You can find the story at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. Below, you can find a sample.

Enjoy!

—Story Sample Below The Cut—

Tap, tap, tap.

The cane foot tapped measuredly on the plank, hammering out a steady tick-tock rhythm. It was not a rubber foot, such as had been common on cane-feet for a century now, but a proper pinned steel cane foot, suitable for a weapon or a prop to lean on or a scepter with which to gesticulate. It kept its clock-like rhythm even as a steam engine pulled out of the station, a few feet from the bench where its owner sat in his frock coat and top hat, measuring the minutes in percussive time.

The late afternoon summer was dry and hot, save for the oppressive blasts of humidity that coated the ticket window with fog for a few brief moments when a locomotive deigned to grace the lonely platform with its presence. The endless in-between times stretched on like the deep-split grain of the wooden planks that seemed to continue uninterrupted from one floorboard to the next. Across the double-tracks, past the far platform, flies and weevils swarmed above the autumn grain, taking from it what pickings they could before the harvest.

It was the last day of summer. Soon the dust would rise from the fields and the northern world would hunker down for a winter season that was comfortable and warm, circumscribed by brick and fiberglass, hearths long since replaced by electric heaters. The days when people froze to death for want of wood, or heating oil, or gas were well gone, but the anachronistic frock coat and cane went seemingly unnoticed on the forgotten railway line, where steam power serviced the nostalgic aging population whose automated homes drew nuclear power from the worldwide grid. The coming months would be a time of hibernation for Europe, but neither the cold slow yearly death the old world had endured, nor the slowed down fallow time of the new world were in the future of this man from out the storybooks of Conan Doyle or the misty streets of Whitechapel. And yet for all his out-of-place formality, the bench he sat on was wrought iron, and the foot of his cane kept perfect time. He seemed a fixture in the weatherbeaten station.

The steel band left small indentations in the old, grey oak, and the cane’s wielder was beginning to regret his promise to await the train from Bonn. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world. Leaving Gibraltar, they each had business to attend to, loose ends of past lives to tie up before they embarked together for the new frontier. She could have flown in, of course, the airport was near enough from their ship’s moorings. Or she could have driven, but somehow, even back in Morocco, the steam train had seemed best. It had seemed fitting that they leave their old world behind in its proper style, and the Orient Express and a few of the other remaining locomotives on the planet ran right past their destination.

So, it had been settled. They had kissed goodbye with promises to meed in two months. There had been chats, and vid calls, and letters, and every other sort of communication that was available to them, and when they got busy and went without each other for a few days or a week, their reconnection was that much sweeter for the absence. She was a hunger for him, as real as his need for meat and far more dearly sought, while he was to her like water. That’s what she had said, over and over again.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

That was what she had said, and he had believed her. But he had been here, waiting on the Orient Express, its last run of the summer, for two days. It had been delayed, there had been no word. Perhaps a mechanical breakdown had stranded it in a high pass – but he discarded the notion as soon as it occurred to him. This wasn’t the nineteenth century – there were were sat phones and radios, and if nothing else the ticket agent should know something.

But if he knew anything, he wasn’t telling.

She was a practical woman, not one to wait around for repairs. If the train were stranded she’d probably found a flat to let while she waited, even though the train had comfortable accommodations, she’d want to take advantage of a last chance to explore an alpine village. She’d dig in and sample the culture, find a club with a good local band and drink microbrews. She’d tour the local historical monuments and maybe have a long conversation over chess in whatever language was spoken in that remote corner of the world.

She spoke all the languages, she’d have no trouble blending in. But when her train departed she’d be on her way to him again, forsaking whatever brief affair she found to occupy her time, to be her last hurrah.

Assuming she had gotten on the train at all. Assuming she would tear herself away from her new life by the stranded train.

Tap. Tap. Tap…

—

End of sample. ©2007, J. Daniel Sawyer. All Rights Reserved

Read the rest atAmazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

In 1860s Manchester, young Jamie Broadman wasn’t much to look at, and he was even less to talk to. His wealthy industrialist father wasn’t impressed with him, his brother was a prodigy engineer, so they both allowed him to drift into a life in the stables. It was a life he wanted–working with horses, keeping company with servants, living in the country far from the concerns of education, business, culture, and politics.

With the kind cooperation of the British Museum and the Broadman Estate, these are the edited diaries of the man who single-handedly created the modern world…by accident.

The story is now available at Amazon and Smashwords, and is coming soon to other retailers.

And now, a sample to whet your appetite:

Cold Duty
Selected Readings from the Diary of a Gelusian Repairman
by J. Daniel Sawyer

Preface

What follows are edited transcripts from the audio diary and excerpts from the written journal of James Broadman, technician and stockholder, Broadman Royal Materials Corporation. These transcripts were created from the original handwritten journals and the recordings on prototype Seanaic wax cylinders with a grant from the Broadman Estate and was committed to the British Museum historical collection, July 1, 1940.

15 November, 1860
Source Medium: Wax Cylinder #109

It ain’t every day a man gets his first real job. I probably wouldn’t ha’ gotten it had me father had his way. He pegged me as shorter on brains than me brother when I was a young’n, and sure’n if he weren’t proper in that. I don’ mind. I liked me work in the stables, keepin’ the horses clean and fed and healthy when I was a lad. The rest of the track ran around me, with a Watts engine runnin’ the Davy arcs and the well pump and the starter gates and old Jimmy keeping the Watts in good nick. I kept the animals happy. First just the family’s, then all the boarded ones. I wasn’t supposed to have nothin’ else to do. But time came when the old Jimmy couldn’t keep on his feet anymore for the drink, and I didna wanna see the old goat get shipped, so I gave him a fresh bottle of whisky and stole his tool belt from him.

Turned out to be no great thing to replace the gaskets, or clean the valves, or service the giant puffer. Nobody told me how, it was just came kinda natural to me, fixin’ things—no different than finding a little rock in an animal’s hoof.

