something I can afford. Air inside bar hangs heavy with smoke and smell of stale beer. Is stark change from outside, and I do not see Butcher or companion at first. Sailors and dockworkers fill bar with singing and loud talking, while fat bartender serves pints from long oak bar at back.

I scan room, and see half dozen men in black longcoats in corner nearest door. They give appearance of being uninterested in surroundings, but one’s eyes flick to me every few seconds. Could be soldiers watching for trouble; could also be brigands. Either way I am on guard.
I pick my way through press of tables and people toward bar. Though I feel eyes of men on me while I move, I do not turn. Let them wonder if I see them or not. Stairway and twin doors at rear of room offer escape if needed.

I catch sight of Butcher when I pass group of dockworkers at fireplace. Butcher and his friend sit with heads close together in booth near kitchen door. I flex my fingers to stop reaching for gun. Stick to plan. Killing Butcher in room full of witnesses is not good idea. Follow him, kidnap him, put fear into his heart. Is better use of talent.

I sit on barstool in corner opposite from Butcher. This allows keeping of watch without appearing to do so. I glance at mirror behind bar, where light from lamps and fire reflect in orangey glow. Men in longcoats near door try to study me without notice. Gloopiye obyez'yani. Never did I see such poorly trained spies. Capture even by bad spies would be inadvisable. If they guard Butcher, they will attempt to take me to dungeons.

Bartender waddles over. Bulge under apron is wrong shape to be bellyfat of man, and tucked strangely into belt. I glimpse shape of gun barrel when he turns. Da, of course. Bartender is smart to carry iron in unsavory place.

“What’ll it be, sir?”

“Bottle of Fantovan semi-dark please, barmyen.” I wave him close, and bartender leans in. “Tuck iron in trouser pocket, not apron. Easier draw and less danger.”

Tomorrow: Part Three of the story.

NOTE: You can read Part One here if you missed it, and all previous installments can be found by clicking here.

Dark Days in Bright City, Part One

2010-12-29T06:54:00.001-05:00

A few days ago, Donna Hole mentioned that I haven't posted any excerpts of my fiction here in quite some time. Since I started focusing this blog more toward becoming a practical literary guide to other writers of Steampunk, I've purposely eschewed putting my own writing up here. It's not that I don't want you all to read my fiction, just that I was slowly moving the brand of the blog away from that.

However! In the holiday spirit, I have a special surprise for you. Over the next few days, I will posting the short story that was published last month in Fissure Magazine's special Steampunk issue. Since it's only about 2,500 words, my plan is to post between 400 and 500 words each day until the story is done. So, without further ado, I give you Part One of "Dark Days in Bright City:"

DARK DAYS IN BRIGHT CITY

By Matthew Delman

Raindrops explode on ground in front of me while cold wind blows through my oilcloth trenchcoat. “Sukkin sin.” I clap hand over mouth and pray no one hears me. This would not be good thing. I huddle in alleyway across from well-lit bar, coat buttoned tight while I spy on entrance to building.

I flick switch on goggles taken from shop. Tiny gears click into place. Front door of bar focuses through rainstorm; door flies open. Singing spills out. I change attention to several men clumped outside bar. Even with better focus on door, men are still unclear through rain. I flick second switch and am able to see men clearly.

Every man is sailor on shore leave. Or ruffians dressed in pea coats common to sailors. Either one is possible in this section of Callarion. One turns toward me as I see flash of flame at mouth. Must be match lighting cigarette. My mouth dries at thought of smooth tobacco. I lick my lips and clench my fists to hold still. Nyet. I stopped smoking because Sonya asked. It would be wrong of me to start again, though she lay dead these past three years.

Bar door opens and sea shanty spills out. Tune sounds familiar, but wind obscures clear hearing. Bells of Saint Michael’s church toll the hour seconds later. Those I can hear fine. I pull fobwatch from pocket. Caleb said last night that Butcher was to meet associate outside this bar one hour ago. Perhaps Caleb’s information was wrong. But these are dark days in Bright City. I cannot afford to abandon post on hunch.

I hear sea shanty again and wish I could join sailors in bar, forget about mission. But I did not come here for singing — I came to stop Butcher from creating more mechanical creatures for Premier. Lack of mechanical army will make Butcher’s master that much easier to topple.

Thoughts of Butcher’s creations remind me of day I saw Sonya’s face on mechanical monster. I curse Butcher every day for turning my wife into machine. This is why I sit here now, huddled in dark, despite high chance of death at hands of men loyal to Premier.

Possibility of capture is why I have rubber capsule embedded in front tooth. I caress poison pill with tongue; rough edge is comforting despite purpose. Its presence makes me brave, and will allow me to do what I must. I rub hands together. Fingerless gloves good for detail work but not for sitting in cold alleyway. Men in alleyway draw attention again. Would Butcher be meeting one of them? Caleb had no information other than time Butcher would arrive.

It is another hour before skinny figure wearing top hat and black longcoat slick with rain strides toward bar. I click button on goggles. Zoom lenses snap into place as lightning flashes overhead. Hooked nose and scar along cheek could only mean Butcher. Sudden anger burns in me, spurring motion, but I hold back. Plan requires Butcher to first meet with contact. Burly man walks out of bar as skinny man approaches. Perhaps he is man Butcher is to meet.

Tomorrow: Part Two of "Dark Days in Bright City"

Questions about The Omnibus of Doctor Bill Shakes

2010-12-15T07:30:00.000-05:00

So lots of people are asking questions about the Steampunk Shakespeare anthology. We've also already gotten our first submission (yay sonnets!) and a some writers are asking us about stories that we'd love to see written but won't fit the anthology. Loving the concepts, folks!

I figured I'd answer at least three of the questions we've been asked here (either myself or Lia Keyes will post the answers on the S.W.A.G. group later today).

What's the pay?

Flying Pen Press is a royalties-only publisher. As a result of that, the payment for each submission is a percentage of the royalties on the sale of the book.

Is this going to be a print book or an eBook?

It's actually going to be both. Flying Pen works on the POD model, so we will offer printed copies of the anthology. We also publish eBooks to the Amazon Kindle. I'm not sure about the Sony eReader or the B&N Nook though.

Does the story need to be set in Europe?

Shakespeare was an English writer, but his stories transcend the European experience. So no, you don't need to set your Steampunk'd version of Shakespeare in England or anywhere else in Europe if you don't want to. In fact, myself and the other editors would LOVE to see a wide variety of settings for the stories. Let your imagination run wild, folks!

Hope that helps with some of your questions.

The Omnibus of Doctor Bill Shakes and the Magnificent Ionic Pentatetrameter: A Steampunk's Shakespeare Anthology

2010-12-14T07:00:00.003-05:00

I don't know if any of you were tooling around Steampunk Chat on Twitter from 9 to 11 pm Eastern on Friday or not, but there was a very interesting development in the midst of the discussion.

Someone, I forget who, mentioned Shakespeare as we were discussing Steampunk as "window dressing." Of course, writers being the creative folks that we are, ended up coming up with Steampunked versions of famous lines from the Bard's plays. Talk of Steampunking out Shakespeare dominated the rest of the chat, and by the end of it it was decided that Flying Pen Press (the company that I'm the Steampunk Imprint Editor for) would next year release an anthology of Steampunk adaptions on Shakespeare's work. To that end, here are the submission guidelines:

From Hamlet as half-man half-machine to Henry V at the helm of an army of men in steam-powered mechanical suits, the sky is the proverbial limit for adapting William Shakespeare’s classic plays and sonnets to the Steampunk aesthetic.

This is not intended to be a series of mash-ups, like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, but rather re-inventions of the classic Shakespearean stories and sonnets. You are free to adapt Shakespeare’s language and themes to a Neo-Victorian setting as you will, but unlike the typical mash-up, you don’t have to include every line of original text from your chosen play or sonnet.

We prefer stories where Steampunk elements and themes are thoughtfully applied to Shakespeare’s works. Do not simply throw automatons into Hamlet or Steampunk technology into Richard III; consider how such technological changes may reinterpret the original stories. Saying it another way: What new insight will your Steampunk version of Shakespeare bring to the Bard’s original works?

General Guidelines:

Send all submissions to submissions@doctorfantastiques.com as attachment in either Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX), Real Text Format (RTF) or OpenOffice (ODT) format, with a short introductory letter.
All submissions should have STEAMPUNK SHAKESPEARE: Story Title/Sonnet Numbers in the subject line. Any submissions without this information will not be considered for the anthology.
We’d prefer inclusion of Steampunk elements in the title of each story, i.e. “Othello, The Half-Machine Moor of Venice” or something similar.
We also welcome interpretations with queer characters, characters of color, non-heteronormative relationships, characters with disabilities, non-Eurocentric settings and other traditionally marginalized narratives in mainstream fiction.
All submissions must be received no later than 12 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time on 30 May 2011. There will be no exceptions.

Play Adaptation Guidelines:

10,000 words or less on one scene, act, or aspect of any play from Shakespeare’s canon.
Integrate Shakespearean language as best as you can within the context of the story; it’s not required that you include some of Shakespeare’s original lines, but it is encouraged.
The play that your story is based on must be recognizable within your version; if you adapt Henry V, the reader must be able to tell it’s Henry V as source material.
Any violence or sexual situations should remain within the limits of general audience acceptability. Let the play you're adapting be your guide.
You are allowed to submit multiple short stories, so long as you do so by the deadline.

Sonnet Adaptation Guidelines:

Adapt any of Shakespeare’s sonnets into a Steampunk version of the same sonnet.
The original Sonnet must be recognizable inside your adaptation (i.e. if we the editors can place your version of Sonnet 156 and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 156 side-by-side, we should be able to identify the origin of your version).
You may submit multiple sonnets.

Payment is a percentage of royalties. If there are any questions about these guidelines, anthology co-editors Jaymee Goh, Lia Keyes, and Matthew Delman may all be contacted via The Steampunk Writers & Artists Guild webportal at http://www.steampunkwritersguild.com.

NOTE: This anthology will be released through the Steampunk Imprint of Flying Pen Press (http://FlyingPenPress.com) as both a print book and an ebook.

On the Problem of Steampunk as "Window Dressing"

2010-12-10T07:15:00.003-05:00

One of the many complaints I've heard about a variety of Steampunk works is that certain aspects that are integral to Steampunk, i.e. the technology of your typical Steampunk society, appear to be mere "window dressing" so you can call the story a Steampunk novel. Steam tanks just to have steam tanks; dirigibles because those are always in Steampunk stories; and even fancy gadgets that have no real purpose other than to look ... well, fancy.

Now, these "window dressing" stories are the kinds of novels that can happen in any time frame with any level of technology. They're in a sense timeless, but they're also not very grounded in their particular world. This is distinct from translating a story into another, related subgenre of the same overarching genre -- a la taking an Urban Fantasy such as Storm Front by Jim Butcher and switching a few aspects to make it a faux-Medieval Fantasy.

Think rather of a Romance or a Detective novel where the characters use advanced mechanical technology that has no reason to not be powered by electricity instead. Like the gear-based zoom binoculars that can easily be replaced by digital binoculars without impacting the story. Or the adventure story where the airship voyage can easily be replaced by a plane ride or an ocean liner. Essentially, the "window dressing" Steampunk tale doesn't integrate the technology into the world of the story in a real way.

A good example of where the technology is necessary is in Dreadnought by Cherie Priest. Without the airship, Vinita Lynch wouldn't have been able to evade the battlegrounds that were evaded and the story would have needed to include scenes of her getting around the fighting instead of allowing her to fly over it. A counter-example, where the technology isn't quite so integrated into the story, would be a tale where the POV character merely sees an airship floating overhead and never actually goes near one.

You could argue that Steampunk as "window dressing" violates the Chekhov's Gun law of fiction, in point of fact. Chekhov's Gun, for those who don't know, comes from a statement made by Russian playwright, short-story writer, and physician Anton Chekhov in his memoirs (published 1911). Chekhov's rule states that "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." (from TVtropes.org)

The rule applies to pretty much everything in your story, particularly as it relates to description of the scene around your characters. Chekhov was of the belief that, if a detail didn't serve a purpose then it shouldn't be mentioned anywhere within the text. If the author spends a full paragraph describing something in loving detail and then never mentions it again, then that's a violation of Chekhov's Gun. So it is with Steampunk as "window dressing" in stories. If the elements don't serve an integral part to the story, then they don't need to be there.

Steampunk as "window dressing" could almost be called a bandwagon move. As Steampunk is on the rise in popularity, there are certain people who are of the belief that if you throw a few cogs and goggles into a story then it's automatically Steampunk. This violates both the concept of Chekhov's Gun and dilutes the notion of Steampunk as a valid subgenre when its aesthetic is co-opted as "window dressing." It also gives those writers who consider the world of their story before including Steampunk elements a very bad name. Now, I'm not saying you need to discuss the socioeconomic impact of Steampunk innovations on the populace and that's the only valid use of the aesthetic, but rather to merely consider whether something is really necessary to move your story forward.

NOTE: I'll be discussing this very topic, co-hosted by Steampunk Writers & Artists Guild Founder Lia Keyes, tonight on Twitter at 9 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time/6 p.m. U.S. Pacific Time. Follow the hashtag #steampunkchat if you want to participate.

The Steampunk Writers & Artists Guild

2010-12-09T06:44:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back, I held an impromptu Steampunk Chat on Twitter. The topic was historical accuracy in Steampunk and how much of it there really needed to be. During that chat, I was contacted by one Lia Keyes, a British ex-pat based in California who revealed to me that she owned the domain name Steampunkchat.com (transcripts of the past two chats are archived there, by the by), and suggested that we make the Twitter chat a weekly thing. And as you know, me being me, I couldn't resist such a pleasant idea.

Lia also told me that she'd created this fantastic web portal that, separate from The Steampunk Empire and Brass Goggles, was meant as a gathering place for Steampunk writers (and eventually Steampunk artists as well). Thus was born The Steampunk Writers & Artists Guild, or S.W.A.G. for short (I can hear the groans now).

Anywho, I write about S.W.A.G. now to tell you of the place's existence. We (I'm an admin) have a good number of members on there, but I'd love to see more participation with cross-posting of stuff on there among the various writers and artists that call the portal home. Or rather a home, since many of them also have other websites they operate. It's been a good resource so far in terms of connecting like-minded folks, which I love, and is a grand place for self-promotion and discussion. I know Lia's started a good number of discussions herself, and I want to see more and more people chime in as time goes on.

