Fiction
'A Body in the Bath House' by Lindsey Davis
This is a book from the long-running Falco series of books, featuring the eponymous Roman detective active in the 1st century CE. I read the first in the series 'The Silver Pigs' (1989) many years ago. This is the 13th book of 20, published in 2001. Davis has moved on to writing stories featuring Falco's daughter.
This novel was not at all good. The books are written in the first person with Falco looking back on his life. However, despite Davis's work in terms of ensuring historical accuracy, Falco's manner is far too late 20th century/early 21st century. The complexities of Falco's family and connections are complex and add little to the story except for confusion and coincidence later in the story.
This story mainly focuses on Falco resolving issues at the construction of the palace at Fishbourne in southern England. Thus, Davis puts in far too many jokes about unreliable builders and uses construction jargon from modern times. The jokes are very feeble and not humorous if you have never had an extension built. The key problem with the book is that it progresses with minimal direction. Various people die whether from accidents or murders but there is little sense of urgency. Ultimately murders both in Rome and in Britain are resolved almost by accident. Overall this book seemed to be a waste of effort. There were interesting components but they were assembled in a way which was listless and not engaging. I am unlikely to read any more of Davis's books.
'The Time Ships' by Stephen Baxter
Down the years friends have often recommended me to read certain books. Typically I have loathed the recommendations and as a consequence if someone suggests I should read a book, let alone says I 'have to' read it, then I go out of my way to avoid it. This book was lent to me by a friend and running short of science fiction or fantasy books, I turned to it. It is billed as 'The Authorized Sequel to The Time Machine'. It is not clear who authorised it, but I imagine it was the estate of H.G. Wells. As we know from the difficulties that 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' (2003) movie faced in trying to feature the lead character of 'The Invisible Man' (1897), the estate guards these things very assiduously. 'The Time Machine' (1895) is a novella and at over 600 pages, I feel Baxter has lost some of the essence of the original. The tone is pretty well replicated of a Victorian character written in the first person. However, Baxter does tend to betray his own era especially in portraying the superstructures created by the advanced Morlocks and then the Universal Constructors that seem to be physical manifestations of the internet. Baxter's problem is that he simply has too many ideas that he feels compelled to jam into the book. This is in contrast to Wells who maintained a tighter focus, exploring a concept per book.
Wells's book first appeared as a magazine serial and it is ironic that because of the multiplicity of ideas that Baxter feels compelled to include his book ends up being very episodic. Any block could have been a book in itself. There is travel to the advanced Morlock society in which a vast sphere has been built around the Sun. There is a brief episode in which the time traveller meets his younger self. There is an alternate 1938 and 1944 caused by time travel and involving an enduring First World War. This seems to have been caused by the Kaiserschlacht of March 1918 succeeding and an assassination of a leading Allied general in Paris, I assume Marshal Foch. There is a return to the Paleocene era; a journey to an Earth wrecked by a perpetual ice age brought on by climate change from pollution and a return to the original future of Morlocks and Eloi envisaged in the original novel. Any one of these would have been sufficient for Baxter to explore his ideas of parallel realities allowing time travel and changes to history shifting the traveller into an alternate rather than actually changing that line of history; plus the sense that humans are almost doomed to becoming Morlocks or Eloi in one way or another. I am never happy with beneficent super-powerful creatures with vast constructs and Baxter manages to get two of these in. The visits to the alternate mid-20th century and the prehistoric period are much more tolerable.
I enjoyed this book more than I anticipated. However, I feel it is too long. I feel that it should not be perceived as a sequel to 'The Time Machine' but something simply using the tone of that book. It might appeal more to readers who are fans of 'hard' science fiction. Steampunk fans may enjoy the middle element of the book. However, this is clearly a segmented novel and ultimately it is less overall than the sum of its parts. I have been ambivalent about Baxter's work and this hardly encourages me to seek out any more. However, in contrast to other book recommendations I have received, I am not angry with my friend for proposing this book.
'The Daydreamer' by Ian McEwan
My book choices recently have proven to be so poor that I almost feel I should start up a separate blog entitled 'Books Not to Read'. Given how harsh and dismissive a large portion of online reviews are, I feel at least I am fair in my portrayal of the books. I do wonder, sometimes, how these people managed to get their books published. As someone once said to me, it is clear that it is not the book which gets it published, it is the person. This is one reason why established authors, let alone celebrities, get poor quality books out there and why sales of Robert Galbraith's book, 'The Cuckoo's Calling (2013) rose by 156,866% when it was revealed that they were written by J.K. Rowling.
As you can imagine from this lead-in, I was not pleased with 'The Daydreamer' (1995). I bought it about the time I read 'The Innocent' (1990). That was a gritty thriller set in 1950s Berlin; was well researched and engaging. I was irritated with reviews of the 1993 movie of the novel, as there was criticism that Isabella Rossellini was told old to play Maria in the movie. She was 40 years old at the time and the character is 36 in the book. Critics made the lazy assumption that innocent had to be the female character rather than Leonard played by Campbell Scott.
That aside, 'The Daydreamer' comes nowhere close to the earlier book by McEwan. It is a conceit. It is supposed to be a book written for children that adults can enjoy. It features a number of episodes from the life of Peter Fortune between the ages of 10-12. He daydreams himself into a number of scenarios, quite a fair portion of which envisage him swapping bodies in order to learn a lesson. Yes, it is written in language which could be comprehensible by children of that age and could be seen as a collection of modern fables. However, even if you accept these aspects, it is highly flawed.