I’ve always reckoned I’d run the stable for the rest of me life, and you know, that woulda suited me just fine. Me days filled with the horses and the smithee and the sounds of the engine, me nights taken down at the pub with Simon or trying to coax Charlotte out onto the green.
But it was me brother Sean that finally caught me at it, last night. The turbine on the Watts engine had gone, and the two Davy’s arcs were dim. They were supposed to stay lit, and with everyone else gone home, it was down to me to get it up again, and without settin’ the shop on fire with the candles or the gaslights.

When I got the pressure vented and the turbine cowlin’ open I found a few copper brushes set to stroke against some brightly colored disks that the turbine spun. I’d seen inside before, when I were nine and Jimmy replaced one of the disks. I remembered then that the brushes were actually supposed to drag along the discs, but tonight several of ‘em brushes weren’t makin’ contact anymore, and two of ‘em were worn all down to the nub. Old Jimmy wasn’t anywhere about, and I’d never needed to do up any of the generator parts from scratch before.

Lookin’ around, I found a couple of the brushes at the left end of the turbine were new and had a lot of slack on ‘em. I could tell Jimmy in the morning that he needed to make new ones—for now, I’d just snip the slack and use it to replace the ones that had gone off, which was all well and good until I heard Sean’s voice behind me when I was closin’ the cowlin’.

“How long have you been doin’ that, now?”

I jumped. Me brother never came down to the track except for the races. Turning round to face him, I saw his arms crossed and his eyebrows raised. “Who taught you to fix the Watts?”

I told him nobody taught me, it just had to be done.

“Good with machines then, are ya?” Sean had his full dress on, military from toes to crown. I felt shabby standin’ in front of the family genius, but then I always had done. I took my ‘cerchief out of my pocket and mopped the oil off my hands.

“I reckon so.”

“Clean it up. Guv wants you down at the house.”

He spun around on his heels and strode out of the stable. When his back was turned I didn’t feel like a kid so much anymore.

I thought cleanin’ up would be enough, but when I walked into the Guv’s study I felt like a grease monkey all over again. Sean was there, sitting with a brandy in his hand in one of the Guv’s matched wingbacks. Opposite him the Guv had his pipe going, and right after I come in he moved his horse and said “Check.”

“’Scuse me, Guv?”

“Jamie, good.” He didn’t really even turn to look at me. I didn’t really expect him to. “We’re taking Brass Farthing down to run her in the Royal Ascot. Have her ready to board the eight fifteen tomorrow.”

“Yes sir. I’ll have ‘er up for ya.” I made to go, but after Sean made his move they both stood an’ Lord above if the old Guv didn’t walk straight up to me and clap me on the shoulder.

“Jamie, your brother here tells me you’ve got a way with machines.”

Now I don’t know how this’ll change now that this all gone down, but Sean and I never were the best of friends. He’s six years older than me and smarter than an owl—got himself learnin’ at university and all—and he always made sure I knew I was dim as candle drippings. But he looked pleased, in that kinda friendly way, and not mean at all, so I decided not to lie to the Guv.

“Yes sir, I s’pose I do. They just makes sense to me, and I ain’t never met one I couldn’t get along with. They got spirit, like a good horse, but they ain’t as hard to talk to.”

The Guv nodded his head in some earnest, like he just found the final piece to a puzzle. “Well then, you’d better pack your bag then too. We could use a man like you at the plant in London. Someone in the family, someone we can trust. Yes, pack it well, my boy. If you work out, you’ll be vital to our operation.” He gave me a final nod, then looked back to Sean and said. “Well, that’s done. Who’s move is it?”

The two of ‘em went back to their game like I wasn’t even there. I s’pose I shoulda been put out, but I was set and fit to bust. I took the carriage back out to the track and brushed Brass Farthing down, packed in her tack, and then sidled up to my quick room above the stables. I got me bed and room all proper down at the estate, but I stay here most nights. I got me kit all packed now, everythin’ I might need for weeks. I wanted to go tell Simon and Charlotte the news, but I ain’t gonna get the chance before we’re off in the morning, so I’ll have to post them from the train.

It ain’t every day a man gets offered a job on merits. Not every day at all. But Jesus come home, it sure is a fine thing.

Have you ever seen that well-dressed man at the airport, or the station, who stands patiently by as if he has all the time in the world? Have you wondered who he was waiting for, and how long he’d stay? Have you ever been that man, stuck in the hours between delay and disappointment, with no way to know if the person you’re waiting for will show? Join me in this episode as I take you to the mountains of Northern Italy at the dawn of the 22nd century for the story of a woman and a train–and of a walking stick and the man who owns it, as he waits for Train Time.

Sculpting God opens with a story of an unusual cliff diving episode. In 1898, a woman’s body was discovered broken and battered at the bottom of a tall sea bluff in Southern Scotland. and the small town she lived in began locking the doors at night. Only one man saw what happened, but the secret of her death is one he carried to his death bed. Wounded in World War One, he gives his last confession.

Content advisory: Suitable for all ages, though not necessarily intelligible to prepubescents.

Personal note:
This was my first ever podcast fiction episode, so it holds a bit of a special place in my heart. Hope you enjoy!

Vanity
For your starter today, I’ve recently finished Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape. We recently had a three episode set discussing the premise and arguments Harris addresses in the book. I’ve also posted a review at Goodreads. It’s an interesting and provocative book–if you have an interest in ethical philosophy, I highly recommend it.

Whimsy
This is an oldie, but goodie, video of a squid filming its own escape from a skin-diver.

Civil Liberties
Are you offended and frightened by the recent shooting? Wish you could silence people who are talking about “targeting” and “taking down” the opposition? Think that such speech is the moral equivalent of a terrorist threat? I humbly suggest that you might want to rethink your position in light of this excellent piece from Slate.

In a similar vein, the attempt to silence political speech on the Internet has been whole-heartedly embraced by the Obama administration. EFF brief here.

Politics
In the “I reserve skepticism but it’s starting to look like I was wrong” department, there’s encouraging news about the early effects of the new health care bill.

Business and Writing
In the “cool research for Steampunkers” department, the Guardian talks about the FEMALE criminal underworld in Victorian London.

