Countries… Culture… the Wicking Effect by Raye Dean

Today we welcome Ray Dean!

A reenactor and educator, Ray Dean has delved into many eras of the past, but Steampunk speaks to her in a retroactive futurism that opens so many possibilities. Her blog, My Ethereality http://www.raydean.net, explores history, culture, war and love in eras and countries that might influence a Steampunk world

Countries… Culture… the Wicking Effect

by Raye Dean

When someone brings up Steampunk, most people immediately call up an image of bowler hats, bustles, monocles, corsets, goggles. Then next concept is Victorian alternative history/speculative fiction… and by saying Victorian… the initial connection is England. No argument there for me. I’ve had a longtime love affair with English history, especially the Victorian Era mainly because I have a long history in theater and costume, nuff said.

Still, there’s more to the world of Steampunk than a single country or culture. One of the clearest memories of High School was arguing England’s POV on Colonialism in a debate. Part of the mindset of my argument that England was seeking to, in a way, make the world England. The underlying idea for me was that making the world over in its own image was to make it something they could understand. Foreign was fine for quaint pieces of furniture, luxurious fabrics, spices and wild creatures fit for menageries, but it wasn’t England.

Colonialism is impossible in its purest sense. There is no way to take control of another country and its people without having ‘the Wicking Effect.’ What do I mean by that? I used to hand paint silk and when you add a color onto the fabric it will spread and continue to spread until it hits the end of the fabric or the wall of resist that the artist adds. Add another color to the mix and they’ll spread and mix and change together. The same happens with culture.

Put an Englishman in China, even if he continues to observe all the societal norms and keeps himself as ‘separate’ as possible, there is no way to avoid some sort of exchange of culture. Perhaps a Jasmine tea will become a favorite of his or he’ll use a silk fabric for his waistcoat that has a design motif common for the area. The locals in the area will change as well. They will pick up on his inflection, learn what his habits are and try as they might to avoid absorbing some of it… it will happen.

In the Shanghai Steam anthology this mixing or clash of cultures is a main point of a number of stories.

Derwin Mak (the author of “Flying Devils”) explains:

Steampunk tends to romanticize European culture and its technology of the nineteenth century. I heard one steampunk costumer say it was “nobler period.” Well, it was for some people. It was a nobler period than today if you were a white European who left Europe’s slums and colonized another continent. If you were African, Asian, or Native American, it wasn’t as glorious. The Chinese do not romanticize the nineteenth century as a golden era. Instead, it was the time of national humiliation and the uneven treaties.

I merged the two opposing views of the nineteenth century by basing my story on the Self-Strengthening Movement in the Chinese military. My story is about one of the ideological conflicts of the time.

In my own story, “Fire in the Sky,” I had set up my own alternative history:

There are more walls than wick as the English are viewed as an economic occupying force. The people that occupy the town have had to accomodate not only the English trade ships but the technology that came with them. In my opinion, there are few absolutes. In the case of the technology brought in by the English, there are those that accept it and those that turn their back on it, but even those that are eager to advance themselves with technology… it doesn’t always work for them. For me part of the fun of this mix and clash of cultures is the accomodations that have to be made. And when accomodations don’t work? You salvage what you can… and make do.

Emily Mah (author of “Last Flight of the Lóng Qíshì”) has another take on merging cultures:

Since mine’s post apocalyptic, much of the Chinese culture is only left in the aesthetics of the old technologies. The culture that inhabits the ruins left behind is a mix of different ethnicities who live as hunter/gatherers.

This isn’t just limited to the English in their travels and expansions. The concept of foreign also applies to immigrants.

Laurel Anne Hill (author of “Moon-Flame Woman”) had a different perspective:

The tremendous contribution of Chinese workers in the building of the U.S. Transcontinental Railway never ceases to impress me.  Yet nineteenth-century Chinese laborers in the United States didn’t receive the respect they deserved.  Immigrants were–and still are–often viewed as stereotypes.  I wrote Moon-Flame Woman to depict immigrants as individuals.

