Gearing Up

I’d been putting this off until I had a more polished presentation to bring to the table, but the popularity of Victorientalism lately has given me cause to move ahead, good planning be damned.

Put simply, sky ninja are the natural enemies of that overpopulated scourge of the air, the sky pirate. It was only natural that ninja would evolve skyward just as pirates did.

The name sky ninja actually came about as a joke referring to Captain Jack Rose’s unhealthy attachment to the exotic but dangerous and far-flung colonies of the Mysterious East where he accompanied his parents for a several years of his misspent youth. He spent a few years there in the company of a pair of Imperial agents, eventually losing track of them when they disappeared to oppose the schemes of the Empress Dowager Cixi, and thereafter Jack insisted on bringing an Oriental flair to all things, whether it was really helpful or not.

In addition to the pieces he bought or assembled himself, he has commissioned a few pieces that he feels capture the spirit in which he was “trained”. He enjoys the use of weapons from throughout Asia, including Nipponese shuriken (a pair of which he commissioned from Alexandra of the White Peacock Trading Company shortly after they met) and an Indian talwar sword which was passed on to him from his father. He’s not necessarily much good with all these exotic weapons, mind you, but he tries.

Sky ninja is not so much an actual job (I’d imagine actual steampunk ninja would be more land-based unless they were engaged in specific warfare against their sky pirate enemies) as an expression of interest in Asia as filtered through the Victorian-colonial mentality.

It is important, when looking at Asia through steam-colored glasses, that we use the Western/British mentality toward Asians in the same way we do their mentality toward women and the lower classes: something to play with, parody, and subvert, but not something to seriously adopt. The stereotype of the exotic geisha or the silent warrior monk may be interesting to flesh out or turn inside out, but especially in writing, it’s essential to remember that cardboard cutouts are never interesting characters and stereotypical cutouts are less so.

(If you’re interested in making sure you don’t write stereotypes for your Asian characters, you may wish to read this discussion on LJ for a privilege check and a thread on the many interesting possibilities for non-Eurocentric stories.)

And remember, if you don’t see sky ninja stalking you from above, that just means they’re doing their job.

A new magazine, the Gatehouse Gazette, has just published its first issue. It features steampunk and dieselpunk-related articles, fiction and photos by the members of the Smoking Lounge MB. I happen to have an article in there myself. I recommend you check it out!

The Book of Imaginary Beasts, a bimonthly literary magazine on LiveJournal, recently published its steampunk issue. I recommend fans of steampunk fiction go check it out.

In case you haven’t heard, the online fiction magazine Imaginary Beasts is currently accepting steampunk-themed short fiction and art for the May issue. The deadline for fiction submission in May 10th, and for art is May 24th. I’ve already signed up and I’ll be writing about my project here as we get a little closer to the deadline.

Of course, any steampunk fiction collection leads to the inevitable discussion of what makes fiction steampunk. (It’s not quite so easy as gluing some gears to the manuscript, after all.) The key piece of any steampunk worldbuilding must be the technology. Steampunk without steam - that is, without modern or future technology incorporated in a Victorian-era-esque setting - is just gaslamp fantasy. While gaslamp fantasy is also fun and enjoyable, it’s not what we’ve set out to look for, now is it?

In any sub-genre of science fiction, it’s the job of a good author to find the delicate balance between overwhelming the reader with too many details and telling a story in a world that’s either too confusing or too boring for the reader to latch on. The best way to give a world depth without drowning the reader is to have a wealth of small details at the ready, but put them in only when they accent the scene.

For example, if Lady Windermere is enjoying a vacation out near the moors, you might note the mechanized butler fanning her, the steam-powered coach that takes her to the vicar’s house for dinner, or the fancy new Aetherweb Telediscussion Device she had installed so that her daughter can send pictures of her grandchildren from London. Each of these would give a different flavor to the setting, and each could be mentioned off-handedly when Lady Windermere was using that particular device.

Of course, the best fiction calls for solid characters first and foremost. Worldbuilding is important, but without interesting characters, even the most fascinating world might as well be empty.