Victoriana: An Englishman's home is his.....

A fine day out walking with an old friend, I stumbled across this fine Des res, another Water company's Victorian building, no doubt full of machinery.
But the thought that popped in to my head was, what a nice private home for a bachelor!
As they say “ An Englishman's home is his Castle”
Just needs a trap door in the middle of the bridge to keep the Chavs out!
Oh dear I forgot about the waterline being so low, oh well.

Victoriana review: STONE'S FALL

STONE'S FALL by Iain Pears
Publisher: Vintage (2010)
ISBN-10: 0099516179
ISBN-13: 978-0099516170
First Edition;Publisher: Jonathan Cape; (2009) Hardback

On the cover of the book you can see the words Love, Murder, Espionage these are a poor approximation of the themes within this unravelling historical enigma.
Firstly set in 1909's London of the Edwardian era, then the second part in Paris in 1890, and the final part in Venice in 1876

As your knowledge of the main characters traverses forward in much in the same way as a viewer's interpretation of the film 'Rashomon', as the journalist Braddock is privately engaged to investigate the death of the capitalist weapons manufacturer John W. Stone and the mystery of his wealth, we are then moved on to intelligence officers discovering a plot to attack England and the Empire by a most modern notion. Interwoven into this tale is the mysterious Countess! What follows is an English inventor's meeting a businessman and that the World needs battleships and torpedoes.

This newly written Victoriana was such an intelligent read it has inspired me to reread 'The Difference Engine'.

SteamPunk Review: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret By Brian Selznick (2007) Published by Scholastic Press – ISBN 978-0-439-81378-5
A book, although set in the1930's has a air of wonder from the past, of a boy living off this wits in a railway station, you can almost smell the smoke from the steam engines, how he bumps in to a young girl who’s godfather runs a small toy kiosk. The boy's father – a watch maker, one day finds an old and abandoned automaton in a museum's attic and vows to fix it, and of memories that a father gives his son.
How motion pictures for the fist time brought people's dreams and imaginations to life. You will read of magicians long since forgotten, in this most delightful illustrated book.

Enjoyable for parents with young children (Coglings), and those of young at heart with a euphoria of innocence. With a cinematic style of its own. - Now made in to a Motion Picture.

SteamPunk Review: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)

A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)
by Mark Twain and original Illustrator Dan Beard
Published in 2007 by Penguin Classics ISBN 9780141919928

A defining novel of a modern World, all be it the 1880's, and a fine example of what the 21st. Century's hopes to achieve with fictional alternate histories such as the Worlds that SteamPunk fiction resides in. The worlds of “what ifs” leading to a sideways take on past events, pushing ahead to new futures, not all of them turning out to be Utopias!

On a Literary note with Edgar Allen Poe being the Founder of Science Fiction (later to be nicknamed 'The sham technical' by other authors), I find that Mark Twain dipping his toe in to the domains of Scientific Romances, when his character (the Boss) imposes19th. Century's political, economic, and industrial might on the Old England of King Arthur's realm and his Knights, is by our definition SteamPunk without a doubt.

Has modernisation shockingly moved to fast for the 19th. Century's Mr. Twain, and who would oppose science in King Arthur's realm, you will just have to read and find out!

Steampunk Review:

The Landships of Lincoln – The story of Lincoln's part in the creation of the Worlds first fighting tanks. (Sn Ed) By Richard Pullen Published in 2007 ISBN 9781873257791
With SteamPunkers looking to arm themselves with a pistol or rifle for personal protection or for piracy but oddly not war! This should inspire your imagination.
'The Landships of Lincoln' chronicling the William Foster & Co Ltd military vehicles, and the engineers behind them, with interviews from the factory workers and those that visited the works. This is not a book about those people that imagined in theory the invention of the Tank, like the predictions of H. G. Wells in the early 'Boar War' of the concept of 'Land Ironclads', no this is about engineers and designers of an armoured trench crosser(necessity being the mother of invention), a weapon that could end the war.

Steampunk Review: The Gangs of New York

The Gangs of New York ( An informal history of the underworld) By Herbert Asbury,
First published in 1927. ISBN 0099436744


Showing the darker side of of New York's history, so much so that street names and places have been renamed, and corrupt Politicians and Police have been forgotten!
From 1838 up to 1925 with foot notes about the 1700's as well, full of colourful characters that New Yorkers have unnoticed for to long. Looking at the rise and fall of the district known as the 'Five Points' a dismal slum.

Charles Dickens who visited and chronicled his observations for publication in 'American Notes' wrote:-
“Let us go on again, and … plunge into the Five Points….We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day, but of other kinds of strollers plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice are rife enough where we are going now.

This is the place; these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with, dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays.”

White-chapel in London features in Charles Dickens's novels 'Oliver Twist' and 'Pickwick Papers' is upstaged by the 'Five Point' for its slum and villainy!

The Martin Scorsese film 'Gangs of New York' centres on only a small period of time around the American civil war Riots in New York, with a lot of characters based on real historical people.

The colourful history was by and large gained from the Newspapers of the time, and thus prone to sensationalism, but there is no getting away from the rottenness and vile depravity of New York's slums and their gangs with their political masters.

The Campaign to Bridge the Gap!

Bridging the Gap! (part two and ¼)

Being a SteamPunk correspondent (sometimes undercover), it would be a good start to go to some Steam Rallies and working Steam engine open days..............more to follow..soon