The Antisocial Socialist

Apparently there was, at some point, quite a fad for writing Edisonades, dime novels of the Boy and His Robot variety. These stories typically involved a brilliant young inventor creating a gigantic robot and using it as a tool of U.S. expansionist policy in the Wild West.

And thanks to Project Gutenberg, you can read them online.

Here is The Huge Hunter; or, The Steam Man of the Prairies, Edward S. Ellis (1868).


This is a thing in the world.

Warning: It is exceedingly awful. Shoddy prose, racism, imperialism, ableism, and the most grievous sin of all, the author has chosen to write out the dialect as was the fashion of that unenlightened age.

More about Johnny Brainerd's Steam Man here.

Via apocalypsos: This post has some real gems, though mostly what you'd expect from a Teabagger function (though, amusingly, Boston has so few homegrown Teabaggers that they had to roll them in on the Tea Party Express). The commentary is pretty good too.

My favourite, though, were the photographs showing a confrontation between what appear to be steampunk-esque LARPers and the Teabaggers.

( cut for huge )

Cutest. Counter-protest. Ever.

Short recommendations time!

Book-wise, I just finished Swordspoint and The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner (those were both zingerella-recs that she thought I'd like, as opposed to the times when she gives me books that she thinks it'll be funny to hear me rant about). I couldn't put either of them down. They're swashbuckling fantasy, with no actual magic, and no glossing over of the ugly class and gender dynamics of period settings, which made me quite a happy girl.

I preferred Privilege, as it had an engaging female lead who did stuff, and a host of secondary female characters who also did stuff, and talked to each other about things other than a man. And it skirted the other big problem in writing strong female characters, particularly in genre fiction, wherein "strong" is defined as "kicking ass" without having to resort to vagaries such as character development. Katherine kicks a substantial amount of ass, don't get me wrong, but the less ass-kicking characters, from the traditionally girlie Artemesia to the brilliant-but-dumpy Flavia, are just as interesting and well-developed.

Also, it has hot boys making out. Well, hot boys in one book and hot middle-aged men in the other book. And beautifully witty dialogue.

On the non-fiction end, I'm almost finished reading The Authoritarians, available for free online. It's an accessible study of the authoritarian personality, both that of followers and leaders. I don't think it's covering any new ground and I'm not entirely sure I buy Altemeyer's methodology or conclusions, but it's definitely an interesting read, and it very much describes some of the more puzzling things about the Right (or, in the case of people I more frequently encounter, what I'd term the "reflexively Right").

The last movie I saw was Alien Apocalypse, courtesy of PopeJohn. It has Bruce Campbell fighting giant termites, so if you like that kind of thing (I do) you should check it out. Also it's shot in Bulgaria, and most of the actors don't speak English, so the dialogue is horribly and hilariously dubbed in.

I've acquired a bunch of new music lately, most notably LAL's 10-year anniversary CD, Tom Waits' Glitter and Doom (thanks to outcastspice), and a very weird CD by Tim Buckley (thanks to culpster). I also discovered a great new band called Sunday Driver, a steampunk band with Indian classical influences. They have three free songs that you can download on their site, and I liked those so much that I bought the album (see, it works), which is hopefully in the mail.

Oh! TV. Well, I finished Deadwood and am now bereft, in the way I was when Oz and Six Feet Under ended. As in "what am I going to like as much now?" I suppose when Mad Men starts up again I'll have something, but really, Deadwood is a fucking masterpiece and why would they ever cancel something so great? And don't tell me to get into The Wire; I watched the first season and found it too triggering.

"Read this," zingerella said, dropping a thick paperback on my desk. "I think you'll hate it."

(She does that a lot. In fairness, she quite frequently also gives me fantastic recommendations, as there's a pretty big overlap in our literary tastes, but it's way more fun to blog about the books that suck.)

The Court of the Air starts out properly, with a steampunk London, robots, airships, and an inventive way for dealing with the monarchy (every time a new king is crowned, his arms are cut off and publicly displayed in the parliament to ensure that he never raises them against his people; also his primary duties are to appear in front of the mob so that they can throw rotten fruit). In two separate storylines that only connect, briefly, two-thirds of the way through the book (Problem #1: The two protagonists meet a grand total of once) young orphan Molly Templar finds herself the target of a ruthless assassin and goes on the run with a robot, while young orphan Oliver Brooks finds himself framed for the murder of his uncle and goes on the run with an unsavory character from the country's secret police, known as the Court of the Air.