Americans seemed to absorb other cultures faster, giving them footholds where a country like England wouldn’t see fit. A number of dishes that Americans ate during the same period were not from China. The Chinese cooks in America would throw together whatever odds and ends were around and earned itself a place in American stomachs and on many menus. The commonly accepted history of the ‘chop suey’ you see on modern menus comes from this very practice. Perhaps this hodge podge worked better in America because the country, as it was shaping up, was more of an immigrant nation.

When the Shanghai Steam anthology is released you’ll have the opportunity to delve into the nineteen short stories that add up to a unique Steampunk… and Wuxia… experience. As you read through the stories look for those moments when cultures crash and/or bleed into each other. Keep careful watch… one culture may just push back.

What cultures would you like to see come crashing into one another? What types of culture bleeds might happen when two foreign nations interact? Where can you add this idea into your own work?

Contributing Authors listed in alphabetical order:

Ray Dean “Fire in the Sky”   http://www.raydean.net

Lauren Anne Hill “Moon-Flame Woman”     http://www.laurelannehill.com/

Emily Mah “Last Flight of the Long Qishi”   http://www.emilymah.com

Derwin Mak “Flying Devils”  http://www.derwinmaksf.com

~Raye Dean

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Ancient Clockwork by Maeve Alpin

Steampunk Greek Gods – photographed by Foodbyfax at DragonCon 2010

Steampunk writers and readers love clockwork automations but they go back much further than you may think. They begin as long ago as ancient Greece, third century B.C. with Ctesibus, the first head of the library in Alexandria. He invented the hydraulis a water organ and the first keyboard musical instrument, the ancestor of the modern pipe organ. Clocks are a big part of Steampunk and his, the clepsydra, kept more accurate time than any clock until Dutch physicist, Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock in the 17th century AD. If Ctesibus invented such a marvelous clock, what else could he, someone, or others have created to technologically revolutionize ancient Greece? Does your muse have you thinking about togas? What about a Steampunk and Greek mythology? Steampunk Greek Goddesses.

Asian Steampunk at Aetherfest 2012

But before Huygens came along with his swinging pendulum, a Chinese monk, Su Sung, created atowering clepsydra in 1092 AD. It stood five stories high, and was operated by a large water wheel, which acted very similar to a modern clock escapement. It most likely was the first mechanical clock. Every fifteen minutes the water wheel turned, then all the other cogs and gears, which opened and closed doors that released the automata. Here is a scale model of Su Sung’s clock. Just imagine, historical China and Steampunk, what a perfect combination for an exotic, adventure tale.

Let’s go through the mist of time from China to Japan back when Shoguns ruled and to the invention of karakuri dolls, the ancestors of modern robots.The dolls were crafted of paulownia wood with gear wheels to move the joints, and whale whiskers were used as the springs in the mechanism.

Just think, Shoguns, robots, and Steampunk, who could ask for more.

I hope you find this information interesting and aslo helpful for anyone who’s writing a Steampunk story set much further back than the 19^th century.

Maeve Alpin

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Maritime Steampunk by Maeve Alpin

two of our tour guides dressed the part

42nd Airborne battalion at the Houston Maritime Museum

Recently with the help of the Steampunk group, the 42^nd Airship Battalion, I organized an outing to the Houston Maritime museum. The tour included over 150 model ship exhibits, spanning the age of exploration to the modern merchant marines and several models of steam powered ships from the Victorian age. As you can see from the photos we all had an amazing time.