It appears to be as nastily autobiographical as Martin Amis's work and, as regular readers know, I think Amis is highly over-rated. It is set in a world that only exists in the mind of Michael Bond. Aside from the occasional references to computer games, it could be inhabiting that stylised third quarter of the 20th century; it barely scrapes into the fourth quarter. It is as if white middle class southern urban England has been distilled to its fullest. This is the kind of context that the grandchildren of Enid Blyton's characters would have ended up living in. As such, this is more unrealistic than the fantasies Peter ends up in. It would have been more refreshing set on a fantasy island. I have no idea why McEwan wrote this book, it seems to have been an utter waste of his time. I have been reminded of the lesson of not to fall into the trap of assuming that if an author can write one good or even decent book, that others they produce will come anywhere close.
I have another of McEwan's slim volumes on my pile which I will read, but then it might be time to give up on him entirely.
Showing posts with label H.G. Wells. Show all posts
Showing posts with label H.G. Wells. Show all posts
Monday, 30 November 2015
Saturday, 12 April 2008
'The War In The Air' and Steampunk
'The War in the Air' by H.G. Wells
When commenting on H.G. Wells's 'The War of the Worlds' and steampunk aspects of some of its spin-offs I was reminded of 'The War in the Air' (1907; novel 1908) also by Wells. I came to this novel as a boy, prompted by the small airships which flew over my house in the summer, out on short pleasure trips or off to film sports events. Of course, they were tiny compared to the airships of the past but that droning sound of their engines as they approached probably stirred up in me a feeling of excitement as it would have done in a boy fifty years earlier. Maybe I was destined to have an interest in counter-factual and steampunk ideas from that stage on.
'The War in the Air', possibly, has more use for current steampunk thinking, or, even, bakelitepunk/Zeppelin Age work than 'The War of the Worlds'. This is because, rather than featuring technology developed by aliens, it as about a war between different Powers on Earth. It was pretty prescient about the kind of airborne combat which would develop during the First World War 1914-18 that broke out just a few years later and would cost the life of Wells's son. The politics of the world Wells portrays are interesting with an aggressive Germany, Russia divided in revolution (the 1905 Russian Revolution would be fresh in readers' minds at the time), China and Japan in some kind of alliance (this is the least likely outcome more feasible was a collaborationist government installed in China by the Japanese as occurred 1931-45) and the USA in tension with Japan; the USA itself seemingly facing a repeat of the tensions of the 1850s that resulted in the American Civil War (1861-5).
Against this background of global politics, the focus of the story is on Bert Smallways, a man who builds light aircraft as a hobby in the way men of the time were increasingly fiddling with bicycles and later motorbikes. This focus is reminiscent of the characters we see in the 'Steamboy' (2004) movie, where three generations of the Steam family: Lloyd, Eddy and James, are featured as keen amateur engineers whose work ends up being desired by governments. Smallways effectively creates a kind of flying motorbike which lands him in contact with Alfred Butteridge an aviator and then with the German airship fleet which goes to attack New York. However, at the same time, the Japanese-Chinese alliance forces, using similar flying motorbikes, also invade the USA, as well as Pacific islands and Australia. War breaks out in Europe too, between Germany and their Swiss allies and Britain, France and Italy. The widespread fighting leads to a desolate backward world. Interestingly, all of this was in a context when the Kaiser of the German Empire, Wilhelm II spoke in 1895, about the danger of the 'yellow peril' meaning the growth of states in East Asia.
Though 'The War in the Air' has not been as referenced as much in subsequent media as 'The War of the Worlds', elements of it do turn up in other stories. In the first volume of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' some of Fu Manchu's guards ride on flying motorbikes with long tails which are very similar to those described as used by the Chinese forces in 'The War in the Air' especially at the Battle of Niagara Falls. I take the lack of reference to these in critiques of the 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' novel as stemming from the unfamiliarity most people have with Wells's lesser-known novel. However, it fits Alan Moore's use of people and inventions from right across Victorian/Edwardian fiction.
In some ways Robert Conroy's '1901' (1995) which sees a German invasion of the USA in 1901 owes something to Wells's novel, but, probably, more to 'The Invasion of the United States' by H. Irving Hancock (1916) which envisaged an invasion of the USA by Imperial Germany in 1920-21; not an unreasonable suggestion given that the First World War was raging at the time and Germany was unbeaten and the USA had not entered the war yet, despite some of its shipping being sunk by German submarines.
A more recent example is 'Turning Point: Fall of Liberty' a PC and console first/third person shooting game which envisages a Nazi German invasion of the USA in 1953. Despite it being set presumably after Britain and the USSR have lost the Second World War and jet fighters and long-range rockets have been developed, a lot of the invading German troops are brought by airship. There is one wonderful screenshot that shows this:
Unfortunately the game is apparently not very exciting to play and the story does not develop a great deal as you are a builder in New York fighting back against the Nazi invaders. It does stem from an interesting counter-factual however, that Winston Churchill was killed on 13th December 1931 when he was hit (in reality) by a taxi in New York. In this game Britain made peace with Germany in 1940, as was expected by people on both sides at the time. The Japanese decide not to attack Pearl Harbor, presumably sated by easier gains in British, French and Dutch colonies and also, I imagine, fighting for gains in Siberia with Germany having turned against the USSR a little sooner.
