SteampubkPrime Read online

  Selection and introduction copyright © 2010 by Mike Ashley

  Foreword © 2010 by Paul di Filippo

  Interior illustrations © 2010 by Luis Ortiz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

  Book design by Luis Ortiz • Production by Nonstop Ink

  ISBN 978-1933065-18-2 Trade Paper

  ISBN 978-1-933065-19-9 Epub

  ISBN 978-1-933065-21-2 Mobi

  Nonstop Press

  www.nonstop-press.com

  Contents

  FOREWORD: BRIT BOFFIN DELIVERS STEAMPUNK’S PURE QUILL! or AFTER SUCH KNOWLEDGE, WHAT THRILLS?

  INTRODUCTION: WHEN STEAMPUNK WAS REAL

  MR. BROADBENT’S INFORMATION

  THE AUTOMATON

  THE ABDUCTION OF ALEXANDRA SEINE

  THE GIBRALTAR TUNNEL

  FROM POLE TO POLE

  IN THE DEEP OF TIME

  THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE SEVEN KINGS

  THE PLAGUE OF LIGHTS

  WHAT THE RATS BROUGHT

  THE GREAT CATASTROPHE

  WITHIN AN ACE OF THE END OF THE WORLD

  AN INTERPLANETARY RUPTURE

  THE LAST DAYS OF EARTH

  THE PLUNGE

  SOURCES

  Contributors

  FOREWORD: BRIT BOFFIN DELIVERS STEAMPUNK’S PURE QUILL! or AFTER SUCH KNOWLEDGE, WHAT THRILLS?

  Paul Di Filippo

  “IT’S NEVER TOO LATE to have a happy childhood.”

  This bumper-sticker-quality slogan, often interpreted as a slightly disreputable excuse for intransigent Peter-Pan-style misbehavior and shirking of adult responsibilities, seems to me somehow admirable and endorsable on a higher plane, and also to be a sentiment particularly tied up with the science-fiction weltanschauung.

  We all know another expression that is a kissing cousin to the one above: “The Golden Age of science fiction is thirteen.”

  Put the two maxims together, and you get something that may be more tediously and laboriously expressed thus:

  “A youthful sense of wonder invoked by apprehension of the true dimensions of the cosmos and the depiction of the mysteries of creation in the literature of the fantastic — a frisson frequently experienced most intensely in early adolescence — may, with some effort and imagination, be recaptured even by jaded and stale adults via a deliberate and forceful re-virginization of the intellect and emotions, in the presence of appropriate eidolons.”

  Whew! I warned you it was going to be a laborious and tedious restatement, didn’t I?

  In any case, I believe you now grasp how these twinned sentiments define the core ethos of the true science fiction fan. Even in our most cynical moments, appalled by the flood of stale, mercenary literary trash masquerading as novelty, coarsened by our own addiction to mindless repetitive kicks, beset by the quotidian hardships of mature existence, teased and betrayed by the empty eye-candy of Hollywood, we somehow maintain an undying spark of idealism that may be fanned back into a flame with the proper attitude and objects of worship.

  When I ponder along these lines, I am always reminded of a self-observation made by legendary SF editor David Hartwell, who — not bragging, and with all due humility and gratitude — was once heard to say, “I became the adult I envisioned myself being as a child.” Lucky Hartwell! For most of us, invoking — and living out! — that youthful, idealistic self-concept requires the painful stripping away of layers of hardened indifference and disappointment, guilt and fear of betrayal.

  One method of summoning up such potent ghosts of our heart’s dawn is to return to our roots, whether literally or literarily.

  The SF reader today is lucky enough to have easy and unimpeded access to the entire corpus of our genre’s history. True, much of the canon remains lamentably and in a technical quibble “out of print,” in the sense that no major or minor publisher lists a certain title on their official backlist. And yet, as critic Barry Malzberg has observed, when sixty seconds of internet activity is sufficient to secure either a digital or hard copy of practically any book you can name, then “out of print” has very little practical meaning any longer.

  But of course, having curated old-school texts available in handsome new editions is the gold standard for enjoyment and revivification of the reader’s spirits. Presses such as NESFA, Wesleyan, Haffner and Baen have introduced new generations of readers to the classics of the genre, and allowed old-timers to freshen up their memories. And in fact, the opportunity, for instance, to read thirteen volumes of The Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (North Atlantic Books) is not merely an exercise in nostalgia but an unprecedented chance to totally reassess an author’s career and perform new feats of scholarship made possible only by this unique presentation.

  All of this prelude about being “born again” into Our Lord Science Fiction, and the necessity of proper psychoactive sacraments, brings us of course to the volume you hold in your hands. But before I begin extolling the worth of these stories and their editor, allow me to offer a small new insight into the allure of steampunk, an a-ha moment that occurred to me only as I framed my thoughts here.

  By now, I and hundreds of others, both within and without the field, have written ourselves hoarse on the peculiar virtues and traits of this fascinating subgenre, so I won’t rehash all the learned analyses again. But since the phenomenon of steampunk shows no sign of — well, losing steam — and in fact seems to be still accelerating, there must exist some hidden engine at the heart of the mode which we have not yet identified.