Steampunk outing at the Maritime Museum

The museum exhibits included models of steam paddle ships. Riverboats conjure images of fun and adventure and are therefore a perfect setting for a Steampunk story. Paddle boats were highly popular in the 18^thcentury for navigating well in shallow waters as well as up river against fierce currents. Prior to the development of the railways they were a favorite ways to travel. The interiors of the antebellum riverboats were luxurious with elaborate crystal chandeliers, lush hand carved furniture, oriental rugs, and so much more.  Of course one needs drama and trauma in any novel and there is plenty of opportunity for that on a steam paddle ship.

at the Houston Maritime Museum

Fire is always s a great disaster for fiction. At the museum I learned the double steam stacks towered so high to keep sparks as far away from the wood boat as possible. Still sometimes an ember would hit the ship. Wood and paint are highly flammable so fire, panic, and catastrophe would ensue. If you want something even more dramatic, the boilers sometimes exploded in a huge, ear splitting, blast of fire and smoke, resulting in the deaths of many passengers and leaving even more injured.  Body parts were literary blown off.  In 1830 the US Congress funded research to end boiler explosions. Here is a website that even list River Boat demise with the reason and year of the loss.

The museum also had an exhibit on the Texas Navy which served the Republic of Texas when it stood as a separate country from 1836 into 1845 after gaining independence from Mexico. The idea of combing the wild west with Victorian nautical influences thrilled my muse. You can see more of these valiant fighting men in tiny but feisty ships on this youtube video.

To me the most important Victorian submarine was the Plongeur, simply because when Jules Verne saw it at the Exposition Universelle in 1867, it served as his inspiration for the Nautilus. However, the museum’s model of and news clipping about the confederate submarine the H. L. Hunley intrigued me. This combat submarine, named after its inventor Horace Lawson Hunley, was the first sub to sink an enemy warship. However, the Hunley itself sunk three times in its short career. The second time it sunk, Horace Lawson Hunley was among one of the men who drowned. After the Hunley’s successful attack on the screw sloop, the USS Housatonic the sub sank for unknown reasons and was lost.

Speaking of the confederacy and the U.S Civil war the museum included models of the ironclad ships, the rebel Merrimac and the union Monitor. Ironclads refer to steam powered warships of that era, protected by iron or steel armor plates. By the end of the U. S. civil war the Union was building triple turreted ironclads with twenty inch mounted guns. By the 1880’s ironclads were equipped with the heaviest guns ever mounted at sea and more sophisticated steam engines. Modern day battleships developed from these ironclad ships.

If you have a maritime museum in your local area, I encourage you to visit. Organize a Steampunk outing there if you are able, I guarantee you it’ll be a lot of fun and I’m sure you’ll gather inspiration for your Steampunk writing. After all, it’s sad to think of this, but if  Jules Verne had not attended the Exposition Universelle in 1867 and seen the Plongeur, we might not have 20,000 Leauges Under The Sea, which readers enjoy to this day, over 140 years after it was first published.

There may well be an exhibit at your local museum just waiting for you to discover it and gain inspiration for your next book.

Maeve Alpin

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A Review of SteamCon II

If you’ve never been to a steampunk con, let me say, you’re missing something. It is emersion into the culture at it’s finest. Where do I even begin?

Just look at that arm!

How about Friday? Friday early I arrived at the location of SteamCon II, which was held between the SeaTac Marriot and SeaTac Hilton. (For those of you not familiar with the Seattle area, that’s right across from the Seattle airport, which means it’s great for people flying in, but not so fun to walk between the two up the hill and down the hill depending on which activity or workshop you were interested in.) The registration lines looped around a bit like Disneyland, and people in the pre-registered line were all in costume, and so were most of those who were coming in to register that day for the event. Unlike other conferences and conventions I’ve been to, the costuming is a huge part of the experience. There’s eye-candy everywhere.

Fabulously Dressed Ladies in Workshop

They gave us a newspaper-like program heaped with so many different workshops and events it was likely to make your top-hat spin. What a glorious array! Everything from steampunk modding and how real gun fights work to magic and steampunk, and chats with the likes of James Blaylock (one

Tuesday Lolita Theresa Meyers with James Blaylock

of the founding fathers of the genre), Cherie Priest, Gail Carriger, Jay Lake, Nick Valentino and the intrepid inventor Jake Von Slatt, and a set of Steampunk ghost-busting enthusiasts from The League of S.T.E.A.M.