'The War in the Air' probably does not offer the steampunk enthusiast a great deal beyond lots of airships and flying motorbikes, but it does put them in a context of the Edwardian era when steam trains were the main form of transport in the UK and steamships had not converted to oil from coal. It also has that context of the inventor in his garage building something that could be of a challenge even to governments. Of course, this was a time when car companies in Britain and elsewhere were becoming established in precisely that way. The ingenious individual against greater powers is always a nice perspective for stories and who of us could not dream of powering around the skies on a flying motorbike? This angle I imagine is one that we are likely to see featuring commonly in steampunk writing.
I am not the only one commenting on 'The War in the Air' on my blog:
http://praxeology.net/blog/2007/04/06/war-and-back-again/
I have to replicate the image from these blog pages used to illustrate the invasion. The image of large airships over New York was not an uncommon one as the Hindenburg (which was three times larger than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet aeroplane is today) and other German airships flew over the city in the 1930s and after the Germans, the Americans and especially their Navy, long had an interest in airships.
These days, portrayal of the near future usually has as bleak conclusions as those shown by Wells, but nowadays the technology is usually small scale and the stories about big business or big government. The individual enthusiast is still the focus through which we see the developments but these days he (and interestingly it does still tend to remain 'he') is likely to be a computer hacker or conspiracy theorist rather than a garage engineer. So, though there may be similar conclusions, the scope and the vision of how we reach such situations is much more constrained than a man sweeping over New York as part of an airship fleet.
As an aside, while researching this posting I came across a recording on YouTube originally captured on an Edison phonograph wax cylinder recording in 1908. It is very crisp given the age. The audio is illustrated by covers of books available that year, including 'The War in the Air'. Just right for the steampunk mood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA4B5MVDM_0
As with 'The War of the Worlds', you can read 'The War in the Air' for free online see: http://www.wells.omnia.co.uk/war-air/ or http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/780
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
'The War of the Worlds' and Steampunk
'The War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells
I was reading on 'The Heliograph' website that there is an intention to make a $200 million movie of the novel 'Larklight' (2006) by Philip Reeve. It envisages a solar system which humans have been exploring since the time of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) so beginning with clockworkpunk, though the novels (this book was the first of trilogy) are set in the Victorian era when colonies have been set up on moons and planets. Apparently the Martians who were the same as those in H.G. Wells's 'The War of the Worlds' (1898) were surprised when invaded by humans. This is ironic because in part the Wells book was a critique of colonisation which was nearing its peak for the British Empire at the time he wrote it, with the British for a change being the 'native' peoples having to face up to an invasion by technologically better equipped colonisers.
My thoughts on 'The War of the Worlds' and its relation to steampunk had also been stimulated by recently reading 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume II' by Alan Moore which features the league battling against the Martian invasion. (I also suggest reading 'War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches' ed. by Kevin J. Anderson (1996) which features a range of stories by leading science fiction authors viewing the events from the perspective of various historical characters around the world, in some cases leading to a string of counter-factuals, such as Chinese expulsion of European powers at the turn of the 20th century using Martian technology, though given Empress Cixi's aversion to the technology available at the time, I personally doubt she would have embraced alien techonology any stronger). The Martians are defeated by a biological warfare disease H-142 (a mix of anthrax and streptococcus) created by Dr. Moreau (from H.G. Wells's novel 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' (1896) which as a novel with its theme of a scientist creating animal-human crossovers through genetic engineering and given last week's announcement of the development of human-animal hybrid embryos in the UK seems even more prescient than 'The War of the Worlds') but is claimed for history that the common cold was the killer. This picks up some of Wells's own themes about biological warfare whether intentional or not, as killed out many native populations of the Americas.
Another interesting follow-up is 'Scarlet Traces' by Ian Edginton (2002) a steampunk graphic novel which sees the British Empire utilising Martian technology in the 1900s and expanding by the 1930s into space. Sequels were not common in Wells's era in the way they are today, but it would have been interesting for him to show life after the Martians have been expelled. There is a sense that the Earth would be purified of Marian influence and technology rather than that technology being exploited. Again there would be parallels with colonialism as the Japanese in particular, through adopting the technology of the colonial powers from the mid-1850s onwards, within forty years were able to make Japan a colonial power itself taking Taiwan in 1895 and Korea in 1910.