I did already cross-post to S.W.A.G. the interview I did with award-winning author Karin Lowachee about her Steampunk work, THE GASLIGHT DOGS, and other fun stuff that appeared on Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders as the first installment of the Ladies of Steampunk series. It would be kind of cool if y'all joined up and did some more cross-posting -- believe me, it's awesome to get your information out to as many places as possible.

But that's enough of my telling you about the Guild. Why not head over and check it out yourself?

Our Powers Combined ....

2010-12-08T12:52:00.000-05:00

As I'm wont to do most days, I was tooling around on Twitter when I espied Steampunk Scholar Mike Perschon, Beyond Victoriana's Ay-leen the Peacemaker, and Jaymee Goh of Silver Goggles talking academics. Mike mentioned world domination, and of course I had to get in the mix. Then Lee-Ann Faruga (Countessa Lenora) of Steampunk Canada, Airship Ambassador Kevin Stiel, and Ren Cummins also joined the discussion.

Go to Silver Goggles to see the transcript of the insanity. Trust me, it's funny.

Considerations on Steampunk Culture

2010-12-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about the culture of Steampunk lately. This is something I do pretty much all the time, but my work with Doctor Fantastique's and Flying Pen Press and this blog has made that even more of a consistent thought than it was before. My life is steeped in Steampunk now, which isn't a bad thing in the slightest.

Random side note: I'll be hosting regular Steampunk Chats on Twitter starting today at 9 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time/6 p.m. U.S. Pacific Time focusing on the Literature side of the genre.

Anyway, back to the main topic: The culture of Steampunk has, up to this point, appeared to focus on a very narrow view of what can be done with the genre. I know the beginnings place the primary setting of First World Steampunk in Victorian England. I get that, especially because England was the center of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions from 1750 to 1920. There are some stories that expand on this -- Boneshaker and Native Star among them -- but those stories appear drowned out among the standard Victorian London stories that proliferate in the genre.

It's important to note that I'm not saying the stories set in Victorian England are bad. In fact, there are some of them that are very, very well-written and interesting. But their predominance is somewhat bothersome; especially because there's a whole wealth of source material throughout the period of 1750 to 1920 that writers of Steampunk could use to make very, very interesting stories. I'm of course excluding Fantasy World Steampunk from this discussion because it's ... well ... Fantasy World and different topics apply there (not that Fantasy World Steampunk is automatically better than First World Steampunk, just that I'm ignoring it for the purposes of this argument).

The dominance of England-set stories is why I love something like Virtuoso so much. If you don't know the comic, it's set in an Africa that runs on the Steampunk mechanics of cogs and gears and springs. Seeing an African-based Steampunk world is extremely refreshing, as is reading Karin Lowachee's The Gaslight Dogs, where the Steampunk focuses on a tribe of Inuit-esque people in a far northern landscape.

I love the England-set stories as much as the next fan of Steampunk, but seeing them all over the place has led me to wonder how often we can really see the same First World setting over and over again. Granted, it's not really the same because different authors write different stories, but having everything taking place in an alternate version of England has always led me to wonder what else was going on in the rest of the alternate world. Was China the same? Was Africa? What about Latin America?

In fact, there's a thought -- show me a Steampunk story where the Mayans, Incas, or Aztecs have developed steam power independent of European involvement, or maybe in response to European involvement. Show me a world where the great tribal civilizations of the Americas pushed out the Spanish invaders by using steam-powered mechanical suits or clockwork weaponry they invented based on the technology of the people who conquered them.

Write me an India where Punjabi rebels fight against the British using steam cannons and mechanical machinery cobbled together from stolen parts. Or drop me in the midst of a Steampunked Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, but give the Japanese some special mechanized weapon to use against the Russians. Or maybe you're thinking of something set in China during the years of the Boxer Rebellion; or Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

And when it comes to the clothing at cons, I would love to see someone taking a Steampunk brush to traditional garments from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Native Americans, and the African-Americans brought to the Americas via the slave trade. Show me a cosplayer who creates a character that comes from a Steampunk Jamaica and I will be very interested; something like that is why the work of folks like Monique Poirier and Ay-leen the Peacemaker is so important to the culture.*

My point is that the world's a whole heck of a lot bigger than Merry Old England, with a wealth of stories to tell and adventures to experience. Why would Steampunks, who are part of a subgenre/subculture that defies explanation, decide to limit themselves to one country? Why not spread around the world and show how inventive we can be?

* No slight intended to Jaymee Goh or any of the dozens of other Steampunks of Color floating around the aether. Those were simply the first two people I thought of.

Open Post: What Steampunk Technology Are You Curious About?

2010-11-29T09:13:00.000-05:00

You might have noticed I've been missing my Monday and Tuesday posts here for several weeks now. This was due to a whole onslaught of work that came up at once (isn't that how it always is?), but I want you all to know that I fully plan to get back on the posting schedule as it were as quickly as possible.

To that end, I realized that there's already been quite a bit of technology and science posts that I've done in the past year and a half; so I was wondering if there were any areas of Victorian Era science or technology that my faithful readers would want to see me write about?

It doesn't have to be new material either. You can ask me to write about anything, even if I have a post in the back catalog that already deals with the topic.

The floor is yours ....

Determining the Roots of Steampunk videos

2010-11-26T05:47:00.000-05:00

Below is the video playlist off YouTube for my presentation on the literary roots of Steampunk. I'm tremendously sorry for the watermark on videos 6 and 7 -- the friend who helped me upload the videos tried about a dozen different programs to pull the watermarks off but it didn't work. Ah well. Hope you all enjoy it anyway!

The Con Report: Upstate Steampunk

2010-11-24T07:53:00.001-05:00

It's been a few days now since Upstate Steampunk in South Carolina, so I feel more than comfortable finally writing this con report after having that time to digest the full impact of the awesome that was my very first foray into convention-going.Yes, you read that right -- I'd never been to a con before Upstate Steampunk, and it was such an amazing experience that I'm going to be heading to three more in the first six months of 2011.

My trip to S.C. started with a 4.5 hour drive from Eastern Massachusetts to Central New York to pick up my friend who agreed to act as technical assistant on the trip (that's how I was able to record my presentation). We then switched off driving the 14 hours to South Carolina. Random trivia: did you know that Pennsylvania feels like the widest state on the East Coast? This is despite the fact that Virginia takes at least 45 minutes longer to drive through on a North-South route.

But anyway, we got into South Carolina just before midnight on Friday, November 19, and promptly collapsed until the next morning when we had to wake up before 8 so we could register for the day's events. This meant that we missed the Friday night pre-registration and meet-up, but after 19 hours of driving I don't think either one of us wanted to do anything except crash.

Saturday morning was a blast though -- we registered for the day's events and then went straight to the vendor room, where I met a good number of awesome folks plying their wares. I spent some time with Jim Looper of Bitz N Pieces, who graciously demonstrated a six-shooter replica he was selling for a good chunk of change. Jim assured me the gun was non-operational, but it was still all kinds of cool to chat with him about the different pieces he had in stock. I wish I had the wherewithall to grab a picture of Jim -- he led a dueling demonstration at noon that was six different kinds of cool. Kind of sad I couldn't stick around for the entire dueling demo, but my presentation was at 1 and we had to eat lunch and do some prep work.

The time of my presentation rolled around, and I was surprised at the turnout -- many of the seats in the classroom were full. Not quite standing-room only, which would've been entertaining, but still a very respectable showing for people interested in the roots of Steampunk. The video, which will be posted later, will show you the talk I gave and hopefully you'll be able to hear the questions folks asked as well. Suffice to say, the discussion ranged far and wide once we got comfortable with each other, and didn't result in me talking at people for 90 minutes (which was something I was slightly frightened of). I did have a few technical difficulties in that I had to keep switching between my Powerpoint and a video player for my video clips -- the way we downloaded the videos meant I couldn't embed the files into the presentation itself.

Anyway, after I spoke I sat in on the very elucidating presentation by Lydia Ferguson on Captain Nemo as the new Ancient Mariner as represented by his character in Volume 1 of Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Lydia certainly knew what she was talking about, and she did a very good job of keeping the presentation lively. Well prior to my own presentation was a discussion of the golems in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and how they represented both the machines that drove the industrial revolution and the people who worked those machines. Janet Brennan Croft was the Golempunk presenter -- she mentioned Moist von Lipwig, one of my favorite Pratchett characters of all time in her talk, so that made me happy.

I ended up not going to a whole lot of panels, which was unfortunate because there were some dang cool topics that people were talking about. Thus is the peril of having one 90 minute talk to yourself and then being on a later hour-long panel with a group of other gents. Speaking of said panel -- with Brian K. Ladd, Maxwell Cynn, and Shane McElveen -- I have to admit that it was more interesting listening to my fellow panelists answer than talking myself. Brian, Maxwell, and Shane are all very talented and creative gents, and I was honored to be included among them. Gail Gray, our facilitator, also didn't hesitate to offer some answers to the audience members.

The other panelists and I had a whole lot of fun riffing off each other; Maxwell attended my Roots talk and I saw him nodding profusely when Gail asked if anyone had attended it. Funny anecdote: when I met Brian and his wife Megan earlier in the day, Gail was singing my praises and Brian commented that Gail was pretty much the "world's biggest cheerleader." Which of course amused me to no end. Speaking of Gail Gray and Fissure Magazine, you can purchase their Steampunk issue at http://www.shadowarcherpress.com, wherein you'll find my first published short story, "Dark Days in Bright City."

Back to the panel -- someone asked about the definition of Steampunk and if anything was excluded or not. I can't remember my exact response (which included monkeys and rockets fueled by cheese for some reason), but it amounted to the fact that Steampunk as a genre is a wide open field right now. Write what you want, and if someone likes it then someone likes it. Maxwell, Brian, and Shane had some very good advice about getting published and the potential pitfalls therein. Maxwell especially had an interesting way of putting out his first novel; he'd come up with a way to code the book into a website so at certain points you would receive emails from the characters in a sort of multimedia immersive experience.

Brian spoke at length about dealing with changes from editors, and the fact that you can break any rule on the books so long as you know why you're breaking it. And Shane made several very good points about the importance of critique; he has one trusted editor that reads all of his stuff, although he also works with a writing partner for his screenwriting. All of us agreed that crit groups are important, but even more important than that is knowing when to walk away from a crit group. Brian made a fascinating point in that he sees crit groups as being there to work -- not to socialize.

It was unfortunate that the panel was only an hour long. I had tons of fun being up there with my fellow panelists, and in fact Gail told me later that one of the attendees to that panel said he thought we were better than the authors' panel at DragonCon! You can imagine how cool that was to hear.

I ended my day with an open-ended workshop where folks talked about the stuff they made. Which is also the only time I took pictures:

A giant hammer made from foam and an old clock.
Many of the materials were purchased from Lowe's,
which was a common theme.

The creator of this map (Ed, who's not in the picture) developed this entire fantasy world
that he intends to offer to people as a fantasy setting for them to write their adventures in.


The Gatling gun was made from an old gas-powered hedge trimmer and parts purchased at Lowe's.

My compatriot and I were more or less drained after the workshops ended at 5 on Saturday. I wandered downstairs after we'd had dinner at the Ruby Tuesday's down the street and took in some of the belly dancing. I could tell even at 8 p.m. though that I was done for the night -- didn't even stay awake to go to the Steampunk ball. This of course means that I am unfortunately unable to report who won Mr. and Mrs. Upstate Steampunk.

I can however say that driving down to Greenville was a good decision. I met a whole lot of good people there, made some awesome contacts for Flying Pen, and had an all-around great time. Now of course I'm looking forward to the conventions I'll be attending in 2011!

REPOST: Steampunk Technology and Culture: Why the Railways Developed

2010-11-16T12:15:00.000-05:00

In the midst of working hard on my Roots of Steampunk paper for presenting this weekend, I realized that I haven't put anything up here in a over a week. However, since my brain is mush, all I can do is offer up this post that originally appeared on July 27, 2010.

One of the things we forget, looking back at the proverbial march of history, is that many of the innovations we take for granted today were new and frightening at one time. The locomotive, the telegraph, the radio, electricity; the list goes on and on. And while I've spoken about two towering figures in the development of the railways in Britain (and by extension the rest of the world), it struck me recently that I didn't yet talk about the cultural impact of those very same railways.

"Hindsight is 20/20," as the old saying goes. Looking back at the early 1800s, when the first moves were being made toward steam locomotives and iron railways crisscrossing the countryside, we now can clearly see the economic and social benefit that steam locomotives provided. However, the people living in that time didn't have the benefit of knowing how much cheaper the locomotive would turn out to be, and how much of an improvement over canals and horse-drawn coaches this new technology actually was.

Consider how long the British people lived with the horse and the ship as the main modes of transportation. Horses had been used by the inhabitants of Britain since at least 1,000 BCE, and seaborne transit was almost a no-brained, given the nature of the landmass as an island. Most people knew horses and boats; they knew how to operate them and they knew what to expect from them. By the same token, very few people knew what to expect out of a steam locomotive. You'll recall the image I posted of Richard Trevithick's "puffer" that went along the railway at Penydarren -- no one had ever seen anything like it before that day in 1804.

People weren't certain that mobile steam engines were any better than horses right up until George Stephenson proved the point at Rainhill in 1829. Until that time, most of the railways in Britain were oak logs with a replaceable strip of beachwood nailed on top, set on iron sleepers. The horses walked on tracks of cinders in between the rails of the tramway. And this method worked for quite a few decades before the locomotives came around.

So what changed to make the railways suddenly a more viable option than horses pulling carts to a landing point at a canal, where the barges would float your goods down to market? Well, for starters, the Napoleonic Wars had something to do with it.

The Napoleonic Wars drove the price of horse feed through the proverbial roof. Gavin Weightman makes a stellar point in The Industrial Revolutionaries:

"It is a modern prejudice, it has been said, to imagine horses are a cheap form of power: in reality, the cost of 'running' them could rise of fall alarmingly with the price of hay and oats and the military demand for mounts. (119)"

Horses were expensive, and so too were the canals that crisscrossed the English countryside and carried goods to market. The canal companies were businesses as well, and had to charge exorbitant fees if they wanted to offer any dividends at all to their shareholders. Thus mine owners started to consider how they could transport their goods to market at the same or better speed than the canals, with a pricepoint much lower than the one they currently paid.