Ever wondered what the real scoop is on the most important part of you’re book’s marketing (i.e. the cover)? Turns out that Laura Resnick did a very extensive series of articles a few years back that goes in depth on how the whole business of covers works. Well worth the read.

The charming Kate Elliot posts a great article at SFWA offering advice to teen writers from someone who’s been there. If you’re a teen writer, check it out.

Bob Mayer expresses admirably why I’ve not yet done a book trailer, and why it would take a special project for me even to consider it. A quick read, worth the click.

For your treadmill-listening pleasure, Gail Carriger gives a delightful and characteristically witty interview with SF Signal, discussing the impact of social media on the book industry and the author’s business model.

Nathan Lowell’s publisher Robin Sullivan does a guest blog for J.A. Konrath in which she busts some myths about indie publishing and talks about the sales growth curve of her authors. Interesting, useful stuff.

If you thought 2010 was tumultuous for the publishing industry, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Borders is in the process of a crash-and-burn, and depending on how it goes down, it could do anything from expanding the print-book market to seriously shrinking it over the near-to-medium term (though I doubt it will actually sink any of the publishing houses along the way, it may mean a lot less cash going around to buy new titles). If you have print books on the market or on the way to market, it behooves you to read Joshua Blimes’s excellent and thorough Borders post-mortem report.

Science and Technology
As an enthusiastic tender of a bacteria culture (lacto bascillus San Francisco), this kind of stuff fascinates me. An in-depth article, with sub-links, on the unique ecosystems that exist within cheeses.

Perhaps I’m showing my age–and I can’t believe I just said that–but I’m still blown away by the return of lay people to the sciences. Last week, a ten-year-old girl discovered a brand-new supernova, and setting a world-record in the process.

The Singularity (in the loose sense) continues apace with the development of contact lenses that display information directly in the field of vision. This is the very epitome of “augmented reality” technology. Wonder how long it’ll be until we can buy them at Walgreens.

Another nifty extra-solar planet discovery–this one very like Mercury.

It’s early days yet, but there’s more rumblings from legitimate autism research that might just have nailed down one of the reasons for increasing incidence and prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in the last couple decades. Encouraging news, as this one is completely preventable. Also weird as hell, which tickles my interest-o-meter.

In archeology news, physicists seem to have cracked the secret of the Mayan ability to make dyes that last forever.

At the end of December, the BBC did a wonderful 1-hour documentary on the most world-shaking scientific and technological advantages which, thanks to the marvels of YouTube, you can now see for yourself.

Along similar lines, here’s an article on 8 Science Fiction gadgets and plot devices that became a reality in 2010.

Laser weapons deployed for use on the high-seas! That’s right, non-lethal stun lasers are now being tested for use against pirates. No joke!

And, for the sake of great science-fictiony fun, here’s a great essay by Ronald Bailey speculating on the GOOD things that the lack of ET signals could portend.

Orwell
In other news, moral crusaders continue to Bowdlerize and lie about history “for the sake of the children.” If I can point to the single most harmful strand of human nature, aside perhaps from the propensity to commit genocide, this is the one I’d pick.

On the other hand, there are people of genuine moral fiber still circulating in the world. If you want something that will make you cry or stand up and cheer, check out this statement by the father of one the 9-year-old girl slain in the assassination attempt this week. Someone who takes his responsibility as a member of the body politic seriously enough that he’s unwilling to call for the curtailment of the civil liberties of others as salve for his grief? Uncommon! And displays most excellent character.

Weird Apps
Digital Life has info on an app for all you iPhone folks that will tell you when you can leave the theater to hit the bathroom without missing any plot points in currently-released movies. Behold, RunPee!

And that’s it for this time. Catch you around next time the world gets weird!

Vanity

On the ever-so-self-indulgent subject of, well, me, there are a few items potentially of interest.

First, I released a second Clarke Lantham novel. When Clarke Lantham goes home for Christmas, the results can’t be good.

Meanwhile, the first Clarke Lantham book has been getting some attention. KindleAuthor just interviewed me about it, View from Valhalla loved it, and Seth Harwood, Gail Carriger, and Philippa Ballantine all liked it well enough to provide blurbs. If you haven’t read it yet, you can check out the first couple chapters here. For that matter, you can check out the first part of book to, A Ghostly Christmas Present, here. Enjoy!

Art and Writing
If you’re an artist, or a writer, and you live somewhere that the influence of Hollywood reaches (i.e. everywhere), it’s very easy to forget that being “in shape,” “fit,” or “athletic,” doesn’t mean the same thing as “lean,” “6-pack abs,” or “what I saw on the cover of Vogue this month.” Forgetting this basic fact of life robs stories and paintings and graphic novels of realism, even if slightly. So, for your benefit and mine, here’s a photo essay featuring over 100 Olympic atheletes in phenomenal shape, each featuring a very unique body type.

Odd how the two most “offensive” words in the English language at the moment were words that were only mildly naughty 30 years ago. While one of these will continue to be a problem for a while, the other is redeemable. Check out Hal Duncan’s brilliant linguistic history of “cunt,” and his take-down of the implicit sexism sold with the demonization of what is, after all, a very cute word for a very delightful organ. He also goes into depth in the way usage varies on either side of the Atlantic. Unusually thought-provoking, and not played for shock value. Very useful for writers who write cross-culturally.

Publishing
We all know publishing is changing — snooze, hit the alarm, pull the other one, etc. We read about it in the New York Times a hundred times, which one would expect, as publishing is a big presence in New York. But when you read about it in the LA Times you know the movement’s gone big. Of course, this is the LA Times, which isn’t exactly a bastion of non-sensationalistic accuracy. Even so, it’s a fun read full of links to authors doing innovative things. Fun stuff!

TeleRead posted an interesting overview of the history of book piracy, it’s sociodynamics, and economics, with a follow-up column speculating on what it means for the industry. Some interesting stuff here by Chris Meadows.

