Couldn't have said it better myself - really, I couldn't.

My far better-read brother emailed me this article some time ago, after I posted my first rant about World War I films. I finally read it (I know, shameful). It's a piece by G.K. Chesterton about the sort of stories people were writing about the Great War, and it pretty much said a lot of what I said, but in a more organized fashion. I particularly like this paragraph:

"Lastly, let us remember as a general principle that opinions should be stated as opinions and convictions as convictions. We must not be impatient because these statements are called abstract. Whereas some charming romance about mud and blood and disemboweled horses is in comparison beautifully concrete. We are not savages, to express ourselves only in picture-writing. We are civilised men, acquainted with mathematics and metaphysics, and presumably capable of thinking in terms of thought. Certainly if we ever lose that power, it will be a worse relapse into barbarism than the worst war in the world."

It almost makes me want to take a creative writing class just so I can tell them that when they get all "show don't tell" on me. Not that I don't think there is a place for description - Chesterton was an unparalleled master at describing how things looked, right down to lighting and "camera" angles!

Are the oldies the only goodies?

So, after watching almost every World War I flyer movie I could find (this week I'm going to rent "Lafayette Escadrille", and then finally bite the bullet and watch "Flyboys" *shudder*, and that will be pretty much all of them), I think the farther we get from history, the more people try to mess with it to suit their agendas, or just plain tell whatever story pops into their heads.

I watched "The Blue Max" (1966), which I thought was going to be good, since it has James Mason. I suppose it wasn't entirely awful - it started all right, and it had two good characters. The problem was the main character. From about thirty-five minutes into the film, I was rooting for someone to kill him. The other problem was the costumes on the leading "lady" *cough(hussy)cough*. Like many (most?) period films from the sixties, the men are in fairly accurate costumes, but the women have sixties eyeliner and that weird hair that's like a beehive or a bouffant on top but hangs down in the back. I almost can't watch movies like that. The really weird thing about this film in particular is that the women who are extras are all dressed in appropriately Edwardian-looking clothing and hair.

It also had bad dogfight scenes. Not only are they dull and don't show off any nice maneuvers or wide shots of the action, they also don't make a lot of sense. Basically, the main guy, and many other pilots whose POV we get to see, will fly towards a tiny speck, and begin blasting away (always the same shot too - looking through the propeller at his face with a lit-up machine on either side - a nice shot, but should be used sparingly). Anyway, not to sound picky, but Oswald Boelcke must spinning in his grave. The guns back then only had about ninety seconds of sustained fire, and were so inaccurate that the Dicta Boelcke and Mannock's Rules both say you should hold your fire until you're about a hundred yards away, if not closer, and preferably only from behind. Now, I might not be so picky (actually, yes, yes I would) if they didn't bring up this very issue right there in the movie itself. In one scene the main jerk character's armorer says that his guns had jammed after firing only forty rounds, or about two three-second bursts. It's kind of like in Star Trek when they are standing there in the transporter room talking about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - The audience was with you until you went and brought it up!!!

On a better note, I next rented "Wings" from 1927. It was the first movie to receive the academy award for best picture, and it truly is a great film! It also won for Best Engineering Effects. Also, the director, William Wellman, was actually in the Lafayette Flying Corps (not the Lafayette Escadrille), and apparently many of his films are about aviation and adventure, including "Lafayette Escadrille". (He also directed "The Story of G.I. Joe", which is an incredibly good film, based a real guy.) He's in the movie as well, according to this site, which has tons of info and pictures.

What a difference! Just like "Hell's Angels" which I wrote about earlier, this film actually gets to the point of World War I (which is sort like the point of World War II, oddly enough). Besides that, it's just a well-done movie. It's got great characters and fine acting (more subtle than many silent films), and an awesome combination of action, romance, suspense, and pathos, all thrown together in a melodramatic way that still had me actually jumping off the couch and crying, occasionally at the same time. I don't know what it is, but I get really into silent movies, and I think part of it is how you have to use your imagination, and you can go ahead and talk and yell and laugh and do whatever. Catharsis? I'm sure I learned this in film school.