Before leaving this graphic novels, there are a couple of asides, notably that the Martians who invade Earth are not the only occupants of Mars and in fact are portrayed as one-time invaders of that planet. The novel shows John Carter from Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series (1917-64 in novel form) and Gullivar Jones from 'Lieutenant Gullivar Jones, His Vacation' by Edwin Lester Arnold (1905) a novel about his adventures on Mars that was so badly received Arnold gave up writing, though it heavily influenced Burroughs and Carter is taken from another of Arnold's series. Barsoom's Green Martians also turn up alongside the Sorns from C.S. Lewis's (also responsible for the Narnia books) book 'Out of the Silent Planet' (1938) also set on Mars. The other point is made by the character Mina Murphy (who in the graphic novels actually demonstrates no extraordinary abilities, her equivalent in the movie 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen', Mina Harker, is a vampire who can walk in daylight) who it is implied has been attacked by a vampire (referencing Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (1897)). When the extensive scarring at her neck is revealed in a sex scene, she says that people should not believe the stories about two plain puncture marks in the neck. This was the best comment I had read on vampires in stories for a long time. I had always wondered how vampires drained blood through the two puncture marks simply left by their fangs. The only conclusion I could make was that the fangs had to be hollow and the blood sucked up through them which would make it a lengthy process especially if seeking to drain a person of all of their blood. Of course these days vampires in movies simply rend through the neck and feed like a wolf or lion drinking as much blood as they need. After all fangs are only extended canine teeth which allow predators to hold on to and slice through meat. It is clear the two puncture wounds was only for the sensibilities of the audiences in less brutal viewing eras.
Anyway, another place where I see the steampunk crossover coming to the fore most is in the computer game, 'Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds' (1999). It is interesting since musician Jeff Wayne released his music concept album 'The War of the Worlds' in 1978 he has really snatched the title from H.G. Wells. A single of 'The Eve of the War' element did well in the charts in 1978 and when remixed and re-released in 1989 reaching number 3 in the UK. Wayne was early on the games bandwagon as I remember a game 'Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds' (1984) for the old ZX Spectrum home computer which itself was released in 1982. It was created by CRL and was poorly reviewed as the player often died very quickly. The iconography of his album production remains the enduring one despite the appearance of numerous other books referencing the original (just see the Wikipedia listing). The stage production was on tour around the UK last year to sell-out houses and even included a video of Richard Burton doing the narration as on the album.
The story is a gloomy one, though the with the human race really only spared by a twist of fate and to some extent reflects Wells's novels warning of the potential dangers of the coming 20th century. It is set in the 'early years of the 20th century' and the human technology portrayed is really the same as that available in 1898 so pretty powerless against the heat ray firing tripods, the black powder and red weed of the Martians.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen take on the story brings in more steampunk technology along with the approach adopted in those graphic novels, notably the facilities of Captain Nemo's submarine, Nautilus. Some of the most interesting steampunk suggestions come in the PC game. The game itself sees a second Martian invasion which lands in the Grampian Mountains of Scotland (partly for gaming purposes as the humans begin at the other end of the country in London) and though it seems to be set in a world before the First World War (so in line with Wells's novel) internal combustion engine run lorries are far more common than they were until after the war. One interesting element of the game is that you can play as the humans or as the Martians. Both sides can experiment to gain more powerful equipment and the humans can end up with not only armoured lorries but also caterpillar-tracked tanks; self-propelled artillery guns and mobile anti-aircraft arrays both of which in reality did not come in until the Second World War; a tunnelling vehicle and a special forces motorbike. Some of the technology was around in, say, 1905 such as submarines and observation balloons, but not as developed as they were to become. The Martians can develop a whole array from a 'flying machine' (in the novel the Martians pods are fired to Earth from great guns on Mars and have no motive power of their own) a rapid heat way and a 'bombarding machine' through plasma and laser fencing to an explosive 'tempest', a bio-chemical 'constrictor' and the black 'dust' chemical weapon. As the Martians spread so does the red weed.
'The War of the Worlds' was the first real alien invasion story and is likely to continue to have an impact on our contemporary culture, the latest movie version starring Tom Cruise came out as recent as 2005 and despite relocating the action to the USA and replacing the hero's wife with two children, kept many of the key elements including the tripods. The story and its spin-offs which seem to be growing by the year are an invaluable source of steampunk technology, but wait until I start going on about H.G. Wells's 'The War in the Air' (1907) an often overlooked novel with real steampunk elements.
