Quickly!  Do you want a collection of of Steampunk tales from some of the best authors in the business?  Do you seek tales of metal men, corsets aplenty and more cogs than you can shake a tesla-cane at?  Perhaps you’d like it discounted and personally ‘blimped’ by the editors, Ann and Jeff Vandermeer?  Then you want a copy of the Steampunk Anthology!

Then haste ye to to your aethermail and Paypal those hard working souls (vanderworld at hotmail.com) or email them (to reserve it) and then send a cheque to the address at their site.  Until tomorrow, it will set you back $12 in the US (with shipping), and various other reasonable sounding prices for Canada, Australia and Europe.  Apparently they are working their fingers to the bone personalising every book ordered up to the 15th of May with a little airship/zeppelin/blimp picture, just for you.  If you don’t make it in time for the deadline, it’s still only $14.95 and there abouts.

While on the quest for Steampunk-themed décor for my humble abode, I found myself at the RISD [ Rhode Island School of Design ] Alumni Art Sale, and stumbled upon these delicious tiles, created by John White at Odd Inq. There are 26 tiles total - of course! - and each one is a rather unexpected take on the letter, including G for Gravestone, I for Industry, and V for Vault.

I personally own A for Alligator & Z for Zeppelin, whose juxtaposition I particularly enjoy.

See the full tile set here or visit his website, for other ceramic goods he’s created.

Wearing your Pocket Watch - Part 1.

Perhaps one of the most desirable Steampunk garb accessories is the pocket watch. A pocket watch certainly adds a classy and retro element to any attire. But, how to wear them, you may well ask? The answer lies in the variety of chains that were common in the Victorian era. A watch chain is a necessity, especially with a vintage mechanical pocket watch. Most older pocket watches have no built-in means of protection against shock for the delicate balance shaft. Dropping your watch meant an expensive repair.

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In the year 1769 the first Horseless Carriage prototype was hammered out by a French engineer named Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. His rudimentary design borrowed primary design aspects of the great Iron Horse bearing a steam based engine to power the vehicle. This revolution of self propelled machine forged the path for the Brass Era which would see the schematic lowered dramatically in scale with an experimental and unstable combustion engine replacing the tried and true steam powered model.

Some years later a gentleman by name of Stephen Rothwell would paint the portrait seen above titled “Journeyman” which can only be, as I surmise, a missing link of sorts gaping the time span between Cugnot’s original design and the Brass Era. One can clearly see depicted an apparatus in which the name “Horseless Carriage” would be aptly succinct, replacing a beast of flesh and bone with a more reliable and ever tireless mechanical model.

While there is a lot to like about this particular machine, I am partial to the tank treads. It adds a certain “Why yes Sir, I can traverse over all terrains” feeling that I am quite fond of.

The PMOG, The Passively Multiplayer Online game, has just launched. This is a new type of online game that uses the internet as the game-world. Players can create quests that have you journey from webpage to webpage, avoiding traps, earning badges and discovering treasure that you can use gain new items and bonuses for your “avatar”. What’s even better is that this game has a wonderful steampunk look that adds a whimsical touch to everyday web-browsing. They have truly created what some in the steampunk community call “the Aethernet”. The only things that are missing are airships and internet-kraken.

The PMOG currently only works on Firefox.

I’ve always loved maps; the more arcane the better. There’s nothing like a really good map to help you find your way (although inaccurate ones can be a lot more fun).

And in the true tradition of route-finding, Justin Fisher has taken the time to create a map (in English and in colour) of Lincoln Island, the island featured in “The Mysterious Island” by Jules Verne. Finding that a map was indispensable to enjoyment of the book, Justin used the original French engraving and Verne’s original notes as references to draw a detailed map of the island.

For those of us who would like to benefit from Justin’s efforts, you can go to Justin’s Map Page and download your own copy or have a printed version delivered to your humble abode.