  I believe it is this:

  Steampunk is science fiction’s age thirteen.

  Steampunk is the adolescent SF genre dreaming of the adult it hopes to grow up to become.

  Steampunk is science fiction’s subconscious attempt to have — or re-have — a happy childhood, shorn of all the fossilized crap encrusting the medium.

  Mike Ashley makes much the same point in the opening paragraphs of his witty and learned introduction, but in a more scholarly way, compared to my perhaps overly poetic metaphors. But this only marks a minor difference in style and angle of attack between us, not in shared vision.

  Having had the privilege of cohabiting with Mike Ashley in a certain online forum of savants for over a decade, and of enjoying his patronage as expert commissioning editor of several of my stories, I can say with all proper objectivity that this man is not only one of the most erudite and insightful historians and critics of our field, but also an admirable fellow who, like David Hartwell, has succeeded in maintaining unbesmirched his wide-eyed, passionate love affair with science fiction. His generous embrace of the field in all its manifestations and all its ages is heartening and inspiring.

  Ashley is one of only a very few editors learned enough to have assembled this treasure trove of truly enjoyable and eye-opening Ur-steampunk. His Indiana-Jones-style expeditions through the bowels of the British Library, his safaris through jungles of moldering pulp, have acquainted him with exotic tribes and species unknown to lesser explorers.

  But the real brilliance of this volume lies in the very stroke of its conception: to forsake the secondary texts of modern authors — which, however entertaining and relevant, are, after all, knockoffs and pastiches and xeroxes, to greater or lesser extent — and to return to the pure quill, the Victorian roots of the genre, as codified entertainingly and at first-hand by our ancestors.

  The assemblage of these unjustly forgotten stories — each with its perceptive Ashley introduction, in which he offers biographical, cultural and critical insights galore — provides us with a chance to divest ourselves of a century o
f preconceptions, misconceptions and misprisions, and to return to the dawn of a literature, when the future — our present — still shone with a numinous radiance.

  Get young again! You have nothing to lose but your sour old puss!

  INTRODUCTION: WHEN STEAMPUNK WAS REAL

  Mike Ashley

  THERE’S SOMETHING so gloriously reassuring about steampunk fiction. The idea that perhaps the Victorians got it right and that we do live in a world of airships and vast calculating machines and automatons, all visible from the safety of our luxurious deep leather chairs, perhaps in the smoking room of the Explorers’ Club.

  And who’s to say they didn’t get it right. It was the Victorians who more or less invented science fiction. Oh yes, sure, there were plenty of earlier stories about trips to the Moon or about island utopias or lost races, but they were simply getting the seating arranged for the big feature. Mary Shelley really got things going by showing what the wonders of electricity might bring with the possibility of recreating man in Frankenstein in 1818 and then things really began gathering pace. As new scientific and technological marvels came along, so writers pounced on them to see what else the future might bring.

  It is perhaps a bit bizarre, then, that the genre should be called “steampunk” and not “electricpunk” but there is no doubt that it was the opening up of the world through steam trains and the opportunities that steampower introduced that ushered in the Industrial Revolution and began the true scientific revolution that allowed science fiction to prosper. It doesn’t really matter that electricity superseded steam as the main power source, because by then the legacy of steampower was so great that it personified the marvels of technology.

  If steampowered science fiction started anywhere it was probably in the dime novels, and in particular with The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis, first published in 1868. I decided to spare readers the full text of this story which is perhaps a little unsophisticated for modern tastes, but as it is the true progenitor of all steampunk, I thought it might be interesting to reproduce here the original description of the Steam Man which was built like a steam engine to pull carriages across the plains. It was created by the deformed teenage genius inventor Jack Brainerd.

  It was about ten feet in hight, measuring to the top of the ‘stove-pipe hat,’ which was fashioned after the common order of felt coverings, with a broad brim, all painted a shiny black. The face was made of iron, painted a black color, with a pair of fearful eyes, and a tremendous grinning mouth. A whistle-like contrivance was made to answer for the nose. The steam chest proper and boiler were where the chest in a human being is generally supposed to be, extending also into a large knapsack arrangement over the shoulders and back. A pair of arms, like projections, held the shafts, and the broad flat feet were covered with sharp spikes, as though he were the monarch of base-ball players. The legs were quite long, and the step was natural, except when running, at which time, the bolt uprightness in the figure showed different from a human being.

  In the knapsack were the valves, by which the steam or water was examined. In front was a painted imitation of a vest, in which a door opened to receive the fuel, which, together with the water, was carried in the wagon, a pipe running along the shaft and connecting with the boiler.

  The legs of this extraordinary mechanism were fully a yard apart, so as to avoid the danger of its upsetting, and at the same time, there was given more room for the play of the delicate machinery within. Long, sharp, spike-like projections adorned those toes of the immense feet, so that there was little danger of its slipping, while the length of the legs showed that, under favorable circumstances, the steam man must be capable of very great speed.

  The door being opened in front, showed a mass of glowing coals lying in the capacious abdomen of the giant; the hissing valves in the knapsack made themselves apparent, and the top of the hat or smoke-stack had a sieve-like arrangement, such as is frequently seen on the locomotive.

