Book: Steampunk Roots

 The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Bantam Spectra Books ( a division of Doubleday Bantam Dell Publishing Group), 1991

Provenance: Unsure. I got this book in hardback back in '91, which means I was living in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin at the time. While we had a small bookstore in town (The Breadloaf), but I think I probably got it in hardback up at one of the big chains in Milwaukee (Waldens. B.Daltons, Borders, and Barnes & Nobles).

Review: This one is going to be a be scattershot, and I have a bunch to say, so let me divvy it add up for easier digestion.

        i. A forgotten book

I have what a friend described as a perfectly average library. Books I really like I press into the hands of others. Books I don't like I donate to libraries or sell to used bookstores. Yet those that remain are memory-enhancers. I look at the shelves, and can usually tell what the book was about without much rummaging through my mental attic. The presence of a physical book brings back memories in a way that a file folder cannot.

But this one, not so much. I know I had read work by Gibson (Neuromancer) and Sterling (Involution Ocean) before picking this up. Both authors were the bannermen and bleeding edge of the cyberpunk movement, coming out of the Austin Writing Mafia (I think I still have a button identifying them as such). And this one flips from a dark future to an alternate past, and is in my opinion the first of the modern Steampunk genre.

        ii. On genre

I've said this elsewhere, but genre is a marketing term. It is very much "if you liked X, you'll like Y". And indeed, the Cyberpunk movement gathered together a group of similar writers (many of them from Austin) and formed an Sf subgenre of it.

In the light opera Pirates of Penzance, the Modern Major General buys his estate and title, and in the process buys his ancestors as well who came with the place. In the same way, genre creates its own predecessors, who may not have been connected with the process. Mary Shelley wrote gothic romances, not SF or horror. And Jules Verne and HG Wells were writing adventure fiction because no one thought of it as Science Fiction in those days, though we look at their books as being precursors of Steampunk. And "SF set in the Victorian Age" is a good touchstone for this, though these guys were writing in the Victorian Age. 

Another predecessor, one that is closer to what I think of as Steampunk were the Edisonades (which you may or may not have heard of). These were adventure fiction of the early pulps, which usually involved some young genius (some of the featured a young and fictitious Thomas Edison) who explored the west and fought Native Americans with the aide of steam-powered robots. So we're closing in on the definition. And yeah, that feels Steampunky, and are part of the evolution of the genre.

But Bruce Sterling (one of the authors here) defined Cyberpunk as "Where the technology meets the street". It is not just cool tech, but rather an attitude as that tech moves into the mainstream, and is used by the populace for purposes not intended by their creators. A real-world example were the pagers in the 80s, which were a pre-cellphone invention to tell you you were needed on the (usually landline) phone. When they first showed up, they were posited to be used by doctors who might be needed in surgery. And they ended up being used for drug deals once everyday people got ahold of them. So the various "'punk" genres have that sense of utility to them. It's not all about dirigibles and land fortresses, its about how it affects the inhabitants of that genre.

Anyway, The Difference Engine is definitely in the Steampunk vein, and I think I can make a claim that its the definitive modern Steampunk novel, though that term would not come into common usage until later (with the joke -"Steampunk is what happens when goths discover the color brown"). This is serious tech, and how it involves the world in ways that were not anticipated.

        iii. Oh, what a world that has such creatures in it

We could easily drop The Difference Engine into the "alternate history" genre, and it fits snugly there as well (indeed, the blurbs for it key in on that). And the alternate that it proposes is one where Charles Babbage gets his analytical engine in gear back in the 1820s (in our world, the plan broke down and this initial engine was never completed). The result of this is a world driven by steam and clockwork gears as opposed to electricity and gasoline. Its an analog world with massive calculating engines figuring everything, resulting in an authoritarian merit-based dystopia where the populace have citizenship numbers. Babbage and Lord Byron are running the works, while figures like Disraeli are writers and the poet John Keats is doing analog powerpoint slides. 

The time of the novel is 1855. Maps of the world are provided in the endpapers. London and Paris are allies under their individual national thinking machines. The US has broken up and the Confederacy arrives early. New York is a commune like Paris in the 1870s. Texas is independent but rebelling against French Mexico. California is a republic, and most of the west is still "unorganized territory". Japan is developing the next level of tech with coiled springs and whalebone. We don't get a timeline here, or even a definite point where it all diverges. It just does create an alternate world.

        iv. There's a plot in here, right?

Oh, yeah, we have a plot. We've three separate protagonists, each of which spend their time on the stage, fade from the narrative, then pop up again later. Sybil Gerald is a prostitute who falls in with the PR man working for an exiled Sam Houston. Edward Mallory is a paleontologist who discovered the brontosaurus fossils in the Wild West and has returned to London to present his findings. Laurence Oliphant is a mysterious government agent who is threatened by forces within and without. All of them come into contact with a deck of programming cards, of unknown origin, which bounces from person to person throughout the novel.

And as in a lot of cyberpunk, the story is full of incidents and accidents, which may or may not have to do with the main characters, but they are swept up into them. There's an assassination attempt on Sam Houston, after which he exits the narrative. A race at the Downs as a test-bed for steam-powered vehicles, and introducing streamlining to the world. The Big Stink, a historic event where London becomes unlivable due to its own waster products, arrives early and suddenly. suffocating the city, causing the upper classes to flee, and creating the foundation for a rebellion. And all of these brush up against our protagonists, even as the deck of cards disappears for a while in all the confusion. 

        v. Who wrote what?

With books with multiple authors, there's always the temptation to try to figure out who wrote what. In the case of Cormyr: A Novel by Ed Greenwood and myself, Ed wrote the modern sections, I wrote the sections set in the past, then we switched and revised each other. Working with Kate on our Finder's Stone books, we both hammered out the plot, then I wrote the first draft and she turned it into English. And the Beatles have Paul songs and John songs but most are Lennon & McCartney. But its a chancy mind problem and guesswork at best.

Still, there are some fingerprints of the authors from their other works. William Gibson is noticeable in the presence of a mysterious McGuffin (the cards) and the idea of a final revelation that shows up what is really happening in the book behind all the incidents and accidents we encounter. The writing style and historicity feels a lot more like Bruce Sterling, who delves a lot more into the style of previous eras (indeed, Sybil comes to us sideways from a Benjamin Disraeli novel), and the level of detail and accuracy on reporting the life and times of the Victorian age. 

But that's just a guess. Every collaboration creates a new form, format, and style, and this must be judged as a separate chimera from its individual creators.. 

        vi. Why is this a forgotten book?

I don't know if it is truly forgotten - I'm going through the Internet and seeing numerous editions of it. But it doesn't seem to have the effect of Mirrorshades or Mona Lisa Overdrive did on the body literate in general. And they may be a couple reasons for it. The book's heavier than most cyberpunky tomes, and its language is deep and involved, mimicking the tone of stuff truly from the Victorian Age. Plus the level of detail is such that a post 20th century reader would be well-warned to keep the Wikipedia at hand to explains crinolines, portmanteaus, dollymops, and the various classes of London Society. Plus a map of London of the period would aid as well, since the characters cross through it great detail. 

Yet the book has value for the modern reader.  It foreshadows a lot of developments in our after-the-Millenium world. The Radical Lords are techbros in the 1800s. We're developing large language models and using them to bet in a burgeoning prediction market. Even more so now than then, we can be tracked by our purchases, our numbers, and our faces. Extreme databases on all of us are currently at large, along with cultural hackers that can make use of this endless supply of data to our own ends. And the book really sings with the promise of an unevenly-distributed apocalypse.

So Difference Engine oddly has more resonance now than thirty years ago when I first read it, and then forgot about it. It was worth a visit, and it should return to the shelf else it slips from organic memory once more.

More later,

Twenty-Five Years Ago

 

More later,

Book: Book about Books

 The Bookshop; A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss, Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2024

Provenance:  Village Books and Paper Dreams, a three-story bookstore in the Fairhaven district of Bellingham Washington. According to the receipt I was using as a bookmark (and admit it, you do the same). I was up north for one of the Lovely Bride's tax-preparer conventions, and while she attended meetings on the tax implications of crypto, I book-shopped. 

I've noted elsewhere that actors love plays about the theatre, but I don't find a lot of writers writing about the process of making and selling books. Most of the "books about bookstores" have been fiction and in particular romances (cue up the movie "You've Got Mail"). So it's good to get ahold of something talking about the history of bookstore. 

And physical bookstores are odd things in our digital world, in that they have a "baby turtle" approach to sales. A host of authors create works, which publishers create a huge printing of individual volumes, which are then scattered throughout the country to bookstores large and small, independent and chains, on the off-chance that someone will come in and adopt them. There are cases where I go in looking for a specific volume or author, but just as often I'm just browsing, seeing if something piques my interest. 