And then the author throws in a bunch of really cool stuff at a frantic pace. Halfway through I realized that I was only reading it so that I could tear it apart in my LJ.

( spoilers abound )

There, I just read it so you don't have to.

P.S. zingerella, let me know how big the fine is. Long book is long.

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity.
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions. No more, you guys! I'm going to start asking people what their favourite shade of sea monkey is or something.

1. Would you teach a unit on goth music if you could get away with it?

I probably could get away with it. But given that discussions of music with the Sablets typically end with me shaking my cane and muttering "kids these days" while they search for Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube, I doubt I would willingly put myself through that.

Also, a public high school is not the proper environment to be introduced to goth music, even if I do teach in a lightless concrete bunker. You ought to sneak into goth clubs when you're underage and befriend the DJ, or else stay up late listening to "Beyond the Gates of Hell" on CIUT. God I'm old; neither of those are options now. But I guess there's the internet.

2. would you rather have an aerovelocipede, a zeppelin or a robot-drawn carriage?

Good question, old chap! There are several issues to be considered in the choosing of a new Vehicle, including practicality, fuel efficiency, parking, and Pure Awesome, and each Mode of Transport must be considered both for its Merits and Downfalls.

As the point of such Devices is to avoid becoming Stuck in Traffic with the Common Rabble on the Thoroughfares, the robot-drawn carriage, regardless of how Badass it might be, must be excluded from our options, unless it is a Flying Robot Carriage. As well, parking would be a right bother.

An aerovelocipede provides excellent maneuverability, and a certain panache, but provides no shelter from the harsh winters of our uncivilized North, and thus would be Most Impractical for commuting to Scarborough. Besides which, one can only transport oneself and perhaps one's Exceptionally Large feline Acquaintance, and that won't do.

This leaves us with the zeppelin as the most desirable option. Of course, there is always the possibility of Dying in a Spectacular Conflagration, but I believe, good sir, that the Awesomeness is well worth it.

3. What is the worst movie you've seen lately?

I haven't seen an entire movie in forever. The last deeply awful movie I sat through was Battle in Seattle; the most recent excerpts from a bad movie I've seen were bits of Paranormal Activity that my kids showed me. I look forward greatly to watching New Moon, however.

4. What is the best comic you've read lately?

The Pros Arch flashback scenes that snarkitysnarks made. Not that I'm biased in any way.

In terms of published comics, Lackadaisy Cats. It's brilliant and hilarious, and you should check it out if you haven't already.

5. What would you get with a sudden unlimited clothing budget?

Besides more closets and someone to do my laundry? Lots of long, flapping coats, and various period clothes in which to play dress-up. Also more boots. I'd commission Fluevog to design some tall boots without heels.

The Stone Canal, Ken McLeod

Yes, people who keep recommending him to me, I finally got around to reading one of his books. And yeah, I see what you mean.

The Stone Canal is part of a trilogy, and I don't think it's the first book, but that didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of it. It begins and ends in a distant future where humans and robots live on the Planet of Free Market Yay, and death is a relatively minor inconvenience because of cloning technology, flashing back, in what I found to be the most interesting scenes, to Scotland in the 1970s where the main characters debate and eventually put into practice the beliefs that will shape their future. What begins as an argument in a pub between two friends, one an anarcho-individualist and the other a Trot, becomes a struggle between anarchism-of-a-sort and capitalism-of-a-sort, to the point where I couldn't come up with substantive differences between the two.

I also couldn't get a handle on McLeod's politics any more than I could grok those of his protagonist, Wilde. Which says something about McLeod's writing—if he shares the views his characters espouse, he also does an equally good job of debunking them. Anarcho-capitalism is functional in the book only because death is impermanent and other planets exist to colonize, which is a fairly good take-down of the philosophy, if you ask me.

Overall, it's a lovely mix between hard sci-fi and political sci-fi, which, as you can imagine, is the sort of thing that makes me happy in my geek places. I was thoroughly absorbed in it up until the ending, where [spoilers for this book and Miéville's Iron Council] the Singularity happens, or something like it, at which point the writing goes all weird. China Miéville claimed that he gave Iron Council the horrific downer of an ending that he did because, as a revolutionary, he felt ill-equipped to write The Revolution in a way that would do it justice. (I don't really believe him; I think he just likes writing really depressing endings.) But anyway, there's something about depicting The Revolution (not a revolution, mind you, but the big one that would fix things), or the Rapture if you're a fundamentalist Christian, or the Singularity if you're an SF geek, that is inherently problematic. As in I wasn't sure if he was typing with both hands. [/spoilers]

But yes, now I want to read more by him. What do you guys recommend?