For those of you who, like me, have a huge library full of books by dead people that will never be released in e-book format (or, at least, not for anothe decade or two) there is an inexpensive non-destructive way to digitize your books. This method is legal and ethically benign so long as you do not share or sell the resulting digital books. As an open source advocate and DIY culture member, I am very much in favor of projects like this. As an author who makes his living off his intellectual property, I work hard to make sure my work is always available in forms that do not strip the reader of his or her fair use rights. The other side of that contract is that the reader doesn’t steal or pirate the creative work of the entertainers whose work they consume. So, with that caveat, enjoy the workshop experience I’ll keep writing ‘em if you keep reading ‘em.

Speaking of piracy, Paul Cornell writes a provocative ethics article about illegal downloading filled with many good and some rather flacid points. Worth a read, nicely thought-provoking.

Got a book available on Kindle? You can now post the sample on your website with the Kindle for the Web app. This post from indieKindle gives instructions for embedding the app on your site or in a blog post.

And, speaking of e-books…solar powered e-reader, anyone?

Beauty
A really fun time-lapse of what looks like the blizzard from hell — over 3 feet in less than 24hrs. Most impressive – the best 30 seconds you’ll spend today.

Terry Gilliam, whose work has always been kinda steampunky anyway, is producing a steampunk puppet movie that looks really damn cool if this short film version of it is any indication.

Not to be out-done on the time-lapse front, NASA brings you a time-lapse of a sunset from another world. Click here to watch a Martian sunset.

And for breathtaking, how bout a collection of photos of man-made footprints on other worlds?

Science & Technology

Recycling. We all do it for the environment, but some kinds of recycling–like recycling plastic–are a waste of energy, resources, money, and doesn’t yeild an environemntal or economic gain. This isn’t true for everything–aluminum, scrap metal, electronics, and (thanks to a recent breakthrough in dealing with treatment of toxic de-inking chemicals) paper–all yeild tremendous benefits when properly recycled. But plastics…man, plastics are a problem. They’re all chemically different, they have to be very carefully sorted, cooked, and then are downcycled (made into things further down the supply chain) rather than recycled to the same quality. It’s a dirty secret, and it’s been a bit of a problem and embarassment for a couple decades now. That might not be true for much longer. Seems that, rather than resorting to dogmatism and moral guilting on one side, or lazy-bones naysaying on the other, one scientist has figured out a process for recycling all plastics that’s inexpensive, energy efficient, and a net environmental gain. Bravo!

In the realm of philosophy of science, Alvin Plantinga, an otherwise respected epistemologist from Harvard, is in the process of dipping his face in egg when it comes to philosphy of science. His companionable discussion with Daniel Dennet gives you the bulk of his case in his own words, and P.Z. Meyers (whom I consider entertaining but not exactly one for nuance) takes him apart very effectively here.

Research on different kinds of invisiblity continues apace. This article talks time distortion effects of certain kinds of meta-materials, and gives a roadmap for a proof-of-concept. I’ve been having a blast watching this field go from the stuff of dreams and science fiction to the stuff of serious, hard-core well-funded research in the last ten years. I can’t wait to see–or not see–some metamaterial-based invisibility prototypes in action.

In other news, 3D image editing for anaglyph is coming soon to a computer near you.

The field of linguistics has long been one of those in-between sciences–not quite a real hard science, but something more quantitative than a social science. Google Books looks to be changing that. Ronald Bailey talks about the new trend in tracking linguistic and cultural evolution using quantitative analysis of Google’s book database.

You know the insomnia you get after a traumatic experience? Turns out that trying like hell to get to sleep might not be such a good idea after all.

If you’ve heard about geopolitical unrest because of China’s attempts to lock down the rare-earth metal market, don’t worry. Turns out they’re not the only country with lots of the “rare” stuff.

Education

If you’re a strong autodidact like me, you’re always on the prowl for new educational stuff. OpenCulture just updated their list of free online courses from major universities this month, and the selection is getting really impressive. Even scarier, as one who grew up in academia, I’m starting to recognize a lot of names on that list.

Meanwhile, one of the most excellent shows on the history of technology, James Burke’s Connections, has made its way onto YouTube. Bears multiple re-watchings. Check it out.

If you’re like most people, you’ve heard about the Theory of Relativity (E=MC^2) and have a vague idea that it means all matter is energy or something like that, but you’ve never really been able to get your head around the math to understand what it really means. Well, fear not — the always-readable Bertrand Russel wrote the definitive popularization of general relativity, and Derek Jacobi read it. Now, it’s available for free to the public as an audiobook. Go grab it now, give it a listen, and prepare to have your mind turned inside-out. Fun stuff

Also in the “good clean fun” department, someone with actual sexual experience on the order of decades is now producing a sex education series on youtube. Funny, clever, and no-bullshit, he calls it the “Guide to Getting It On,” and he hits a lot of points that younger, hipper educators often miss.

Politics

This is the only political article this time, and I’m including it because of how much of a shocker it is. Francis Fukyama’s analysis of where liberal econimcs went wrong by embracing the liberalization of financial markets instead of trade-goods markets. It’s very interesting watching the Keynsians, the Monetarists, and the Hayekians all starting to converge on this point in the wake of the recent banking crisis. More interesting to me is that Adam Smith got there two hundred years ago–and that politicians and policy makers still aren’t listening.

— — — —
I got tons more in my salad bowl, but that’s already a more substantive meal than I had planned to serve up. Hope you enjoy — and have a great New Year!

[In honor of her new book Soulless, which impressed me with its groundedness in the Victorian world, I asked author Gail Carriger to blog about the art of finding good research sources for Steampunk writing. This is her contribution - thank you very much, Ms. Carriger! -JDS]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: nothing beats primary sources. I hate to be a traitor to the Author Guild’s justifiable objection to the Google Book settlement, but Google books does already have a number of good primary sources from the 1800s available.

* One of my personal favorites, with recipes and other interesting tidbits about domestic management in 1876, is Things a Lady Would Like to Know

* Floote’s Medical Common Sense is another wonderful resource for a historical perspective on the Victorian attitude towards medical science, not to mention a window into scientific, social, and psychological theory. This is an American classic (if non-fiction can be called such).