Even after Trevithick's success at Penydarren, and the dozen or so other collieries that slowly gained steam locomotives, most mine owners still weren't convinced that the machines were better that horses. Oh they accepted that there should be a cheaper way to transport their goods to market than using the canals, but it took George Stephenson's Rocket and his victory at Rainhill to truly prove that locomotives were better.

In 1831, the Liverpool-Manchester line that the Rocket was designed for carried, according to Weightman, "445,047 passengers, 43,070 tons of cotton and other merchandise and 11,285 tons of coal. (134)" Though the passenger total ended swinging back and forth like on a pendulum, the tonnage of merchandise carried by the Liverpool-Manchester line only increased.

By Queen Victoria's coronation in 1837, there were roughly 80 railway companies intent on adding track to the ever-growing rail network across Britain. In a single year, more than 1,000 miles of track were laid down across the English countryside. If any single innovation could be said to drive the Industrial Revolution, these dozens of miles of railway track laid down across England (and soon elsewhere in the world) could be pointed to fairly simply.

So why did the railways develop when they did, at the very base of it? Because of a combination of money, technical know-now, and the ability of financiers to see that this invention could make moving their product very, very easy indeed.

Steampunk Relevance

Much of early Steampunk deals with the culture effects of technology as well as the main story the author or authors wish to tell. Case in point is The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. The three interwoven stories in that narrative prove themselves as concerned with the effect technology has on the people of Britain as on the main story of discovering what the heck is going on with Ada Lovelace and the cards from the French computer. Michael Moorcock's Warlord of the Air does something similar, as he imagines differences between our world and that of the one Oswald Bastable falls into.

Technology and culture are inextricably tied together, as certain technologies only arise when the surrounding culture is ready for them and not before. A good example is this knowledge: the Romans knew how steam power worked. They had the technology to build a proper engine and set it crisscrossing the Imperial landscape. Why, you may ask, would they not do so and begin an Industrial Revolution in 102 A.D.?

The answer's simple: the technology didn't develop because the culture didn't need it to. Britain in the 19th Century needed the locomotive to develop. This is why that's where it came into being. The end result of all this is a simple question you need to ask yourself when developing a Steampunk world:

Would this technology happen in the culture I've created?

NOTE: An awesome book to read on the topic of why some countries became industrialized and others didn't is Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

A Word About Historical Accuracy in Steampunk

2010-11-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

Recently, there have been some articles and blog posts floating around lambasting Steampunk for any number of failings -- real or imagined -- that the genre seems to express. Now, there are some that I agree with, and if you've followed my Twitter back-and-forths with Paul Jessup or read his fantastic article on "The Future of Steampunk" (posted at Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders and Mad Hatter's Bookshelf and Book Review), then you already know that I'd love to see more non-European Steampunk kicking about.

However, one of the primary complaints that I seem to be seeing in regards to Steampunk is that it's not historically accurate. That people couldn't have possibly developed the level of technology some of the fiction evidences -- like airships, for example. Despite the fact that Henri Giffard first flew a dirigible in the 1850s, certain commenters on other blogs (not here) have insisted that airships were an invention of the 20th century and not the 19th, therefore you can't possibly have someone flying an airship on the level of the Graf Zeppelin if your timeframe is earlier than 1900.

All right I can see that argument -- Zeppelin developed his airship in 1898 to 1899, but he didn't fly it until 1900, so the point is valid. However, and here's the really, really big point that I want to make for people who dislike Steampunk on basis of it not being historically accurate enough:

Steampunk is Alternate history.

Alternate history, by its very definition, isn't 100 percent historically accurate because you're changing the historical record with your fiction. If I wanted to read a Steampunk novel that was accurate historically to the minutest of details, then I wouldn't be reading a Steampunk novel -- I'd be reading historical fiction.

So someone who complains about the lack of historical accuracy in Steampunk is missing the entire point of the stories. It's supposed to be an alternate history set in the Victorian period of world history. There is no reason for Cherie Priest, Gail Carriger, George Mann, or S.M. Peters to get their history 100% accurate because they're not writing historical novels. They're writing alternate histories with a Steampunk aesthetic that happen to be set in the 19th century.

This complaint about historical accuracy leads me of course to wonder if the people who use this tired old excuse hate the entire genre of alternate history. Do they despise the Harry Turtledove novels where aliens land in the middle of the Cold War? Or his stories where the South wins the American Civil War? Or the alternate history novels where the American Revolution never happened?

Steampunk, as I've said before, is more concerned with what could possibly happen in a real-world society with advanced steam power and mechanics introduced into the proverbial mix. If you can convince the reader that your world could possibly exist, then you've done your job as a writer. There's no reason for you to be overly concerned with complete historic accuracy -- if you're writing a story set in Victorian England, then focus on the aspects you need in order to create the flavor of the time. You're changing things anyway by including the advanced steam power and mechanics that you're already throwing into the society.

Main point? Steampunk doesn't have to be 100 percent historically accurate. Be accurate as it relates to your story. That's all you really need to be concerned about.

Holey Shamoley! A Post at the Archives???

2010-11-03T07:00:00.000-04:00

That's right, Princess Freers, The Secret Archives of the Alliterati came off hiatus on Monday. My first post since ... oh August ... is up over there today. Look there for an encapsulated view of the craziness that has taken over my life in the past few months.

Did I mention how much fun I'm having?

GUEST POST: K.M. Weiland on 13 Places to Find Inspiration

2010-10-28T11:00:00.002-04:00

People are always asking writers where they get their ideas. My typically trite reply is, “Everywhere.” I once grabbed a kitchen towel and told someone, “I could write a story about this towel if I wanted to.” While that response was likely a bit extreme (I could write a story about a kitchen towel, but I couldn’t guarantee that it’d be interesting!), it is true that inspiration is all around us. As I explain in my recently released CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration (http://www.kmweiland.com/books_CWBASI.php), inspiration is always there for the taking. We just have to figure out where the harvest is ripest. Following are some places where we’re always sure to find inspiration:

Dreams. Pay attention to the vivid imagery and the bizarre juxtaposition of your dreams. Perhaps even start a dream journal.
Movies. The visual/auditory combination of movies and theater has something to offer just about everyone. View movies as more than just entertainment; consider them idea labs.
Paintings. Great artistic ventures offer us the emotional high points of human history. Visit an art museum and study the paintings to figure out what draws you, what repulses you, and what leaves you cold.
Music. Music is the arguably the purest form of storytelling, since it taps directly into our emotional core, without even the necessity of words. Find an instrumental song and see if you can write out the story it’s trying to tell.
Life. Even if you don’t want to write about your own life, never discount the value of your experiences. Live widely and live deeply.
Nature. The virtue, the violence, the vibrancy, and the variety of the natural world is a never-ending well of possible story ideas.
Books. As writers we feed off each other, gaining and giving in a never-ending cycle. Read voraciously; it’s the best way to study the craft.
Dictionary. If you’re stumped for a new story idea or for a way to progress your plot, open your dictionary to a random page for an instant story prompt. Pick a word and see where it takes you.
History. Even if you don’t write historical fiction, history, as a recording of all of human experience, is rife with story ideas. At the very least, understanding history can bring a broader understanding of life and its truths to our work.
Exercise. Who says writers need to be pudgy desk jockeys? Get out there and pump some blood. Your brain works better when the rest of your body is moving.
Shower. Need a good idea? Just add water! Writers should just take up permanent residence in the shower. Something about that warm, running water is always good for jumpstarting creativity.
Curiosity. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it’s what puts bread on the writer’s table. Never stop asking questions—especially what if?
Eavesdropping. Join the writer club and you get a special exemption card that allows you to eavesdrop with impunity. Who knows what juicy tidbits you’ll pick up on your next jaunt to the grocery store.

Of course, this little list isn’t anywhere close to exhaustive. But hopefully it serves as a reminder for us to keep our eyes and ears and imaginations wide open wherever we go. Inspiration is waiting. All we have to do is find it.

K.M. Weiland

K.M. Weiland writes historical and speculative fiction from her home in the sandhills of western Nebraska. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, editing services, workshops, and her recently released instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

GUEST BLOG: What If?

2010-10-27T10:00:00.002-04:00

Jon S. Lewis is the co-creator of the world of The Grey Griffins in The Revenge of the Shadow King (2006), which has been optioned for a movie by Deathly Pale Productions. A new Grey Griffins trilogy begins with The Brimstone Key, Book I of The Clockwork Chronicles. The book is the first foray into Steampunk that Jon and co-author Derek Benz have taken with the series.

I spent quite a few Saturdays in my local comic book shop growing up, and I was always intrigued by Marvel’s What If titles. Each issue asked a deep philosophical question like “What if the X-Men died on their first mission?” or “What if Spider-man had six arms?”

Okay, so maybe the questions weren’t very deep, but we’ve all played the “what if” game, right? “What if I would have married the first person I kissed?” or “What if I would have gone to medical school like my brother who drives the BMW?”

“What if?” became an important question for the Grey Griffins . . .

Derek and I decided early in our writing careers that we weren’t going to name modern technology in our books. That meant words like “cell phone,” “laptop,” “SUV,” and “iPod” were banned. Why? Technology is moving so rapidly that we didn’t want to date the stories. I mean, when we were writing our first book (The Revenge of the Shadow King), the term “smart phone” wasn’t even coined yet, Napster had stronger brand recognition than iTunes, and eReaders were little more than a dream.

There was a problem, though. Tweens and teens are hardwired into digital communication and even though the hardware is bound to change, their passion for digital media won’t. So introducing technology into the series was critical, but how could we do that without making our stories stand out like butterfly collars, bellbottom jeans or parachute pants?

At about that same time, Derek picked up a copy of Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. We were already fans of the Steampunk aesthetic, but for some reason the idea of introducing Steampunk into our stories hadn’t crossed our minds. Alan Moore helped us see the light, and we asked ourselves the following question: “What if our world was invaded by Steampunk culture?”

It was the perfect solution! We could introduce futuristic technology wrapped in a timeless package, like laptops in leather cases with brass corners where the keypad looked like it was taken from an early model Remington typewriter. And instead of walking around in wizards robes, the students at Iron Bridge Academy could wear things like classic safari gear, petticoats, knickers with argyle socks, driving caps and goggles.

Then, instead of fighting trolls, dragons and faeries, we could set our heroes against fresh villains like clockwork soldiers and steam-powered war machines. It was too delicious to pass up.

We hope the end result is an action-packed adventure that fans of our original trilogy will enjoy. At the same time, we’re excited about introducing a new crop of readers to Steampunk in much the same way that J.K. Rowling introduced an entire generation to fantasy books through Harry Potter. Okay, so maybe we won’t have quite that impact, but you never know.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The contest to win a Grey Griffins prize pack is open until November 5; put your entry in the comments thread of the announcement post to be entered for a chance to win.

The Brimstone Key, Book I of The Clockwork Chronicles by Derek Benz and J.S. Lewis

2010-10-25T11:12:00.001-04:00

The Brimstone Key (Little, Brown, June 2010, $15.99 in Hardcover, 369 pages) is the first installment in a new trilogy featuring the Grey Griffins -- Max Sumner, Harley Eisenstein, Ernie Tweeny, and Natalia Romanov -- regular kids from Avalon, Minnesota who became monster hunters under the tutelage of the Knights Templar in the first trilogy authors Derek Benz and J.S. Lewis conceived of.

I never read the original Grey Griffins trilogy, so to come at The Brimstone Key from the perspective of a neophyte to the characters was an interesting one. There's an entire swath of character development and history that I missed out on by not reading the first three books, but Benz and Lewis write so skillfully that I didn't feel lost for a second. The narration gives background without pulling the reader from the story, and switching between the perspectives of Max, Natalia, Harley, and Ernie helped keep the reader abreast of everything that's going on while making certain the reader's not lost.

This new story opens with the Griffins on the eve of transferring into Iron Bridge Academy, a Templar training school for young people who are being trained in the hunting of monsters. But all's not well at Iron Bridge. Soon after the school year starts, changelings (children with fairy blood) begin disappearing -- taken in the dead of night via magical portal. The Griffins realize that the strange hiding place they discovered over the summer, filled with mechanisms and blueprints of clockwork devices, holds more importance than they realized. Especially as one name comes up again and again: Otto Von Strife, the Clockwork King.

Von Strife spent a century locked up in one of the Round Table cards so central to the Grey Griffins series, and when he gets out and starts wreaking havoc, it falls to the Griffins and their Templar allies to move against him. After the climax of the story, I'm certain the rest of the books in the trilogy will keep the adventure moving.

As to the Steampunk elements, Benz and Lewis chose to create Iron Bridge in a city called New Victoria, that retained its Victorian sensibilities, which is on the other side of the veil from Avalon, Minnesota. The children of Iron Bridge dress in Steampunk garb complete with goggles and brass fittings on their outfits -- the goggles are explained because they allow games of Round Table to be played in 3D -- and of course since the Griffins are completely lost in the realm of fashion the authors are allowed the freedom to explain the style of the clothing.

Clockwork robots, Steampunk clothing, and a city that never moved past the Victorian Age are just a few of the fun Steampunk elements within a very, very fun opening to a new trilogy of stories. There's some good tearjerker moments as well, particularly if you've read the original stories that featured the Griffins. That's not to say a reader can't pick up this novel without having read the other ones. I did, and certainly found the story to be engaging, engrossing, and entertaining without feeling lost in the slightest.

I'm definitely looking forward to the second book -- The Relic Hunters, due out in Spring 2011.

And now we move onto a CONTEST!!

There are several prizes available for this fun little contest:

FIRST PRIZE: A copy of THE BRIMSTONE KEY with signed bookmarks, and your choice of one of the following posters:

* SIM Chamber (like the X-Men Danger Room): http://www.jonslewis.com/images/432_ggSIMsketch.jpg

* Natalia and Brooke: http://www.jonslewis.com/images/432_ggGirls.jpg

* United We Stand: http://www.jonslewis.com/images/612_ggChangelings.jpg

* Xander Swift: http://www.jonslewis.com/images/432_ggXander.jpg

* Round Table: http://www.jonslewis.com/images/432_ggRoundtable.jpg

Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth place winners will each get their choice of poster.

Now for The Rules:

In the comments of this post, tell me your wackiest idea for a Steampunk invention that could exist today. Portable mechanical kinotrope? Steam-powered automobile with the ability to brew tea while driving? Artificial limb that runs on mechanics?

The crazier the invention, the more fun it is. Your inventions will be scored based on plausibility, purpose, and inventiveness, and the contest will end on Friday, November 5.

