Well! Those charmers at Quirk Classics, the people who brought the world *Pride and Prejudice and Zombies*, have just brought out *Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters*! And a merry read it is! More liberties were taken with the setting, steampunkly so, and as always, Austen's greatness shines through. Really, I like these pastiches far better than the usual ones, that usually demonstrate by their drabness the excellences of what they try to imitate. I usually toss that sort aside and think--well that's time I won't get back. Not so with Quirk Classics' efforts. By their very ridiculousness of setting, they show a much greater affection and understanding of Austen's work. I can't help but imagine Austen herself would like them.
Now if only someone would do Agatha Christie pastiches where Jane Marple is a biker in a post-apocalyptic world....
Showing posts with label steampunk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steampunk. Show all posts
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Steampunky Non-fiction!
Okay, so maybe I am the last person on the planet to finally read *The Devil At The White City* but I did. I quickly followed this up with another Eric Larson book, *Thunderstruck* about Marconi and this time only one murder, but a really grisly one.
Yup, I think Mr Larson just might have done it, he may have come up with "steampunk nonfiction" How have changes in technology and culture influenced eachother in the past?
Any other suggestions for what other *contemporary* works may qualify for this genre?
Yup, I think Mr Larson just might have done it, he may have come up with "steampunk nonfiction" How have changes in technology and culture influenced eachother in the past?
Any other suggestions for what other *contemporary* works may qualify for this genre?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Down by Fourth
The other day, since I was already down by Angel's Flight, I cut through Grand Central Market--still all the grand sensory overload I remember it being, with that noodle stand that always put me in mind of that one we see Harrison Ford at in the beginning of *Bladerunner*, even though it doesn't really look so much like it. I'm not sure the goat meat taco place is still there, but how could it not be?
Having thought of *Bladerunner*, and being *right there*, I have to poke my head in at the Bradbury Building. Which everyone has seen, whether they know it or not. It was built by a fellow who supposedly did it with no great knowledge, inspired by a ouija board experience and Ralph Bellamy's book *Looking Backward*. It was completed in 1894 and I don't know who it was who described it as "a fairytale of mathematics." You've seen it in movies and fashion shoots and the like forever--that place that is all light and air and spare lovely ironwork and handsome wood. International Style may be looking as dated as mantuas, but the Bradbury Building is as fresh and lovely as ever. I can't for the life of me figure out why it isn't ringed by purring steampunks. Perhaps security lures them away with scones and clotted cream....
So of course by the time I come out of the Bradbury (don't you love that the delightful writer and the vintage modern building share a name?) I'm right there by the cut-through to Spring St, so I have to stop by the Biddy Mason wall.
If Los Angeles were an Orthodox Christian town, Biddy Mason would be the patron saint of the city. Biddy Mason (1810-1900) came to the area as a slave, trained as a midwife, and in the narrow window of legal opportunity, won freedom for herself and her family. She promptly settled down and saved enough money to buy a parcel of land where her memorial now stands. It served as a base of economic operations for herself and her family, and "urban homestead" as one writer put it. She delivered babies all over the city, in all walks of life. She set up an account at the store that used to be at 4th and Spring for flood victims to use. First A.M.E. was started in her home. She lived long enough to see her children and grandchildren be a credit to her, and respected and successful members of the community All in all, the sort of person who would be a superb patron saint, for any city let alone this one.
I have never been out of the country, so I don't know what it is like in places where the current culture has been in the same location for millennia, but this day I stood in the same general area where Biddy Mason had lived and walked, and I wondered about that. What had it been like then? What had it been like to be her, living through so much and constantly imagining good works to do? What was it like to watch the Bradbury go up practically next door, and taking far longer than planned to do so? I stood on the south corner of 4th and Spring and wondered which corner that store had been on where Biddy Mason kept the account for flood victims to use. I was standing where they had stood, on their way to the place where they could get food and clean clothes and household goods, because of the kindness of a woman born into chattel slavery in the opening years of the 19th century, who had walked halfway across the country behind a wagon, who had seized that brief moment around the Dred Scott case to free herself and her children and her sister and her sister's children. Who had been trained to a profession and was good at it, and used her earnings to help not only her own family but these flooded-out immigrants too.
Maybe part of what interests me is that there is comparatively little history on this spot, for the culture that is here now. Okay, Biddy Mason was born two hundred years ago next year, but she only died a little over a century ago. Historically speaking, that is the blink of an eye. When I was standing by her memorial wall, we were separated only by some time, and not at all by space. It would have been wonderful to have stood there and have read any writings of hers. (Are there any?)