There are other useful primary sources as well, that you might be able to order through Amazon or a rare books dealer. My two favorites are:

* Baedeker, Karl. 1896. Baedeker’s's London and its Environs. (or any Baedeker’s dated to the Victorian era) for maps, railroad time tables, popular museums and visitors areas, not to mention names of shops, clubs, restaurants, news papers and more.

* Edwards, Amelia B. 1877. A Thousand Miles Up the Nile. For language and the Victorian adventurer abroad feel.

As for secondary sources, what you need may depend upon what you’re writing. I write comedy of manners, so my needs reflect this more pedestrian interest level, someone with a more military bent probably has a different list. Never the less, I find myself constantly reaching for the following:

* Pool, Daniel. 1993. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. For the basics.

* Cunnington, C. Willett. 1990. English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. For anything to do with women’s clothing

* Flanders, Judith. 2003. The Victorian House. For domestic life questions. The information is not well structured, but it is there.

* Farwell, Byron. 1972 Queen Victoria’s Little Wars. For the quickest insight into the Empire Building mentality and military history of the age.

Aside from Wikipeda, which can be an okay place to start, there are some good, if not particularly well organized, research tools dedicated to the Victorians online as well.

* By far the biggest and the best is the Victorian Web which is a great spiderweb of all sorts of useful information

* The Victorian Dictionary offers up primary newspaper articles on different topics

And here are a few interesting individual offerings online.

* Victorian Slag Dictionary

* Victorian Etiquette

* The Illustrated London News (starting in 1842)

* Victorian servants

* The Ladies Journal

* Godey’s Lady’s Book

* Naval Ships of Victorian times

* Nick Names of Cavalry regiments

* Some ways to tie a cravat

* La Mode Illustree LiveJournal group

Other tips:

* If you have a DVR or Tivo trigger in keywords pertaining to your topic of interest. You never know what the history channel might be dealing with next. It will at least give you a jumping off point.

* Watch BBC costume dramas, and or, rent the DVD and check out the extras, they often have interviews with historical experts.

* Having a really hard time answering a research question? Cold call a local university history department. Experts love to talk about their expertise, perhaps there is someone in the history department you can ask. They may at least give you a book or article to read.

Lastly, of course you can keep an eye on my website, I often put up bits and bobs I’ve discovered around the net.

To backtrack, I just finished reading Gail Carriger’s debut novel Soulless, now available for preorder from Amazon and scheduled for release this October. An unusual genre mash-up that the author aptly describes as “Urbane Fantasy,” it combines fantasy, paranormal, romance, horror, mystery, steampunk, and Victorian comedy of manners in the same way one might expect of a veteran chef blending Chinese, Italian, and California flavor palates for a lark at a summer barbecue that is to say, the result is unexpected, surprising, delightful, and brings one up a bit short. Or, it would, if it weren’t for one of the best opening paragraphs I’ve read in a long time. The first chapter flies by fast enough that it’s not until the narrator pauses for breath in chapter two that the reader is left to puzzle over the curiosities of, say, a perfectly ordinary-seeming spinster with a weighted brass parasol encountering an unexpected vampire while having tea at a soirée. The fact that she easily dispatches said vampire, which lisps terribly and can’t seem to keep his fangs up when he touches her, resulting in a scene that positively screams “Buffy, you’re a poseur.” Alexia Tarabotti isn’t a vampire hunter or an angsty teenage girl, and her story is a cut or five above Whedonesque kitschy cuteness.

To backtrack further, Soulless follows the adventures of one Alexia Tarabotti, an independently minded Victorian spinster in her own special kind of hell. That variety of hell is, aptly enough, called “home,” where she lives with her two much younger, much less Italian sisters and a mother that can’t seem to utter three words without being dreadfully boorish or uselessly boring. To compensate for her unfortunate circumstances, Alexia enjoys hobnobbing with flamboyant vampires, needling the local werewolves, resenting her friend Ivy’s taste in hats, and reading until her socks turn blue.

Ms. Carriger makes a great use of romance formula – taking the basic template and subverting it well enough that, even when you know what *must* be coming, it’s often a genuine surprise when it arrives. She also presents the reader with the Victorian world as seen by the social-climbing London middle class. Normally, I find this angle on the Victorian world both suffocating and tiresome, but in this case it works to great effect. As this class historically subsisted on a worldview that was, in large part, fantasy, this turns out to be an apt basis for a novel in which Werewolves are responsible for the British Regimental structure and the Queen has a Shadow Cabinet made up of supernatural advisors.

Which leads me to my favorite thing about the book: it takes itself seriously. I mean this in the sense that there is a flawless internal integrity to the world, the characters, their attitudes, and the action. Far too often with period fantasy or romance (or drama, for that matter), the author delivers cosplay instead of integrity – that is to say, the characters act like contemporary people affecting period manners and forms, but without a genuine period-restricted worldview. As a history nut, this is a make-or-break issue for me – I’m hypercritical about it and will sooner put down a book with poor historical integrity than waste the precious moments of my life reading something by a careless author who can’t be bothered to get it right in the milieu they’ve chosen. Ms. Carriger’s world passes this test with flying colors, even as she works in dozens of sly nods to Austin, Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, and all manner of geeky trivia.

Alas, nothing is perfect, and the one thing about Soulless that kept me frustrated was the world building. This alternate London is a marvelous place, filled up to the corners with an intriguing social structure – and we get only the barest taste of it. It’s quite obvious that Ms. Carriger has done her homework and likely has a voluminous stack of notebooks on the minutiae of her world on a shelf next to her notorious hat collection (which I trust is far more tasteful than a certain hat collection on display in the book), and yet she shows us little enough that I found myself irritated that the book had the temerity to end after a mere 350 pages. Then again, perhaps this is what sequels are for, and the sequel is due out in March.