Oh, and I'm running the same contest at Gear Bits and Clockwork and Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, so remember to head over there to posit your inventions as well. That gives everyone 15 chances to win something! You read that right: 15 chances to win.

All entries must be received by 12 am on Friday, November 5 to be considered.

SPECIAL NOTE: There will be a guest post from J.S. Lewis, co-author of The Brimstone Key, later this week; Mr. Lewis will be talking about the challenges of integrating Steampunk tech into contemporary times.

Random Historicial Trivia: The Meaning of "Condescending"

2010-10-22T06:38:00.000-04:00

Dictionary.com defines the word condescending as "showing or implying a usually patronizing descent from dignity or superiority, as in 'They resented the older neighbors' condescending cordiality.'"

We all know people that can be described as condescending; they're generally aloof, snobbish, and a whole lot of fake rolled into one. Many people today hate being condescended to, because it means that they're somehow less than the person doing the condescending.

You might then be interested to know that being condescending wasn't always a bad thing. An older, less-used definition of the word has condescend as a verb rather than an adjective, and defines it as "to behave as if one is conscious of descending from a superior position, rank, or dignity." A good example would be the Queen of England talking to someone of a lower social rank without appearing to talk down to that person. In that case, the Queen would have condescended to the lower rank of the other person.

There are letters from the American Civil War where Confederate* soldiers praise the ability of their superior officers to condescend to their level. Specifically where the superior officer was one of the upper classes, it was always seen as a good thing for them to have the ability to step down, as it were, from their higher station in life and speak plainly with their subordinates. It wasn't until much, much later that the act of condescension took on the negative connotation it has today.

Perhaps the alteration in meaning might be tied to changing attitudes in the United States in the Reconstruction Era, and particularly the pat-on-the-head condescension that many Americans felt from foreign-born travelers and politicians. James Russel Lowell wrote an essay, On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners, that ran in the Atlantic Monthly in 1869. Within Lowell's essay is the following line:

"So long as we continue to be the most common-schooled and the least cultivated people in the world, I suppose we must consent to endure this condescending manner of foreigners toward us. The more friendly they mean to be the more ludicrously prominent it becomes. They can never appreciate the immense amount of silent work that has been done here, making this continent slowly fit for the abode of man, and which will demonstrate itself, let us hope, in the character of the people." (from Bartleby.com)

This shows an interesting shift, from the perception pre-Civil War of the ability of the upper classes to condescend to the lower classes as a more-or-less good thing to something that is seen as a bad quality to have.

The things you learn, huh?

Steampunk Character Type: The Gentleman

2010-10-21T07:28:00.001-04:00

Image from Victoriana.com

The Gentleman as a Steampunk Character Type is one of those fluid personalities that tends to blend with another archetype rather than stand on its own. Every other Steampunk Character Type can do the same -- there's nothing that says a Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor can't also be an Adventurer, or a Suffragette, or a Savant, or a Rebel. However, when it comes to The Gentleman as an archetype, you're much more likely to see this personality in combination with another one.

A common thought is the Gentleman Adventurer -- a nobleman who travels the world righting wrongs and doing good deeds for the disaffected people of the world. One example of a Gentleman Adventurer is Othar Tryggvassen, a character in Phil and Kaja Foglio's Hugo-winning Girl Genius comic (I plug the Profs. Foglio because their comic is one of my all-time favorites). Othar has the distinct personality trait of also being kind of annoying to practically anyone he meets, despite the fact that he's convinced he's doing good works.

But anyway, my commentary about how brilliantly put-together Othar is as a character aside, the Gentleman as a Steampunk Character Type appears to be more of an overlay for a simple reason -- a character doesn't have to be born a Gentleman to act as one; the behavior that makes up the "standard" of being a Gentleman is easily translatable across primary character types.

What makes a gentleman though? In John Henry Cardinal Newman's 1852 work, The Idea of a University, the Gentleman is defined as someone who never inflicts pain, whether emotional, mental, or physical, on anyone that he comes into contact with. "He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. (Newman 208-9)."

The Gentleman's great concern then, according to Newman, is to make everyone feel at home in the space around him. He is affable, articulate, and generally focused on avoiding conflict wherever he can.

"He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. (Newman 209)"

It's interesting to note that, although anyone born into the nobility was automatically considered a "gentleman," the Character Type itself isn't limited to those of noble birth in fiction. Doctor Watson from the Sherlock Holmes stories might qualify as a Gentleman, as does Lord Maccon from Gail Carriger's Soulless -- granted, Lord Maccon fails a bit in that he causes Alexia emotional pain on several occasions, but otherwise he more or less falls into the proper classification of the Character Type. Another example of a Gentleman from Carriger's novels is Professor Lyall, who as the Beta of Lord Maccon's pack probably makes a bit of a better example than his Alpha does.

From older fiction, the character of Phileas Fogg slots nicely into the Gentleman role. He is non-abrasive, does not seek out conflict, and intends to make people -- particularly Aouda -- comfortable in whatever abode they may be. Fogg endeavors throughout his journey to keep calm and thus keep calm the people around him. I mentioned Fogg before, when it came to the Adventurer, but he also fits here under the Gentleman simply because of the way he perceives the world around him.

What other Gentleman can you think of Steampunk (or any other) fiction?

NOTE: If you're interested in reading the Newman text, here's the Google Books link: http://books.google.com/books?id=IY9SyxjhmtwC&dq=the%20idea%20of%20a%20university&pg=PR2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Featured at SF Signal

2010-10-20T05:40:00.000-04:00

"Featured" is kind of a strong word now that I think about it. But anyway, last week the folks at SF Signal put out a call for the Most Memorable Anti Heroes in SF/F to the Twitter-verse. Me being me, I decided to knock off a quick list of my favorite anti heroes from all the speculative fiction I've read since ... oh geez ... forevers?

The SF Signal crew then emailed me back saying they loved my list, and wanted me to include a brief paragraph for each selection plus a biography of little old me to include as part of their MIND MELD series.

So this morning, I log into Twitter and I see the following Tweet from @sfsignal:

#MindMeld: Memorable Anti-Heroes in SF/F w. Allen Steele, S. Andrew Swann, @LisaSpindler, @MattDelman: http://sfsignal.com/10819 #fb

Of course I click on the link, and then I realize that they've put my list in among the likes of 3 award-winning authors, one of whom has won the Hugo twice, and a mega-prolific blogger in the form of Lisa Spindler.

Suffice to say, I ... umm ... kind of geeked out a little bit.

This is ignoring the fact that I adore SF Signal as a general rule, and the fact that they feature my Steampunk Character Type pieces in practically ever Friday SF Tidbits post since I started writing the things. So yeah ... how are all of you this morning?

Steampunk Character Type: The Savant

2010-10-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

In A Beautiful Mind, Russel Crowe portrays John Forbes Nash, Jr., a brilliant mathematician who struggles with paranoid schizophrenia. This is an example of a character that I've termed The Savant, someone who might be absolutely brilliant in one area and yet have an equally as damaging flaw in another.


Laurence Kim Peek (1951 to 2009), a Savant with perfect photographic memory who was able to recall the contents of 12,000 books. He had severe motor function disabilities. (image from Historic Mysteries)

Someone who can do complex mathematical algorithms in his head but is unable to tie his shoes is one example; another is the incredible musician that lacks even basic social skills. It's the scientific and mathematical fields where this character type is seen most acutely -- an interesting side note is that a Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor might be a Savant, but a Savant is not always a Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor -- as those fields require extremely high-level brain function that can take from other parts of the brain.

From Historic Mysteries:

A Savant is someone possessing exceptional skill in a particular area, such as art, literature and mathematics. They are a rare breed; only 100 individuals recognized as Savants are alive today. But what is most interesting, is that half of all Savants are autistic, and the other half have some other type of mental disability, such as a brain injury or retardation.

In terms of fictional Savants, the mental or physical difficulties may or may not make an appearance. What might be the damning character flaw that shifts your hyper-intelligent character into Savant status may be something as simple as lack of social grace. If played to its logical extreme, you could have an exceptionally brilliant musician that refuses to talk to people because of difficulty relating. Talk about music, and they discourse for hours; talk about anything else and they clam up because they can't speak about anything else.

Characters that are engineers, scientists, and mathematically focused are especially prone to Savant status. In the more fantastic vein of Second-World Steampunk, you might also see a mage-scientist that has issues relating to people outside of his or her specific brand of high-level knowledge. A pure fantasy example would probably be Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance series of novels; a more Steampunk choice could be Edward "Leviathan" Mallory from The Difference Engine, a brilliant paleontologist and explorer who nevertheless has difficulty dealing with people who don't conform to his worldview.

It's interesting to note that, in The Difference Engine, the word "Savant" is used to refer to the meritocracy that rules Britain. When you're a Savant in the Britain of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's seminal Steampunk novel, then you're part of the elite of the elite. This is an interesting way to use the highly scientific mind of the Savant to be sure, and something that would be very in keeping with the way a Savant character might view him or herself.

What fictional characters do you think qualify for Savant status?

Victorian Courtship Rituals, Or How Fanning Meant Flirting

2010-10-08T09:45:00.000-04:00

The rules of courtship in Victorian England were many and varied. Since courtship and marriage was viewed primarily as a career move for young men rather than something done for love, the rituals took on excessive importance so as not to waste the time of anyone involved. Why would the young Lord Danforth pursue the eldest daughter of Baron Whistlefield if it meant he couldn't advance his own property holdings or his situation in Parliament?

I have a whole lot of commentary on this topic, but that's not the point of this post. Rather, it's to share the minimal freedom that upper class women had when it came to interacting with young, available men at social events. This freedom to "flirt," as it were, was limited to how the woman made use of her fan:

Fan fast--I am independent
Fan slow--I am engaged
Fan with right hand in front of face--Come on
Fan with left hand in front of face--Leave me
Fan open and shut--Kiss me
Fan open wide--Love
Fan half open--Friendship
Fan shut--Hate
Fan swinging--Can I see you home?

(Source: Literary Liaisons, Ltd, "Courting the Victorian Woman")

Personally, I never knew that the different ways a lady used her fan meant different things. The proper courtship rituals of Victorian Britain are endlessly fascinating. Expect quite a few more posts on this area in the future.

Steampunk Character Type: The Rebel

2010-10-07T11:00:00.024-04:00

Along with the Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor, the Rebel is one of the quintessential Steampunk character types. The etymology of the word Steampunk, while a riff on the phrase "cyberpunk," is still tied directly to the rebellion against the status quo that Punk desires. To be "Punk," in fact, is to rebel against whatever system/government/social convention is currently in place.

There have been thousands of rebels throughout history; the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, the Sons of Liberty and others during the American Revolution, the leaders of the Glorious Revolution in Britain, Charles Babbage, Guy Fawkes, Ada Lovelace, Nelson Mandela, and so on and so forth. My naming the revolutions or people isn't a judgment on any other revolutionaries, merely a sampling of the type of person I'm talking about.

In fiction, the list is equally as long. One of the most famous Steampunk trilogies, A Nomad of the Time Streams, has the unique distinction of its author Michael Moorcock being a card-carrying anarchist. In Warlord of the Air, the first novel in the trilogy, main character Oswald Bastable begins the story as a loyal son of the British Empire before he slowly becomes a Rebel when he realizes how wrong things really are in the alternate world he's ended up in.

Whitechapel Gods by S.M. Peters has Oliver, Missy, and the other "heroes" of the novel battling against the servants of Mama Engine, Grandfather Clock, and Baron Hume. Soulless by Gail Carriger has Alexia Tarabotti rebelling against convention while she seeks to help Lord Maccon and solve the mystery that plagues the werewolves and vampires of the United Kingdom.

Steampunk, some will argue, is about rebellion against the Empire in all its forms. The best Steampunks, these same people say, are the ones that reject the way the world is and battle to change it for the better. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville has Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, a scientist that fills the role of rebel quite nicely once you look at him closely; The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia claims Mattie, the automaton main character, as a rebel against the world. Mattie is an emancipated automaton -- this is something that simply does not happen in the world of the novel. The fact that Mattie remains unharmed and successful is testament to the success of her rebellion.

Who is the rebel in Steampunk though? What type of person is he or she?

Well there are two kinds: the Rebel-as-Hero and the Rebel-as-Villain. The Rebel-as-Hero is someone who fights for a cause above all else. Sometimes that's to right a wrong, sometimes that's to move themselves up in the world against resistance, and sometimes that's because they rode into town and realized "wait a minute, that lord/king/baron/sheriff isn't treating his people right." The Rebel can be an Adventurer as well, but there's no guarantee that an Adventurer is a Rebel. A good example is Phileas Fogg, perhaps one of the most famous Adventurers in fiction, who does not waste any time on his trip around the world by rebelling against anything. He does save Aouda, but that's not a rebellion against her native culture. Rather, it's a simple rescue taking place throughout the course of the novel.

The Rebel-as-Villain is a bit trickier to tease out. This villain-rebel might use fear to make his point, is often mistake for a terrorist, and will use any means necessary to achieve his end goal. The rebel may have altruistic ideals at the beginning, but those quickly become subsumed under an overriding desire for revenge, anger at the establishment for a (sometimes incorrectly) perceived wrong, or even pain at something that happened in their past. The Rebel-as-Villain also makes common use of extreme violence in his acts. Guy Fawkes's plan to blow up Parliament in the 1600s is a good example of a common Rebel-as-Villain plan. They want to kill as many people as possible to prove their point. I'm not saying Guy Fawkes fit the bill of Rebel-as-Villain, mind you.

Nemo from the film
"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"

Perhaps the most famous Rebel in Steampunk fiction is Captain Nemo. The Villain-Hero of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is one of those characters that almost defies description; he is a Mad Scientist, and a Rebel, and an Adventurer, and everything else about a Steampunk hero that writers strive to include.

From different perspectives, you can argue that Nemo is both a Rebel-as-Hero and a Rebel-as-Villain. He uses fear to get his point across; as the novel opens, Professor Pierre Aronnax is sought out to study the effects of an attack by a giant cetacean on several vessels in the Atlantic shipping lanes.

Nemo also battles the Empire to revenge himself for the failed Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 to 1859. We see Nemo in the guise of Rebel-as-Hero for his role in that rebellion, as the main thrust of that conflict was to expel the British from India. Nemo is also a Rebel-as-Hero because he gives aid to others rebelling against their masters -- in one case aiding the Greeks against the Ottoman Turks in the Cretan Revolt of 1866 to 1869.