Member of The League of S.T.E.A.M.

There was a Grand Mercantile with a huge array of things to be purchased – feathers, leathers, hats and tea, corsets, books and jewelry (oh, good grief, does that actually rhyme?) You could find numerous opportunities to practice your acting skills in live action role-playing events (LARP), or game away in the various game rooms. (I attempted to sit in on a card and dice game of The Good, The Bad and The Munchkin, and having never played any sort of Munchkin was still horribly newbie and lost despite the best efforts of my fellow players at the end of an hour. Thank you to those of you who were so gracious and patient.)

The devine Cherie Priest on her way to a workshop

Friday also presented us with the First Annual Airship Awards, where lovely little airship statuettes were presented for the best in written, auditory, visual and community support of the genre. (Winners and finalists in each can be found at the SteamCon II website if you are curious.) They had a lovely dinner, and big screen flashing various images of the finalist. A few funny speeches and a lot of fun talk around the tables with fellow steampunk enthusiasts.

Saturday saw more workshops and the hosting of a most memorable afternoon tea and fashion show. The designers had some absolutely stunning clothes (which I believe there might be pictures of at the SteamCon website shortly).

A good doggone answer to What is Steampunk?

Due to an unforeseen series of most fortunate events, I was invited to fill in for an author who had to cancel at the last moment, so I spoke on three different panels and gave a reading. May I say, if you ever get the opportunity to go to a workshop by Jay Lake, do so. He is a veritable fount of one-liners that are both groan-worthy and very humorous at the same time.

That is a HUGE hand, mister.

We talked about what is steampunk, dissecting the genre, as it were, and after an hour came to the conclusion that it’s as much time period and aesthetic as it is a particular feeling to the work which is based in the gilded age where excess reigned supreme and exploration was rather mandatory, vs. diesel-punk which has roots more firmly grounded in the dystopian elements of the great depression and world war, where scarcity rules the day and invention is out of necessity to use and reuse whatever one had on hand to survive.

A Teapot handbag! How brilliant!

I went to workshops on ghost hunting in the Victorian era, steam cowboys and one about Hoaxes perpetuated by newspapers of the time by the likes of writers such as Samuel Clemens and Edgar Allen Poe, who apparently made a decent enough showing of it to have their tales of airships being spotted over the city, and animals escaping zoos in the midst of busy down-town cities very popular – and gasp, news of the day. In fact, I found it most fascinating that fictional tales were often intermingled with actual news items in such prestigious publications at The Boston Globe, and not much was done to distinguish between the two. (Wait, how is that so different than today’s reporting?)

L to R Nick Valentino, Tues. Lolita Theresa and Wed. Lolita Elizabeth

I digress. I went shopping in the grand mercantile and purchased a new corset, some tea and some Christmas presents. I had fun lunch with fellow Lolita Elizabeth Darvill. Late in the day I gave a reading from my Weird West set steampunk The Hunter, which doesn’t even come out until late 2011. I let the audience choose, from two sections, action or spicy. They unanimously picked the spicy version. Unfortunately, we’d spent so much time chit-chatting to start that we barely even got into the spicy bit before my half hour was up.

They actually move up and down!

I also took time to visit the art gallery. Wow! Such creativity. (I didn’t know if we were actually allowed to take pictures, so I opted not to.) There were three-dimensional sculptures, prints, clothing, jewelry and more.

Saturday night was the esteemed Outlaw Concert featuring three different bands, including the well-known steampunk stylings of Abney Park. There were people crowded, spinning, dipping and doing what suspiciously looked to me like the Tango out on the dance floor in front of the stage. We were admonished at the beginning of the concert not to leap upon the stage due to the damaging of equipment in the past from such behaviors. While I had to leave early (because I was driving back and forth from home each day rather than staying at the hotel) apparently the high enthusiasm kept up until 3:30 Sunday morning.

