Tall Cool One (2006 Remastered LP Version) - Robert Plant
NaNoWriMo starts in exactly one week and just under twelve hours as I write this post. Since I'm between projects at the moment, I've used the past couple of days to keep my writing muscles sharp by penning the first part of a Steampunk tale, which has been a recent reading interest of mine.
If you're unfamiliar with the genre of Steampunk, I would define it at its simplest as anachronistic technology introduced into a 19th-Century setting. Recent examples would include some of the gizmos in the excellent show Warehouse 13 (currently done with its first season) like the Tesla ray gun, the Farnsworth video communicator, and the Edison electric automobile. Steampunk is H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Steamboy, Castle in the Sky. It's steam-powered mechanical men, airships like naval battleships, and ... rockets.
And of course, the stories are not simply about the technology, but about how the advanced tech has affected the lives of the characters within the stories, because we'd all rather read stories about people instead of things. Here's a taste of my own tale, with a working title of Ad Venus, Fidens (To Venus, Fearlessly):
‘Twas the day before Christmas, and a fine day for rocketry. The fellows and I had gathered in a snow-covered cow pasture to the east of Denver, with our needles of steel and iron, wood and bamboo, ready to challenge the rarefied heights of the wintry air.
Gwen and the boys sat in the wagon, wrapped up in wool blankets and scarves, sipping at hot cider from the Youngs’ stove. My wife’s cheeks were red from the bracing cold of the morning, but she smiled gamely at me as I set up my projectile, a Hale rocket with fourteen pounds of caked fuel between nose cone and the bell-shaped exhaust nozzle. The gantry was giving me fits; I’d dropped at least three bolts into the snow and was wet through the knees of my trousers from hunting for them.
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