Reveal

[seekingferret]

For Kaleidoscope, I wrote what I've been calling my Epistolary Lesbian Steampunk Voodoo Frankenstein story. (Alai told me it sounded like I was going for geek bingo) It is the Ferretiest story ever, despite my doubts that I could make the whole thing work. It's also the first story I wrote entirely to an outline in a very, very long time. I had to plan this thing out, the story beats were complicated and I didn't trust myself with the details.

The Petro Dynamo, prequelfic for NK Jemisin's "The Effluent Engine", which is steampunk set in 1840s New Orleans.

I'm quite pleased with the story. I vowed to Alai when I first got the prompt that it would be the hardest science he'd ever seen in a steampunk story, as I grappled with the fact that I had to write steampunk, horror of horrors. I'm pretty sure I've succeeded.

sanguinity wrote something about the cargo-cultyness of steampunk, which was a sentiment I largely agreed with before starting to write the story, but I think I found the virtues of steampunk in writing this story. It's a mode for telling stories about the past that are also stories about the future, and that's a useful thing. It's also a way to ask questions about what might have been- that chief question of historical research- about scientific history. For as long as I've been studying history I've been poking at the hidden ways in which science has been pushing and prodding politics and culture. Belle and I, among others, have had long, loud arguments about the extent to which social developments can be attributes to technological change. Steampunk is centrally about litigating those questions, about pushing science to the forefront of our past. At least when it's done right.

I think I once told someone that if I were to become a mad scientist, I would want to be either an 18th century vivisectionist or a 14th century alchemist. There's a little bit of both in this story. There, that's the best enticement I can offer to read this story.

Thanks go to paxpinnae for reviewing my outline and to Alai and Lee for last minute reading and commenting that helped polish the final version that went live. I was really nervous about writing this story and having smart people to check me was a tremendous help.

Lastly, a thousand thanks to rhi for writing "Optic/Nerve". My ridiculous Dhalgren crackfic is still out there waiting to be written, but I am immensely pleased with the tiny yet enormous snapshot of Bellona that you shared with me.

Comments

[kindness_says]

Geek bingo! I love that.

[sanguinity]

:: Steampunk is centrally about litigating those questions, about pushing science to the forefront of our past. At least when it's done right. ::

Yes. It can have all the virtues of alt-hist, if done right. And potentially, an alt-hist that recognizes the importance of technology in human cultures.

I haven't yet seen steampunk litigate the questions that I most want to see litigated, but eh. And my keyboard works as well as anyone else's, if it comes down to that.

[seekingferret]

The single most interesting thing I read while researching for this story was a book created to collate the memories of the congregants and friends of an early 18th century New Orleans Protestant preacher who had recently died. The account of him leaving New Orleans proper for the countryside for a whole summer to avoid a yellow fever epidemic (and then the epidemic hitting the countryside too, of course, so that he ended up right near where most of the people who died were anyway) certainly influenced my plotting. It was incredible how dangerous New Orleans was back then in ways we can barely comprehend because science has done such a good job of mitigating the dangers.