Lovely use of top hat and corset!

Which made giving a workshop at 9:00 am Sunday morning a bit of let down. A few hardy souls trickled in to hear about Steampunk Young Adult books, but by far, I think people were likely still dealing with the affects of the concert the night before. I was part of another talk later in the day about Character vs. Setting which was better attended.

I also went to a workshop about the history of steam propulsion that was incredible. Who knew the first hybrid steam/electric car was actually introduced in 1903 and the Prius in 2003? Makes you wonder what the auto industry has actually be working on in the last 100 years, doesn’t it?

Hey, Zombies! Mad Scientist with Brain Pack over here!

My overall impression is that steampunk cons are a meeting of the mind, the creative, social and intellectual (not to mention the dancing portion of one’s anatomy). If you really want to have a good time, prepared to bring comfortable shoes and costumes. Not just one costume, but at least one for each day, and possibly a forth for dancing or going to fancier dinners and events. And don’t be shy about being a mad scientist with a backpack brain on one day and an aeronaut hottie with brown bolero-length bomber jacket and brown leather and wool trimmed hot pants on another, and a high-society vixen with an outrageous top hat and bustle on the third. Everything goes as long as it relates back to the genre. And the array of hats is very impressive. One person at a workshop put it best, “I’ve discovered something about steampunk, there is no such thing as excess. One can never have too much of anything.”

No such thing as excess, I tell you!

Be prepared to shop for those things you’ll find it difficult to get elsewhere. Have business cards so you can share with fellow steampunk fans, and for the love of all that’s decent, if you are going to give a workshop, at least provide some type of handout to go with your brilliant Powerpoint so people will have something to take with them. There’s just too much information to store it all under one’s top hat and I found myself scribbling like a jibbering idiot to keep up.

All in all it was a fantastic event, so worthy in fact, that I’ve already pre-registered for next year! There’s steampunk conventions aplenty out there. If you are interested in the genre, think you want to write in it or would just like something fun and crazy to do for a weekend go to one! And of course this isn’t ALL the pictures…if you are looking for more check out the SteamCon II album over at www.facebook.com/TheresaMeyersAuthor or go www.steamcon.org and check out their gallery.

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From the AP: Poe’s Mourner Is A No Show

By BEN NUCKOLS and JOSEPH WHITE, Associated Press Writers Ben Nuckols And Joseph White, Associated Press Writers – Tue Jan 19, 6:22 pm ET

BALTIMORE – It is what Edgar Allan Poe might have called “a mystery all insoluble”: Every year for the past six decades, a shadowy visitor would leave roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on Poe’s grave on the anniversary of the writer’s birth. This year, no one showed.

Did the mysterious “Poe toaster” meet his own mortal end? Did some kind of ghastly misfortune befall him? Will he be heard from nevermore?

“I’m confused, befuddled,” said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

The visitor’s absence this year only deepened the mystery over his identity. One name mentioned as a possibility was that of a Baltimore poet and known prankster who died in his 60s last week. But there is little or no evidence to suggest he was the man.

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EDGAR ALLAN POE: What You May Not Know About Him

 Edgar Allan Poe is the only Victorian author to have an NFL Football Team named for his writing.

BALTIMORE 

RAVENS!

You go, Edgar!

He’s probably the only writer in world whose life is celebrated yearly by a lone Toaster.  The Poe Toaster is the unofficial nickname given to a mysterious figure who pays an annual tribute to American author Poe by visiting the author’s original grave marker on his birthday, January 19. Though many gather annually to watch for the toaster and his yearly visit is supported by the Edgar Allan Poe Society, he is rarely seen or photographed. His identity has never been revealed to the public. The original toaster visited the tomb yearly between 1949 and his death in 1998, after which time the tradition was left to “a son.”  A bottle of cognac is usually left on his tombstone.