After all this pondering and exaltation--(that building on the north side of Broadway still displaying a red and gold mural of the hands raised as though in blessing, showing over the tops of the buildings to the south, where I stood, having visions of this street and mixing my poetic references freely--)--I continue my meandering toward Metropolis Books, I swear not two blocks away from all this. A bookstore is full of voices dependant upon our eyes to be heard. I did not hear Biddy Mason in there, but I could have asked.
I don't really know why chronos time thins out so easily and kairos shines through when I am downtown, but it does for me, and I will keep going back.
Having thought of *Bladerunner*, and being *right there*, I have to poke my head in at the Bradbury Building. Which everyone has seen, whether they know it or not. It was built by a fellow who supposedly did it with no great knowledge, inspired by a ouija board experience and Ralph Bellamy's book *Looking Backward*. It was completed in 1894 and I don't know who it was who described it as "a fairytale of mathematics." You've seen it in movies and fashion shoots and the like forever--that place that is all light and air and spare lovely ironwork and handsome wood. International Style may be looking as dated as mantuas, but the Bradbury Building is as fresh and lovely as ever. I can't for the life of me figure out why it isn't ringed by purring steampunks. Perhaps security lures them away with scones and clotted cream....
So of course by the time I come out of the Bradbury (don't you love that the delightful writer and the vintage modern building share a name?) I'm right there by the cut-through to Spring St, so I have to stop by the Biddy Mason wall.
If Los Angeles were an Orthodox Christian town, Biddy Mason would be the patron saint of the city. Biddy Mason (1810-1900) came to the area as a slave, trained as a midwife, and in the narrow window of legal opportunity, won freedom for herself and her family. She promptly settled down and saved enough money to buy a parcel of land where her memorial now stands. It served as a base of economic operations for herself and her family, and "urban homestead" as one writer put it. She delivered babies all over the city, in all walks of life. She set up an account at the store that used to be at 4th and Spring for flood victims to use. First A.M.E. was started in her home. She lived long enough to see her children and grandchildren be a credit to her, and respected and successful members of the community All in all, the sort of person who would be a superb patron saint, for any city let alone this one.
I have never been out of the country, so I don't know what it is like in places where the current culture has been in the same location for millennia, but this day I stood in the same general area where Biddy Mason had lived and walked, and I wondered about that. What had it been like then? What had it been like to be her, living through so much and constantly imagining good works to do? What was it like to watch the Bradbury go up practically next door, and taking far longer than planned to do so? I stood on the south corner of 4th and Spring and wondered which corner that store had been on where Biddy Mason kept the account for flood victims to use. I was standing where they had stood, on their way to the place where they could get food and clean clothes and household goods, because of the kindness of a woman born into chattel slavery in the opening years of the 19th century, who had walked halfway across the country behind a wagon, who had seized that brief moment around the Dred Scott case to free herself and her children and her sister and her sister's children. Who had been trained to a profession and was good at it, and used her earnings to help not only her own family but these flooded-out immigrants too.
Maybe part of what interests me is that there is comparatively little history on this spot, for the culture that is here now. Okay, Biddy Mason was born two hundred years ago next year, but she only died a little over a century ago. Historically speaking, that is the blink of an eye. When I was standing by her memorial wall, we were separated only by some time, and not at all by space. It would have been wonderful to have stood there and have read any writings of hers. (Are there any?)
After all this pondering and exaltation--(that building on the north side of Broadway still displaying a red and gold mural of the hands raised as though in blessing, showing over the tops of the buildings to the south, where I stood, having visions of this street and mixing my poetic references freely--)--I continue my meandering toward Metropolis Books, I swear not two blocks away from all this. A bookstore is full of voices dependant upon our eyes to be heard. I did not hear Biddy Mason in there, but I could have asked.
I don't really know why chronos time thins out so easily and kairos shines through when I am downtown, but it does for me, and I will keep going back.
I Saw Angel's Flight In Motion...
Having gone upstairs from the Pershing Square station by a different escalator, I saw the little railway car moving. I didn't know which car it was I saw, and I could not remember which car had crashed years back. At this moment that knowledge seemed important. The cars are called Sinai and Olivet, I could remember that easily enough.
So of course I scamper over with a cry of joyful surprise, seeing finally two cars moving--it is a funicular railway after all--and they stop in the middle of the tracks, side by side on the double-tracked part. I am suspecting the somewhat eccentric people sitting around in the sun are used to these outbursts by visitors. I run over to the gate, already planning the page in my journal where I would glue down my ticket stub from having finally, finally ridden Angel's Flight again. Would they still be selling the packet of five tickets? The cyclone fence still blocked the sturdy old orange and brown gate. The sign on it still gave no indication of when Angel's Flight would open again. A place to donate money toward it was listed. I did not care, my heart still rejoiced to see Angel's Flight in motion. I'll ride it again someday.
Years ago one of the cars crashed, I believe killing a passenger (the second fatality in all its history, which is a long one.) This was due, as I recall, to faulty maintenance and faulty inspection. But I could be remembering this incorrectly.
This little dab of rail helped people scale the short steep hill from Hill St to Olive, and was, I believe, the most heavily used piece of track in the world, due to its short length and long long history. It stands about half a block down from its original location, as I recall. I used to love riding it. As I recall it now, you could buy a slip of five tickets for a dollar, single rides 25 cents, and from gate to gate, I don't think the ride took more than five minutes, if even that long. The cars were all stairs and brass rails and windows, and wood that rattled--pleasantly then--as I sat and watched the centuries meet, the last century (?) meeting the current one. It was so much more enjoyable than an elevator.
Time, technology, Who-knows-what; I don't know what is holding up the reopening of Angel's Flight but I hope it opens soon.
So of course I scamper over with a cry of joyful surprise, seeing finally two cars moving--it is a funicular railway after all--and they stop in the middle of the tracks, side by side on the double-tracked part. I am suspecting the somewhat eccentric people sitting around in the sun are used to these outbursts by visitors. I run over to the gate, already planning the page in my journal where I would glue down my ticket stub from having finally, finally ridden Angel's Flight again. Would they still be selling the packet of five tickets? The cyclone fence still blocked the sturdy old orange and brown gate. The sign on it still gave no indication of when Angel's Flight would open again. A place to donate money toward it was listed. I did not care, my heart still rejoiced to see Angel's Flight in motion. I'll ride it again someday.
Years ago one of the cars crashed, I believe killing a passenger (the second fatality in all its history, which is a long one.) This was due, as I recall, to faulty maintenance and faulty inspection. But I could be remembering this incorrectly.
This little dab of rail helped people scale the short steep hill from Hill St to Olive, and was, I believe, the most heavily used piece of track in the world, due to its short length and long long history. It stands about half a block down from its original location, as I recall. I used to love riding it. As I recall it now, you could buy a slip of five tickets for a dollar, single rides 25 cents, and from gate to gate, I don't think the ride took more than five minutes, if even that long. The cars were all stairs and brass rails and windows, and wood that rattled--pleasantly then--as I sat and watched the centuries meet, the last century (?) meeting the current one. It was so much more enjoyable than an elevator.
Time, technology, Who-knows-what; I don't know what is holding up the reopening of Angel's Flight but I hope it opens soon.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Airship Dream
Last Saturday the beloved and I were keeping our usual hours at The Press (a restaurant in Claremont. That's what people did before phones, "keep hours" in public places) when a fellow at the bar was telling us, that in west Texas, the little abandoned railroad towns are being revived by artists and other likely characters. Some place just big enough to have a post office will have three art galleries. Suddenly I was dazzled by the very idea of captaining an airship for commuter travel between them all. (And some freight too, sure.) The beloved brought up airship rides over the Grand Canyon. Yum!
Well what did I dream of Saturday night but of being an airship captain running a commuter line among little towns abandoned by the railroads! I don't think it was west Texas, it was too green. I had great fun in the dream, sipping coffee from a mug as I stood at the wheel, like an old sailing ship's wheel, like old airships had. The sun shown gently, the breeze was fresh. People moved back and forth between towns and we were all happy to see each other. I hope I dream of that again.
Imagination, and Steampunky implications...
A travel supplies catalog. I won't say which one it was I looked at today, but, well, *really.* It seemed to my eyes to be full of gear for the anxious and paranoid traveller. Heaven's sake, if you *really* think you are that menaced by leaving home--then don't go! Hire someone to go for you with all the money you would have spent on theft-proof luggage, bacteria-killing lamps, poop-deodorizers and wearable air filters and water-cleaners. (But golly now, all, all of it IS *portable.* I'll admit I'm a mild sucker for miniaturization.)
