Michael Coorlim's Blog, page 52

Seeing Doctor Who on the Big Screen

Last night I went and saw Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary Special, The Day of the Doctor, in the movie theater. This is my trip report. I’m not reviewing the special itself, but rather the theater going experience, so there won’t be any spoilers.



The Day of the Doctor was simulcast in 94 countries, on television and in cinema, making it the all time largest dramatic simultaneous broadcasting according to Guinness. Tickets sold out fast, and I was relegated to seeing it in the theater on the following Monday instead.

Despite this, upon my arrival I immediately noticed the long line snaking out from the auditorium, winding back and forth through the ropes set up by the staff. I’d arrived an hour early and already there were thirty people ahead of me, talking and laughing as they waited to get in. I immediately revised my plan to meet my girlfriend in the bar across the street for a drink and a snack… we’d pre-ordered our tickets, but unless we wanted to be relegated to seats in some inconvenient corner.

It was then that I noticed that this crowd was for the IMAX presentation. I turned my head and saw another theater showing Doctor Who, and this one had eight patrons waiting. It turned out that this was not our theater either, because we hadn’t chosen to see the 3D showing, but rather our tickets were for a third packed auditorium further along the way.

Days after the simulcast, and there were still three sold-out auditoriums for The Day of the Doctor.

The Audience Themselves

Despite my expectations the audience skewed young and mostly female, many per-adolescent. Even more interestingly was the proportion of the audience in some sort of costume; in addition to young men in bow-ties and ill-fitting suits, I saw TARDIS-girls, Dalek-girls, and even a fully-painted weeping angel. All were talking and laughing and waving their sonic screwdrivers about.

I felt fortunate that most of the younger crowd had opted for the IMAX and 3D showings, leaving our own mundane two-dimensional auditorium a bit older on average, at least in the physical sense, if not in the heart.

The Theater Experience

Only days before I’d seen Catching Fire, the second in the Hunger Games trilogy, with a friend for her birthday. Like the Doctor Who audience, Catching Fire’s was largely young and female. And loud. There was a good deal of chatter during the movie, and this is one of the reasons I generally don’t get out to the cinema more often. I’m disinclined to leave the comfort of my own home and brave the combined forces of the CTA and whatever weather Chicago has to pay way too much money to sit in a room full of noisy strangers. The “Theater Experience” has ceased to be a pleasant one.

Despite the definite crossovers, the Who audience was different, and perhaps it was because of the fact that most of those in my auditorium were older and familiar with pre-Eccleston eras. The film was full of subtle nostalgia, as befits the 50th anniversary special, meaning that may have been lost on those who’d grown up with Tennant and Smith. One of the high points for many of us was the way that the film more-solidly reconciled the first forty years of the show with the latter ten, a history that is not often touched upon in the series.

John Hurt, in a way, represents doctors one through eight, more staid, more serious, less prone to fits of childlike behavior compared to Tennant’s cool or Smith’s ancient peter pan. Despite being chronologically younger, Hurt portrays a doctor infinitely more the curmudgeon.

The Verdict

I have no complaints. No quibbles. There’s nothing that the experience did not give me. This was perfect.

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More 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Goodness: The Five(ish) Doctors

Presenting The Five(ish) Doctors, a meta-fictional film starring Peter Davidson, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, with cameos by Paul McGann, Ian McKellin, Peter Jackson, David Tennant and John Barrowman.

Personally I think it could use a bit more Tom Backer.

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Website Updates

Nothing too wild, but I’ve migrated http://www.mcoorlim.com and http://www.booknouveau.com to a new host. It went pretty smoothly, but apparently I’m not terribly good with computers because I ended up having to re-upload all of my image files and then edit every post and page to point to their new URLs.

New Sections

If you check out the menu bar above you’ll see a few new pages.

Interviews and Essays covers articles I’ve written elsewhere online, as well as any interviews I’ve given.

Reviews links to reviews of my work in book blogs and elsewhere.

Awards is just that, awards my work has won. So far I have a grand total of two, but it felt nice to make a page for it.

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Galvanic Century gets a shout out on the Sci-Guys podcast

Author William van Winkle gives the Galvanic Century steampunk mystery thriller series a review on the Sci-Guys podcast episode 143. It starts at the 46 minute mark, and is quite complimentary. I’m glad you enjoyed And They Called Her Spider and Sky Pirates Over London, William, and hope you find the next in the series just as compelling.

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Under Construction like it’s 1999

Just switched web-hosts. I’m having to manually re-upload any image files, so if a page seems like it’s missing… something… well. There you have it.

March of the Cogsmen is the Indie Book of the Day

Indie Book of the Day has selected March of the Cogsmen as its book of the day for November 8th, 2013.

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Classic Art Animated

Stumbled across this early this morning. Bumpers for an Australian sketch-comedy show.

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New Release: Dreams of the Damned

Detectives Alton Bartleby and James Wainwright’s latest case will take them to the boundaries of Edwardian psychiatry and beyond. There’s been a murder in the Bedford Mental Hospital, and the patients have taken over to ensure that justice is done.

Will the conflicts caused by Bartleby’s recent wedding rend their partnership apart, or can the detectives keep their focus long enough to solve the case, before Scotland Yard’s impatience leads to the hanging of a scapegoat?