Meanwhile you can access 'The War of the Worlds' freely downloadable/readable in its entirety from at least two websites: http://www.wells.omnia.co.uk/war-worlds/
and http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/36
Friday, 18 January 2008
Online Steampunk Resources: 'The Heliograph' and 'Gothic Steam Phantastic'
Following a recent posting on this blog by MCG, I followed his link and it took me to a wonderful steampunk magazine: 'The Heliograph' which was produced for a number of editions in 1996. I recommend you take a look as it has some wonderful steampunk images and fascinating short stories for passing the time when you are in a steampunk frame-of-mind in front of your computer. The link is: http://www.sottisier.co.uk/heliograph/index.php
P.P. Since posting this link, I have come across another resource entitled 'The Heliograph' (making the third one I have heard of with that name, the other being a magazine about wargaming colonial era wars) which is the title of a blog which covers a whole range of steampunk themes as well as information about actual Victorian history for useful reference and has loads of interesting links to follow up. A lot of it is about a steampunk community in Second Life making my inability to get my avatar in there in any decent shape and particularly in the Goth lord with steampunk gear that I wanted, even more frustrating. Anyway its URL is: http://voyagesofdrfabre.blogspot.com/
While discussing online steampunk resources can I suggest you also have a look at Gothic Steam Phantastic which is a forum for discussion about steampunk and is a good place for references to ideas, books, films, etc. in the steampunk genre. It seems to be run by Dutch and German fans but the bulk of postings are in English. My 'The Grey Commission' was first posted there and there is occasional short fiction located there. The link is: http://www.xs4all.nl/~vanip/gsp/gspindex.htm
While I am thinking about such things you may also enjoy 'Transactions of the Royal Martian Geographical Society' which was produced 1991-2000 in support of the role-playing game 'Space 1889'. It envisaged Victorian explorers of the solar system with imperial battles transposed to Mars. There are editions available online in a wonderful style reminiscent of 'The First Men in the Moon' by H.G. Wells (1901). It can be found at the following link: http://www.heliograph.com/trmgs/ The company which produced this now concentrates on 'Zeppelin Age' which is a proposed role-playing game set in the 1920s and 1930s but where airships have been more successful, what I might term 'bakelitepunk'. This link is: http://www.heliograph.com/zeppelinage/
I have just encountered Brass Goggles which bills itself as a looking at 'the lighter side of Steampunk'. It has a good watching brief on examples of steampunk in our modern day culture in visual, video and written media, plus events, from the UK, USA, Europe and farther afield and has wonderful images which may inspire your own steampunk activities. See: http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk/brassgoggles/
I came across another slightly different one which envisages superheros appearing on Earth in the 1880s and distorting the history of the world as we know it in terms of countries, technology, etc. as viewed from the alternate 1994. It is called 'Overman 1994' and was apparently inspired by a rather steampunk story which ran as a serial as part of 'The Two Ronnies' comedy show: http://www.wolfram.demon.co.uk/rp_ch_om_1995_top.html#tl
Another resource supporting a game is the Castle Falkenstein site. It has a lot of interesting resources about things like aerial, land and air vehicles, wars, countries, secret societies, currency, medals and the role of women in a Victorian alternate world setting of 1870, apparently for a role-playing game of the same name, which I must confess I had never encountered. I was interested to find that a character from the CSA I am using in a story I am writing is also listed here. Lots of interest and inspiration for steampunk fiction: http://www.asmrb.org/michaelb/FalkIndex.html
P.P.P. - 22/02/2009. The Gothic Phantastic site seems to be a little moribund these days, but a more vigorous steampunk website is The Smoking Lounge, which appears to be associated with a journal too. It has discussion boards of the kind of the Gothic Phatastic site has about all sorts of steampunk media and culture: http://www.ottens.co.uk/lounge/index.php
P.P. Since posting this link, I have come across another resource entitled 'The Heliograph' (making the third one I have heard of with that name, the other being a magazine about wargaming colonial era wars) which is the title of a blog which covers a whole range of steampunk themes as well as information about actual Victorian history for useful reference and has loads of interesting links to follow up. A lot of it is about a steampunk community in Second Life making my inability to get my avatar in there in any decent shape and particularly in the Goth lord with steampunk gear that I wanted, even more frustrating. Anyway its URL is: http://voyagesofdrfabre.blogspot.com/
While discussing online steampunk resources can I suggest you also have a look at Gothic Steam Phantastic which is a forum for discussion about steampunk and is a good place for references to ideas, books, films, etc. in the steampunk genre. It seems to be run by Dutch and German fans but the bulk of postings are in English. My 'The Grey Commission' was first posted there and there is occasional short fiction located there. The link is: http://www.xs4all.nl/~vanip/gsp/gspindex.htm
While I am thinking about such things you may also enjoy 'Transactions of the Royal Martian Geographical Society' which was produced 1991-2000 in support of the role-playing game 'Space 1889'. It envisaged Victorian explorers of the solar system with imperial battles transposed to Mars. There are editions available online in a wonderful style reminiscent of 'The First Men in the Moon' by H.G. Wells (1901). It can be found at the following link: http://www.heliograph.com/trmgs/ The company which produced this now concentrates on 'Zeppelin Age' which is a proposed role-playing game set in the 1920s and 1930s but where airships have been more successful, what I might term 'bakelitepunk'. This link is: http://www.heliograph.com/zeppelinage/
I have just encountered Brass Goggles which bills itself as a looking at 'the lighter side of Steampunk'. It has a good watching brief on examples of steampunk in our modern day culture in visual, video and written media, plus events, from the UK, USA, Europe and farther afield and has wonderful images which may inspire your own steampunk activities. See: http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk/brassgoggles/
I came across another slightly different one which envisages superheros appearing on Earth in the 1880s and distorting the history of the world as we know it in terms of countries, technology, etc. as viewed from the alternate 1994. It is called 'Overman 1994' and was apparently inspired by a rather steampunk story which ran as a serial as part of 'The Two Ronnies' comedy show: http://www.wolfram.demon.co.uk/rp_ch_om_1995_top.html#tl
Another resource supporting a game is the Castle Falkenstein site. It has a lot of interesting resources about things like aerial, land and air vehicles, wars, countries, secret societies, currency, medals and the role of women in a Victorian alternate world setting of 1870, apparently for a role-playing game of the same name, which I must confess I had never encountered. I was interested to find that a character from the CSA I am using in a story I am writing is also listed here. Lots of interest and inspiration for steampunk fiction: http://www.asmrb.org/michaelb/FalkIndex.html
P.P.P. - 22/02/2009. The Gothic Phantastic site seems to be a little moribund these days, but a more vigorous steampunk website is The Smoking Lounge, which appears to be associated with a journal too. It has discussion boards of the kind of the Gothic Phatastic site has about all sorts of steampunk media and culture: http://www.ottens.co.uk/lounge/index.php
Friday, 25 May 2007
The Steampunk Genre
Anyone who has read my posts will know I am interested in 'what if?' history whether as a tool for testing history or as an entertainment. Related to that in my interests is what is called 'steampunk', which refers to novels, movies, artwork. For those unfamiliar with this, here is some background.