Which is how I found this particular book. Up in Bellingham.

Review: The Bookshop is more of a collection of short vignettes and anecdotes than a solid linear history of the bookstore, which sounds about right given the individualistic anarchic nature of the history of selling books. It is a swarm of origin stories, and swings all over the joint and all over the country. We intro through the author's local bookstore, the Three Lives in NYC, then spring back in time to Ben Franklin and printer/publisher/ booksellers, then the oldest Bookstore - the Old Corner in Boston. Then we go to bookmobiles, Marshall Fields to introduce the department store bookstore, and the Strand, again in NYC, as the first superstore. we skate along specialty bookstores (Socialist, Nazi, Queer, Black, though nothing on SF or Mystery book shops), then into Barnes & Nobles and the mall/destination bookstore, and Amazon's attempt at a physical bookstore (There was one at University Village, but that's now a restaurant). We take a side alley into the sidewalk vendors of New York, and finally lands on a bookstore co-owned by an author, Anne Pattchet, as an example of the modern indie, blonde-wood bookcases and all. 

Despite the scattershot vignettes, there are a lot of through-lines. The modern independent bookstore is a community gathering place - its owners are in the shop (and often characters in their own rights), and has its regulars and its signings, lectures and events. These bookstores have also always been under siege - underfunded and often running on fumes, with threats from larger chains, censorship, local government regulations, the Internet, Book of the Month, e-books, and even libraries. Plus they have taken the hits from the twentieth century - war and depression and AIDs and COVID. Bookstores close and move and get new owners. So the story of the bookstores are one of survival and community. 

And despite the wide net cast by the author, we're missing stuff. A lot of bookstores get a glancing mention (Powell's in Portland, City Lights in SF, Third Place in Seattle), with the assumption that the reader knows about them. Brentanno's gets mentioned a lot but I don't know much of their story from what is here. There is a lot of famous-authors-as-patrons. But what's missing is the publishers - they move like great dark shapes in the waters offshore, mysterious and powerful. I am STILL looking for a good history on publishers. 

Still, it is a worthy and readable volume that lionizes the independent bookshop and presents its people as unlikely community heroes. Worth diving into.

More later,

Theatre: Freak Out

 Freak the Mighty - Book and Lyrics by Anthony Drewe, Music by Ryan Fielding Garrett, based on the novel by Rodman Philbrick, Directed by Michael Barakiva, Choreographed by Patrick McCollum, Seattle Rep through 6 September 

The Rep launches its season with a big-hearted, big-cast, big charactered musical. The Come From Away  revival last year was a hit (so much so that they brought it back during the summer for another run), so they tapped the same producers - Junkyard Dog Productions - in a co-development with the Cleveland Play House for this new work. And despite the fact that it has already opened in Cleveland, the Rep is crediting this as a World Premiere. OK, fine. 

Here's the overview: Max at 15 is a big soul in an overlarge body. Traumatized at a early age by the loss of his mother, he is developmentally challenged, a slow, oversized cowardly lion. He is distant from his grandparents, has been left behind a couple grades at school, bullied by the tough kids, and has no real friends. That is, until Kevin moves next door with his mother. Kevin is physically disabled, on crutches, and has Morquio syndrome, where his organs are growing faster than his diminutive body. Brainy, acerbic, hopelessly optimistic and a know-it-all, Kevin, who takes the name Freak and is unashamed of his appearance, adopts Max as his best friend. Kevin is a big fan of King Arthur, and an imaginative sequence set in the court of the King is one of the highlights of the show. Together they are adventurers in the town of Portsmouth, Maine. Together they become Freak the Mighty, brains and brawn.

This is a full-fledged, Broadway-bound musical. A large cast with great voices and solid dancing. Big production numbers combine with small spotlight moments. The live orchestra is based in the adjacent Poncho Theater (didn't realize this until after the show). Coming of age. Big-hearted themes. The REP tends overdo its staging, but it works oh-so-well here as background fly in from above, sets skate onto the stage, and everything moves with a clockwork precision. A lot of the numbers feel like they have Come From Away in their DNA, and it has a lot of structure of a modern musical - the initial "I want" song, the sad lament, and the big production number right before the intermission, the reprise of an earlier song in a darker key, and the big Finale. Its a musical, so my writer's brain can identify the plot points as I go along, but it is so well done that I really don't mind. And yeah, I got emotional about it.