In sum, Soulless is an unusually strong showing for a first novel, for a comedy of manners, and indeed for a paranormal romance. In blending these with its other genres it manages to achieve what very few novels in any tradition do: it creates a strong enough sense of itself to stand out from the background noise in its genre. This book is something special, a paean to and gentle satire of the Victorian delight with frivolity, witty to the end. The closing author’s note in my ARC mentions the influence of Wodehouse and Austin on the style of Soulless, and while both have noticeable echoes in the author’s voice, I don’t think either does it justice. As good as Wodehouse is, and as iconic as Austin has become, Soulless is not properly a successor to either. It is something better. It is instead, if you will forgive the phrase, a very Wilde excursion.

Beginning in December, we will be working together on a Steampunk YA novel set in San Francisco, about a pair of young troublemakers who just can’t seem to stop fighting about a car, or the strange monsters that come out at night, or the steampunk world they keep stumbling into, or…well, that’s for you to find out, isn’t it? And find out you will, either through podcast or through print, when Philippa Ballantine and J. Daniel Sawyer present The Auto Motive sometime in 2010.

It’s going to be so much fun!

This one features Miss Kalendar along with Chris Lester and Kitty Nic’Iaian.

This is it, folks, the final round of Dealing In before we get to Down From Ten. We toast the successful conclusion of Predestination and look forward. Some info on Down From Ten here, as well as some very involved conversations about the themes of Predestination, the possible interaction of quantum mechanics and consciousness, and the nature of trust. Not to mention a LOT of laughs, some inside information on what I’m like as a director, and lots of other stuff. This is one of three episodes in this final Dealing In saga — 61 minutes of audio goodness here. Enjoy!!!
-Dan

Part 1 of the final Dealing In (well, the final one before the end of the book) is here! This week’s serves up a mountain of your emails on a range of topics including:

Old Europe
Bastiat’s Principle
Buried Alive In The Blues
Steampunk (Van Der Meer, Broadmore, Carriger)
Soulless by Gail Carriger
The Red Panda and Black Jack Justice — Decoder Ring Theater
Heather Welliver
The basics behind stereo imaging
McCarthyism and Bill Shelley
Flight of the Conchords “The Humans Are Dead”
Easter Eggs in Predestination
First Gulf War
Xanatos gambits and bounded perspective
Is stealth technology in space possible?
Chicken Scissors
Tom Lehrer
Man Love in Metamor City and on Erotica A La Carte
Scott Sigler’s The Crypt
Angels Unawares

Kitty Nic’Iaian and Chris Lester join, once again. Enjoy!

Cold Duty: Selected Readings from the Diary of a Gelusian Repairman is the tale of a stable boy who gets caught working on a steam engine, which lights off an adventure in the big city and a 100-years too early scientific and technological revolution. Steampunk memoir – and a tale very close to my heart. If you haven’t heard it yet, I hope you’ll give it a listen.

Here’s what this means for you all, my loyal readers:

I’m going to fix and drop Episode 13 of Antithesis tomorrow, probably late, assuming the congestion clears.

I’ll start blogging again, with reports from SteamCon and some other interesting updates, later this week.

The feedback episode will record Wed and drop on Thurs or Fri, after which I’ll slide back into my regular production schedule.

I have a backlog of other blog posts to write, particularly more from the Steampunk Education series and the Entitlement Mentality series. Those I’ll be hammering out between commissioned articles (which I now have a backlog of).

Soon, very soon, a calender will be available for purchase featuring my fine art photography. There will be two versions available – one worksafe and one definitely not.

So, if the Creeks don’t rise, I’m now back in circulation. Thank you all for your well wishes.

-Dan

For this weekend’s foray into steampunkiness, I ordered my outfit for Steamcon. It should be quite dapper.

Now, on to Steamboy.

At first blush, this is a gorgeous film. The artwork is fabulous, the sense of form and movement is spectacular. I’m not actually a big anime fan, but the previews made this movie look gorgeous – a cut above the usual anime standard in terms of visuals and in terms of story, and “Anime Steampunk” seemed a combination just weird enough to be interesting. Besides, these were the guys who did Akira, which was gorgeous.

As the film got rolling, I began to think that Anime Steampunk was a more sensible combination than I thought at first. If there’s one thing that Anime is spectacular with, it’s rendering scenery, and the Victorian London setting, complete with steam-powered giant power plants, gave this film a rich, palpable atmosphere from frame one. Inasmuch as Steampunk is a style, this film must be a perfect example.

The first act of the film was very promising, beginning with a provocative teaser about mineral water miners and moving straight into the story of a young boy – the oldest son of the Steam family – who wishes he could be off sharing adventures in engineering and scientific discovery with his father and grandfather, both of whom are great inventors.

Like The Rocketeer, this film sits in the retro-scifi corner of steampunk, where speculation is made upon technologies known to exist at the time, and Steamboy does a good job of sitting in that genre. The corners of the world are filled up by background (and sometimes foreground) elements of the world of the time – wanted posters for Jack The Ripper, a piece of the plot featuring the crystal palace of the Great Exposition. Sure, the two events weren’t quite contemporaneous, but they still tickle the cockles of a history geek’s heart. The historical flavor is a little bit tongue-in-cheek, dotting its landscape with family names like “Steam” and character names like Scarlet O’Hara and Robert Stephenson (both meant to evoke the flavor of the era rather than stand in for the historical or fictional personages), and this added to the charm of the first act.

Now, you may be asking yourself why I keep referring to the first act?

The reason is that the first act presents a glorious film opening, filled with well-realized characters inhabiting a well-developed world. At the end of the first act, the writers even go in for a bit of intellectual sophistication, explaining the film’s McGuffin in very sharp, intelligent, layman-accessible language that is for the most part fully compatible with the mechanics and operations of steam power (so long as you ignore a couple little thermodynamics issues which are, honestly, very minor).

