We shall not forget them

With No survivors now living who witnessed the Great War, all I can do is witness that this generation will not forget them! I am proud to English, and I am proud of our British Forces, and deeply sadden for all our losses from that Great War to this day.

It is no longer that “War starts at midnight”, or that it stops for tea, nor is it a Grand Adventure to go off to fight! For the Internet and Video Game generation, there is NO medi-pack to bring you instantly back to life, there is NO Re-spawn after a fatal wound, War is a horrid thing and we all have a dept of gratitude to our country's Armed Forces.

In to a parallel distant future, that could have been dreampt by, Hans Pfaall.

Upon reading the collection short stories (Kipling's Science Fiction ISBN 1-84677-128-5) from the master storyteller Rudyard Kipling, best known for the works of the Jungle Books and Kim. In witch by the year 2000, submersibles carry freight, and Aeroplanes are still just a bit of a reckless fad! Entitled 'With the Night Mail '(1905) and 'As Easy As A. B. C' (1912), Aeroplanes are the heaver than air coffins that only the most courageous of adventures would use to mount the stratosphere in a world governed by the 'Aerial Board of Control' and AirShips are the lords of the skies. Among other delightful tales are, 'The ship that found Herself' (1898) and '.007 - The Story of an American Locomotive ' (1897), giving a soul to an Iron ship, and a voice to an Iron-Horse, while 'Wireless' (1902 ) explores the new scientific apparatus of wireless telegraphy,. These are some of my best-loved stories.

This is not intended as a book review, more of a nod to the enlightened reader.

Seek out this book!

Regards
The Steam Brigaider

The evaluation and manipulation of SteamPunk!

SteamPunk is the 'Age of Invention', with the absence of electronics.
That 'Age of Invention' also known as the Victorian era, saw industrialization and mechanization, on a grand scale, which has inspired Authors from the 19th., 20th. And 21st. Century to create some subtle or delicate and more portable gizmo's, others to envisage more grandiose machines to convey people. These machines have become Iconic focal-points, and have gone through several transformations over the years, interpreted via different media.

From the written word (which fires the imagination), from the accompanying prospective of the engraved illustrations, depicting an art-Deco feel and style, to many of Verne's wonderus machines far away from a future of steam and rivets. With the advent of the motion picture, and visual effects pioneered by the directors of the silent films, helped to give a mass audience a group memory of what the machines looked like.




This group memory has again entered in to modern society, in the mid 1950's, and the prolific 1960's, and up until end of the 1970's, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells inspired family films (the lighter side of SteamPunk) solidified people's imaginations.




The Iconic Balloon from 'Michael Todd's Around the World in 80 Days' was never in Verne's original novel, and so far (as I write this) I have yet to see on celluloid the Steam powered mechanical elephant (a play on the nickname for the Standard gauge six wheeled Locomotive, with its chimney coming out from the front) that was also in the novel, and Walt Disney's '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' interpretation of the 'Nautilus', with its Victorian retro look has survived as the modern Iconic submarine, in which all Vernesque submersibles are now taken from, you could say “it's a true SteamPunk marvel”. Even one of Jules Verne's most revered characters 'Captain Nemo' was not always portrayed as the Indian Prince of Dakkar!







So popular was this 'Age of Invention' to the Hollywood movie makers that, films like ‘The Assassination Bureau’ (1969), and 'The Island at the Top of the World' (1974 ), with its beautiful Airship were taken from the novel 'The Lost Ones', Written in 1970 by Ian Cameron, and set in the 1960's and ‘The Assassination Bureau Limited’ was started in 1910 I am told, by Jack London, and then finished by Robert L. Fish in 1963 were made to fit the era, and thus show how a good story can be given a SteamPunk makeover and survive in people's memories to this day. Now these things all SteamPunkers can see.


Looking at the wealth of 19th. And 20th. Century Science Fiction to be portrayed on film, what about the mediums of today, Television (and its press) and the Internet communities, and Forums, how have they changed the vision populous have of Steampunk?