But enough about that. What really set this film apart, for me, was the technical stuff! It shows how pilots were trained back then, and how they lived. It's very interesting. Then, when they actually get into some fights, it's just fantastic. The fights are cut in a way that makes them very intense, and shows off the actual dogfighting. The airmen who worked on those scenes must have been very good, because they do all the moves a geek like me would like to see in a dogfight, and you gotta figure multiple takes, flying with big running cameras on board, etc. They generally use four types of shots - looking at the front of the pilot with a view of the sky (and planes) behind him, looking from his POV past his guns, medium shot of the whole plane, and a wide shot of two or more planes with room to maneuver. Each shot of course had variations, being tighter or wider as the action demanded, and sometimes closeups of other angles, like instrument panels being shattered by bullets, or guns jamming.

My personal favorite thing about the dogfighting scenes was the title cards - yes title cards! Aside from showing the action in a very realistic fashion, they pop cards in to let you know what the pilots are thinking, what tactical use their artful movements serve, and how the fight is going (helpful since a German plane and a French plane look very similar from a distance and in black and white). It's especially cool that the director actually did those things himself. The language on the cards is very nice and poetic as well, throughout the film. I believe silent movies are their own medium, and the cards narrate in a way that is different from just showing the action, or even from spoken narration.

If you can find a video store that has "Hell's Angels" and "Wings" you should absolutely watch them both. It seems that after 1930, World War I aviation movies just weren't the same. Hopefully "Lafayette Escadrille" will be good, even though it's a talkie. (OK, Hell's Angels is a talkie too, but it was originally shot silent, then reshot with sound, so it counts!)

World War I Films, or, Why are they all Viet Nam films?

So I was trying to find some good World War I films that showed off the aircraft they used back then. Aside from the fact that there really weren't that many made, most of the ones I found were just so whiny! Now I should say that there are several very good WWI films, whiny or not, like Lawrence of Arabia, the Dawn Patrol, Galipoli, and Hell's Angels. And there are also a bunch of non-whiny ones that barely qualify as war films at all, focusing mainly on romance between girls and handsome pilots (not that I mind watching handsome WWI pilots).

I will not talk about the ultimate achievement in the art of whining and missing the point that is both versions of All Quiet on the Western Front, nor will I go into the WWII movies-disguised-as-WWI movies, like Sergeant York, which was a deliberate propaganda piece to get Americans to think about entering WWII (as well as being a great film). It's like how MASH was really about Viet Nam even though it's set in Korea, but with the opposite message.

I'm talking about the early 30s WWI films here, and unfortunately I must limit it to the ones that are available to rent (*sniff* I want to see Dirigible. . .) Once again heading to my favorite video store (the one that still rents tapes) I picked up The Dawn Patrol, starring Errol Flynn. It's a very good movie, despite the fact that tension issues on this particular tape made it look as though the whole thing was filmed under water. It's got great characters and fine acting, and it's quite exciting. Flynn plays the leader of a squadron of British flyers in France. They are on their last legs, surviving only because they get new replacements every day for the men who are killed. Of course the replacements are basically cannon fodder for the far more battle-hardened German aces. During the film, Flynn's character makes the usual speech, looking off into the distance, about how they keep sending these boys up to die, and no one remembers what it's all for. Very "Bridge Too Far". I recall reading about another situation where it was all Britain could do to keep planes in the air, most of them piloted by young men who were lucky if they'd flown more than 10 hours. It's called the Battle of Britain, and of course their officers probably felt horrible sending them up knowing they had almost no chance of coming back. But they didn't pretend to have forgotten why they did it. Germany was trying to invade them.

So I took that tape back, after finally watching the whole thing, despite having to fast-forward it all the way to the end and then back to where I left off every time it got too hard to see. The guy at the store gave me a free rental. I was looking in the war films for 30 Seconds Over Tokyo (wrong war, but it's just so good, and Robert Mitchum is in it) when what should I see on the shelf but Hell's Angels!

Hell's Angels was directed and produced by Howard Hughes, and in 1930 was the the most expensive movie ever made. It's easy to see why. It has everything, including a long color sequence. It had the usual tinted blue-for-night, red-for-awesome-airship-crash bits, but this color sequence was actually in color. Other strains to the budget included a scene in an airship, which burns up and crashes spectacularly, much better than the one in the Rocketeer, and a dogfighting scene with countless planes on screen at once. When they filmed it they actually used something like 80 planes, which makes for some really really exciting dogfights, some of which are quite gruesome. The first time I saw it I was trying so hard to figure out how they could possibly have made it look so realistic, like did they use rear-projection? Did they use miniatures? Did they build cockpits and put them on moving stands? Turns out it was the obvious (and yet unbelievable) answer - they put a bunch of cameras on a bunch of planes and had themselves a dogfight! They reshot it a bunch and also had to wait around for months and months until they could get some clouds in the background. It has the Red Baron's Flying Circus (Jasta 11, which I was so impressed to see shown still using biplanes, the famous red triplane appearing only late in the war) and excellent special effects throughout. Basically Howard Hughes was one hell of a film-maker (it helps to be crazy).

