To Steampunk with Temperance
Hello?
Is anybody there?
This is Ichabod Temperance in the year 1876 attempting to make textual contact with the year 2015.
Do you read me?
It’s a good thing I’m wearing my goggles, because the inter-dimensional, trans-universe/temperal-flowmograph is spitting sparks in every direction! These vacuum tubes are as hot as all get out so I better be brief.
The afore mentioned machine has allowed me to publish my astounding adventures in your world. I understand that the genre my writings fall under is denoted ‘Steampunk’. This is my understanding of the development of that word. As digital formats emerged, in the 1980’s and 90’s, fiction writers delved into the dangers and unforeseen problems of this rapid rise in technology. This was known as ‘cyberpunk’. When writers of the 1990’s wrote of fictional scientific endeavors in the 1890’s, this begat the name ‘steampunk’.
When I look at steampunk from my imagined 2015 point of view, I see it as re-imagining the birth of the science fiction genre. There is a remarkable delight people take in returning to the world of Jules Verne, H.G. Welles, and the science fiction elements of Conan Doyle, and then adding a peculiar twist. This is often seen as an alternate history, but with fantastical elements thrown in. Warring countries battle each other or bands of pirates with fleets of dirigibles and massive battleships. Secret properties of electricity are exploited by Mankind, for both Good and Evil. Secret agents abound in worlds stocked with wondrous spring or steam-driven clockwork devices. This is not just writing, but costuming and film-making as well.
Many writers like to add a supernatural flair to their writings. I confess, my own adventures have had some inexplicable phenomenon. World-devouring, tentacle faced, inter-dimensional monster/conquerors, hundred foot tall red-haired super-beauty witches, Egyptian Gods, vampires, and zombies are some of the monsters you will encounter in these adventures, but the book we are concerned with, ‘For the Love of Temperance’, our heroes are faced with Martian invaders and their terrible three-legged war-machines!
The Earth that you folks reside in is different from the one where I am. You see, our solar system was visited by a strange comet. When the Earth rolled through its wake, many people found that their own natural proclivities to be mightily enhanced. It didn’t take long before wondrous devices began to be built by many of these comet enhanced tinkers. I am one of the folks that was affected by the comet’s pass. I have a real talent for building amazing contraptions! I have built several gadgets such as ‘See in the dark’ goggles, ecto-plasmic based weapon platforms, underwater breathing apparatus and the like, but there are lots of inventors out there. Mechanical horses, clockwork men, steam powered carriages, and thousands of other devices are being built all the time.
That comet did more than just kick off a wave of inventiveness. Actors, writers, are also very prolific, but, so to has the seedier side of Mankind’s nature been unbound.
I’m just a feller from Alabama, but fortune has allowed me to gain an unimagined accomplice in my adventures. British beauty, Miss Persephone Plumtartt is my stalwart ally in the horrible pickles of disaster in which we are often embroiled. Her no-nonsense aristocratic authority is no joke!
As it is, in ‘For the Love of Temperance’, those dang Martian walker war-machines are proving to be more than Earth’s weapons can handle! It’s gonna be up to me, Miss Plumtartt, and a cast of charming characters to save our planet!
Oh my Goodness! A vacuum tube just burst! I better let y’all go.
Thanks for stopping by this lovely blog and reading this post!
Cheers!
Your pal,
~Icky. :-)
Title:For the Love of Temperance
Author: Ichabod Temperance
Genre: Steampunk/Paranormal
“Golly, Miss Plumtartt, the Earth is getting pummeled with meteorites!”
“I say, if only these projectiles were organically based,
Mr. Temperance, I would not be of such a troubled mind, but I fear that the flaming flotsam are revealing themselves to be warcraft from the planet Mars.
Their weapons are uncanny and easily defeat the greatest of Terras resources.
These invaders wish to strip our beloved planet of her native sovereignty!”
“Holy Red Planet Invaders, Miss Plumtartt, you're right! I reckon it's gonna be up to you, me, and this charming cast of characters to save the Earth in this War betwixt the Worlds.”
About the Author:
Ichabod Temperance is a silly little fellow living in
picturesque Irondale Alabama, USA, along with his lovely gracious patient and
kind muse, Miss Persephone Plumtartt and their furry pack family.
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