Thomas M. Disch has argued in his The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of (1998) that it was actually Poe who was the originator of the modern science fiction.

Poe’s work and his theory of “pure poetry” was early recognized especially in France, where he inspired Jules Verne, Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), Paul Valéry (1871-1945) and Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898). “In Edgar Poe,” wrote Baudelaire, “there is no tiresome snivelling; but everywhere and at all times an indefatigable enthusiasm in seeking the ideal.”

In America Emerson called him “the jingle man.” Poe’s influence is seen in many other modern writers, and in the development of the19th century detective novel. J.L. Borges, R.L. Stevenson, and a vast general readership, have been impressed by the stories which feature Poe’s detective Dupin (‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, 1841; ‘The Purloined Letter,’ 1845) and the morbid metaphysical speculation of ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Waldermar’ (1845).

One of his tales, ‘Mellonta Taunta’ (1840) describes a future society, an anti-Utopia, in which Poe satirizes his own times. Other tales in this vein are ‘The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Sceherazade’ and ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom’. However, Poe was not concerned with any specific scientific concept but mostly explored different realities, one of the central concerns of science fiction ever since

Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809 in Boston, where his mother had been employed as an actress. Elizabeth Arnold Poe died in Richmond, Virginia, on December 8, 1811. His father, also an actor, had died in 1810 and Edgar was taken into the family of John Allan, a member of the firm of Ellis and Allan, tobacco-merchants. Edgar added the surname Allan as his middle name.

The cities of Baltimore, Maryland, and Richmond, Virginia, have wonderful POE MUSEUMS. There are Edgar Allan Poe Societies and several American universities have Poe Studies Departments. 

Annabel Lee, is the most famous poem composed by Poe. Like many of his poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman.  The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are jealous. He retains his love for her even after her death. There has been debate over who, if anyone, was the inspiration for “Annabel Lee.” Though many women have been suggested, Poe’s wife Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe is one of the more credible candidates. Written in 1849, it was not published until shortly after Poe’s death that same year.

EDGAR ALLAN POE’S WRITINGS:

Tamerlane and Other Poems, By a Bostonian, 1827, was followed by a large body of work, some of which is still being adapted into films.

Metzengerstein, 1832

MS Found in a Bottle, 1833

Morella, 1835

Shadow, 1835

Berenice, 1835

Loss of Breath, 1835

Bon-Bon, 1835

King Pest, 1835

Ligeia, 1838

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838 (unfinished)

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1839

The Conchologist’s First Book, 1839 (ed.)

The Fall of the House of Usher, 1839

William Wilson, 1839

Silence, 1839

The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion, 1839

The Devil in the Belfrey, 1839

The Conchologist’s First Book, 1839 (with others)

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840

The Man of the Crowd, 1840

A Descent into Maelström, 1841

The Island of the Fay, 1841

The Colloquy of Monos and Una, 1841

The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1841

The Masque of the Red Death, 1842

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, 1842-43

Eleonara, 1842

The Oval Portrait, 1842

The Black Cat, 1843

The Gold Bug, 1843

The Pit and the Pendulum, 1843

The Prose Poems of Edgar A. Poe, 1843

The Tell-Tale Heart, 1843

The Oblong Box, 1844

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains, 1844

The Balloon Hoax, 1844

The Elk, 1844

The Assignation (aka The Visionary), 1844

Thou Art the Man, 1844

The Spectacles, 1844

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, 1845

The Premature Burial, 1845 

The Purloined Letter, 1845

The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade, 1845

The Imp of the Perverse, 1845

The Raven and Other Poems, 1845 

Tales, 1845

The Cask of Amontillado, 1846

The Domain of Arnheim, 1847

Eureka: A Prose Poem, 1848

Mellonta Tauta, 1849

Hop-Frog, 1849

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