Weird west steampunk1/4/2024 ![]() ![]() In the alternative reality brought vividly to life in The Difference Engine (1991), the 19th century mathematician Charles Babbage not only conceived the titular apparatus, a mechanical computer, but lived to build it and in doing so ushered in the information age in parallel with the industrial revolution. The Difference Engine outlines the iconography and ideology of the New World. However its artfulness, clutter of Victoriana and fantastic inventions are essential to the plot and not mere set dressing. Imagine the more off-the-wall episodes of ‘The Avengers’ and ‘Adam Adamant’ in a Victorian setting with clockwork automata standing in for the Cybernauts, deserted villages hiding sinister secrets and bizarre religious sects acting as a front for secret societies bent on overthrowing the establishment and you have something of the flavour of this deliciously entertaining book. But his one redeeming quality is his restless curiosity and so when a mysterious visitor entrusts George with the repair of a complex apparatus and pays him in an unfamiliar currency, our reluctant hero ventures outside the cosy familiarity of the shop to explore what lies behind the gay façade of gas lit London. Though outwardly a gentleman of leisure, he is to all intents and purposes a forerunner of ourselves, a pleasure-seeker who desires increasingly sophisticated toys but hasn’t the patience to learn how they work, or how to repair them when they fail. On the surface it is a novel concerned with the minutia of machinery, specifically clockwork mechanisms which the narrator, George Dower the son of a watch maker, finds fascinating and intimidating at the same time, for he has inherited his late father’s workshop but not his craftsmanship or understanding and facility with the intricacies of these devices. Those who prefer their steampunk novels ‘straight’ will find more to their liking in the macabre humour of Jeter’s ‘Infernal Devices’, a relentlessly inventive mystery which sets up and subverts the major tropes and themes that would all too soon become Steampunk conventions. It reads like a mashup of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, the ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ and the ‘Dr Who’ episode ‘Pyramids of Mars’, but Power’s blending of disparate elements brings the poets Byron and Coleridge into the mix, making for a far more cerebral adventure than the alchemical hotchpotch of ingredients might suggest. There he befriends a girl who provides the obligatory romantic interest and forms an alliance with a body swapping werewolf. The Egyptian magicians are pitted against a 20th century academic, Professor Brendan Doyle and a band of beggars who offer him shelter. With this intriguing premise in place the adventure can begin. But they succeed only in opening a phalanx of time portals which facilitate travel across time and space. In 1801 a cabal of Egyptian High Priests invoke the ancient gods and unleash them on London to wreak havoc in the capital and bring the British Empire to its knees. Think Dan Brown, but with well-constructed sentences and pre-echoes of Roland Emmerich’s popcorn movie ‘Stargate’. If it hadn’t been well-written it would still enthral as the idea is simply too strong to fail. ![]() This is what Hollywood executives call a ‘high concept’ novel. ![]()
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