But what makes Hell's Angels the best movie about WWI? They are fighting because Germany was stealing other countries. Imagine that. The final dramatic bombing mission in the film is to take out a munitions factory and supply lines so that when the infantry goes over the top to advance the next day, they won't get quite so slaughtered. It's quite clear, the lives lost are not shown as wasted, and it actually felt like the war it was made about, not like Viet Nam, which in real life wasn't even like "Viet Nam" as it's shown in movies.

Genuinely Old and Steampunk!

Greetings and salutations, everyone. I've decided to occasionally write a series on here about steampunk clothing that I have. Ideally, I'd like to focus on items that are genuinely old, from the age of steam, but that would make it a very short series, as I have only two such items. So I'll pad it with other random things from my growing collection. Who knows, if I get a real job and eBay fortune smiles on me, I may soon have more actually old steampunky goodness.

For this first installment in the series, I would like to present . . . Cinder Goggles! (circa 1850)

These are the oldest things I have in my house, being older even than my Edison phonograph cylinders! They come from a time when trains did not have windows on all the cars, and they prevented hot cinders from blowing into your eyes. Believe me, when that happens, it is not pleasant. To try it out, take the Durango-Silverton or Cumbres-Toltec railroads, or any of the steam railroads that are scattered around still. It's a truly steampunk experience.

But I digress. I like these goggles because they are small and ladylike. They even came in a handy tin case to slip in your purse. However, they also have a distinct mad science look to

them, as seen here. I want to play with the lighting to get both lenses to glow, but I already love the way the old glass creates a nice even shine with no details like an actual reflection. Out of all the goggles I have, these are my favorites, and the only ones I am not going to modify in any way, except maybe clean up the ends of the string.

Stayed tuned for an article on jodhpurs, the official trousers of adventure!

An Ideal Husband Part 3, or "A happy ending after all"

You may recall that the movie version of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" is a terrible adaptation, apart from the costumes. Not satisfied, and trying to get the taste out my mouth, I found an old tape of the 1947 version at a marvelous video store that has that sort of thing (tapes, I mean). Even with the poor image quality, muddy sound, and occasional suspenseful moments where it looked like the tape might break, it was a much better viewing experience, because it was a much better movie.

Basically, it was the play. They moved a few scenes and greatly condensed most of the ending, but it held up well. Lord Goring was charming, Mrs. Cheveley was slimy, and the other characters were quite good as well. I liked Miss Mabel, and unlike in the other version, they left her a funny, clever, and minor character. I hate when screenwriters feel the need to make minor female characters show up all over the story and take over (Arwen). But I digress.

I only had a couple of problems with it. There are spoilers in here, so go read the play. I've turned them a parchmenty yellow color, so you can highlight them and read if you want. First, the tremendous condensation of the ending left almost no time for the charming scenes between Lord Goring and Mabel. Her impatience to get Goring to propose to her, and her scolding of him, is so funny in the play, and it was largely left out. I suppose that's minor, but still...

The other problem is also pretty minor, but I find it annoying. Here's a bunch of spoilers. In the play, Lady Chiltern sends Goring a letter asking his help, which Mrs. Cheveley finds, and being a bad person herself, assumes meant she was having an affair with him. After Goring makes Mrs. Cheveley give him the other letter she has, she reveals she has pocketed Lady Chiltern's letter, and runs off. The ending is rather suspenseful because just when Sir Chiltern decides to stick to his guns, and Lord Goring has succeeded in keeping his past a secret, Mrs. Cheveley is scheming away to ruin the Chilterns' marriage again. In both movies, they have Mrs. Cheveley keep Lady Chiltern's letter a secret, and tell Lord Goring she has it after they all go to watch Sir Chiltern give his speech to Parliament (not in the play). While this is a more simple "good guys think they're safe but then the villain has one last trick" twist, I like the extra suspense of knowing her scheme the whole time, and hoping their success won't be ruined, and wondering how they'll get out of it. It works OK either way, but I like the play better. Also, showing the speech in Parliament is boring! It works fine in the play where it cuts to them back at home talking about what a great speech it was, while the audience knows the trouble that the letter could still bring.