We have to go back to 1984 when the book 'Neuromancer' by William Gibson was published. Gibson is seen as the 'father of Cyberpunk', though others had already contributed to it, such as Philip K. Dick, publishing from 1950s onwards, who died in 1982 (many of whose books have become movies such as 'Blade Runner', 'Total Recall', 'Paycheck', 'Through A Mirror Darkly') and John Brunner a science fiction author publishing since the late 1960s. Gibson envisaged a dystopian world of the near future with two important characteristics. First that people could physically connect to the internet and send their consciousness into it in order to conduct business or hack. Second, that people would have cybernetic enhancements, such as blades coming from their fists or cameras in their eyes. This latter element Gibson did not invent but what he did was give it a 'sexier' edge. So you had the 'cyber' of cybernetics and the punk of very urban, dirty, sprawling cities. In particular, Gibson's portrayal of a high-tech world dominated by huge, amoral corporations called zaibatsu (the Japanese word for such corporations) seemed to really chime with 1980s 'greed is good' culture. Gibson continued writing with 'Count Zero' (1986), 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' (1988), 'Burning Chrome' (1986 - a short story collection) being the core of his cyberpunk work. I find Gibson's work good on ideas but rather clunky in construction.
Other good cyberpunk autors, if you are interested, include Walter Jon Williams, Lewis Shiner (a European angle on Cyberpunk with references to Michael Moorcock's work too), George Alec Effinger (whose Cyberpunk stories have an interesting Middle Eastern take on the genre) and Bruce Sterling. Sterling is an all round writer who includes historical as well as science fiction stories and I feel his writing is smoother than Gibson's. His 1980 'The Artificial Kid' predates Gibson's work, and whilst not set on Earth has many cyberpunk elements.
Right, you may ask what has all this cyberpunk got to do with steampunk? Well, in 1990, Gibson and Sterling jointly wrote a book called 'The Difference Engine' which envisaged a mid-Victorian Britain in which technology, notably Charles Babbage's computer (the Difference Engine) which in reality was experimented on in the 1840s, was a success and led to a computer age in the mid-19th century (so a kind of 'what if?' which as you know, appeals to me). [Difference engines had been proposed as early as 1786 and after Babbage, Per Georg Scheutz built a number in the 1850s including one he sold to the British Government.] The expansion of computing leads to other things like the streamlining of traction engines for racing and the British House of Lords becomes filled with inventors and explorers rather than simply noblemen who have inherited their titles. This is seen as the first steampunk book, like the cyberpunk books exploring a world where technology is key and creates turmoil in a society of conflicting pressures.
There are older roots to the genre. There was a US TV series 'Wild Wild West' which was a TV series which ran for 4 seasons 1965-9. It seems to have been set between the end of the American Civil War and 1875 and Grant is the President (1869-77) shown. The heroes' nemesis, Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless, is supposed to have died in 1880. The spark of the original series was rather overshadowed by a couple of really dull TV movies in the 1980s using original cast members who were pretty old by then, and the rather failed 'Wild Wild West' (1999) movie with Will Smith and Kevin Kline, though it gives you a flavour of the original with their private train and the technology that they had. The first three series were darker and shot in black and white, but matching trends in US television at the time by the end of the run it became more 'camp' as have been the subsequent movies. However, they all included various Steampunk equipment such as concealed guns and a stage coach with an ejector seat. The attempts to dismember the USA as featured in the movie plots are common 'what if?' history scenarios (see also 'The Mask of Zorro' (1998)). After this series there seems to have been little interest in Steampunk in the USA until the 1990s.
In novels you have to mention Ronald W. Clark's 1969 novel 'Queen Victoria's Bomb' which envisages an atomic bomb being developed in the 1830s, testing in India and almost used in the Crimean War. Michael Moorcock's books 'Warlord of the Air' (1971), 'The Land Leviathan' (1974) and 'The Steel Tsar' (1981) also featured what can be termed Steampunk elements. In addition, by having Oswald Bastable as the hero of these books, a character who appears as a child in E. Nesbitt's 'The Story of the Treasure Seekers', Moorcock established the Steampunk approach of having characters from other authors' stories featuring as genuine people (alongside historical people too, as Clark had done extensively), a trend taken further by Alan Moore's graphic Steampunk novel, 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' (starting 1999). The the thread goes back even beyond these novels of course.
It can be argued that the real originators of steampunk were Victorian authors themselves. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells with their stories set in contemporary times to them but featuring huge airships, large submarines, tanks, flying motorbikes, a tunnel under the English Channel (as well as more fantastical devices to travel in time or to the Moon or make people invisible) built on the rush of technology throughout the 19th century and took their envisaging further, usually to look at moral issues in such a context, and like the steampunk authors, looking at the dilemmas that such technologies bring. These stories directly influence steampunk authors today, though their morals questions tend to be more direct and simpler than their Victorian predecessors.