New Amsterdam, Elizabeth Bear

There's been some controversy about Bear lately, but I've been so into reading New Amsterdam that of course I haven't been following it. You can tell me later. Anyway, it's a series of steampunk novellas about a vampire detective, a forensic sorceress, and their various friends and lovers. The first story takes place on a zeppelin, so if that doesn't make you want to read the book I don't know what will.

Bear does a tremendous amount of things right (I did mention the zeppelin, yes?). This is the first vampire novel since Sunshine that I've read that's actually good—her vampires don't bloody well sparkle. And also, they're impotent. Three cheers for tradition and realism. Her writing is engrossing—period and witty and evocative. I am a sucker for "cozy murder mystery set against the backdrop of impending war" (see also: Farthing by Jo Walton). The last story has a cameo by a certain historical personage that made me squee out loud on the subway.

Where it falls down is in its structure. It was originally published as a series of novellas, and it doesn't quite work as a novel. We get repeated descriptions of characters we've already met, and it feels episodic. That's okay until the last few stories, where [spoiler] first, a series of monumentally life-changing events threaten to give the book a bit of a genre shift and permanently change the lives of the characters, and then we are hit with a wallop of Teh Angst in the last few pages, which would be fine if there were some sort of big plot arc. But there isn't, so it's jarring. [/spoiler] Other than that, completely awesome.

Am currently reading Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, which is fantastic so far.

I don't care what it does, as long as we're that much closer to a steampunk future.

Chronophage/Large Hadron Collider OTP.

This amuses me.

THE WTF PRIZE!

Build an airship capable of carrying four or more people into flight, and do it with an engine that produces less pollution than a standard internal combustion engine. And by build it, I mean that you, the entrant and pilot, must actually undertake the fabrication and construction of this device. Prefabricated parts may be used for your construction, but pre-built, purchased engines are right out. You must build your propulsion system, not just install it.

This ship must be capable of true directed flight, rather than simple wind-directed flight, so the ship must include a propulsion and navigational system in addition to basic lift.

Build it, fly it to Seattle, and land it safely at the venue location for Steamcon '09. For those already in the area, you need to prove that your airship can sustain flight for more than three hours. On landing, your engine will be inspected by a team of judges to consider the following: fuel type, fuel consumption-power ratio, and exhaust output. This means you will have to present your blueprints as well.

Winners will receive the following:
A metric fuckton of notoriety for landing an airship at a public convention.
Women swooning at your air-piratical feet.
The satisfaction of me apologizing and having to eat my words in public.
Permanent advertising for any of your endeavors via Tormented artifacts, the LXB, etc, etc... (It's not much, but it's something at least.)
if any sponsors want to step forward and offer a prize to this, I'll gladly include them.

...Hell- you built yourself a working airship- what kind of prize do you need when you've got one of those?

I want someone to do this. I want to live in the future.

...airships!

(I'd meant to blog this when frandroid first posted it, but of course I've been terribly busy.)

Anyway, I keep seeing posters around town for this fellow Monbiot and his new book about how we are all fucked. I like him, if only because his solution to the energy crisis is to replace airplanes with pure, unmitigated awesome.

Airships fly much lower than planes – typically at about 4000 feet – which means that their emissions of water vapour have very little effect on temperature. If they were powered by hydrogen fuel cells, they would be almost silent, greatly reducing the effects for people on the ground. Though they are slower than jets, the cabin can be built much wider, which means that travelling by airship would be rather like travelling by cruise ship, but at twice the speed and using a fraction of the fuel.

y/y?

He also lists a bunch of disadvantages, but they're all outweighed by how hardcore it would be to travel by dirigible.


I mean, really.

EDIT: I am jealous of this guy's jetpack.

Here, have some cats playing the theremin.

[Error: unknown template 'video']

[Error: unknown template 'video']

Courtesy of Laughing Squid.

Also, An Engineer's Guide to Cats:

[Error: unknown template 'video']

Hat tip: eumelia and warlordkittens.

P.S. You guys, I cleaned all of the binders and textbooks off my floor! You can almost see it again.