Netza Jimenez is a beautiful ogre as Max, who starts to heal his trauma and inertness. Cornelius Kittrell is the dynamic, unstoppable Kevin, undaunted by his physical limitations. Both have great pipes - there is a lot of great singing here, but a particularly call-out goes to Kanoa Sims as Gwen, Kevin's mom, who brings an innate warmth to all her songs. But they're all good, and their characters earn their moments.

And I should note that this is based on a young adult novel of the same name, and that was made into a movie about 25 years ago. And the plotline holds in all the versions. But this is its own animal, adapted to the stage with all its advantages and challenges. And the result is this world premiere, the test run, the out-of-town opening, and it is so heartful and engaging and well worth it that I actually hope that it makes it, and that in ten years we see it come back as a revival. 

Good start to the season. More later, 

Political Desk: Primary Colors

 So, why are you taking so long to report this? 

Well, a big part of it is our mail-in ballot system. While we have strict limitations (the ballot has to postmarked or in a voting box by the 8 PM election day), it usually takes a couple days for the smoke to clear and results finalized. Plus, there are usually one or two results that a so close you have to wait to find out who wins. Older and conservative voters tend to vote early in the process, while more progressive types and young folk vote later, which can really swing results. And I think that this lack of instant gratification is a reason some folk don't care much for mail-ins, but I'm willing to wait for final results (I tend to look askance at exit polls, by the way).

In any event, there were few surprises out here. The big one is one I didn't talk about - a levy to support the Seattle Public Library system. It wasn't on my hyper-local ballot, so I didn't talk about it. The Seattle Times did talk about it, and said, "No Thanks".  Everyone else gave it an overwhelming "Yes" with 75% of the vote in favor. My only problem with all this - Why do we have to vote to raise money for overwhelmingly popular items for the greater good, while other budgetary matters (Like, oh, salaries of our elected officials) slip through without a second thought?

Anyway, here's the results from Grubb Street

US Representative District 9: Adam Smith (48%) vs Doug Basler.(29%). The more progressive candidates split the vote and the Republican talk-show host gets through for the third time. He's about topped out his final numbers from the last two runs, and there is little doubt it with tri-peat here. 

State Representative, District 11: David Hackney (43%) vs Ashley Fedan (31%). Both are Democrats. The third candidate in this race was a Republican, so it is likely those votes will swing to Hackney.

King County Assessor: Robert Foxcurran (47%) vs ....? At the time of this writing, Dominique Scarimbolo is at 19.17% and Christopher Roberts is at 18.69%. This one will continue to hang fire for a while, but it is worth noting that Scarimbolo got no endorsements, raised no funds, did little active campaigning, and was running on a platform of "Property Taxes Suck". So it is interesting to see how this one will play out. 

Washington State Supreme Court:

Position 1: Colleen Melody (53%) vs Scott Edwards (29%)

Position 3: David Stevens (35%) vs Jaime Michael Hawk (33%)

Position 5: Theo Angelis (36%) vs. Sharonda Amamilo (32%)

Position 7: Debra Stephens (54%) vs Todd Bloom (27%)

The only note I have on the above is that 50%+ for a nonpartisan position is pretty solid for the upcoming general election. 

And with that we close the rolltop on the Political Desk for a few weeks until things heat up for the general, and go back to talking about games, books, and theater. 

More later,

Theatre: Shakespeare in a Quarry

 The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare, directed by Susan Weingarten, Shakespeare Northwest, Rexville-Blackrock Amphitheatre, Through 7 August.

OK, you can come back now. I'm done with local politics for a couple weeks. 

All the World's a Stage

The Skagit Valley is pretty far off my beaten path, but a member of my playwriting group is the director, so I and two fellow Quills decamped the far-off lands of the Skagit Valley north of the city for this production. Shakespeare Northwest is a plucky band of thespians who bring the Bard's work to life in a natural setting.

That setting is alongside Pleasant Ridge, in what looks like would once be a stone quarry. It is near the Rexville Grange, a large hall for the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, set back among the trees in the back of the property. The outdoor stage is simple bare stage with a few backdrops. The groundlings (and everyone is a groundling here) bring their own chairs. blankets, and drinks.

(And as a note, I stopped for dinner at the nearby Rex Bistro, a bustling place with a good smashburger. Just passing that on.)

The play itself is classic mix-up. Two sets of twins, master and servant, separated as babies, find themselves in the same town. They bear the same name (Antipholus for the master, Dromio for the servant) and appearance. The native Antipholus is married, the newcomer is not, but is stunned by the fact that everyone recognizes him by name, and is convinced the entire town is beset by witches. There are mixed deliveries, assignations, tasks, tokens, the Dromios are beaten for following their masters' orders, and the new Antipholus falls for the native Antipholus's wife's sister. And their original parents are on the scene, though they don't realize it yet. Hilarity results.

It is at its base a screwball comedy, and the troupe leans into it, decked out in 1930's garb. Add to that some songs from Cole Porter and Rogers and Hart, and you has more than a whiff of that decade. Abbot and Costello would fit right into this version. One of the challenges of the play is dealing with twins (A mystery is never about twins, while a Shakespeare play its a good bet). This version uses the same actor as the Antipholus (Antipholi?) and the same actor as the Dromios, and pulls it off with mild costume changes (hats and ties). 

The actors themselves were very good, though un-microphoned and outdoors, they had to project over the wind in the trees and the occasional truck on the main road. Carolyn Travis threw themselves into the roles of both new and original-flavor Antipholus with increasing frustration over the situation. Stacy Brooks as the suffering wife Adriana was excellent, as well as winning the "Sonnet Slam" at the start of the evening (five actors each present a Shakespearean sonnet - a hat is passed and winner gets the proceeds). My fellow Quill, Susan Weingarten, did an excellent job directing this, the farcical of Shakespeare's plays, and yes, it was a long trip home in the dark, but worth it.

Shakespeare Northwest's site is here, and here's the calendar of their performances. Some of which are actually down in Seattle. Worth checking out.

More later, 

The Political Desk: Summing up a Summer Primary

 What, that's it?

Yep, this year's primary is kinda quiet. The biggest ticket is US Rep for us up in the Panther Lake area, and we're looking for a replacement for County Assessor, as well as a slew of State Supreme Court candidates. 

Here are my recommendations. You don't have to  pay attention to them, and I encourage you to make your own decisions. One of the great advantages of mail-in ballots is that it gives you the chance to deliberate as opposed to being in a voting booth facing a bunch of strange names and no idea what to do. 

There are whole slew of other people's endorsements and recommendations, but I recommend people start with the Voter's Guide, which allows the candidates to present themselves in their own words (or their approved words). Sometimes its a great place to see red flags, or to reveal their personal story or preferences. You want to see who is giving money to the various candidates? Check out the Public Disclosure Commission here.

The two big sets of media endorsements are:

The Stranger. which tends to be lefty loosie, swung more away from progressive candidates this time around. Their arguments can be a little loose, and they often do not get this far south of the city.

The Seattle Times goes a little more righty-tighty, but aims at centrist and pro-business. Oddly, they've currently got their recommendations behind a paywall, which is just dumb.

And I should note that here you can find a summary of the two major papers, with notes about where they agree with each other.

Other than that?

The Urbanist does a damned fine job summing up the races and covers a lot of the races that the mains don't deal with.

Washingtonsupremecourt.org does a great job summarizing the state of the state's supreme court, 

The Fuse Progressive Voters Guide weighs in, giving their choices and why other candidates may not have made the cut. Here's the link for King County, but you can search around for other locations as well. 

The Lefty Cheat Sheet does a good job gathering together all of the endorsements of the center-to-left crowd, for your viewing enjoyment.

The Sierra Club's notes are here. The state GOP talks about their chosen judges here. The King County Dems talk here. 

And with all of that out of the way, here's what I put down. You can find my rationale and rationalizations in the earlier entries.

US Representative District 9: Adam Smith 

State Representative, District 11: Ashley Fedan

King County Assessor: Robert Foxcurran

Washington State Supreme Court:

Position 1: Colleen Melody 

Position 3: Mike Diaz

Position 5: Theo Angelis

Position 7: Debra Stephens

And that's it for me. The deadline is 4 August, and I strongly advise voting early because of all the craziness at the National Level. And if you no longer trust the post office, here is a link with your friendly neighborhood voting drop-offs.

OK,  I went to all the trouble of providing all the links. Now go out there and vote!

More later,