Overall, though, it's a pretty good adaptation, and a pretty good movie.

"Steam Airships (Real Ones)" or "They said it couldn't be done!"

So, while I'm writing a steampunk story, I've been getting all these gloomy nay-sayers telling me you couldn't really have steam-powered airships. Now, obviously, the water tank would be pretty heavy, and you'd have to have a really good condenser so you don't boil all your water out into the atmosphere, but those are just details. What is even cooler, as this page shows, is that you can actually use steam as your lift gas!

This eliminates the danger of running a coal fire under a giant bag of hydrogen (anyone who's ever ridden on a steam train can tell you about the burning cinders blowing around). Also, it is a much cheaper option for pirate crews and the like. Your balloon and its boiler could be their own closed system, with the steam trap pipes dumping the condensed steam back into the boiler. A pressure valve would turn the steam off to prevent the balloon from bursting, and turn it back on as you gain altitude and the temperature drop condenses the steam at a faster rate. You could combine steam and other lift gases perhaps, in separate envelopes, since you would need a pretty big balloon to displace the weight of the boiler, the water tank, the coal or oil, your crew, and all your weapons, and a bigger steam balloon would necessitate a bigger water tank and more weight.

The next question I would try to answer is whether you ought to use normal steam or "dry" or superheated steam. Dry steam can perform an enormous amount of work, but is it lighter? It's hotter, so it's probably less dense. You just need to send the steam back through a separate section of the boiler to get it hotter. Jay Leno explains a bit about a compact version of this technology in his video about the amazing Doble Steam car. If you were going to use steam power to run your propellers as well, you certain would like to have a superheater.

So, I would just like to say, "They said it couldn't be done! But I'll show them all! Mwahahahaaaa!" (fires lightning cannon from airship)

Adventures in Victorian Steampunkland (London)

Merry Christmas (it counts until tomorrow!) and Happy New Year, everyone. As my first post this year, I will relate something I did last year. Three weeks before Christmas I went with my aunt to England, and Paris, via the Chunnel. We ran all over and did touristy things, but explored a lot too. We became hopelessly lost on Hampstead Heath, in the rain, and I got trenchfoot because the soles of my old boots wore through. A tragedy - they will be missed. (My boots, not my feet). Going off the name (since changed) of a street in a book we both read and enjoyed (Ghost Map) we wandered the narrow streets behind Picadilly Circus until we found the site of a pump responsible for London's worst ever cholera epidemic. The pub far in the background is the John Snow, named for the man who used data collected from the incident to prove that cholera is a water-borne disease.

So I guess that's touristy. I'm sure I needn't tell you how thrilled I was to be in the middle of so much history, particularly Victorian history. Even the tube station near our hostel (Palmer's Lodge, a former Victorian mansion) was steampunk. It was built in 1863 as one of the the first underground

stations, and it looks just as it did then, but grungier and with new advertisements on the walls. Even the fire extinguishers are inside fancy wood and glass cabinets.

The station's entrance had this war monument with an artillery shell from the first World War. All over London, and Paris, there are war monuments, mostly from WWI, and also WWII. The ones in Paris really got to me, since you almost can't walk down a street without seeing a plaque telling about someone who died on that spot, and what they were doing for the war. I'll have more on war monuments later.

First, more about steampunk! The highlight of the scientific expedition portion of the trip for me was, of course, the London Science Museum. I wanted to go there because I knew they had a difference engine, Charles Babbage's amazing steam-powered clockwork calculation machine. I believe at one time they had an exhibit of a modern analytical engine based on his design, but not when I went. Here I am standing next to Babbage's Difference Engine no. 1.

And on the right is the engine itself. You can see the numbered gears and the columns of other gears that somehow perform calculations. Honestly, it might as well be magic. I only understand it a tiny bit, but this is the little guy that kicked off steampunk as a literary genre.

The difference engine was in a room called "The making of the modern world." It was a huge jumble of wonderful things like dynamos and cars, a penny farthing bike, lenses, telephone, an Avro (One of Britain's WWI biplanes) an AC motor built by Tesla himself, and a box containing cross sections of different kinds of undersea telegraph cables. The museum also had rooms and rooms devoted to history of flight, with some really old planes, and models of even more planes, and airships. They had a flight suit from 1909, and even a real autogyro!