What really put the cap on it all for me was when I found the special case to keep all your credit cards, that would block--I wasn't quite clear on this part--either high-tech super thieves from stealing information off your cards, or would keep a chip in your card from broadcasting, uhm, stuff. I went all steampunky there for a moment and decided that the most fiendishly diabolical way to thwart today's super-thieves and their cutting edge naughtiness is to go as low-tech as possible.
At the Magic Castle this week I was fortunate enough to see a particularly solid ole' trouper who knows his business as a performing magician better than plenty of people. His act was a complete pleasure, being a compendium of classic effects presented superbly. I was wildly privileged to chat with some of the audience members after the show, and listen to their complete bafflement over what they had seen.
Now these were reasonable adults, not too drunk or anything of the like. They had never seen most of what the magician presented, and spun out somewhat plausible, invariably high-tech ways for the tricks to have been done. I nodded and listened and intuited that I really didn't need to instruct their imaginations/be a sanctimonious jerk about any of this.
I was intensely fascinated by it all. I see often enough people unconsideredly assume a magician is presenting all-original material, and, they don't really consider that there may be certain principles at play that are the same since the disputed images were painted in Egyptian tombs. For *me,* this makes it all the more magical. This may not be the same for everyone. What strange power and possibility lies in being able to function outside the ordinary bounds of some peoples' imaginations. I'm not quite sure how to phrase that....
Friday, May 29, 2009
Steampunk right in the midst of the era in question, and another window to be made into the past
Well if you like this sort of thing, and if you have not heard of this yet, let me tell you of it. *Tomorrow's Eve* by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, translated by Robert Martin Adams (1982). University of Illinois Press, first paperback edition, 2002. It was first published as a volume, in French, in 1886. Thomas Edison and a sensitive young English nobleman make a rather Faustian pact to create a female android. Zowie. The translator's introductory notes are engaging, and so far I have read through "Book One" of the novel. The most dedicated pastiche writer could not sustain the evenness of tone that an actual old novel has. Like many old products, plenty of this novel has aged greatly, but plenty is still disturbingly current. It can be perhaps playfully regarded as a superb steampunk novel, all the more so for being written in the period and not intended as such. So far, I've enjoyed the long discourses upon what modern humanity has come to. Anyone who has been a cubicle-denizen will get a shiver reading it. More on that as I finish it.
An idea that hit me a while back--using Moleskine City Notebooks for historical and literary notes on the place. Yum. Has anyone tried that yet?
An idea that hit me a while back--using Moleskine City Notebooks for historical and literary notes on the place. Yum. Has anyone tried that yet?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The Future of Airships
Oh my heavens!
The latest issue of dwell magazine had a small article on how airships could be making a comeback! They can carry more than planes can, and they can move faster than ships can. They don't require nearly the same infrastructure as many other forms of transport. They don't fly so high as to hurt one's eardrums, they are more energy-efficient. The article did say that a Los Angeles to New York flight would take 24 hours instead of what I believe is currently a 6 hours. So okay, although a new airship would be slower than a plane, it would still be faster than a train, yet still be close enough to the ground to see things.
As my beloved and I travelled to and from Charleston recently, we fantasized about what the trip could be like in airships. Maybe we could have boarded the ship from a landing pad right at Union Station, or at the combination helipad on top of a skyscraper. Maybe we could have had a cozy sleeper like on the Amtrak long-distance trains, and meals in a dining room, and no ear pain. There would probably have been plenty of meandering stops on the way. Maybe the ship would have been made of nylon and Kevlar.... The ideas go on and on.
We would like to see a future of quiet enviromentally sound airships hauling people and cargo about the country, as easy as trains, more flexible than buses.
The latest issue of dwell magazine had a small article on how airships could be making a comeback! They can carry more than planes can, and they can move faster than ships can. They don't require nearly the same infrastructure as many other forms of transport. They don't fly so high as to hurt one's eardrums, they are more energy-efficient. The article did say that a Los Angeles to New York flight would take 24 hours instead of what I believe is currently a 6 hours. So okay, although a new airship would be slower than a plane, it would still be faster than a train, yet still be close enough to the ground to see things.