The story takes a hard left turn into idiocy at the beginning of the second act, and from there it’s all down hill. By the end of act three the film’s initial glory is largely lost, and aside from a few really creative moments and ideas the viewer is mostly left with a large, steaming pile of incoherent dog shit. If you’ve been reading this blog or listening to my podcasts for any appreciable length of time, you’ll recognize this as an uncharacteristically disparaging statement, so let me explain:

The central point around the story turns is the destructive uses of science. Essentially, there is an evil, warmongering charitable foundation which funds research in order to keep the defense contractor that created the foundation in business. The Steam family has been retained by them to create the ultimate steam-power capacitor, something that allows for unimaginably high pressures. The Steam family inventors laughably believe that the purpose of this research is to create a children’s theme park to bring delight and happiness to all children, and when this turns out to be only the tip of a larger industrial iceberg, Father Steam decides to sabotage the project, while Son Steam decides to carry on. Grandson Steam, at the age of about 10, winds up being the moral arbiter of this conflict.

During the course of the film we, the unfortunate viewers, are subjected to long-winded idiotic preachments that hammer home the following points:

All profit motives are evil (in so many words)

Trackless steam engines operating as battle tanks will mean the end of the idyllic, non-exploitative Victorian civilization.

The true purpose of science is to make the world peaceful by making children happy.

True science cannot coexist with any kind of business interests.

And endless rehashings of that sort from one angle or another.

Please bear in mind that we’re not talking about one or two stray lines, or ideas being floated for consideration, we are talking about pages of dialog of Grandfather Steam ranting to Grandson Steam. To reinforce the point, midway through the third act the O’Hara corporation deploys steam-powered cybermen to terrorize, maim, and kill everyone at the Great Exposition (because, as we all know, technologists are so evil that they can’t let a little thing like having the greatest military in the world shoot them out of the sky stand in the way of securing a military contract with the Grand Sultan of Arabia).

You think that’s bad? I promise, I’m being kind. Everything that this film started out with in terms of craft and intellectual sophistication get pissed away in the second and third act in an attempt to create the perfect lesson in Marxism for first graders (complete with the triumph of the steam-powered children’s amusement park at the end). It’s an insulting, stupid, depressing piece of crap – and all the more ironic for coming out of the wealthiest film studio in Japan, a nation of technocrats.

I’ve made no secret that I have no great love for either Marxism or Merchantilism, that I think they’re both destructive ideologies that are, in the end, highly destructive to both individuals and culture. That doesn’t mean that these ideas shouldn’t be discussed, or even encouraged, in films. A number of my favorite films have a strong anti-capitalist and/or anti-technological flavor (Blade Runner chief among them, but certainly not standing alone). But the difference between Steamboy and intelligent treatments of the same subject matter is as broad as the difference between Michael Parenti and Michael Moore. The socialist and progressive traditions in Victorian and Edwardian culture gave shelter to ideas that turned out to be deeply destructive (Eugenics and the Temperence movement chief among them), but it also achieved noble articulation from the pens of thinkers and authors such as H.G. Wells, Betrand Russel, and Jules Verne, who understood the complexities of a developing industrial society and had genuine concern for both the plight of the underclasses and the dispensation of the enormous industrial power that humanity suddenly possessed.

Steamboy is well within the Victorian intellectual tradition in its starry-eyed idealism about science for the sake of science, and in its distrust of capitalism. However its articulation of these concepts is heavy handed, moronic, insulting, and embarrassing. That its writers were so incompetent that they had to preach in platitudes rather than unfolding their ideas through dramatic narratives is the classic hallmark of all self-important bad art.

What’s the first thing you learn in creative writing class? Show, don’t tell.

Steamboy is a failure on every artistic level for this reason. But damn, the first twenty minutes sure are a feast for the geek in me.

As for the steampunky goodness. Today, I’m watching The Brother’s Grimm .

I’m typing as I go along, but not posting until I’m done with the film. Overall, it’s a strange blend of the very good, the irritating, and the really dumb. Let’s start with the good:

The concept is very, very clever. The eponymous Brothers Grimm, hard pressed for cash, parlay their knowledge of Bavarian folklore into a career as ghostbusting con artists. This works pretty well until the Napoleonic army decides to co-opt their skills to eliminate superstition in a difficult-to-conquer village.

In the course of their adventures, where they encounter real enchantment, the story skillfully weaves together the grimmest of Grimm with very well-timed references to the rest of the mythological and medieval worlds. It’s not just Rapunzel here, it’s The Lady of Shallot . It’s the wicked queen from Snow White . It’s Jack in the Beanstalk and Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretal. It’s chalk full of echoes of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory. It’s Alice in Wonderland . There are shamanic rituals underlying it all – from licking the toad to participate in the wisdom of the forest spirits (originated because of the hallucinogenic excretions on the skins of some frogs), to the Corn King rituals, to the Sacred Kingship, to the Pied Piper. This movie is neck-deep in multiple layers of melded mythologies that marry magnificently, while still preserving the original notions that underlay them. The author of this screenplay didn’t just lift the surface of the old stories, he plumbed the guts of them, too.

In a lot of ways it’s a perfect monomythologist’s fable, beautifully rendered, and lots of fun. It *almost* gets to be a faerie tale in its own rite, but it falls short of other recent masterpieces like Pan’s Labrynth, in part because it doesn’t take the integrity of its own universe seriously.

Gilliam, naturally, makes amazing, glorious use of the grotesque – and like the old faerie stories, he takes the grotesque realities of the everyday and gives them the odd prod and twist here and there to bring out the inherent horror implicit in a world where life depends upon death to continue. Although Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro do give Gilliam a run for his money, I don’t think anybody does this better at the moment – certainly not Tim Burton, who currently is the only other serious contender for the directorial title of "Master of the Fantasy Macabre." Where Burton’s works are slick, well packaged angsty goth bullshit, Gilliam (and his latter-day acolytes Jackson and Del Toro) knows how to get at the heart of terror and darkness. He actually understands why the Romantics (like Shelley, Byron, and Poe) put terror on the same level as rapture in their reckoning of the sublime.

