• Home
  • LOLITAS
  • READING LISTS
  • STEAMPUNKAPALOOZA
  • WRITING STEAMPUNK

STEAMED!

Writing Steampunk Fiction

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« The Dead Flower Case
Bits and Pieces »

Three Hundred Years Hence

November 19, 2013 by Cornelia Amiri

By reading early sci-fi books, you gather wonderful steampunk ideas, as well as a Victorian and Regency perspective on their vision of the future. Contrary to what I’ve heard some people say, women have written Sci-Fi books for hundreds of years. Including several published in the Regency and Victorian eras. One example is Mary Griffith’s, Three Hundred Years Hence, the first utopia story written by an American woman. After its publication in 1836, many American authors followed her lead, and still do to this day.

Mary Griffith

In Three Hundred Years Hence, Mary Griffith envisioned a feminist future in the year 2135. She set the book in Philadelphia, her hometown. In some ways, her vision of the future is strange, at times not quite right, and in other ways it’s amazing. Keep in mind, she wrote this in 1835.

In her novel, the main character, Edgar Hastings, when leaving on a business trip, as he walks to the steamboat, stops off at a small farmhouse on his estate. There he falls asleep. A great thaw causes a bank of snow from the hill above to cover the farmhouse. His family never tries to dig out his body as they think he’s was on the steamship, which happened to explode. So they thought he died in the explosion with the other passengers.

Three hundred years later, his descendants, who still own the property, hire workers to cut a road through the hill. They come to a stratum of ice. After the workers cut through the ice, they discover the farmhouse. Edgar’s descendants step inside and that is when he thaws out and wakes up, still alive. But he thinks he’s in the wrong place for so much has changed in 300 years. He finds the improvements taken place since his accident, amazing. Edgar’s descendants explain the improved conditions are due entirely to the changes that took place when all poor females were given an education.

In Philadelphia, Edgar only recognizes five buildings still standing from his day: the Mint, the United States Bank, the Asylum for the deaf and dumb and Girard College, (still in operation and the school’s buildings, shown in this drawing, still stand). Of all those, only one of them, the mint, was demolished, the other three still stand in 2013, almost two hundred years later.

In the book, Edgar’s descendants inform him, no one goes door to door asking for donations to charities anymore. Now, each state runs its own charitable institutions, except for those people volunteer to maintain with their own money.

The old market place used to be a roof supported by pillars with stone pavement running the length of it, where women selling food and wares sat under the arch, outside of the pillars, and yelled through the streets, carrying fish and vegetables on their heads. Now it’s changed into a two story, fire proof building of hewn stone. On the upper story, wooden, tin, baskets, and crockery domestic wares, as well as seeds and garden utensils, are all kept clean and are neatly arranged. On the ground floor, under which runs a stream of cold, clear water, are a variety of fruits and vegetables. All the women clerks, selling the produce, wear caps and snow white aprons, and stand or sit by their baskets, no longer having to yell. In the butcher shop, meat is no longer hung in the open air. You just ask for a particular joint and a small door opens, two feet square in the wall and there hangs the part, priced four cents a pound.

Steamboats due to all their boiler explosions and the deaths they caused were replaced in 1850. A woman invented a new power for the boats to run on – no steam, no heat, nor animal power, no masts and no sails, and not condensed air, which was tried in Edgar’s time – but with enough energy to move the largest ship.

In China, the feet of their women are allowed to grow and they import their fashions from France. They also have made great improvements in the conditions of their lower class, all due to humanizing the treatment of women.

Tobacco is no longer grown, due to the disgusting habit of tobacco juice. (Not due to the dangers of nicotine and cancer, which no one in the Regency era knew about.) Instead of copyrights for 14 years, as in Edgar’s time, they are held by the author, then by his/her family as long as they choose to keep it. Daniel Webster became president in 1842, (of course that didn’t happen).

Monopolies have become illegal. In 1848, the monopolies of roads are broken up and come under the state governments, then later, control of the roads all merge under the federal government.

In the rail cars they travel in, the seats are all nice rocking chairs. The cars run silently with little friction as the rails of the road and the tires of the wheels are of wood. They also come in a variety of sizes – some small enough for only two or four passengers. They run by themselves and you just turn a little crank to bring the machine to a stop.

Edgar’s descendants explain that as soon as women were considered of equal importance with their husbands – as soon as they were financially equal – all barbaric practices of the age disappeared. Women exterminated all wars to abstain from shedding human blood except in self-defense or in cases of invasion. No more hangings, criminals are sent to solitary confinement.

He also finds that slavery is abolished and the rights and privileges of African Americans are respected and all without a civil war. The government, rich in resources, and rich in land, sells the land, and with that money, they indemnify the slaveholders for their loss of property. (Keep in mind she is writing this twenty-six years before the civil war began).

Three Hundred Years Hence is just one example of Sci-fi written by a woman, many years ago. Women have been reading and writing Sci-fi and utopia novels for hundreds of years and will continue to do so far into the future. We modern women, in reading and writing sci-fi, are simply following an old tradition. This link will take you to an interesting list of science fiction books by female authors that were published before 1923. It begins with Lady Mary Wroth’s, The Countesse of Mountgomeries, Urania, published in 1621. This link is to an amazing post on nine women who shaped sci-fi.

Please feel free to comment below. All comments welcomed.

~      ~      ~

Maeve Alpin, who also writes as Cornelia Amiri, is the author of 19 published books. Her latest Steampunk/Romance is Conquistadors In Outer Space. She lives in Houston Texas with her son, granddaughter, and her cat, Severus.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Steampunk | 3 Comments

3 Responses

  1. on November 20, 2013 at 3:40 am Karen Sava Critter

    Best blog, most interesting, I felt the excitement of reading that I had as a child, thankyou for the links.


  2. on November 20, 2013 at 4:30 am Liz S

    This was fascinating. Thanks for providing the additional links.


    • on November 20, 2013 at 7:08 am maevealpin

      Thank you so much, Liz. I appreciate your comment so much, I’m glad you liked the information, I plan to do other post about the founding mothers of sci-fi. I sometimes hear comments at cons, or hear of comments, or even read some indicating people have forgotten about these early female sci-fi writers. I didn’t know of many of them myself and am just now discovering them. They are so important as their books are filled with so much inspiration and information for modern Steampunk authors and readers and of course there books are a type of timemahcine that links us to the minds of strong talented women of the Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian era. When writing about strong women of that time period, in steampunk, it’s good to have a glimpse of what they actually thought.



Comments are closed.

  • Welcome to Steamed!

    We hope you enjoy Steamed. We're no longer adding new content, but we have lots of great stuff. so please enjoy!

  • Pages

    • LOLITAS
    • READING LISTS
      • Reviews
      • Steam Classics
    • STEAMPUNKAPALOOZA
      • Steampunkapalooza 2010
      • Steampunkapalooza 2011
      • Steampunkapalooza 2012
    • WRITING STEAMPUNK
  • Recent Posts

    • Lit-Con at Write Space
    • Tea Time
    • Gail Carriger – Book Signing for Prudence
    • Quest for the Lost City of Z
    • The Great Airship Scare of 1896 – 1897
  • Archives

    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • September 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
  • Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,793 other subscribers
    • RSS - Posts
    • RSS - Comments

WPThemes.


  • Follow Following
    • STEAMED!
    • Join 755 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • STEAMED!
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
%d bloggers like this: