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starladyHolmes Big Bang steampunk AU meta and background post, ahoy!
This post contains major spoilers for the entire story, which I unreservedly recommend that you read first.
I started out wanting to write a Holmes steampunk AU, and as I've said other places, I don't believe that there's any value in going back to the past in fiction--performing an intervention, one might say--unless in your narrative you're performing an intervention of some kind, changing things around to make one point or several. I had several in mind, the first of which, in the broadest sense, was feminism; I had a vision of Mary Morstan commanding an airship and decided to arrange my AU so that that was not only possible, but natural.
I was also reading Tom Lamarre's The Anime Machine around the same time, and a lot of the narrative at several levels is an attempt to dramatize points he makes, particularly about Miyazaki Hayao's movie Laputa: Castle in the Sky, though the idea of the information bomb is taken from his discussion of otaku subjectiles in Gainax's work--in fact the title of the story comes from an early story treatment for the movie. Lamarre talks about Miyazaki's decision in his movies to put the gun in the woman's hand, which allows for a different relationship to militarism and violence than that which played out historically, and my ideas about the Aery (which also obviously owe a debt to Naomi Novik's aviators in the Temeraire books) were heavily influenced by his discussion. I'm not sure whether my wind-and-steam powered airships really do present an alternative relation to empire and technology, but it should be apparent from the text that I did change around quite a lot of things, and as I go forward in this AU, if and when I do, some things will depart even more radically from our history.
Perhaps the two most obvious changes is that two famous women who died young in history survived in my world--Princess Charlotte and Countess Ada Lovelace, to be precise. In my world Princess Charlotte gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Prince Leopold-Edward, in 1819, and went on to become Queen Charlotte, having many more children with her husband Prince Leopold. Thus Victoria was never born, and instead there was a Carlist Age. Similarly, Ada Lovelace did not die of uterine cancer but instead lived to a ripe old age, having seen the difference and analytical engines come to full prominence in society; indeed, the analytical engine was key in the development of advanced airship designs after the Aery's creation during the Crimean War and establishment in the Mutiny. That the Aery is an all-female service is attributable to the Queen and her self-professed hoydenism.
Another obvious change is that the now-United States did not achieve its independence from Great Britain until 1865; this was because Kansas is a major location of helium deposits, and I needed the British to have easy access to helium at least during the Aery's early years. (Indeed, the perils of floating airships without helium were driven home during the final months of the American War, when the continentals achieved several important victories simply by bringing down hydrogen-floated Aery ships with incendiaries). The extension of coloniality and the abolition of slavery in 1832, as well as the reason the South attempted to stay with Britain and the North declared war on both sides, and what Lincoln did w/r/t society after independence, has all sorts of important social repercussions which this story does not really get into.
It may or may not be deducible from the story that the Chinese and the Americans have an alliance that predates both countries (re)gaining full sovereignty after the American and Second Opium War, respectively, but they do; I imagine the west coast of North America looks rather different than it did in 1888 in our history, though I haven't put much thought to it yet. There will be inevitably be friction in the relationship as China's industrial revolution gets into gear and they are less willing to buy American guns instead of making their own, but these are less immediate concerns.
Another major change I made, though this may seem less obvious, is to alter and weaponize the designs of the airships Hindenburg and Graf von Zeppelin, the pre-eminent vessels of the short-lived Golden Age of Airships in our world. If you're curious about the same, check out Dr. Eckener's Dream Machine: The Great Zeppelin and the Dawn of Air Travel by Douglas Botting. I wound up conceptualizing the airships as somewhere between submarines and sailing ships, though really someone needs to invent the radio posthaste in my world so as to make battle tactics much more dynamic.
Obviously the canon character who is the focus of all these AU changes is Mary Morstan, and I could see readers thinking that I have changed her so much as to be unrecognizable. Canonically, however, Mary Morstan spent nearly half her life at boarding school in Edinburgh after her father's death, and at the end of The Sign of the Four Holmes observes that she might have been of assistance to them on cases but for Watson's marrying her. Out of such threads have I taken an alternate--but ultimately, I think, fairly true to the movie's more independent vision of Mary--take on her character.
This post contains major spoilers for the entire story, which I unreservedly recommend that you read first.
I started out wanting to write a Holmes steampunk AU, and as I've said other places, I don't believe that there's any value in going back to the past in fiction--performing an intervention, one might say--unless in your narrative you're performing an intervention of some kind, changing things around to make one point or several. I had several in mind, the first of which, in the broadest sense, was feminism; I had a vision of Mary Morstan commanding an airship and decided to arrange my AU so that that was not only possible, but natural.
I was also reading Tom Lamarre's The Anime Machine around the same time, and a lot of the narrative at several levels is an attempt to dramatize points he makes, particularly about Miyazaki Hayao's movie Laputa: Castle in the Sky, though the idea of the information bomb is taken from his discussion of otaku subjectiles in Gainax's work--in fact the title of the story comes from an early story treatment for the movie. Lamarre talks about Miyazaki's decision in his movies to put the gun in the woman's hand, which allows for a different relationship to militarism and violence than that which played out historically, and my ideas about the Aery (which also obviously owe a debt to Naomi Novik's aviators in the Temeraire books) were heavily influenced by his discussion. I'm not sure whether my wind-and-steam powered airships really do present an alternative relation to empire and technology, but it should be apparent from the text that I did change around quite a lot of things, and as I go forward in this AU, if and when I do, some things will depart even more radically from our history.
Perhaps the two most obvious changes is that two famous women who died young in history survived in my world--Princess Charlotte and Countess Ada Lovelace, to be precise. In my world Princess Charlotte gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Prince Leopold-Edward, in 1819, and went on to become Queen Charlotte, having many more children with her husband Prince Leopold. Thus Victoria was never born, and instead there was a Carlist Age. Similarly, Ada Lovelace did not die of uterine cancer but instead lived to a ripe old age, having seen the difference and analytical engines come to full prominence in society; indeed, the analytical engine was key in the development of advanced airship designs after the Aery's creation during the Crimean War and establishment in the Mutiny. That the Aery is an all-female service is attributable to the Queen and her self-professed hoydenism.
Another obvious change is that the now-United States did not achieve its independence from Great Britain until 1865; this was because Kansas is a major location of helium deposits, and I needed the British to have easy access to helium at least during the Aery's early years. (Indeed, the perils of floating airships without helium were driven home during the final months of the American War, when the continentals achieved several important victories simply by bringing down hydrogen-floated Aery ships with incendiaries). The extension of coloniality and the abolition of slavery in 1832, as well as the reason the South attempted to stay with Britain and the North declared war on both sides, and what Lincoln did w/r/t society after independence, has all sorts of important social repercussions which this story does not really get into.
It may or may not be deducible from the story that the Chinese and the Americans have an alliance that predates both countries (re)gaining full sovereignty after the American and Second Opium War, respectively, but they do; I imagine the west coast of North America looks rather different than it did in 1888 in our history, though I haven't put much thought to it yet. There will be inevitably be friction in the relationship as China's industrial revolution gets into gear and they are less willing to buy American guns instead of making their own, but these are less immediate concerns.
Another major change I made, though this may seem less obvious, is to alter and weaponize the designs of the airships Hindenburg and Graf von Zeppelin, the pre-eminent vessels of the short-lived Golden Age of Airships in our world. If you're curious about the same, check out Dr. Eckener's Dream Machine: The Great Zeppelin and the Dawn of Air Travel by Douglas Botting. I wound up conceptualizing the airships as somewhere between submarines and sailing ships, though really someone needs to invent the radio posthaste in my world so as to make battle tactics much more dynamic.
Obviously the canon character who is the focus of all these AU changes is Mary Morstan, and I could see readers thinking that I have changed her so much as to be unrecognizable. Canonically, however, Mary Morstan spent nearly half her life at boarding school in Edinburgh after her father's death, and at the end of The Sign of the Four Holmes observes that she might have been of assistance to them on cases but for Watson's marrying her. Out of such threads have I taken an alternate--but ultimately, I think, fairly true to the movie's more independent vision of Mary--take on her character.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-08 18:21 (UTC)I particularly liked how the ships were named after Amazon warriors. Heh. I would love a story just involving the women in the Aery, with some love/sex in there. :-D
Or perhaps stories set in China or the States (or India for that matter, what is India doing during this time period? How has its course been altered?)
I loved the relationship between Holmes and Watson and the nicknames. Heh.
Great job all around. You had my imagination flowing.
Now after the praise comes my unfortunate teacher/grammar brain. I came upon a lot of mistakes upon reading it, mostly a lot of comma weirdness. Some commas were just incorrect from a grammatical standpoint, but worked ok stylistically, others didn't work even from a flow standpoint. Some sentences could have used the addition of a comma to make any sense whatsoever. I have not actually listed any of that, nor the one instance of a debatably incorrect apostrophe, but I do list below some instances where there were mistakes that actually took me out of the story. Hopefully you will forgive me for this. I can't read anything without doing this.
Here you go:
"gestured at the basket Mrs. Watson had packed, currently half-open on the seat beside him." (chp 2)
Did you mean the landlady?
"Ahead of him Holmes abruptly, and Watson halted on the instant" (chp3)
Holmes stopped abruptly? Or some other synonym
“I told you seven years ago that you two were the most dangerous men in London, Doctor,” King replied (chp4)
I thought it was 6 years
"but it was doubtful that Adler’s memory when back quite that far" (ch4)
s/when/went/
Once again, I will reiterate that I loved the story, and I would happily beta for you anytime.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-08 22:06 (UTC)Also, thanks for pointing out the typos--in a 35K word text I'd be surprised if there weren't any, and I do appreciate people helping me find them.
*is mysterious about other parts of the alternate history, mostly because I haven't thought them through yet*
"The Flying Empire" Translation
Date: 2011-12-08 10:11 (UTC)I really loved your fic and I'd like to ask your permission to translate it into Russian, if you don't mind, and use the translation for the Russian Sherlock Holmes Secret Santa fest on diary.ru (http://pay.diary.ru/~sherlockss).
Naturally, I'll save all the credits to the original and give you the link to the translation, if you let me translate it)))
Thanks in advance,
Vipera_Berus89
(http://vipera-berus89.diary.ru/)
(http://vipera-berus89.livejournal.com/)
Re: "The Flying Empire" Translation
Date: 2011-12-08 19:21 (UTC)