The bad:

As is probably to be expected with Gilliam, the film has its rather irritating and none-too-subtle subtext. His glory days of the Trilogy of Man (Time Bandits , Brazil, Baron Münchhausen ), and The Fisher King , seem forgotten here. He’s carried forward his reflexive anti-modernism, his concerns about the mechanized world draining people of humanity until they have to enter the land of magic in order to find their love of life once again. It’s an old trope, and one of the most effective ones out there. If you want to read up on some of its history, check out The Golden Bough on "The Sacred Kingship" (come to think about it, there’s a good Wikipedia article on the subject too). But where once his films were complicated, this one is pretty simplistic. The bad guys are the ones with machines, the fools are all skeptical thinkers, scientifically minded – and he lays it on pretty damn thick, to the point where just about any scene the skeptical general shows up, he’s torturing some poor sod with Rube Goldberg versions of kitchen appliances.

It’s not the attitude I object to – although I’m definitely a modernist, I enjoy quite a lot of art that turns on romanticism or critiquing modernity. It’s more that I know Gilliam to be capable of so much better. I’m thinking particularly of the battle at the end of Time Bandits here, where when the bandits bring war machines from all ages against Satan and then can’t make them work against him. When one complains "I can’t control them!" Satan replies "Of course not, you stupid man, I control them." The blend of camp humor and relentless critique of every sort of authority (parental, governmental, divine, infernal, military, social, intellectual) make that obvious, throwaway joke truly chilling.

Throughout The Brothers Grimm I found myself wishing for that old Gilliam, the one who really was a punk in the classical sense, pushing back against all prescriptions that oppress the soul of man rather than one who uses tropes he helped create in order to pick on obvious, boring kinds of authority and orthodoxy. In short, there’s nothing truly challenging in this film – it’s all attitude and no substance. More "steam" than "punk."

In the end, we have in The Brothers Grimm a simplistic, even dishonest, casting of the conflict between modernism and primitivism, and it fails to satisfy the itches it scratches.

The stupid:

There are a lot of little false steps here and there. For example, I know Steampunk works by melding modern sensibilities, but a 19th century German – even one from the city – would not vomit at the sight of a rabbit being skinned (though I have to give kudos to Gilliam for using a real rabbit). They wouldn’t panic at the sight of beetles. There’s a lot in this movie that they might plausibly have found offputting – but I’m sorry, those ain’t among them. Over and over again, the movie is put off-pace by little sour notes like these.

Overall impression:

Though the "punk" part of steampunk here is more juvenile than a lot of Gilliam’s previous work, the style is beautiful (as his work always is) and the story is engaging. The acting is wonderful – good enough to cover the deficiencies in the script and make for a fun evening. In many ways, this film is what Sleepy Hollow should have been – clever, engaging, full of fun culture references and with a proper understanding of its source mythology, rather than a thinly veiled Freudian/neopagan evangelism tract with nothing below its sexy surface. It also helps that the source material – the myths collected by The Brothers Grimm – honestly were pagan folklore from a superstitious world, rather than a satire making fun of superstition (as the original The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was). It’s the author in me – I hate remakes that plunder, rape, and pervert the original story to make a preachy point exactly contrary to the story they’re attempting to "present." Burton is worse at this than Disney. Gilliam has the decency to respect his source material, and the result is watchable fun with beatiful moments, but not his best work.

Next up on the Stempunk menu: The Japanese Anime film Steamboy

So, this week, in between evaluating the Trinity Indamixx (initial impressions – favorable but with caveats), which I’m blogging on right now using an external keyboard (I could seriously get addicted to this thing), I learn all about Steampunk Films!

But back to the steampunkiness. I really enjoyed Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Yeah, I know, I know. It’s preachy and shallow and far too didactic for anyone’s own good. You know what? So was Narnia, but most of the people that go around slagging Pullman off are Christians who are blind to how preachy and simplistic Narnia is, while they find Pullman’s universe frightening and subversive.

The fact is that the books were preachy, but they were hardly shallow. They were gloriously imaginative, and they were appropriately geared for preteens (which, if you don’t remember from the books you read as a kid, means heavy-handedness is important. This is a demographic that’s exploring big ideas in a big way, for the first time). Like the Narnia books, these stories deal with big ideas in a bold, almost tacky way. Unlike Narnia, Pullman waited to write his saga until he was a mature author, so his stories are better, his metaphors more sophisticated, and his style more consistent. The other thing that bears mentioning is that Materials is actually a fully developed fantasy, while Narnia is, by Lewis’ own admission, a hybrid of allegory and beast fable. Because of this, the worst of Materials compares well with the best of Narnia, from an adult perspective. From a child’s perspective, both are packed with wonder and terror and the glory of life in the finest coming-of-age tradition.

But I digress…

For the movie, they sanitized the idealogical content for mass audiences, but they did not neuter it. There’s still a goodly amount here to engender a lot of discussion. Visually, the film’s a stunner. Given the production team I should have expected that, but honestly I’m surprised. Steampunk in all the right ways, the world is gloriously visualized. The depth of the grandeur in the world really comes through. The adaptation is well-penned, the acting above par, and – best of all for my purposes – it’s deeply immersive. The particle physics, the alethiometer, the daemons, the bears, the dirigibles, the brass machinery, mostly plausibly rendered with just a touch of the fantastic. Also, for my purposes, it was a good place to start. It’s shot through with the steampunk ethos of individualism, distrust for authority, ubermenschen, and situational ethics.

It’s a damn shame that small minded bigoted activists like the ones at the American Family Association managed to propagandize this film out of business. It would have been great to see the rest of these films – now I daresay they will never be produced. More than that, watching these films next to the Narnia films would have given a lot of opportunity for children to explore the big questions both series raise in unique ways. And, where Materials is concerned, since the entire conceit of the story relies upon particle physics and string theory, it could be a great conversation starter for other big ideas full of wonder.

So, there we are. Steampunk education part 1 complete. Part two coming soon!

I will be on the following panels:

Engines of Empire: Real Science and Gadgets of Victorian Times – Saturday 1:30-2:30

and

Steampunk Multi-Media: Steamy film, photo, audio and more – Saturday 3-4

Come along, join the party – it promises to be a hell of a debut con!