  The steam man was a frightful looking object, being painted of a glossy black, with a pair of white stripes down its legs, and with a face which was intended to be of a flesh color, but, which was really a fearful red.

  With that “steampunk” was born. The dime novels were full of steam creatures after that, and even Jules Verne created one — a steam elephant, no less — in The Steam House (1880). The British writer, Anthony Trollope, known for his Barchester Chronicles, incorporated a steam bowler in a game of cricket in The Fixed Period (1882).

  So I would argue that steampunk was well under way by the 1880s but came into its own in the 1890s. This decade saw so much technological development that writers were struggling to keep up with it. At the same time the emergence of cheaply priced popular illustrated magazines full of short stories allowed a huge market to develop for science fiction, mysteries and strange tales. The Strand led the way because of the popularity of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. These magazines, in Britain and the United States, hungered for unusual fiction that would capture the public imagination and the writers would respond. There were the likes of George Griffith, Cutcliffe Hyne, M. P. Shiel, George C. Wallis, George Allan England and, of course, towering above them as the adopted Father of Science Fiction, H. G. Wells. His novels, especially The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon and When the Sleeper Wakes contain all the imagery that would later be plundered by the masters of steampunk. Wells’s work is too easily available to be reprinted here, but his imaginative power pervades the book.

  But that should not diminish the abilities of the writers collected here. You will find, for instance, that some, like George Parsons Lathrop, utilised ideas ahead of H. G. Wells. Others, like Owen Oliver may have followed in Wells’s wake, but with original and unusual ideas of his own. What I have done is selected stories that on the whole are lesser known but which, between them, create many of the concepts and images that have become associated with steampunk — airships, automatons, secret societies, vast engineering projects, anti-gravity, moving walkways and so on. This was how the Victorians and Edwardians in Britain and their American counterparts saw the future — our present.

  Science fiction continued to grow and prosper, of course, but it mutated. The wonderful visions and hopes of the Victorians became overtaken by the real world, especially by the First World War. So we might argue that the great era of steampunk ran from around 1880 to 1914 and those are the years covered in this book. Or at least, the years when the stories were written. Their ideas and visions go way beyond, ultimately to 13 million years in the future.

  Here then are the days when the future was young and everything was possible. The days of steampunk prime!

  MR. BROADBENT’S INFORMATION

  Henry A. Hering

  The idea of the mechanical man or automaton is as old as myth. Jason, in his quest for the Golden Fleece, encountered Talos, a bronze giant made by the god Hephaestus to protect the island of Crete. It walked around the island three times each day making itself red hot and embracing any strangers it encountered. Mechanical toys, usually of clockwork, were made throughout the Middle Ages though the first genuine life-like bio-mechanical toy was that of a flute player made by the French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson in 1737. These toys became very popular and were also represented in fiction, one of the earliest being the Talking Turk in “Automata” by E. T. A. Hoffmann, published in 1814.

  It was the idea of creating man that really launched science fiction with the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and it was the “steam man” featured in the popular dime-novel adventures, starting with The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward F. Ellis that brought the dawn of steampunk.

  We should not call these steam men or automata by the name robots. That word did not pass into the English language until the translation of Karel Capek’s 1920 play Rossum’s Universal Robots in 1923 and it soon caught on. For the steampunk period they were automata and, as the essence of steampunk, they fe
ature in our first two stories.

  Henry A. Hering (1864-1945) wrote quite a few stories that qualify as science fiction for the popular magazines of his day. Most fell into the crazy invention category that was popular at that time, several featuring his eccentric American inventor Silas P. Cornu. The most intriguing is “Silas P. Cornu’s Dry Calculator” (Windsor Magazine, January 1898) which includes an interesting description of a proto-computer. Although born in Yorkshire, Hering was of Prussian descent which may explain why in “The O.P.Q. Rays” (Windsor Magazine, March 1908) the German army finds it easy to invade and defeat the British. Hering is probably best remembered for his collection The Burglars Club (1906) but in later life he collected together his early stories as Adventures and Fantasy (1930), which includes the following story, first published in 1909. — M.A.

  “By specializing it may be possible for science to create a type of animal capable of doing the heavy work of the world — creatures of vast physical strength, coupled with a higher form of intelligence than has been evolved as yet in any animal, excepting man.”

  — PROFESSOR OSTWALD, Leipzig University.

  I AM JAMES BROADBENT, the author. I hold the record for fiction production — forty-eight novels in twelve years, each one turned out with clockwork regularity in three months, and each one consisting of precisely one hundred thousand words. I don’t write masterpieces, but I have a reputation for good, solid, sensational stuff, and I keep my contracts to the letter. What with serial, volume, American, and occasional continental rights, my books bring me in an average of £200 apiece. In other words, my income is £800 a year. It is my ambition to make it a thousand. For this purpose I agreed to produce five novels this year, but I could not do it in London. I was good for four books a year there; and not a chapter more. An extra stimulus was necessary for the production of a fifth, and I thought I should get it in Devonshire from the moors, the sea air, and the sunshine. There, at any rate, I should have perfect quietude.