Nemo fills the Rebel-as-Villain role primarily for his unrelenting desire to destroy the British Empire's power by any means necessary. He ruthlessly and silently attacks British warships in such a fashion as to kill everyone on board without being seen by ramming the vessels below the waterline. He spreads fear and terror throughout the Empire simply through existing. The sheer stories that are passed around about him spark speculation and terror among all the Empire's possessions.

The Rebel, whether as a Hero or as a Villain, is an important part of Steampunk fiction. There are many people who say that if there isn't a rebel character, then the story isn't really Steampunk. I don't know if I agree with this statement, as Steampunk has swiftly morphed into more of a Pulp-adventure genre than anything, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that Steampunk and Rebels go hand-in-hand.

What other Rebels can you think of in Steampunk?

Off Topic: Guest Post at Who's Your Gladys?

2010-10-06T09:53:00.000-04:00

I'm filing this under "Off Topic" because it has nothing to do with Steampunk. For the past ten years, I've worked off-and-on in customer service and retail sales roles, something that I feel has made me much better customer when I'm in those situations. You want to find out the reasons why?

Then head on over to the prominent Customer Service blog called "Who's Your Gladys?" -- the owners of which have graciously decided to run a guest post by yours truly today.

Here's the link: http://www.whosyourgladys.com -- let me know what you think!

GUEST POST: The Asylum: A UK Steampunk Event in Lincoln

2010-10-05T11:00:00.002-04:00

Alex Keller's debut novel Haywired, a steampunk fairytale, was released on 1 September in the UK by Mogzilla Books. Alex maintains a blog at http://alexkelleruk.tumblr.com, where he discusses Steampunk, the life of a writer, and other assorted items. You can purchase Haywired at the Mogzilla shop, Amazon UK, and at Waterstones. Its sequel, Rewired, is due out April 2011 in the UK. Haywired will be released to U.S. readers sometime in 2011.

The Asylum was the first Steampunk convention I'd attended and I had no idea what to expect. I've never really been one for conventions to be honest. I've nothing particularly against them, but I've never been a big fan of group things so I've avoided them like the plague. I've always preferred my own company rather than being stuck in a crowd, but I was genuinely pleasantly surprised by the Asylum. I had a really good time. It looks like I've made quite the mistake.

What first struck me were the costumes: they were incredible. The effort people had gone to was tremendous. I don't really know much about the Steampunk community and I thought that maybe a few people would really make the effort while the majority would just be in jeans and t-shirts with a slightly steampunky feel to them, but wow was I wrong. I wore a pair of brown trousers, a shirt, and a waistcoat, and I felt massively under-dressed. However, there was no ostracising because I hadn't gone to the lengths most others had. Every person I spoke to, and I mean everyone, was friendly and talkative.

Anyway, to keep this concise, there were a couple of things that really blew me away. First of all, people actually bought my book. This was AMAZING. I'm proud of Haywired and extremely happy with the reception it has received on the review circuit, but what I found incredible was that people, real flesh and blood people, were prepared to part with their hard-earned money to get a copy. And they even wanted me to scrawl something barely legible in it as well! It felt very strange being in this position but I'm delighted they wanted my signature, let alone the book itself.

The second thing that felt very strange was having Mr Robert Rankin on the stall next to me. I knew he was going to be there, but I thought he would be in some closed off area for him to perform whatever person magic he wished, not be sitting at the stall next to mine looking like an ordinary mortal. I have to admit, I didn't speak to him much as I was a bit star-struck, but he seemed like an incredibly nice guy. He and his wife got involved in all the events that were going on, and on the one occasion when I did pluck up enough courage to speak to him, he was very friendly.

I do come away with a few regrets though. As this was my first convention, I was a bit cautious. There was a ball on in the evening and I thought that might be a bit too much for me, but once I was there I was disappointed I hadn't signed up. On Sunday, everyone was saying it was great! Oh well, there's always next year.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Alex has pictures of The Asylum up on his blog, http://alexkelleruk.tumblr.com. Scroll down a bit and you can see a photo of Robert Rankin and a slideshow of other pictures Alex took.

The Jacquard Loom -- Ancestor of the Computer

2010-10-04T13:54:00.000-04:00

Joseph-Marie Jacquard

Charles Babbage is given a prominent place in the annals of Computer History, and rightly so. His Difference Engine, designed in the 1820s, would've been the first free-standing general use computer system had it ever been built. It's worth noting, however, that Babbage's machine wouldn't have been the first to use the system of punched cards that drove the mechanical computer. Rather, that honor belongs to the loom designed and patented by Joseph-Marie Jacquard, a Frenchman, in 1801.

Joseph-Marie Jacquard was born in Lyon, France in 1752 to a family of weavers. At the time, weaving the fine cloths in demand around the world was a tedious process that had been done by hand for generations. When Jacquard inherited his family's business, he realized that the labor cost of weaving the fabrics more or less destroyed any profit he could hope to make.

The profit was so minuscule on weaving, in fact, that Jacquard worked a separate job in a factory to make ends meet for a time. He began developing what would become the Jacquard loom prior to the French Revolution, during which time progress on the invention was stalled long enough to prevent the patent from being filed until 1804. The French government, realizing how important the Jacquard loom was, declared Jacquard's invention public property and assigned him a government pension and a set royalty on every machine produced. This seizure of the patent happened in 1806, two years after the patent was filed, and five years after Jacquard exhibited the loom in Paris.

The cantilever loom, an example
of the looms in common use
prior to the Jacquard loom.
(Image from the
Colonial Williamsburg website)

The Jacquard loom automated an important process in cloth weaving. Prior to this, a drawboy would inside the loom and lift or move a number of threads based on directions from the master weaver. When the shuttle passed through -- the flying shuttle was in use by this time, which made weaving easier -- the design would begin to appear where the master weaver wanted.

This process was prone to error, which was a two-fold reason for Jacquard to automate the weaving process. This isn't to say that other inventors hadn't already attempted the same thing Jacquard succeeded at. Fellow Lyon native Basile Bouchon developed a way to control a loom using punched paper tape similar to a organ in 1725; three years later, his assistant Jean-Baptiste Falcon made some improvements to the machine.

The year 1745 saw Jacques de Vaucanson (a renowned builder of automatons) developing a system of further automating the process in Bouchon's design. De Vaucanson's designs were ignored in his lifetime, however, and he died without the loom ever being fully produced.

An Anglican priest stationed at the cathedral in Lincolnshire, Edmund Cartwright, developed the power loom in 1784. The design had numerous flaws though, and it would take 40 years and several patented designs -- including in 1789 and 1792 -- before all the issues with the loom's function were resolved.

Regardless of the innovations that came before, the Jacquard loom was the first to make consistent and effective use of a punch card system to automate the weaving process. The loom was initially opposed by silk weavers throughout France; the weavers were under the impression that the Jacquard loom's automation would make them redundant, thus eliminating an entire cottage industry.

Jacquard loom on display at the
Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.
Photo taken by George H. Williams in July 2004.

Contrary to that belief, however, the Jacquard loom allowed thousands upon thousands more yards of fabric to be produced across Europe in ever-increasing amounts. That there were more than 11,000 Jacquard looms in use throughout France by 1812 shows quite clearly that the advantages far outweighed any possible negatives.

The function of the loom itself is striking in its simplicity. A roll of punched cards is placed in the feeder, which runs beneath the hooks in the loom. The hooks remain in place until a hole in the punched card passes by, and then move into action pressing another thread into place. From Wikipedia:

Each hole in the card corresponds to a "Bolus" hook, which can either be up or down. The hook raises or lowers the harness, which carries and guides the warp thread so that the weft will either lie above or below it. The sequence of raised and lowered threads is what creates the pattern. Each hook can be connected via the harness to a number of threads, allowing more than one repeat of a pattern. A loom with a 400-hook head might have four threads connected to each hook, resulting in a fabric that is 1600 warp ends wide with four repeats of the weave going across.

The heavy card-stock common to punched cards was first developed because of the Jacquard loom; high-volume Jacquard looms even made use of metal cards so they programs wouldn't fall to pieces after excessive use. A very interesting facet of the Jacquard loom that makes it distinct among machines using punched cards is the fact that the cards themselves are strung together and fed along a cylinder rather than being placed through the machine one at a time.


Close-up view of the 8 × 26 hole punched cards— one card per pick (weft) in the fabric. (Wikipedia)

Each hole in the card relates to one hook in the mechanism of the machine. The Jacquard loom's success comes not so much in the mechanization of the process of weaving, but rather that the punched cards allow for the same design to be woven over and over again without error.

As more Jacquard looms were built and sent to factories throughout Europe, more designs were programmed into the punched card system, and fabric became cheaper and cheaper to weave. The errors of the pre-Jacquard loom weaving industry could be said to have almost disappeared, and the lack of profit one could expect from becoming a weaver also slowly diminished. If a single man could weave 10 yards of cloth in the time it used to take him to weave one or two, then the Jacquard loom already made its mark in the economics of the Industrial Revolution.

As for the history of computers, the success of the Jacquard loom is what led Charles Babbage to develop his Engines in the 1820s and 1830s based on the punched-card model. In fact, Babbage's punched cards were also attached to one another by small straps, similar to the way the punched cards of the Jacquard loom were attached to one another. It wouldn't be until Herman Hollerith developed his punched cards for the 1890 U.S. Census that individual punched cards came around into popular use.

That the Jacquard loom is a Steampunk device is in little doubt. Mechanical computer? Check. Punched card system set in a language of 0 (no hole) and 1 (hole)? Check. Possibility to have mechanized looms clacking along while steam power sends the flying shuttle whizzing back and forth through the mechanism? Check. Already the possibilities for a scene in a Steampunk textile factory are very interesting. But that's just my view.

Pictures of The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations (1851)

2010-10-01T10:21:00.001-04:00

In lieu of a honest-to-goodness post on The Great Exhibition of 1851, which will be forthcoming, I'm going to wow you with some sketches published in The Illustrated London News during the months of the Exhibition itself in 1851 (all images are from VictorianWeb.com; scanned by Philip V. Allingham):

[India] Sculpture displays in front of the Indian Pavillion. The Great Exhibition of 1851.
Caption from The Illustrated London News.
Beating from the Chase — Indian Shawls — Kincob Silk — Fine Dacca Muslins: piece of 10 yards, 10 pounds, &c. — Embroidered Scarfs. Satan tempting Eve — The Jealousy of Medea — Satan Vanquished by the Archangel Michael. Marble Statue of Victory (Bauch, of Berlin); purchased by her Majesty — Indian Arms and Armour.


Grand Panorama of the Great Exhibition of 1851 — Portion of the South Transept from The Illustrated London News.


[France] No. II. — South-East Portion of the Nave from The Illustrated London News.

Grand Panorama of the Great Exhibition (4) from The Illustrated London News.
Statue, "The Canadian Indian at her Child's Grave" — Porcelain — Framed Mirrors — Flannels — Sail-Cloths — Mixed Fabrics — Linens — Statue, "Eve" — Busts of King and Queen of the Belgians — Statue, "Lady and Dove" — Velvet Pile Carpet — Saddlery — Wood Carvings — Geert's "[?]." — "Madonna" in marble — "Lion in Love" — "The Broken Drun," marble — [. . . ] Stuffs — Cloths — Leather — Minerals — Earthware — Tapestry.

Agriculturalists at the Exhibition from The Illustrated London News (19 July 1851): 101.

"He finds it very hot; but believes they say it is hotter in the gallery; and wonders why Mr. Paxton don't find some means of cooling the air, icing the fountains, or driving a cold blast through the organs, or something of that sort."

Steampunk Character Type: The Suffragette

2010-09-30T11:00:00.000-04:00

Both women and men can fulfill the Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor or Adventurer character types in Steampunk, but there is one particular character type unique to women that took on particular importance during the late 1800s. The Suffragette arose with the drive for women's rights that took place throughout much of the Western Republics during the late 19th/early 20th centuries. We have women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Muriel Matters, Louisa Lawson, Viscountess Nancy Witcher Astor, Emmeline Pankhurst, and the list goes on and on.

Susan B. Anthony

Though the historical Suffragettes crusaded for women's rights, there isn't a need to do the same in order to fall under the Suffragette character type. A fine example of this character type, in fact, is Alexia Tarabotti from Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series. Alexia is intelligent, independent, and though she's aware of her place within society she isn't hidebound by the societal mores she doesn't agree with.

The proper Suffragette character type is that type of woman -- intelligent, independent, and capable of ignoring established laws when they stand in her way. The Suffragette's of history were almost all very, very smart women who were focused on altering the established rules of society to give women all sorts of rights under the law that they didn't have before in the Western Republics.

Not every independent female character is a Suffragette-type, but many of them are. The character archetype of the Warrior Woman from fantasy novels is subsumed under the Suffragette umbrella within Steampunk, primarily because the drive for Women's Suffrage took place smack in the middle of the time period where much of Steampunk is set. Both character types can still exist in a Steampunk world, but the Suffragette is almost more natural because she understands the nature of the society she lives in and seeks to change it for the better.

In terms of real-life Steampunks, I can think of few better examples for the attitudes of the "punk" suffix of the word than the Suffragette. She quests for change in the world around her, to give a voice in government to groups that don't yet have one or to help change an attitude that has sent her nation spiraling down the proverbial tubes. She also might be a wife and mother, sometimes to a husband that shares her goals and sometimes to one that tells her she should give up and accept the world for what it is. However, the fictional Suffragette can't do that because she sees an injustice and something in her character forces her to right it.

I realize, as I write this, that I've created Moriah Rowani (heroine of CALLARION AT NIGHT) as a Suffragette character. She doesn't really start off this way, but eventually becomes a leader when she realizes the true depth of the wrongs going on in the city.

An alternate side is the Suffragette-as-villain; this might be someone who's had a psychotic break and is convinced that something's wrong with the world when it's really not, or someone who's taken their quest to the extremes of using fear tactics and hatred to change things. Granted, this is my personal opinion (and one you're welcome to disagree with).

Can you think of any other Suffragette characters in fiction?

Winners of The Dark Deeps Contest

2010-09-28T12:08:00.000-04:00

All right, Princess Freers, here's the promised official announcement of the winners of an ARC for Arthur Slade's The Dark Deeps, The Hunchback Assignments Book 2:

Winner number one is ....

Nemone7

"After an evening of pipe-smoking and clever deductions peppered by witty remarks, nothing delighted Dr Watson more than sitting at his desk to record Holmes’ effortless fits of brain power for posterity. Or so dear gyroscopic Sherlock believed.