Now, in a parrallel dimension somewhere, Steampunk ladies and gentlemen of sufficient wealth and meager instincts of self-preservation know that when you just have to have something disintegrated - only Doctor Grordborts rayguns will do.

Of course, as much as we might like it to be, disintegration is not for every day, and sometimes you just want to cross the plains of Mars in style, or perhaps go spelunking in the crushing pressures of Saturn, and if that is the case, the unhinged and genteel will turn to Doctor Grordbort’s Contrapulotronic Dingus Directory!

But now, through some frightfully revealing tear in the aether/time continuum, the directory is available for purchase by mere mortals such as we. (Yes, I realise some of you may not consider yourself ‘mortals’, never mind ‘mere’ ones, but do play along.)

The Directory has lovingly drawn diagrams of the internals of the Grordborts rayguns, as well as items that the good Doctors sponsors, Weta (with the aid of Dark Horse Comics), have not yet managed to bring to market such as the Lazoplod 300 for Martian perambulation, the Courage Coat for extreme pressure space jaunts, and the above, mighty and delightful Goliathon 800 Moon Hater Death Ray - for when that pale baleful face in the sky has laughed at you one too many times. Lastly, but not least, there’s an illustrated account of one of the adventures of the magnificient Lord Cockswain and his ‘little’ hunting trip.

(Amazon affiliate links follow: UK, US.)

One of the most popular objects of “steampunk-ing” (that is, the craft of those skilled artisans and inventors amongst us) are undoubtedly guns. Not the typical, cold and cruel weapons in use nowadays, of course! No, these extraordinary engineers restore grace and dignity to the lost art of building rifles, revolvers, ray-guns, and lightning projection contraptions!

If you’re quite as unfamiliar with the precise operation of a “lightning projection gun” as yours truly, let us further scrutinize this depiction of Mr Danny Ashby’s creation. Apparently, the larger device, painted of course in a handsome shade of brass, co-operates with the glowing blue tank situated above it, which produces bolts of lightning to be fired toward one’s adversaries and what offworldly perils with the gun itself.

The aforementioned Mr Ashby, who created these lovely devices, including the steam-powered revolver visible in this picture but still under construction, goes by the name of Vladislaus Dantes and has much more photographs of his work on display in his Profile. Those interested in all kinds of steampunk-styled firearms definitely ought to check it out! For even more sabre-rattling, might we suggest the “Collective Thread for All Them Guns” over at the forums?

According to retired submariner and amateur historian, Gavin Menzies, in 1421, decades before Christopher Columbus spotted the New World and a century prior to Ferdinand Magellan’s exploration of the world beyond the Unknown, a humble Chinese admiral by the name of Zheng He set out with His Majesty’s fleet to discover the world!

Mr Menzies’ theory has obviously been dismissed by more professional historians, yet had Zheng He’s fleet been composed of such fanciful dirigibles as the craft depicted here, perhaps he would have been capable of sailing the clouds to unravel the mysteries of those continents beyond the horizon?

This charming artwork was created by a Mr James Ng, Hong-Kong born but traveled across the Americas in a fashion similar to the exploits of his medieval ancestors—that is, if we are to believe Mr Menzies after all!

I was reading “The Cryptonomicon” by Neal Stephenson just now, and came across a very interesting bit. A conversation between one of the main characters and Alan Turing (the one and only) who has recently discovered radio tubes, and intends to build a computer using them.

“I cannot believe the number of years I wasted on sprockets! God!”
“Your zeta-function machine? I thought it was beautiful,” Lawrence says.
“So are many things that belong in a museum,” Alan says.

Truer words …

Some of the most beautiful things ever crafted by man can be found in Museums across the world. Old artefacts, mementos of times long passed. Items that are outdated, replaced by better versions or alternatives and often forgotten.

One of those things is a “computer” like the one discussed above: an enormous calculator that works with just mechanical forces. Cogs and sprockets on drive shaft operated by a hand-crank, Charles Babbage’s difference engine.

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