Hooray for History Fans!

And I mean fans in the fangirl/fangent/otakuish sense. Hmm. I just realized something. I used "fangent" to mean a tangent indulged in by fans (a more random and less canonical relative of the fan theory) but when paired with fangirl, it could also be a gentleman who is a fan. This all makes me very happy.

BUT!

Not as happy as this web comic, which I stumbled across by way of Twitter (because random steampunk tidbits soothe my fevered brow better than actual sleep {my brow is fevered because I recently became a computer teacher, while keeping my part-time job at Barnes and Noble.})

It reminds me in a way of Five Fists of Science, but, dare I say(?) better. I feel that there should be a question mark in the previous sentence, so I put one in. And I do dare say it, because FFoS is pretty entertaining, but kind of meh. Any hoo, "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" is about Charles Babbage, creator of the first computer, and Ada Lovelace, creator of the first computer program. Apparently they fight crime? It's fantastic.

Even more fantastic (but actually less fantastic inasmuch as it's actually true) are all the links to Primary Source Documents by about the protagonists. I dare not start clicking on any more of them tonight or I really won't get any sleep. And then I won't be able to set up the computers for next week's classes. Maybe I should give the middle school kids a project later to research the history of computers on the interwebz. Whoever can go back the farthest gets a prize.

Of course, depending on how broadly one defines computers, there were even earlier examples of machines that used basic logic, but not to do math. So, since a computer ought to compute, the Difference Engine was the first one.

Some Reviews

I just read what may be the best fantasy story I've seen in years! It's called "Nine Pound Hammer", and it's the first book in the Clockwork Dark Trilogy, by John Claude Bemis. Yes, "clockwork dark" is as cool as it sounds! The author is a musician from the south, so he naturally knows about John Henry, and decided to turn the story into epic fantasy, using all kinds of American folklore, and steampunkish flair. The main character is a boy named Ray, who was is headed south on a train with many other orphans, following the pull of his father's mysterious Lodestone. When he sleeps with the stone, he has dreams about being chased by a monstrous clockwork hound. He runs away and joins a traveling medicine show, where he learns some very interesting things. There are some very cool twists and the characters are all awesome. I couldn't put this book down, and I can't wait to read "The Wolf Tree"!

On to games! I played Red Dead Redemption a while back, and I really liked it, with a couple of reservations. First, the bad, then the good, then the ugly:

The minor complaint I had about this game was the lack of depth. Heresy, they'll say! It's a huge sprawling sandbox style game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sandbox style games tend to be very repetitive, and this was no exception. Sure, the different environments looked different and had different animals (freakin' mountain lions!) but you pretty much do the same things all the time. I wanted more control over the story - since morality is a big feature of the story, it would have been nice to be able to make a few choices, pick out who your allies are, that sort of thing. They managed it in Steambot Chronicle (not that that wasn't repetitive).

Also, while they do an excellent job establishing time and place, it manages to feel very static. A major feature of the setting is the end of the wild west, the spread of the railroad, the introduction of the car! And yet, I never got a sense of the tension, excitement, or melancholy that should go along with this change, outside of a couple of scenes where it was specifically mentioned.

My more overarching problem was a typical one for Rockstar. Although it seems like their hearts are starting to be in the right place, they still have the puerile tendency to substitute the sordid for the mature. This doesn't make it any edgier, and it certainly doesn't make it any deeper. I would have liked for even one of the Stranger subquests to have a happy ending.

Now for the good: This game is beautiful! Sure, all kinds of games are pretty to look at, and all kinds of games use it as an excuse for lousy gameplay. But this is different - it is like being drawn into the pages of Arizona Highways! It makes the game so immersive and engaging, you can almost smell the greasewood and pinetrees, and feel the gritty wind shift from hot to cold when a monsoon blows in. The graphics and sound design really make a difference here.

I love the story too! The premise is your character used to be an outlaw, and he tried to settle down and be a rancher with his wife and son, but federal agents kidnapped them in order to force you to hunt down your old gang. You have a whole bunch of missions where you do just that, with a few twists and obstacles thrown in. It's all tons of fun, and there's enough variety to keep it interesting - everything to storming forts to herding cattle, from robbing trains to dueling in the streets! There are sidequests too, which start off fun, but after a whole bunch of them ending badly, I started to dread them popping up. Your actions determine both your fame and honor ratings, which change how the random characters and especially law enforcement interact with you. It's way easier if you behave yourself (Hint: if you see a guy running and screaming, make sure the guys chasing him aren't wearing silver stars before you shoot at them.) If things get too hot you can pay off your bounty.

~ Spoiler alert! Highlight to keep reading ~

I really like the last few missions, where you finally find the last bad guy. And then the game keeps going! You go home to your ranch, and do missions for your wife, and teach your boy to shoot and rope, and bring supplies to the neighboring ranch! You start to build a real life, and offer your son more than you had. He wants to be a writer, and is enchanted with novels of the wild west. Or he wants to be a rich industrialist. You tell him he be whatever he wants, but he has to bring the cattle in first. I actually thought this was the most enjoyable part of the game. Of course, the g-men won't just leave you alone, and they come after you. You get your family to safety and a Butch and Sundance style stand-off, and get killed. Your family comes back, and the credits play as they bury you, and the soundtrack is "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie". I cried. It was a great ending.