The truth was quite other, hidden in the basement of a little-known Gentlemen’s club ,The Smoke. Here, after limping down treacherous damp stairs, the good doctor smiled at the innumerable little eyes and hands and hearts(yes, hearts) awaiting his ministrations .Here ,in his cozy workshop by the rumbling steam engine that powered other gentlemen’s unavowable endeavours, De Watson’s delicate surgeon fingers fit together cogs and wheels, wound with copper wire, tensed with springs. Here, Sherlock Holmes’ gentle shadow built his army of clockwork toys, and gave them life. Every tiny copper heart beat for him."

And, by popular Twitter vote, the winner of the second ARC is ...

K. Marie Criddle

"Black Beauty is a roguely, darish animal that won't sit kindly by and be traded around like a common gooseberry, if one catches one's drift. He wears a saddle of fine oiled leather and brass buckles from the finest of purveyors that purvey that type of stuff. His hooves have been modified with clanking, steam powered pistons that build and store energy for those much needed dashes through the bustling streets of London. Step gingerly, or your legs might not be too merry, Brass Beauty! The end. I'm too tired to think of more."

Thank you to Mia Hayson and Paul Singleton for rounding out the entrants, and forcing me to turn to Twitter for the final winner of the second ARC, seeing as your entries were simply too awesome for me to choose.

I'll have another contest here in October, so anyone who didn't win here is more than welcome to come back along for that one as well.

Nemone7 and Marie, please email me your mailing addresses so I can ship your books out to you.

The Fur Trade as Steampunk?

2010-09-28T09:45:00.000-04:00

The fur trade played a major role in the North American economy for more than 300 years, beginning in the 1500s when the first European explorers traded with the Native American/First Nations tribes at seacoast trading areas and all the way up to about 1850. Up until the first planned move into the interior of North America in 1608, the Europeans were content to trade guns, cloth, and manufactured goods for beaver pelts and the furs of the fox, mink, otter, and marten.

Image taken from the Canpages blog

The fur trade in North America is divided into three periods -- the French Era, the British Era, and the American Era -- which are roughly bookended by three major conflicts in North America over the course of 250-year official history of the trade. The French Era ran from 1608, when Samuel Champlain ordered Etiene Brule to go live with the Huron tribe in order to learn their ways, up to the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1760 when New France was taken over by Britain.

The British Era of dominance in the fur trade ran then from 1760 to 1816, with only slight interruption by the American Revolution. I say slight interruption only because the battles of the American Revolution centered on the eastern coastline of the continent, whereas the fur trade was focused around Grand Portage and the Great Lakes out around Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Some traders avoided areas south and east of the Great Lakes as a result of the Revolution, but business did not slow by any stretch of the imagination.

In 1815, the United States government forbade any foreign traders from operating inside the country. This expelled the British fur traders, and forced the North West Company (an organization focused on the fur trade) to depart from the areas now controlled by the United States. Thus began the American Era of fur trading in the U.S., which lasted until 1850 when silk hats and not the felt ones made of beaver pelts became fashionable.

Fort Chipewyan was founded in 1788 on
the shores of Lake Athabasca
in the Canadian North.
(Canada's First Peoples website)

The White Oak Society, Inc of Deer River, Minnesota has a complete timeline of major events in the North American fur trade on their website. That particular organization is also fascinating because they're a living history group that focuses on re-creating what the fur trade would've been like in 1798 -- right at the height of the industry, when the Hudson Bay and North West companies duked it out for dominance over the fur trade of North America.

The fur trade had far-reaching effects on North American society. Many of the French Canadians now living in the United States, for example, might be able to trace their family tree to a fur trader or trapper that lived around the Great Lakes in the 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries. The Metis people would not have existed without the French fur traders in Canada, as the Metis are the children of the French trappers and their First People wives.

We might have the stories of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone without the fur trade, but Crockett wouldn't have his famous coonskin cap if not for the popularity of furs when he was alive.

And lastly, the border between the United States and Canada might be different if the fur trade hadn't existed. A lot of the boundary line in the Great Lakes area was determined by which trading posts controlled which territory. The demarcation that separated U.S. territory from Canadian territory was drawn where it is today because of the fur traders on both sides of the line.

The fur trade is tied closely into the North American experience, and as result it can tie well into Steampunk stories set throughout the northwest United States and the majority of Canada. I can already imagine a group of itinerant fur traders driving their steam-powered wagon through the Saskatchewan (wow I'm kind of surprised I spelled that word right first try) wilderness toward the North West Company's trading post at Fort Chipewyan, where the mechanical weigher and counter will determine how much they get paid for their load of beaver pelts. It's definitely a story that could be distinctly North American, especially if you mix in a few words of French, Metis, and English into the various conversations.

You could even use the Steampunked fur traders as a microcosm to show how the advanced technology of Britain has changed their world, or give France the higher technology and see the French and Indian War go a different direction, with Britain losing her colonies in the Americas.

Things to think about, most definitely.

CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT: There will be a separate post later today detailing the winners of the ARCs for The Dark Deeps.

Elisha Collier's Flintlock Revolver

2010-09-27T07:54:00.001-04:00

The revolver concept is often attributed to Samuel Colt, whose famous revolvers were the ones that the U.S. Army used during the Indian Wars of the post-Civil War period. According to an apocryphal story about the invention of the Colt Paterson, Samuel Colt's first revolver, the invention was inspired by viewing the rotation of a ship's steering wheel on a voyage from the United States to England. Colt made a wooden model of the revolver based upon his observations, and would eventually produce the Patterson pistol upon his arrival home.

Elisha Haydon Collier's flintlock revolver,
patented in 1818 in Great Britain (Quazen.com

Although Samuel Colt's revolvers took the world by storm, it was actually another American inventor by the name of Elisha Haydon Collier who invented an early form of the revolver. Elisha Collier's revolver differed from Colt's in several key respects, but the primary one was that Collier's revolver was a flintlock and Colt's used percussion caps.

Prior to Collier's 1818 patent in England, the only multi-shot pistols were the pepperbox guns, which were distinct in that each bullet had its own barrel. Collier's flintlock revolver was one of the earliest weapons that used a single barrel through which all the bullets would successively fire. The flintlock revolver also lightened the weapon and made it easier to load; not having to place one bullet per barrel cut down on the time to load the weapon significantly.

Though Collier's flintlock revolver was an improvement over the earlier pepperboxes, the design of the gun still presented several problems. As in the pepperbox guns, there was a possibility for a multiple spark from the flint to cause all the bullets in the chamber to ignite. With the pepperbox this wasn't so much of an issue -- each bullet had its own barrel and thus all could exit the gun at the same time -- but Collier's flintlock revolver didn't have that benefit, and thus explosions could still happen.

The other primary issue with Collier's flintlock revolver is the issue that all flintlock weapons had. The flint itself would wear down quickly, and thus needed to be replaced quite often. Also, the flintlock revolver could misfire if inferior gunpowder was used in its operation. The standard operation of the flintlock revolver wasn't much different from the flintlock muskets of an earlier time, except for the multiple bullets and the revolving barrel.

Collier's flintlock revolver fell out of favor by the 1840s and '50s, when Samuel Colt and Smith & Wesson developed their pure revolver concepts that used percussion caps instead of flintlocks as an ignition source. When Elisha Collier returned to his native Boston in 1850, Samuel Colt had taken an additional step of difference by mass-producing the Colt Paterson and other hand guns in factories rather than hand-making the weapons as Collier had done with his flintlock revolver.

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has one of Collier's flintlock revolvers in its collection, as a bequest of Major Victor Alexander Farquharson, and their page devoted to the gun has a detailed description of its materials and dimensions. Perhaps the most interesting thing for the Steampunk writer is that the weapon is made of forged steel, brass, and wood. These materials are as standard to Steampunk as the day is long.

One can almost imagine an underdeveloped nation armed with flintlock revolvers and muskets against an invading force using steam-powered automatic weapons and pure revolvers. It kind of sounds like the way much of Eastern Europe fell to the Germans during the run-up to World War II.

Any ideas for how a flintlock revolver could fit into Steampunk? I'd love to hear them!

A Possible Basis for Miss Havisham

2010-09-24T08:58:00.000-04:00

Today's random historical nonsense bit comes from The History Place, which I discovered on doing random Google searches. The story's very, very sad, but is a potential basis for the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. The full text is taken from The History Place's Strange but True! page:

Jilted in 1846 by shipping clerk George Cuthbertson, 21 year old Eliza Emily Donnithorne was condemned to a life more suiting a bat than a pretty heiress of aristocratic birth.

Probably driven away by her overbearing father, Cuthbertson would die in India during the Sepoy rebellion in 1858, while his fiancée in Sydney waited anxiously for his return.

Suffering a nervous breakdown due to her abandonment, Eliza insisted the wedding feast be left untouched on the long dining room table in the grand mansion, Camperdown Lodge, ready for festivities and ceremonies to commence once the absent groom arrived.

Her orders were complied with by her father, retired Judge James Donnithorne, over concern for her state of mind. Those concerns were amplified by Eliza's refusal to wear anything except her wedding dress as she whiled away the days waiting for her groom. Unknown to all, Eliza was in the early stages of pregnancy.

To avoid further scandal, her newborn baby was spirited away by the Judge who arranged for its adoption while falsely telling his daughter of its death. This blow, coupled with the subsequent death of her father, sent the pretty young woman over the edge.

After her father's funeral, all but two servants were dismissed. The imposing estate would be sealed off from the world for the next 40 years. Windows and shutters were permanently closed, drapes drawn, and the house was blanketed in total darkness. Expensive European paintings and furnishings were gradually blanketed in the dust of decades, falling to ruin anonymously while weeds and overgrowth consumed the outside of the once stately house.

A generation of neighbors were born, lived and died, believing the house to be abandoned. Oblivious to the passage of time, Eliza grew old. Her wedding dress decayed and hung off her withering body as she drifted like a ghost through the dusty ruins of her world.

She refused to leave the grounds or see anyone except her lawyer and minister, who described rotting chairs collapsing under them as the mistress of the house held court, sitting solemnly in her discolored wedding dress while candles cast eerie shadows on the walls. Merciful death finally arrived in 1886 when Eliza died of heart disease, a fitting end for a woman who suffered so long from a broken heart.

A generous woman, her donations helped build the local church where she was buried, while the bulk of her considerable estate was left to charities and her trusty servants.

It is believed novelist Charles Dickens heard of her abandonment and subsequent reclusion through one of his sons and based the character Miss Havisham in his novel Great Expectations on her.

Like I said, it's a sad story and yet one that is fascinating all the same. Reminds me of the sailor's widows in New England who had the widow's walk around the top of their ocean-side homes. I seem to recall more than a few widows who would go up to the roof of their home to watch for the husband that never came home.

Steampunk Character Type: The Adventurer

2010-09-23T22:32:00.000-04:00

We've all seen them in fiction -- the Adventurer-Hero strikes a victorious pose with his fists on his hips and chest puffed out while the villain scrabbles away, defeated. But while this evokes images of the superheroes extant during the comic book Golden Age, and is the one that many of us can conjure up, I'm talking about Adventurers that occur in fiction significantly earlier.

Allan Quartermain. Tom Sawyer. Phileas Fogg. The Time Traveller. These are just a few of the Adventurer characters from classic fiction. As to the names from Steampunk novels? Well that's easy too -- Modo and Octavia (The Hunchback Assignments), Croggon Hainey (The Clockwork Century), Bergen (Whitechapel Gods) ... you get the picture.

We see the Adventurer a lot in Steampunk fiction, but what really typifies the character? How do we know when we've seen an Adventurer and not a regular person thrust into the story's primary plot line against their will?

The Adventurer is comfortable in dire situations. In fact, he almost prefers them to the the quiet supposedly idyllic life he once came from. The classic Adventurer were men (and the occasional woman) who went off into the world in search of far-off lands and peoples, sometimes with the intent to study them but more often to see the sights and see what would happen to them there. A sub-character type is the Adventurer Archaeologist (Indiana Jones), which is actually nothing like archaeology actually is anymore (but once was in the 19th Century).

The Voyages Extraordinaire of Jules Verne are rife with Adventurer characters which, seeing as those are Adventure stories, isn't really that big of a surprise. Phileas Fogg, Captain Nemo, Professor Arronax, etc and so on -- the characters that exist in Verne's stories are men of Action and Adventure. That's the kind of Adventurer-Hero many people have come to expect. He's the man of Action who acts without thinking, and yet somehow always manages to win the girl at the end of the story.

The spirit of Adventure that runs through the root works of Steampunk, and the genre's other basis in the pulp adventure novels of the late 1800s, make it clear that the Adventurer character type is here to stay.

What other traits can you think of that describe an Adventurer character?

The Gatling Gun -- Steampunk Weaponry for Real

2010-09-22T07:23:00.000-04:00

Doctor Richard Gatling's patent drawing

In 1861, Doctor Richard Gatling invented a six-barreled machine gun capable of firing 200 rounds per minute. This "Gatling gun," as it would be known, was designed with the express purpose of decreasing the number of men on the battlefield. In creating it, Dr. Gatling hoped that it would reduce the amount of bloodshed in war and eventually even end war all together. His thought was that the carnage his weapons wreaked would make armies reconsider before they marched to war. Gatling's own words written nearly two decades after the invention of the weapon bear this out.

Hartford, June 15^th, 1877
My Dear Friend.
It may be interesting to you to know how I came to invent the gun which bears my name; I will tell you: In 1861, during the opening events of the war, (residing at that time in Indianapolis, md.,) I witnessed almost daily the departure of troops to the front and the return of the wounded, sick, and dead. The most of the latter lost their lives, not in battle, but by sickness and exposure incident to the service. It occurred to me if I could invent a machine--a gun-- which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a great extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease be greatly diminished. I thought over the subject and finally this idea took practical form in the invention of the Gatling Gun.
Yours truly,
R.J. Gatling

As history has proven, however, Dr. Gatling was way off the mark.

The original Gatling gun models saw use in dozens of wars around the world, from the Spanish-American War of 1898 to the colonial conflicts in Africa and other undeveloped nations. The colonial European powers made particular use of Gatling's weapon to bolster their fortifications against hordes of warriors. Once the destructive power of the Gatling gun was realized, the technology spread around the world like wildfire.

The Gatling gun was operated by a hand-crank, which meant that it wasn't the first truly automatic weapon (that title goes to the Maxim gun invented in 1884). Regardless of this lack of automation, the Gatling gun still holds the title of first machine-fed gun useful on the field of battle.

Prior to Gatling's invention, the most common multi-shot weapons were the French mitrailleuse and grapeshot fired from cannons. The problem with both of those weapons was that they had to be reloaded after every shot, so the high mass rate of fire was counteracted by the slow manual loading process.

The operation of the Gatling gun was different. From The American Civil War Home Page:

"The Gatling gun was a hand-crank-operated weapon with 6 barrels revolving around a central shaft. The cartridges were fed to the gun by gravity through a hopper mounted on the top of the gun. 6 cam-operated bolts alternately wedged, fired, and dropped the bullets, which were contained in steel chambers. Gatling used the 6 barrels to partially cool the gun during firing."

Mitrailleuse Gatling model APX1895
(Musée de l'armée, Paris, France)

That same site places the Gatling gun's rate of fire at 600 rounds per minute (100 rounds per barrel), but other resources have a stated rate of fire of 200 rounds for an unskilled operator. Though the weapon was used in the American Civil War, it was still new and the "unskilled" operator was probably the most common one to find at least in the early years. Besides that, the 600 rounds per minute rate of fire seems more a theoretical rate rather than a practical one.

It's worth noting that the Gatling gun wasn't really adopted by the United States Army until 1866, after the war ended. This can be tied to the many problems that the original 1862-patented design had. Among these was the jamming potential of the original design, which was prodigious because of the tapered barrels that ran the risk of not always aligning properly with the chambers. The bullet design that the first Gatling gun used -- a steel chamber full of black powder and primed with a paper percussion cap -- was both fragile and expensive, as self-contained brass bullets had not yet become available.

The 1866 redesign of the Gatling gun included those aforementioned brass cartridges among other improvements, which finally resulted in the gun being picked up by the U.S Army. The Gatling gun was used extensively in the conflicts of the latter part of the 19th Century, going so far as to make the journey to Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War in 1898. Gatling's weapon made its appearance at San Juan Hill among other battles.

In 1876, the weapon had reached theoretical rate of fire of 1,200 rounds per minute. It's important to note that this is a purely theoretical rate, as in practice it was more likely to achieve 400 rounds per minute. This is still an impressive rate of fire for a weapon that required a four-man team to operate. Its "Bruce"-style feed system, where one row of bullets could be loaded while the other was being fired, allowed for the greater increase in rate of fire.

The U.S. Army decommissioned all its Gatling guns in 1911, declaring them obsolete and dropping the rotating barrel technology for several decades. Then the 1940s rolled around, and new designs based on the Gatling model were developed for use on fighter planes -- thus the Vulcan Gatling gun was born, and eventually a lighter three-barrel version was even developed to use on helicopters. The design is still used on fighter jets today.

Inspection of the gatling gun of an A-10 Thunderbolt II, at Osan Air Base, Korea. (from Wikipedia, Photo by USAF Staff Sgt. Bradley C. Church)

As it relates to Steampunk, the Gatling design is the consummate multi-shot heavy weapon to use against massive numbers of infantry. Many of the "gun arms" of fantasy steampunk worlds such as the Wild Arms game are Gatling-style weapons; so much so when you use the phrase "gun arm," one almost immediately thinks of a set of rotating barrels.

Hook the crank to a steam engine that runs on high-pressure steam, and you have a purely automatic weapon that can potentially be fired by a man sitting in a giant robot. The best part about the Gatling gun is that Dr. Gatling was a consummate mechanical engineer, which makes his simple and effective design perfect for use in a Steampunk society where gearwork and steam power dominates.

How would you design a Steampunk Gatling-style weapon? What materials would you use?

Steampunk Author Interview: Arthur Slade

2010-09-19T11:00:00.014-04:00

Arthur Slade, author of the YA steampunk novels The Hunchback Assignments and The Dark Deeps: The Hunchback Assignments Book 2, was kind enough to stop by to answer a few questions during his whirlwind blog tour to promote the second book. The Dark Deeps hit U.S. shelves this past Tuesday, September 14 (Wendy Lamb Books, $16.99). But that's enough from me, as I'm sure you're more interested to hear from Arthur. Without further ado, let me proudly present Mr. Arthur Slade!

Arthur Slade

What drew you to Steampunk?

I’ve been a sci-fi fan since I began reading novels (thanks to Heinlein and Bradbury) and I followed the rise of steampunk in the ‘80s with interest, so steampunk seemed like a natural “literary” choice for me. This series first started with the idea of writing books inspired by Victorian-era novels so it felt natural (and more fun) to push it in the direction of steampunk. It really combines sci-fi, fantasy, and horror--my three favorite flavors of fiction.

The Hunchback Assignments Book I and The Dark Deeps Book 2 are strong case-file adventures that begin the Hunchback series. Are there more plans for a multi-book storyline?

Yes. My intention is to write six or seven episodic novels. Each tells its own story, but the long “arc” will bring an answer to what happens between the conflict of The Permanent Association and The Clockwork Guild and how Modo adjusts to his role in society and his appearance.

What was the hardest part about writing The Dark Deeps?

The research. I want these books to be as believable as possible so I try to add as much historical detail and accuracy as I can. Researching submarine knowledge in the 1900’s was extremely interesting, but also a great big pile of reading. Plus, like every author, I get addicted to the research and forget that I’m actually supposed to be writing the book.

Modo is an interesting choice as a main character. What drove you to choose a hunchbacked character as the hero?

There were several reasons. One was that I had recently reread The Hunchback of Notre Dame and was so moved by the book that I wanted to do an “ode” to it. The Hunchback Assignments grew from a publisher pitching me on writing a Sherlock Holmes type novel. I didn’t want it to just be Sherlock, so I substituted Quasimodo instead then changed it to a secret agent instead of a detective. That’s the literary influence. On a more personal level my daughter Tori was born with Down Syndrome (she died in 2008 due to complications from treatment for leukemia). In her short life she taught me how little I knew about people with handicaps and also how society often treats them as the “other.” Not one of us. So I was taken by the idea of having a hero with a handicap.

Doctor Cornelius Hyde, Griff, Modo, and Captain Monturiol all have their roots in classic novels of the Victorian Era. What other characters or concepts have you borrowed from that period for The Dark Deeps?

Captain Monturiol actually has a double inspiration. She is obviously inspired by Captain Nemo, but I also drew my inspiration for her from a real life 19th century submarine designer named Narcis Monturiol. He was a brilliant man and did invent a perfectly workable (and safe) submarine years before anyone else and nearly went mad trying to get his creation out to the public (he believed it would end war because it could sink all warships).

The socialist concepts of Monturiol’s Icaria are all influenced by Monturiol and his fellow socialists of the time. A group of socialists from Europe actually tried to create their own utopian country (called Icaria) in Texas. The project failed miserably. I just tried to imagine how different it would have been if they’d tried to build their country under the water.

Obviously this book is influenced by Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. He was such an intelligent and detailed writer that it helped me understand how much people in the Victorian age knew about science and nature and, of course, submarines.

Both The Dark Deeps and The Hunchback Assignments have their basis in classic novels. Did you always intend to use classic stories as the basis for Modo’s adventures?

Yes, at some level. I don’t want to be limited by having to choose a novel or story to base the books on, but I do find so much inspiration from those books. After all you can draw a direct line back from the Sci-fi/fantasy/horror of today to the novels published in Victorian times.

Which character would you say is most like you?

Modo. Not that I have any shapeshifting abilities, but that he’s a reader and I’m a reader. Although maybe I need a bit of Miss Hakkandottir as part of my personality when it comes time to negotiate the next contract.

In all the research you did to write The Dark Deeps and The Hunchback Assignments, what was the most interesting thing you discovered?

That would be hard to pin down. I actually kept finding so many interesting things that I created an Odd Victorian Factoids piece for my website (http://www.hunchbackassignments.com/index_steamtrunk.php). I’d have to say the oddest and most interesting thing is that the flush toilet was made popular in Victorian times by a man named Thomas Crapper. Yes, crap meant the same thing then that it does now. So did he choose to become a plumber because of his name? Fate? Destiny? Fact is so much stranger than fiction.

What’s next for Modo and Octavia? For the Clockwork Guild?

The third novel is titled Empire of Ruins. It’s about Modo’s investigation of a rumored Egyptian temple in the Australian Rainforest that holds a powerful item called The God Face (this item will drive whoever sees it insane). Both the Permanent Association and The Clockwork Guild want it. The novel finds its roots in “adventure” novels from the period (Allan Quartermain novels being one example). And it’s also inspired by the whole race for Africa and colonization of the rest of the “uncivilized” world.

What are you working on now?

Next will be the fourth book in the series, The Shadow of Notre Dame. Where Modo will return to Paris to discover more about his roots. I think he’ll be mightily surprised when he finds out that he’s actually French (having spent his whole life raised as an English gentleman).

Thank you once again to Arthur for stopping here along his blog tour promoting The Dark Deeps. If you want to follow Arthur on his blog tour, make sure to check out these blogs:

Previous stops on The Dark Deeps blog tour:
Friday, September 17 - ArtSlade.com http://arthurslade.livejournal.com/
Saturday September 18 - Cynsations http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/

Upcoming stops on The Dark Deeps blog tour:
Monday, September 20 - STEAMED! http://www.ageofsteam.wordpress.com
Tuesday, September 21 - Steampunk Tribune http://www.steampunktribune.com/
Wednesday, September 22 - Suvudu http://suvudu.com/
Thursday, September 23 - Steampunk Scholar http://steampunkscholar.blogspot.com/
Friday, September 24 - Through the Looking Glass http://lookingglassreview.blogspot.com/

And I also have a surprise for you all: I have two ARCs of Arthur Slade's The Dark Deeps to give away to two lucky readers of Free the Princess. So here's what I propose: Come with the most inventive Steampunk twist on a character from a classic novel. The two most creative offerings will each win an ARC.

The Rules are thus: Put your entry in the comments of this post by week's end -- Friday, September 24 -- and I will announce the winners on Monday, September 26.

Victorian Fun Facts from Southern Illinois University

2010-09-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

So in lieu of a more inventive post, which will be coming later today, I'm passing along some fun facts about the Victorian Era from the Southern Illinois University Museum:

When a woman entered a room, it was considered rude for a man to offer his seat to her because the cushion might still be warm.

People thought food digested better in the dark, so a dining room located in the basement was considered the best spot in which to eat.

A glance into a bedroom was considered improper if viewed by a visitor, so bedrooms were located on the second floor.

People were shy about having water closets, so they disguised fixtures as dressers and cabinets. Tubs were enclosed in wooden boxes that resembled large chests. People went to great lengths to hide toilets from view. In some homes, they were behind a curtain or screen, or even in a room of their own.

Children rarely saw their parents. A special trip was made to the nursery each evening, and the visit lasted about an hour.

Women made pictures, wreaths, and bouquets from their own hair or the hair of a family member to be framed and displayed in the parlor.

Some rocking chairs were designed to disguise a chamber pot. People had to be careful not to rock too quickly!

A lot of men used macassar oil to slick back their hair. Crocheted doilies, called antimacassars, were put over the backs of chairs to keep this grease from staining the furniture.

For a lady to show her ankles was considered very risque!

To control insects, many people kept a HEDGEHOG in the basement. It curled up and slept in the day, but roamed around the dark kitchen at night eating cockroaches and other insects.

Guest post at STEAMED!

2010-09-16T14:09:00.000-04:00

If you haven't seen it already, Doctor Fantastique (from the zine Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders) and I are featured over at Suzanne Lazear's team blog, STEAMED! today.

Doctor Fantastique tells the story of how he came to head the Show of Wonders, and I struggle to keep the good Doctor on topic (which let me tell you is sometimes like attempting to store water in a sieve).

Steampunk Character Type: The Mad Scientist/Quirky Inventor

2010-09-09T13:51:00.001-04:00

Among my fascinations is the study of archetypes and stereotypes in fiction and life. Steampunk, for all the possibilities it provides, isn't immune to the creation of such character standards. In fact, one of the most prevalent Steampunk character types is the Mad Scientist or, if the scientist is a good character, what I've termed the "Quirky Inventor."

The distinction is important for several reasons: A Mad Scientist and a Quirky Inventor both create outlandish inventions that defy the laws of science, but the differences lay in how the invention is used. Where the Mad Scientist uses his inventions to gain power for himself or to prove someone wrong, the Quirky Inventor is more apt to use his science to help people or, in the more naive examples, believe that he's helping people.

A good example of a Quirky Inventor is Doctor Emmet Brown from the Back to the Future movies. His time machine was invented because he came up with the idea and wanted to see if he could make it work. The intentions behind the Delorian time machine were innocent -- building the device only -- but the end result of how it was used became the central conflict of the movies. Even at the end of Back to the Future, Part III, the steam-powered time train was created so Marty wouldn't worry about Doc and Clara.

By contrast, a standard Mad Scientist is someone like Doctor Moreau from H.G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau. According to TVTropes.org, one of my all-time favorite websites:

"The titular vivisectionist isn't as early as Frankenstein, but he played a major role in shaping the trope. He had Einstein Hair - decades before Einstein. He had the Mad Scientist Laboratory - his island (and he likely brought tropical island laboratories into vogue). Cast out from society, with only one assistant? Oh, yes. He did it all For Science but used extremely painful methods that would give any PETA representative nightmares. Turned on by his own creations? Of course. Several films adaptations even give him a beautiful daughter of his own creation. He also provided the beginnings of the Reluctant Mad Scientist - he never intended to get revenge on the other scientists who cast him out, and in his own mind he had noble purposes for his work; it's only his (possibly willful) ignorance of how torturous his methods are that makes him less than a sympathetic character."

For non-literary examples of the proper Mad Scientist, who is completely unrepentant and uncaring about who his science hurts, you don't have to look much farther than the Doctor Who series. Davros, who created the evil race of Daleks, is the prime example of the maniacally evil Mad Scientist who uses his brain power to further his own twisted goals.

Steampunk is rife with Mad Scientists. There's Doctor Cornelius Hyde in Arthur Slade's The Hunchback Assignments, Professor Minnericht in Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, the Hypocras Club/Order of the Brass Octopus* from Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, and John Scared in S.M. Peters's Whitechapel Gods to name a few. Wacked-out inventions that run on steam power or clockwork mechanics, strange uses of biology to develop new creatures, genetic anomalies made even weirder in the gaslight. Steampunk is very much the playplace of the mad scientist.