What appeals to readers of steampunk is that it is technology but with elegance. In contrast to the sleek chrome of the model day it is brass and iron cast into elaborate shapes. Just look at any movie version of 'The Time Machine', it depicts a machine of elegance, all spinning, with inlaid knobs and polished buttons. In addition, in contrast to the cyberpunk novels which tend to portray people as playthings of vast multinational corporations, the heroes of steampunk are often ordinary people who can invent, they turn out a flying machine in the shed in the garden. Whilst this can be seen as very British, it has appeal in the USA for readers looking back to Ford or the Wright Brothers and their developments. However, the greatest success has been in Japan and from there have come notable steampunk movies such as 'Steamboy' (2005 - set in the UK) and 'Howl's Moving Castle' (2005) based on British author Diana Wynne Jones's 1986 novel of the same name.
Cyberpunk and steampunk have faded from their positions on the bestseller lists that they held in the 1980s and 1990s, but they have now effectively entered the mainstream. Graphic novelists have taken them up, notably in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentleman' (Alan Moore's novel and a 2003 movie). Cyberpunk has informed how we view the internet (Gibson is credited with inventing the word 'cyberspace') and are likely to view cybernetic implants (especially the potential for dehumanisation from them) and the position of the individual in relation to corporations. Steampunk is likely to have less impact, but my affection for it probably reflects me being British and so an in-built nostalgia for past things. Its impact is most likely to be in the style of items in the future and you can already see examples of people 'steampimping' their computers, much in the same way that people in the 1970s put their televisions in ornate wooden cabinets and those of the 1980s put their video cassettes in fake leather book covers.
In the meantime, for anyone interested in 'what if?' and 'why not?' in history, I recommend steampunk stories. To blow my own trumpet I intend to put a short story in that genre on this blog in coming weeks.
P.P. 26/10/2009: Despite my efforts at the time of writing this posting I have realised that I had missed out a vital slice of the history of the development of the steampunk genre. This was the first use of the term steampunk, which was by author K.W. Jeter writing to the science fiction magazine, 'Locus' in April 1987, so preceding 'The Difference Engine' by four years. According to wikipedia, Jeter was looking for an umbrella term for novels of the time, 'The Anubis Gates' (1983) by Tim Powers, 'Homunculus' (1986) by James Blaylock and 'Morlock Night' (1979) and 'Infernal Devices' (1987) that he had written himself which were set in the 19th century and took on board elements of the speculative writing naturally in the style of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and so included anachronistic technology. Thus, of course, steampunk even in its latest manifestation predated cyberpunk, but that term was so snappy you can see why Jeter thought it was a good one to mutate for the genre he was writing in and certainly better than the description of Powers, Blaylock and Jeter writing in the so-called 'gonzo-historical manner'! Michael Moorcock noted this year (2009) that there is actually little 'punk' in most steampunk writing and he favours 'steam opera'.
We have to go back to 1984 when the book 'Neuromancer' by William Gibson was published. Gibson is seen as the 'father of Cyberpunk', though others had already contributed to it, such as Philip K. Dick, publishing from 1950s onwards, who died in 1982 (many of whose books have become movies such as 'Blade Runner', 'Total Recall', 'Paycheck', 'Through A Mirror Darkly') and John Brunner a science fiction author publishing since the late 1960s. Gibson envisaged a dystopian world of the near future with two important characteristics. First that people could physically connect to the internet and send their consciousness into it in order to conduct business or hack. Second, that people would have cybernetic enhancements, such as blades coming from their fists or cameras in their eyes. This latter element Gibson did not invent but what he did was give it a 'sexier' edge. So you had the 'cyber' of cybernetics and the punk of very urban, dirty, sprawling cities. In particular, Gibson's portrayal of a high-tech world dominated by huge, amoral corporations called zaibatsu (the Japanese word for such corporations) seemed to really chime with 1980s 'greed is good' culture. Gibson continued writing with 'Count Zero' (1986), 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' (1988), 'Burning Chrome' (1986 - a short story collection) being the core of his cyberpunk work. I find Gibson's work good on ideas but rather clunky in construction.
Other good cyberpunk autors, if you are interested, include Walter Jon Williams, Lewis Shiner (a European angle on Cyberpunk with references to Michael Moorcock's work too), George Alec Effinger (whose Cyberpunk stories have an interesting Middle Eastern take on the genre) and Bruce Sterling. Sterling is an all round writer who includes historical as well as science fiction stories and I feel his writing is smoother than Gibson's. His 1980 'The Artificial Kid' predates Gibson's work, and whilst not set on Earth has many cyberpunk elements.
Right, you may ask what has all this cyberpunk got to do with steampunk? Well, in 1990, Gibson and Sterling jointly wrote a book called 'The Difference Engine' which envisaged a mid-Victorian Britain in which technology, notably Charles Babbage's computer (the Difference Engine) which in reality was experimented on in the 1840s, was a success and led to a computer age in the mid-19th century (so a kind of 'what if?' which as you know, appeals to me). [Difference engines had been proposed as early as 1786 and after Babbage, Per Georg Scheutz built a number in the 1850s including one he sold to the British Government.] The expansion of computing leads to other things like the streamlining of traction engines for racing and the British House of Lords becomes filled with inventors and explorers rather than simply noblemen who have inherited their titles. This is seen as the first steampunk book, like the cyberpunk books exploring a world where technology is key and creates turmoil in a society of conflicting pressures.