Or was it?

The ugly: They had to go and ruin the ending. After the credits, four years have passed, your wife has died, and your son has become a gunslinger. You play as him now. You hunt down the retired agent who set you up and murder him in cold blood. Then you ride around and do nothing - no more missions, no more story, no nothing. What the hell did this guy's father fight and die for?!?! It is the worst possible ending they could possibly have had. It pretty much ruined the game for me.

Baby's First Steampunk, Revisited

Today, I had the pleasure of working in the children's section at Barnes and Noble. It's my favorite part of my job, actually, because the kids are so into all these stories, and most of them are really cute. Plus, a lot of kids' books now have a little steampunk flavor. I also like that we can wear interesting clothes and visible tattoos at work, like this steampunkish ensemble I had on today:

Anyway, I suddenly realized, in my previous discussion of what might be a child's first introduction to steampunk-type notions, assuming he didn't have steampunk parents, I only thought of Talespin, which I still think is Baby's First Steampunk, and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. But I left out something huge! Thomas the Tank Engine! I didn't think of it because it wasn't on when I was a kid, but there were several kids in the the store today who knew all kinds of stuff about steam engines! We have a big train set in the children's section, with the little wooden Thomas trains on it. One of the kids, who was probably about three, was telling his mom all about how the engine was thirsty, and he was getting a drink under the water tower, and what a roundhouse was, and what the caboose did. There was also a girl who made all the engines drive around and get water, and use their brakes down the hill, and wait for the signals to get into the roundhouse. A couple of other kids played games that were similarly detailed about how trains worked. I just think it's cool how kids are still learning about a lifestyle and technology from a bygone age.

So Thomas the Tank Engine gets points for the coveted title, Baby's First Steampunk.

Steampunk is pretty famous...

... or at least famous enough to rate its own endcap at Barnes and Noble, where I work as a purveyor of fine reading material. Imagine my surprise, upon clocking in, to turn around and discover a display called Steampunk Fiction! There were a handful of the latest offerings in the genre, and I thought it was a little odd. My colleagues had, with the exception of one or two people, not heard of steampunk, except from me, but I guess someone in the company back east had.

What I found odd specifically, aside from the very existence of such an endcap, was the selection of titles. There is actually some entertaining steampunk out there right now, but they missed some of the good ones, like Affinity Bridge, and included, of all things, Golden Compass. I think there is a fine line. Golden Compass looks steampunk, which, really, I suppose, is enough, since steampunk is a visual style. But the story had nothing to do with steam machines or Victorian science, and really only touches on any kind of science tangentially. I know this seems awfully stubborn, but the mere presence of airships doesn't make something steampunk. Is the alternative universe in Doctor Who where Rose gets stuck, and Mickey turns into a badass, steampunk? No.

I just don't think Golden Compass is steampunk, but if you watch the movie and fast-forward through the boring parts, it sure is pretty. Stardust is more steampunk, with the coolest airship in any movie, probably.

Another couple of books that looked good, but which I haven't read are Boneshaker (it's not about a bicycle, but that was why it caught my eye, along with the shiny goggles on the cover), and Grand Tour, which looks adorable and fun. They also had Leviathan, by Scott Westerfield, which is a totally epic steampunk version of World War I, for teeneagers! It has great illustrations and good characters, and better still, a journal that matches it. I saw the cover, and totally wanted one, but not enough to spend money on it. But then I looked inside, and discovered.... the pages aren't lined!!! What they called a journal was, in fact, a sketchbook, the holy grail of little books that fit in your purse! It has lovely, cream-colored paper with just enough weight and texture to get a nice line, and it doesn't smudge. I bought two.

But I digress. What book do you think was not on that endcap? Something that really should have been. Difference Engine! William Gibson's Difference Engine was not on the steampunk endcap, and woe to humble book grunts who try and change the required title lists handed down to us. Now, I personally could not get through the first couple of chapters of that book, and I find it really dull, since it doesn't feel, to me, like the characters fit in that time period. It's really more cyberpunk with fancier clothes. That being said, if you are a bookstore, and you are taking it upon yourself to introduce a genre to the nation, shouldn't you include that genre's seminal work?

Not including Difference Engine, and including Golden Compass, shows their understanding of steampunk to be purely based on style, and not based on the philosophy or themes that make it a defined genre of science fiction, however fanciful it gets. The sheer variety and creativity is a big part of what makes steampunk so appealing, but a nod to the canon would be nice. I myself would have included some Jules Verne for good measure, even though, obviously, he was just writing science fiction in his time, steampunk not yet being a twinkle in his eye.

Still, I'm glad people are reading steampunk books, and writing steampunk books, and that the new ones seem pretty good. Perhaps there will be a market clamoring for more when I eventually crank mine out...