Category Archives: Clockpunk

The Seed and Twist Revisited

I’ve mentioned a couple of times before (here and here) my method of coming up with story ideas.  I call it the seed and twist.  The seed is some humdrum, everyday thing.  The twist is where you look at the seed in a new way, give it some novel alteration.

By way of illustration, I’ll discuss the seed and twist for each of the stories I’ve had published to date.  Don’t think of it as a glimpse into how my mind works; you don’t want to know.  Think of it as a jumping off point for coming up with your own story ideas.  Sometimes my seed ideas aren’t very everyday things.

  • “Target Practice”
    • Seed:  a prison
    • Twist:  It’s a prison of the future, underwater, and prisoners are made to drive weaponless mini-subs to serve as targets for the country’s submariners.
  • “Alexander’s Odyssey”
    • Seed:  the legend that Alexander the Great descended in a diving bell
    • Twist:  How would the sea-god Poseidon react?
  • “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai”
    • Seed:  some obscure references I found that someone had made a submarine in China around 200 BC
    • Twist:  make it a tale pitting war against peace
  • “Blood in the River”
    • Seed: your standard vampire
    • Twist:  This is an Amazonian vampire-fish known as a candiru, that shape-shifts between human and fish forms.
  • “The Finality”
    • Seed:  the disaster to come in the year 2012 foretold by the Mayan calendar
    • Twist:  The disaster is the universal end of time itself.
  • “The Vessel”
    • Seed:  a ship and its crew returning home
    • Twist:  It’s a ship from Atlantis, and their home has sunk beneath the seas.
  • “The Steam Elephant”
    • Seed: the huge, mechanical elephant from a Jules Verne story set in India.
    • Twist:  Take the same characters, with a newly built steam elephant, and set them in African in 1879, in time for the Anglo-Zulu War.
  • “The Wind-Sphere Ship”
    • Seed:  the little steam toy invented by Heron (also spelled Hero) in 1st century Alexandria
    • Twist:  What would happen if he’d used steam to power a ship?
  • “Within Victorian Mists”
    • Seed:  a steampunk romance
    • Twist:  Lasers and holograms get invented early, in the late 1800s.
  • “Seasteadia”
    • Seed:  a story of young love between opposites
    • Twist:  The story is set against the backdrop of the world’s first permanent sea colony, or seastead.
  • “A Sea-Fairy Tale”
    • Seed:  a man learning that the world must have some fantasy in it
    • Twist:  He learns this from an oceanid, a mythological sea fairy.
  • “Leonardo’s Lion”
    • Seed:  the life-size clockwork lion built by Leonardo da Vinci in 1515
    • Twist:  It’s about fifty years later and the lion is found by a small boy who finds a secret hidden inside the lion.
  • “Against All Gods”
    • Seed:  a journey to visit all seven wonders of the ancient world
    • Twist:  The gods of Greek mythology are angry with a pair of mortal lovers and will stop at nothing to ruin their love for each other.
  • “A Steampunk Carol”
    • Seed:  Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
    • Twist:  The story is played out using the characters of “Within Victorian Mists.”
  • “The Six Hundred Dollar Man”
    • Seed:  the 1970s TV show, “The Six Million Dollar Man”
    • Twist:  It’s set in steampunk times.
  • “A Tale More True”
    • Seed:  the notion of man travelling to the moon
    • Twist:  The story is set in a time even before steam power, when the most powerful man-made source of energy was the metal clockwork spring.

It’s one way of coming up with story ideas.  So far, it’s worked for—

                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

October 27, 2013Permalink

The Truth About “A Tale More True”

Gypsy Shadow Publishing just launched my newest story, “A Tale More True” and I’m excited about it. Here’s the blurb:

History’s greatest liar, a colossal clockwork spring, a fantastic trip to the Moon…in 1769. Read it, but don’t expect truth.

What made me write a clockpunk alternate history story about an 18th Century trip to the moon? As both of my many fans know, I’m a great admirer of Jules Verne, who wrote a classic tale called From the Earth to the Moon.

One day I was searching the web about fictional trips to the moon and discovered Verne was a bit of a latecomer to that topic. Here are some of his predecessors, and the methods they used to get their characters to the moon, according to this website:

ws-images-reading-09-jan-im01-lucian-true-story-tm• Lucian of Samosata, True History, 2nd Century A.D. Carried to the moon by a waterspout/whirlwind, and Icaromenippus, 2nd Century A.D. Flew to the moon in an aerial carriage.
• Johannes Kepler, The Dream, 1634. Transported to the moon by aerial demons.
• Bishop Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moone, 1638. Pulled to the moon godwin001by trained geese.
• Cyrano de Bergerac, Comic History of Estates and Empires of the Moon, 1650. Launched to the moon by firecrackers.
• Daniel Defoe, The Consolidator, 1705. Rode an ‘engine’ called The Consolidator.
• Vasily Kevshin, Newest Voyage, 1784. Flew to moon in a self-constructed flying apparatus.
• Wilhelm Kuchelbecker, Land of Acephals, 1824. Flew in a balloon.
• Edgar Allan Poe, The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, 1835. Flew in a balloon equipped with an air compressor.