There are older roots to the genre. There was a US TV series 'Wild Wild West' which was a TV series which ran for 4 seasons 1965-9. It seems to have been set between the end of the American Civil War and 1875 and Grant is the President (1869-77) shown. The heroes' nemesis, Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless, is supposed to have died in 1880. The spark of the original series was rather overshadowed by a couple of really dull TV movies in the 1980s using original cast members who were pretty old by then, and the rather failed 'Wild Wild West' (1999) movie with Will Smith and Kevin Kline, though it gives you a flavour of the original with their private train and the technology that they had. The first three series were darker and shot in black and white, but matching trends in US television at the time by the end of the run it became more 'camp' as have been the subsequent movies. However, they all included various Steampunk equipment such as concealed guns and a stage coach with an ejector seat. The attempts to dismember the USA as featured in the movie plots are common 'what if?' history scenarios (see also 'The Mask of Zorro' (1998)). After this series there seems to have been little interest in Steampunk in the USA until the 1990s.
In novels you have to mention Ronald W. Clark's 1969 novel 'Queen Victoria's Bomb' which envisages an atomic bomb being developed in the 1830s, testing in India and almost used in the Crimean War. Michael Moorcock's books 'Warlord of the Air' (1971), 'The Land Leviathan' (1974) and 'The Steel Tsar' (1981) also featured what can be termed Steampunk elements. In addition, by having Oswald Bastable as the hero of these books, a character who appears as a child in E. Nesbitt's 'The Story of the Treasure Seekers', Moorcock established the Steampunk approach of having characters from other authors' stories featuring as genuine people (alongside historical people too, as Clark had done extensively), a trend taken further by Alan Moore's graphic Steampunk novel, 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' (starting 1999). The the thread goes back even beyond these novels of course.
It can be argued that the real originators of steampunk were Victorian authors themselves. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells with their stories set in contemporary times to them but featuring huge airships, large submarines, tanks, flying motorbikes, a tunnel under the English Channel (as well as more fantastical devices to travel in time or to the Moon or make people invisible) built on the rush of technology throughout the 19th century and took their envisaging further, usually to look at moral issues in such a context, and like the steampunk authors, looking at the dilemmas that such technologies bring. These stories directly influence steampunk authors today, though their morals questions tend to be more direct and simpler than their Victorian predecessors.
What appeals to readers of steampunk is that it is technology but with elegance. In contrast to the sleek chrome of the model day it is brass and iron cast into elaborate shapes. Just look at any movie version of 'The Time Machine', it depicts a machine of elegance, all spinning, with inlaid knobs and polished buttons. In addition, in contrast to the cyberpunk novels which tend to portray people as playthings of vast multinational corporations, the heroes of steampunk are often ordinary people who can invent, they turn out a flying machine in the shed in the garden. Whilst this can be seen as very British, it has appeal in the USA for readers looking back to Ford or the Wright Brothers and their developments. However, the greatest success has been in Japan and from there have come notable steampunk movies such as 'Steamboy' (2005 - set in the UK) and 'Howl's Moving Castle' (2005) based on British author Diana Wynne Jones's 1986 novel of the same name.
Cyberpunk and steampunk have faded from their positions on the bestseller lists that they held in the 1980s and 1990s, but they have now effectively entered the mainstream. Graphic novelists have taken them up, notably in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentleman' (Alan Moore's novel and a 2003 movie). Cyberpunk has informed how we view the internet (Gibson is credited with inventing the word 'cyberspace') and are likely to view cybernetic implants (especially the potential for dehumanisation from them) and the position of the individual in relation to corporations. Steampunk is likely to have less impact, but my affection for it probably reflects me being British and so an in-built nostalgia for past things. Its impact is most likely to be in the style of items in the future and you can already see examples of people 'steampimping' their computers, much in the same way that people in the 1970s put their televisions in ornate wooden cabinets and those of the 1980s put their video cassettes in fake leather book covers.
In the meantime, for anyone interested in 'what if?' and 'why not?' in history, I recommend steampunk stories. To blow my own trumpet I intend to put a short story in that genre on this blog in coming weeks.
P.P. 26/10/2009: Despite my efforts at the time of writing this posting I have realised that I had missed out a vital slice of the history of the development of the steampunk genre. This was the first use of the term steampunk, which was by author K.W. Jeter writing to the science fiction magazine, 'Locus' in April 1987, so preceding 'The Difference Engine' by four years. According to wikipedia, Jeter was looking for an umbrella term for novels of the time, 'The Anubis Gates' (1983) by Tim Powers, 'Homunculus' (1986) by James Blaylock and 'Morlock Night' (1979) and 'Infernal Devices' (1987) that he had written himself which were set in the 19th century and took on board elements of the speculative writing naturally in the style of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and so included anachronistic technology. Thus, of course, steampunk even in its latest manifestation predated cyberpunk, but that term was so snappy you can see why Jeter thought it was a good one to mutate for the genre he was writing in and certainly better than the description of Powers, Blaylock and Jeter writing in the so-called 'gonzo-historical manner'! Michael Moorcock noted this year (2009) that there is actually little 'punk' in most steampunk writing and he favours 'steam opera'.
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