While I am not a great supporter of Mr. Verne nor of Mr. Wells (I prefer the less travelled roads of Mr. E. A. Poe (the father of Science Fiction), Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Mr. M Moorcock), but I can see now, in this age of communication so rapped and ever changing that George Owell's 'Newspeak' (am reading 1984) will, in its way change how people see and remember SteamPunk, and that the pioneers will be a forgotten thing of the past and lost to us all.

Looking back to the past, and the future.

Signed

The Steam Brigadier

Back in December 2008, I tried my best cybersleuthing to find out what the hell had happened to the next instalment of 'Jasper Morello', finding only old leads that lead to dead-ends, I took to posting to groups and forums with the cry of "Where the Hell is Jasper!"

You can see, an example bellow, from 'Dreams of Gears and Steam'. Thank to all who replied, and thank you so much Anthony Lucas.

Look, I may as well go off on a rant now.... With thousands SteamPunkers out there, someone must know somebody, who knows what's up!
Jasper Morello and the return of Claude Belgon ( The second voyage)
Jasper Morello and the Ghost of ALTO MEA ( The third voyage)
Jasper Morello and the Ebeneza of Gothia ( The forth voyage)

Melbourne-based director and co-writer of The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello - Anthony Lucas, back in 2005 was later reported to be working on two more shorts in January 2007, and the possibility of a feature film (Animated or live action), but all I can find is his latest little film 'My Rabit Hoppy' in May 2008 – Anyone with any more news!?

Dear Steam Brigadier,

Mark Shirrefs wrote two more scripts for the sequels to Jasper Morello, which went down well with SBS, BBC and other investors.
But regardless of the scripts, SBS has decided that they wont get behind the project, as it "wasn't a priority for the station".

To give you a snapshot of what you missed out on... willian Claude Belgon comes back a changed man, Jasper's wife Amelia has passed over, succumbed to plague, but her presence lingers and Claude's sister Wilhemnia Belgon has plans for her bother.

My animated feature film though, "The Aeronaut" is still in development with a script poised to be finished shortly.

stay tuned!

Anthony Lucas

More reconnoitring.

Once or twice a year I will head off to one of my favourite haunts the 'Abbey Pumping Station' now a museum on the out-skirts of Leicester (Leicestershire, England), usually on one of its special event days, to soak-up the smell of coal smoke and steam, and to see the massive beam engines in motion. On this occasion is was the Christmas toys & steam day, and I was hoping to see something inspirational, to get my old steam hart pumping again.
When you enter the grounds from the car-park side (over looked by the National Space Centre) you can see immediately on your right a sleeping Iron Dinosaur, its caterpillar feet being overtaken by weeds and grass now, this once long ago tamed beast, would have work as hard as any, its familiar sound known to all. What a SteamPunker's restoration project it would make bringing this Steam-shovel back to life, sitting in the cab with levers at your command!

SteamPunk Review: First men In the Moon. Pt.1

H G Wells' First men In the Moon

Synopsis: In 1964 a United Nations lunar mission comes across a union jack and note claiming the moon in name of Queen Victoria and dated 1899. The U.N. Traces this back to Dimchurch, England and an elderly man called Arnold Bedford. Bedford recounts his tale to the investigators of how he and his fiancée Kate encountered the eccentric Joseph Cavor. Cavor has created an anti gravity substance. He intends to use this to take a trip to the moon whist Bedford is chiefly interested in in its mineral resources. Kate is accidentally brought along and the three encounter a subterranean and technologically advanced civilisation that Cavor names Selenites. The trio are captured and studied before escaping back to earth. In the present day Bedford is told by the U.N. That all traces of life on the moon are now extinct, wiped out by the earth men's germs.

Critique: First men in the moon is one of producer Charles Schneer and animator Ray Harryhausen's collaborations together. Clearly the producers and writers (including Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale) had a more optimistic view of the world than many at the time. Filmed during the cold war and two years after the Cuban missile crisis it is a United Nations space expedition that lands on the moon including an American a Russian and an Englishmen. Interestingly it is the American who actually gets to step foot on the surface first, although if he makes any speech about the betterment of mankind we don't get to hear it the film immediately cuts to a montage of worldwide news broadcasts.