I was struck by the fact that no one had written about going to the moon using spring power. During the 1600s and 1700s, they knew about the energy-storage properties of springs, the driving force in most clocks, so I thought someone should write that story.

During the research I also happened upon the interesting historical figure, Baron Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Münchhausen, well known for his fanciful fibs, including tall tales about making two trips to the moon. In one trip he climbed a tall beanstalk, and in the second a hurricane lifted his ship up to the moon. I wondered if a rival of the Baron might be upset by these lies and might set about to prove Münchhausen wrong.

That’s how “A Tale More True” was born.

Subsequently I happened upon this website, and learned that David Russen had written A Voyage to the Moon in 1703, in which a giant spring is used to reach the moon. Oh, well, I wasn’t the first after all!

For you engineers and realists out there, yes, I know a human would not survive the acceleration of being ‘sprung’ to Earth’s escape velocity. However, it might be possible to construct a huge spring within a cylinder, have the spring drawn down in compression, draw a near vacuum in the cylinder, and launch a solid, unmanned projectile to escape velocity. Why you’d want to do that, I have no idea, but it might be possible.

Still, it’s fun to imagine someone building a giant spring in 1769 and travelling to the moon two centuries early. And as long as I was changing history anyway, I figured I’d also change the moon. In most of those early space-travel stories, (except Verne’s), the moon was inhabited. So why not populate the moon in my story?

And, though it’s outside my normal line, why not make the story humorous?

Anyway, enough said. The book has been sprung upon an unsuspecting world, and is available at Gypsy Shadow Publishing, Amazon, Smashwords, and other outlets as well. You’ll enjoy it, thinks—

                                                           Poseidon’s Scribe

June 9, 2013Permalink

Blog Hop – The Next Big Thing

Many thanks to Charlotte Holley who tagged me to participate in The Next Big Thing blog hop.  I didn’t know what a blog hop was but it seems like fun.  In this one, authors answer questions about their Work in Progress (WIP) and people can follow the links along and see what various writers are working on.  That way readers can anticipate and check back later to buy the books they’re interested in.  It’s possible that one or more authors in this chain may really be working on The Next Big Thing!

When you’re tagged for this particular blog hop, you post your answers the following Wednesday and tag five other authors for the following Wednesday.  Here are my answers:

1. What is the working title of your book?  “A Tale More True”

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?  If I recall correctly, I was thinking about fanciful trips to the Moon in early literature.  I’m a fan of Jules Verne, but he’s actually a latecomer to that topic.  While researching, I came across references to Baron Münchhausen.  My story then sort of sprang into my head.

3. What genre does your book fall under?   It’s alternate history, in the subgenre of clockpunk.  I’ve not written much clockpunk, my story “Leonardo’s Lion” being the exception.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?  There are three characters of interest.  The protagonist is Count Eusebius Horst Siegwart von Federmann.  Count Chris HemsworthFedermann could be played well by actor Chris Hemsworth.  He’d have to speak English with a German accent, but doesn’t have to do it well, since it’s a comedy.  Count Federmann is a brooding character, angry at and jealous of Baron Münchhausen.  The Count is intelligent, determined, and optimistic, but lacks sense.

 

Shia_LabeoufThe Count has a young French servant named Fidèle, and I’ll select Shia LaBeouf for that role.  Mr. LaBeouf would have to speak English with a French accent, but not an especially good one.  Fidèle is full of life, but has the sense to fear danger, though he’s always respectful of nobility.

 

 

The character Baron Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Münchhausen only appears briefly at the beginning and end of the story.  Since it’s a cameo role, I’ll splurge and pick Robin WilliamsRobin Williams.  I need an older character of plain appearance who’s able to speak English with a German accent and captivate an audience with his words alone.  Robin Williams played the part of the King of the Moon in the 1988 Movie “The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen.”  

 

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?  A man is so angry about the self-aggrandizing lies of Baron Münchhausen that, just to prove the Baron wrong, he constructs a gigantic metal spring and launches himself to the Moon, where he learns about the nature of Truth.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?  I will offer it to Gypsy Shadow Publishing to be included in my What Man Hath Wrought series.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?  I’m not done with the fist draft yet.  I researched, planned, and outlined the story for about a month.  First and second drafts will take another month.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?  It’s a light-hearted clockpunk tale, so there aren’t many comparable stories.  Perhaps the closest thing is that movie, “The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen.”

9. Who or What inspired you to write this book?  The muse speaks.  I listen and write it all down as fast as I can.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?  Come on—intense jealousy, a space voyage in 1769, and weird Moon creatures.  What more do you want?

At this point I should mention which authors I’m tagging next in this blog hop, but I was unsuccessful in getting any to participate.  I think the hop has been going for about thirty weeks now, with most authors tagging five others.  If you do the math for such a chain, you’ll see how, theoretically, we’d pass the population of the earth in Week 15, and by Week 30 there would be over 2 with 20 zeroes participants.

There only seems to be that many budding authors in the world.  So much for theory.  As Yogi Berra said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.  In practice there is.”

So I won’t be tagging anyone else.  This strand of the chain ends here, with my alter ego, a guy I like to call—

                                                       Poseidon’s Scribe

 

December 19, 2012Permalink