Take these madmen of science though, and give them a heart. Give them remorse and an aim to better the situation of their fellow man. Then you have a Quirky Inventor. He may have the same insane devotion to SCIENCE that the Mad Scientist does, but the difference is that the Quirky Inventor has a morality that essentially forces him to follow some variation on the Hippocratic Oath. Distilled down to its essence, the Quirky Inventor is a Mad Scientist who uses his brilliance for good and not for evil.

What other examples of Quirky Inventors or Mad Scientists do you know of in fiction or in real life?

NOTE: I avoided talking about Victor Frankenstein, the eponymous doctor of Mary Shelley's seminal novel, because he's an unique case in fiction -- many Mad Scientists don't reject their original aims like he did, which is the point of that story.

* Gail Carriger gave me the correct name of her Mad Scientist group on Twitter earlier this evening. Hence you see the correction.

Explaining Steampunk: A Practical Guide

2010-09-07T18:29:00.000-04:00

If you're a fan of Steampunk, you will be asked what it is.

How do I know this? Because it's happened to me more times than I can count. People find out that I write Steampunk, either through me telling them or something they've seen on Twitter or on an online profile of mine, and they send me a Tweet or an email or comment on my blog to ask for clarification.

Of course, the issue I then run into is how to go about explaining Steampunk to someone who might not be very well-versed in science fiction topics. For those people who are fans of science fiction, I can generally relate it to something they already know a lot about -- my personal favorite is to say "Take cyberpunk and make it steam-powered." Granted, that's not the most exact definition but it more or less gets the point across.

My difficulties in explaining Steampunk to people then sparked an idea: "Other people must have similar problems in describing the genre to the uninitiated. Perhaps I could write something that would make it easier!"

So, without further ado, I submit for your approval "Messer Delman's Step-by-Step Guide to Explaining Steampunk."

Determine how much science fiction knowledge the person has.

Have they read a lot of science-fiction stories?
Do they watch the SyFy channel on occasion?
Do they get Star Wars and Star Trek confused?

What type of person are they?

Movie buff? (Go to number 3)
Read a lot? (Go to number 4)
Play a lot of video games? (Go to number 5)
Watch a lot of anime? (Go to number 6)
Watch a lot of science fiction TV shows? (Go to number 7)
Read a lot of webcomics or graphic novels? (Go to number 8

Movie buff: Have they seen any of the following movies?

Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954 Disney version)
Back to the Future Part III
Wild Wild West
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Anything on this list?

Reads a lot: Have they read any of the novels that are examples of the genre?

Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock
Steamed by Kate McAllister
Soulless by Gail Carriger
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Anything on this list?

Gamer: Have they played any of the following?

The Final Fantasy series -- specifically Final Fantasy VI
Wild ARMs
Skies of Arcadia
Steel Empire
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura
Anything else on this list?

Anime watcher: Have they seen any of the following anime?

Full Metal Alchemist
Steamboy
Last Exile
Robot Carnival
Steam Detectives
Anything mentioned on Adam Heine's guest post a few weeks ago?

TV viewer: Have they seen any of these television shows?

The Adventures of Brisco County Junior
Voyagers!
The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne
The Wild Wild West (1965 TV series)
Anything else on this list?

Webcomic/Graphic novel reader: Have they read any of these webcomics or graphic novels?

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Girl Genius
Iron West
Steampunk
Virtuoso

I can hear your next question: But Matt, what if they don't read/watch/play anything on your list?

In the case that the person you're explaining Steampunk to doesn't fall into any of my above categories, then here's a simple definition to get your point across without going into too much detail: Imagine a world where computers run on clockwork and cars are powered by steam. That's what Steampunk is.

My other favorite definition, and the one I told my Twitter-friend Alex Keller when asked for help defining Steampunk (his first novel, Haywired, is soon to be published in Britain -- all my friends across the pond ought to run out and buy it post-haste), is thus: Steampunk is 19th-Century science fiction written by 20th and 21st century authors who have the benefit of hindsight.

Both of those definitions, though serviceable, are also lacking in specifics. But specifics aren't what you want when you're explaining Steampunk to someone new to the genre. Otherwise you run the risk of overwhelming them and turning off their interest, which we very much don't want to do.

So that's my guide to explaining Steampunk. Are there any other ways you've had success in defining this genre we're all fans of?

REPOST: Genetics, Steampunk, and Fantasy

2010-08-27T13:46:00.000-04:00

I know Friday is typically my Random Historical Nonsense day, but since I'm still on blog-cation I'm switching things up. So I offer to you this repost from March 29 of this year. The "Friday" I refer to here was March 26, by the way, for frame of reference.

Donna Hole on Friday brought up a good point in the comments (I'll restate here so you don't have to click through):

"While reading this, I was wondering if you couldn't equate Sauron with a mad scientist with all the gene splicing to create his orks and Brukhi (I know, I spelled it wrong, but I didn't want to get up to get the book). There have been other fantasy novels also that the evil wizard practiced a form of organic or genetic fusing to create the creatures that did their nefarious bidding. Cave weights, Kabold, Dark Elves, gnomes."

Genetics, if anyone remembers science class, was first codified by the monk Gregor Mendel in the mid-19th Century while experimenting on inherited traits in pea plants. However, people have been cross-breeding plants and pets (dog breeds are an example) since ancient times. Classical Sparta practiced selective breeding in its citizens -- look at the movie 300 for an object example. In the opening scenes, we see an elder of Sparta investigating a baby to see if he passes muster for inclusion into Spartan society. If he did not, then the child could've expected instant death.

Simple genetics thus deals with traits inherited from two "parents," whether human, animal, or plant. In this manner, wizards like Sauron and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy can be considered mad scientists because they blend Orcs and Goblins into the new Uruk-hai, a race of creatures that can move in the sun like Orcs but have the strength of Goblins. This simple usage of inherited traits falls under the general umbrella of genetics.

With steampunk, genetic manipulation takes on a more contemporary feel. In Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan, for example, we see the British Army using fabricated animals crafted after Charles Darwin's discovery of DNA and genetics. Truth be told this is actually an expansion on what we know about DNA manipulation -- modern science only allows for very simple organisms to be built, not anywhere near on the scale of the whale airships in that novel.

A simple search of "genetics in fiction" brings up a list of books both at Barnes&Noble and Amazon, but much more in the future/near-future science fiction realm than in steampunk or in standard fantasy. Of course, this could also be tied to people not always considering certain things as genetic science rather than "magic" as in fantasy.

Genetics offers such opportunity for authorial hand-waving or even honest-to-goodness fictional science, that I'm slightly surprised it hasn't quite been done to death in modern fiction. Then again, it might have been without me noticing (which is entirely possible).

But I'm curious: what other novels, films, or video games can you think of that deal in genetics as a plot point? And do you think genetic manipulation and its consequences has been overdone in storytelling?

REPOST: The Perils of Alternate History

2010-08-24T20:53:00.000-04:00

I'm still technically on a blog-break from giving you new material. No worries though, I've got most of September's posts already kicking around in my head. Anyway, without further ado I give you this re-run from November 23, 2009.

One of the hallmarks of traditional steampunk is that it's a re-imagining of the mid to late 1800s or early 1900s, when steam power was the dominant technology. Tied in with this alteration in technology is changes to the historical record. The Difference Engine, for example, has Lord George Gordon Byron (who didn't die in the Greek War of Independence in that world) as prime minister in the 1850s, and a United States of America that's fragmented into several constituent parts -- the Republic of Texas, the Republic of California, the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America are the largest.

Whenever you alter history, you run into the problem of making historical characters act the way they would normally act. Harry Turtledove, one of the alternate history masters, has several series where he adds "watershed" events that alter the course of history. In the Worldwar and Colonization novels, he posits what would happen if aliens invaded Earth in the middle of World War II. In what's called the Southern Victory or Timeline-191 series (not officially, mind you), he considers what would happen if the Confederacy was victorious in the American Civil War.

In How Few Remain, Turtledove includes Samuel Clemens as a sharp-witted newspaper editor in San Francisco of the 1880s. Clemens, best known as Mark Twain, did in fact work in San Francisco in the 1800s -- except he was there in 1864, and was living in Hartford, Conn., during the time frame Turtledove's story occurred. The problem with doing this, of course, is that Turtledove has to have his fictional Clemens react to events in the same, or similar way, the real Clemens would have.

The above is why I've tended to shy away from historical fiction/alternate history, besides my previously stated fear that I'd get drawn too far into research. The possibility that someone would read my story and say "so and so would never do that" for a historical character has previously been too great for my liking. Of course, that also changes as the documentation on a particular person increases. For the major figures of history -- Abraham Lincoln, Charlemagne, Napoleon Bonaparte, etc. -- you can find enough extant scholarship that getting them right is only a matter of reading enough.

I have tremendous respect for the folks who build careers from alternate histories or straight historicals. My hat's off to their research prowess, which far outstrips my own. Those people are the real research gurus.

VIDEO: A Gentlemen's Duel by Blur Studio

2010-08-23T13:08:00.000-04:00

I was going to try getting another series of guest posts for this week, but in the rush of the weekend it slipped my mind. So, rather than do that, I went out and found this very entertaining Steampunk animated short movie from Blur Studio. Without further ado, I give you A Gentlemen's Duel:

Hope you liked it!

GUEST POST: Steampunks Around the World, Unite: Multiculturalism in Steampunk, Conclusion

2010-08-20T11:00:00.000-04:00

What does steampunk and multiculturalism have in common? A lot more than you think. Ay-leen the Peacemaker, proprietress of Beyond Victoriana, explains the connection between what we learn in school to how we engage with steampunk in a theory that might change everything you thought you knew about steampunk subculture.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This essay will be posted in its entirety in the upcoming first issue of Doctor Fantastique's Show of Wonders, and will be reproduced at the website of Steampunk Magazine. Thank you to Ay-leen for allowing me to post the separate parts here first.

Conclusion: Why Multiculturalism is Steampunk

Overall, despite current flaws in its implementation, multiculturalism in steampunk is a welcome development in the subculture. Not only that, its promotion within the subculture fits a subversive premise that many already associate with steampunk. In rebellion against many oppressive Victorian ideas, steampunk's use of multiculturalism can act contrary to the imperialist leanings in education. Moreover, the connection between steampunk interest and imperialist influences in education proves that the steampunk community cannot be enshrined on an imaginative pedestal, untouched by real life. Yet what does multiculturalism mean for the steampunk community now and in the future?

To steampunk hobbyists who don't care about mixing politics with creative interests: this argument was not written to spoil your fun or to make you feel guilty. But an undeniable fact is this: you cannot deny that you are --all of us are-- part of a greater cultural machine that had been constructed generations ago, a cultural system which impacted how we think and how we connect with others. To deny the political factor will always put you at risk in perpetuating socio-cultural machines of oppression whenever you engage in anything multicultural--that is, anything outside your own experience and upbringing. This applies not only to steampunks who identify with the dominant culture, but also to minorities outside of this culture.

The option of "being apolitical" limits people to two options: only to do "what they know"--Anglo-whites only doing British steampunk, Asians/Asian-descents only doing Eastern, etc--or using steampunk to perpetuate all the "'-isms" that reduce them into imperialists supporters who choose to support all the problematic issues that occurred during the nineteenth century. If these options appear extreme, it is because they are. Most steampunks, whether consciously or not, act within a socio-political range. Even simple choices like whether or not to act racist/sexist/classist, to use slurs in-character, to play up stereotypes, or even to believe whether "racism exists" are all political decisions. Steampunks in general, for the sake of well-meaning civility, are steering themselves toward a progressive political mindset, even if they do not consciously realize it.

To the steampunk hobbyist who rejects an “apolitical” stance, remember that when you live in a multicultural world—in today’s world, in our world—to disregard hurtful messages or representations for the sake of art or play sake alone, is to miss the entire point of creativity: as a means of expression. And what do you want steampunk to express about yourself? And how does that expression affect others? The answers to these questions are not simple, but the journey taken to solve them is what matters.

To the self-proclaimed punks of steampunk: Multiculturalism is a vehicle of rebellion against those systematic oppressions in ways just as engaging and productive to "steampunk lifestylers" as D.I.Y.ing your wardrobe, supporting environmental causes, or advocating against centralized authority. You are fighting for freedom, and what greater freedom can there be than fighting for a world more acceptingly diverse than the one we had grown up in?

And a final word: we are all multiculturalists. At the beginning of my essay, I pointed out that the definition of multiculturalism includes more than race and culture. We are not carbon-copy human beings. We come from different backgrounds, across a spectrum of gender, class, race, abilities, ages, and cultures. Diversity is increasing both because of globalization and localization: the barriers of the world are falling away because of massive migration and de-segregation of society, and on the local level, people are choosing to keep and promote their individual cultures as opposed to assimilate. And as the world globalizes, customs and habits that had been previously viewed as different and foreign are now becoming familiar. Our awareness of the world is turning more cosmopolitan; our engagement with it, more global with the Internet.

All this emphasis on globalization and increasing role of technology sounds quite cyberpunk, doesn't it? Add in overarching systems of control, larger paradigms impacting everyday relations, mass technology perpetuating our interconnected lifestyles and transmitting our ideas in a heartbeat: in terms of subculture development, steampunk fantasy is being created through a cyberpunk reality. Not that this is the hypocritical fulcrum within steampunk, or an "unsteampunk" blasphemy, but a social evolutionary signpost. You want your sepia-toned, sunny steampunk dreams? Now is the chance to mold one before it becomes choked with the chains of the past, by using the mindset and technology of the present.

Thus, multiculturalism captures that common sentiment expressed in so many steampunk online communities, websites, articles, interviews, documentaries and fan magazines. We're creating yesterday's future today. We're picking apart the old to engage with the new. We're rebuilding the past to construct a better future.

The steampunk era can be one for me and for you and for that person on the other side of the aethernets and halfway across the globe.

And it is happening now.

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Author’s Bio: Ay-leen the Peacemaker is the founding editor of Beyond Victoriana (beyondvictoriana.com), a blog about multicultural steampunk and retrofuturism. For the past couple of years, Ay-leen has been involved with the steampunk communities in the New York metro area and New England as a convention speaker and general rabble-rouser. Her upcoming published work will be included in the fashion anthology Fashion Talks from SUNY Press this fall. She has also been interviewed about steampunk and its evolving subculture for Tor.com and for the Fall 2010 upcoming books The Steampunk Bible (Abrams Image) and Steampunk: Reloaded (Tachyon Publications). She currently lives and works in New York City. You can reach her via email at attic [dot[ hermit [at] gmail [dot] com.