This is merely the prologue before we are taken back to 1899 and Bedford's story. Here we are introduced to the protagonists. Bedford is a down on on his luck playwright and some thing of a prevaricator. He tells Kate he inherited his cottage from an aunt, that all his money is tied up in Boer war surplus army boots (the war had barely started in 1899) and later, whilst trying to raise finances for Cavor, persuades her to sign her name to the deeds of the cottage. Edward Judd is affable enough to make Bedford likeable through all this. Kate is American and it seems that early drafts of the script might have tried to portray her as a modern type of gal. After all she drives a motor car, or “infernal contraption” as the postman refers to it, but, and not helped by a fairly bland Martha Hyer in the role, has very little to do other than be captured and rescued. Finally we have the great Lionel Jeffries and his superb comedy talents as the wonderfully eccentric and chicken hating (but goose loving) Cavor. Cavor is largely a comic figure in the early sequences and quite similar to the role Jeffries played in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang but later his obsession with the moon proves to be almost as dangerous to Bedford and Kate as the Selenites.

Guest review by Sir Guy

SteamPunk Review: First men In the Moon. Pt.2

Perhaps not one of the best known of Schneer and Harryhausen's works together first men has a sense of humour not always to be found in their movies. This is probably due to Kneale and co writer Jan Reads script and their extensive background in British television and radio. The comedy is not just kept to Jeffries' buffoon, Cavor, but Bedford's attempts to keep Kate in the dark about his finances. They also have a U.N. Investigators say: “ Don't forget, England is a land of eccentrics” when they sceptically seek out the story. The mood is also enhanced by composer Laurie Johnson;s score which is decidedly whimsical, especially for its early scenes in period England. Johnson also had an extensive television background including the Avengers theme tune.

Technically the film is superb with nicely rendered period detail a charming, cluttered mise en scene to Bedford's cottage and Cavor's lab, whilst their spacecraft's interior is all upholstery with mahogany fittings and brass instruments. The cinematography is bright and colourful for the scenes on earth whilst the lunar landscape is beautifully lit in both its sound stage and miniature realisations.
What really stands out, however, is the production design of the Selenite's caverns. Chrystal caverns, a mushroom forest and the awesome, psychedelic oxygen generator this is all lit in garish, primary colours that give the caverns the look of a Mario Bava movie. Bava's classic Blood and black lace was released the same year.

What any review really comes down to is of one of these movies though are Harryhausen's creations. Although we don't see any until over an hour in. The Selenite design's are interesting with their insectoid bodies and hive system of warriors, engineers and best of all the Mekon like overmind we see towards the end. Unfortunately apart from the gigantic moon cow (and bull) this is all we see of lunar life. Admittedly this comes from the screenplay itself and no lack of imagination on Harryhausen's part, the stand out effect is Kate's skeleton in the Selenite's X ray device. The miniature work for the moon itself and the contemporary and period landings are also terrific.

Technically the DVD is presented in 2.35.1 and is a wonderfully crisp transfer with quite muted colours for the rustic scenes in Victorian England and is amazingly crisp for the lunar scenes with solid blacks and the Bava-esque lighting of the interiors shown off in its full glory.
Extras wise we get a neat from the time this is dynamation feature and a Harryhausen documentary which uses many of his fantastic production sketches. Unfortunately other than a photo gallery and trailer there are no extras specific to the movie itself.

Overall first men is a great movie although I doubt its on anyone's favourites list of Schneer and Harryhausen's work together. Nathan Juran ( a workmanlike director with a background in American genre TV and a number of giant monster movies to his credit) handles the direction competently enough although I suspect his experience with effects got him the job.
The movie's real achievements and successes lie with Kneale and Read's script, the likeable cast and, of course, the incredible work of Ray, brought to you in “Dynamation”.


Guest Review by Sir Guy