As my beloved and I travelled to and from Charleston recently, we fantasized about what the trip could be like in airships. Maybe we could have boarded the ship from a landing pad right at Union Station, or at the combination helipad on top of a skyscraper. Maybe we could have had a cozy sleeper like on the Amtrak long-distance trains, and meals in a dining room, and no ear pain. There would probably have been plenty of meandering stops on the way. Maybe the ship would have been made of nylon and Kevlar.... The ideas go on and on.
We would like to see a future of quiet enviromentally sound airships hauling people and cargo about the country, as easy as trains, more flexible than buses.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Steampunk and Fear
Bruce Sterling wrote in an essay about steampunk (What Is Steampunk?") "The past is a future that already happened." I am not clear if this is his statement or if he was quoting, but I like it. I think it is true. The past *can* be our best laboratory for how the future *may* play out, if looked at carefully.
That's the dratted thing about the future, how utterly unknowable it is. All we can know about the future *is* the past. If certain things are done, the result tends to be thus-or-such. No extraordinary divinatory powers needed. Now of course a great many factors can be put into the analysis, and that can be a donnybrook.
What this all can add up to is a great antidote to fear. Fear is a great bother, outside of its salutatory function as the way to keep us from getting killed. Past that, it is a great enemy of hope or problem-solving. So this is part of what I like about steampunk. It has nothing to do with "recreating" an era, but rather skipping through what has come before to find possible solutions for current issues. It saves time and effort to do so, time and effort that may be spent on yet more creative pursuits. How's that for using the modern demon of "efficiency" to good purpose!
That's the dratted thing about the future, how utterly unknowable it is. All we can know about the future *is* the past. If certain things are done, the result tends to be thus-or-such. No extraordinary divinatory powers needed. Now of course a great many factors can be put into the analysis, and that can be a donnybrook.
What this all can add up to is a great antidote to fear. Fear is a great bother, outside of its salutatory function as the way to keep us from getting killed. Past that, it is a great enemy of hope or problem-solving. So this is part of what I like about steampunk. It has nothing to do with "recreating" an era, but rather skipping through what has come before to find possible solutions for current issues. It saves time and effort to do so, time and effort that may be spent on yet more creative pursuits. How's that for using the modern demon of "efficiency" to good purpose!
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Just Lusting
I discovered the Stanley London website. Oh my goodness gracious....
Sextants, telescopes, compasses, various optics and navigational helps, a few pocket watches, a heavy antiqued brass chain for a pocket item--compass or a watch. Lots of handsome functional brass and steel items. I desire most of them fiercely.
Now you know I have a perfectly funtional compass and a pocketwatch. Oh, but, but, but. I'm thinking that going steampunk would be a good style decision to support my wearing a bush jacket of peculiar design to accomodate all the little telescopes and compasses, and watches and whatever else, each fastened with its own handsome chain, (would I end up looking like a Victorian gentleman-gangbanger, with all the chains? Well not if I wear a skirt....) and the fountain pens each with different colored inks, and the collection of Moleskines (feh, yeah, the ones magically altered to take fountain pen ink! Feh.) Then my discreetly handsome leather knapsack can hold my colored pencils, and watchsprings and gluestick, and little stainless steel coffee thermos, and my Sigg water bottle, and a nice snack packed in a tiffin....
Well, truth to tell, I can do alot of this already, and I am well-supplied for places to visit once this well-provisioned. Sorta a grown-up Dora the Explorer I suspect....
Sextants, telescopes, compasses, various optics and navigational helps, a few pocket watches, a heavy antiqued brass chain for a pocket item--compass or a watch. Lots of handsome functional brass and steel items. I desire most of them fiercely.
Now you know I have a perfectly funtional compass and a pocketwatch. Oh, but, but, but. I'm thinking that going steampunk would be a good style decision to support my wearing a bush jacket of peculiar design to accomodate all the little telescopes and compasses, and watches and whatever else, each fastened with its own handsome chain, (would I end up looking like a Victorian gentleman-gangbanger, with all the chains? Well not if I wear a skirt....) and the fountain pens each with different colored inks, and the collection of Moleskines (feh, yeah, the ones magically altered to take fountain pen ink! Feh.) Then my discreetly handsome leather knapsack can hold my colored pencils, and watchsprings and gluestick, and little stainless steel coffee thermos, and my Sigg water bottle, and a nice snack packed in a tiffin....
Well, truth to tell, I can do alot of this already, and I am well-supplied for places to visit once this well-provisioned. Sorta a grown-up Dora the Explorer I suspect....
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