I had an eight a.m. meeting this morning (only two more eight a.m. meetings left, provided no one schedules me for any more!) that I was extremely surly about having to attend, but luckily this too shall pass. After the meeting, I went to main campus to get my last set of allergy shots at work, and they all swelled up quite obnoxiously (I still have a hot, hard lump the size of my palm burrowing into my right arm) -- luckily, I'll be able to continue getting shots at the doctor's private practice, so someday I may actually be free of my allergies. Then, I went back to my building, did some work, welcomed back my friend Joy (who took the last month off), and then went to Big Table to have lunch with Katrina. After lunch, I did some more work until around 3pm, when I sloughed off early to get my eyes checked and order one last pair of contacts before my fancy schmancy vision coverage goes the way of all the other perks I'm walking away from.
I grabbed a pearl milk tea, came home, and did a bit of work and surfing on the internet until around seven. Then, I ate dinner (a baked potato -- I could live off of them exclusively, although with the small but viable possibility of potato blight it's probably not wise to get too attached to them as my only food source), debated writing, and decided to give myself a night off so that I can be more productive this weekend. So, I read a book that showed up earlier this week, called THE IRON DUKE by Meljean Brooks. It's gotten rave reviews amongst the people I follow on Twitter, and I would say that those raves are mostly justified -- but I'm not sure that I have any friends whom I would recommend it to, since it falls firmly into the steampunk genre, which not everyone amongst my acquaintance would embrace.
The only other time I mentioned steampunk on this blog (I just checked), I refrained from explaining what it was, but you're not going to be so lucky this time. In a nutshell, steampunk takes most of the flavor and ambience of Victorian (or in this case, I'm thinking Regency) society, but adds a shitload of crazy gadgets and machines powered by steam. "League of Extraordinary Gentleman", in addition to being a very unfortunate way for Sean Connery to end his long and illustrious (to me) career, was an example of steampunk, and Jules Verne could be seen as a loose precursor to the genre. So, in addition to having a somewhat more technical bent that most romance (since you have to have some scientific interest in machines to come up with steampunk inventions and get into the technical details of dirigibles, etc.), it also seems to deal with some alternate history -- if you've already altered history by giving people steam-powered armor or turning them into cyborgs, you might as well alter history entirely, right?
I've only read a very tiny bit of steampunk -- the SOULLESS/CHANGELESS/BLAMELESS series, and now THE IRON DUKE. The first series is basically Victorian England with vampires, werewolves, and steam-powered stuff; entertaining, but not super into steampunk land. THE IRON DUKE is much further down that road -- it's an alt-history look at what would have happened if the Mongols had kidnapped Marco Polo's expedition, forced the scientists to work for them, and eventually developed nanobots that could infect and control others, thus seizing all of the Old World and driving the refugees to the Americas. The book takes place nine years after a pirate (later given a dukedom) destroys the Mongol Horde's presence in England and frees the populace. I particularly liked that the Iron Duke in real life was Wellington -- and the author made this guys a sort of parallel of Wellington, only parts of him are actually made of iron. Ha.
So now I've gone into way too much detail and likely scared you off. Those of you who are still here should know that I'm not sure I would get much more into steampunk than I already have (although I would read more of both these series) -- but in terms of writing, it's a fascinating look at how to build a convincing and realistic world, and I thought the characters were quite strong. But in terms of my own writing, I don't think it will ever get into steampunk land; I would definitely write a dark dystopian alternate history, since apocalypses are kind of my cup of tea, but any dream I've ever had of the end of the world never involved a steam-powered weapon.
But now, it's almost two a.m., and I should probably make at least some attempt to get something done at the office tomorrow. I'll be unemployed a week from tomorrow and will have all sorts of time to sleep (or, hopefully, write) then. Goodnight!
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