Dreams of the Damned is the ninth story in the Galvanic Century series of steampunk mysteries.

Funny story: I started writing it after A Matter of Spirit and got as far as the first chapter before being sidetracked by the character of Aldora Fiske, and went on to write the Gentleman’s Chronicles stories.  I feel that coming back to Dreams of the Damned after this resulted in a stronger story with more-developed characters.

Dreams of the Damned is currently available for $2.99 as an eBook through Amazon and Barnes & Noble; this special promotional price won’t last, so pick it up early and save.

If you’re on the fence about it, here’s a short sample from the book.

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And They Called Her Spider, Part 4

This is the continuation of the serialization of the Galvanic Century steampunk mystery novelette, “And They Called Her Spider”. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 is here, and Part 3 is here. If you’re impatient like I am, you can download the entire book for free from Amazon.

The doll was incredible. An absolute marvel of clockwork ingenuity disguised as a children’s toy. It was capable of articulation impossible by most engineer’s standards, and when wound moved with an almost prescient autonomy. The patterns it moved through– gymnastic routines, capering, mime-work– were varied and almost human. Its creator was a true master. Sadly, once disassembled, I lacked the skill or tools to put it back together. No matter– it had served its purpose down in my workshop.

I joined Bartleby in the dining room to tell him my findings of a supper over cold knots of beef and ginger beer.

“If Dobbson made the clockwork then he’s got to be guild-accredited. We should visit the Academy hall of records and see what they have on him.”

Bartleby put his plate aside. “Well. We’d best hurry, then– the Jubilee is but days away.”

“What? I thought we had a week?”

“It’s Thursday, James. You’ve been obsessing over that doll for thirty-six hours.”

“That makes sense. Yes, of course. To the Academy then?”

“Maybe you should take some time and rest?”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” I gave my partner a grin borne on wings of sleep-deprivation, enthusiasm fuelled by my examination of a true masterwork of modern clockwork engineering.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

 

***

 

“Dobbson. Two ‘B’s’.”

“I’m afraid I’m not seeing it here.” Mr. Gregory, the aged clerk at the Academy register’s office wasn’t a member of the Guild; no guild member worthy of membership would be content with a paper shuffling job. I had known him since my own academy days, and rumour claimed that he’d worked as an administrator since the founding, though that would put his age well beyond the reasonable.

“Hm. It’d make sense that he’d be using a pseudonym. Still, it’s unlikely that a man with such skill wouldn’t be a member.”

“What did you say it was that he’d made?”

“Toys. Dolls. Clockworks of various sorts.”

Bartleby wasn’t here to handle the talking, citing an appointment with his own contacts elsewhere. It wasn’t a problem, though– old Gregory was well used to engineers and our social shortcomings.

“And how aged would you say he was?”

“Indeterminate. Somewhere between sixty and seventy if I had to hazard a guess.”

The clerk nodded and turned, disappearing between the stacks of folders and walls of filing cabinets. After a few minutes he returned, laden with leather-bound folios. “These are the class pictures of the men in the Academy clockworks program between 1840 and 1860. I don’t know if they’ll help, but this is the best I can do.”

I thanked the clerk and set about looking through the materials he’d offered me. Class sizes over the last century weren’t very large– even in my own graduating class of 1894 we only numbered fifteen– but that still gave me over one hundred poorly lithographed clockwork engineers to sift through. Trying to match those almost identical small portraits to the old man I’d met earlier was a daunting task. Bartleby had a better eye for this sort of thing, but the records were for the perusal of alumni alone.

After a few hours work I’d narrowed the likely engineers down to three possibilities, and Gerald was all too happy to lend me their files. Truth be told, most of those permitted to look through the records— Guild-members— didn’t have the drive, desire, or need to. I think that the old man was just pleased to be able to at least partially justify the pay he’d been receiving all these years.

 

***

 

“Our most likely candidate,” I told Bartleby over dinner, “is one Hector Whitney, class of 1853. In 1870, his masterwork was accepted egregia cum laude by the council of Masters, though he never completed the administrative paperwork for advancement.”

“As with your journey-work advancement?”

“Yes. It’s fairly common that we forget the small details. Advancement isn’t really the point, you understand? It’s all about the work.”

“But in your case they basically took care of all that for you.”

“Yes, and my work was simply maxima cum laude. For a man with this talent-”

“That makes little sense.”

“No, it does not. Oh, a bit of luck. One of his classmates is still alive. He might have some insight into Whitney.”

“We’re running out of time, James.” Bartleby reminded me.

I wasn’t concerned. Just one more constraint under which to solve this puzzle, as surmountable as any other.

 

***

 

“Hector was the best of us, the poor fellow.” Bonner had been a civil engineer at the Nash Conservatory for the last decade, and had worked for the Royal Gardens since graduation. He was kind enough to meet with us in the Conservatory visitor’s centre.

He was a small, wizened man with a surprisingly soft and wheezing voice. “Not only was he brilliant engineer, but a good man. Had the soul of a toymaker. His first inventions were military, yes, but after the birth of his grandson all he made were toys. He took a lot of scorn for that from a lot of short-sighted people, but they shut up when they saw his masterwork. So much talent. So much tragedy.”

“Tragedy?” Bartleby asked.

“Oh yes. This was just after he’d finished his masterwork– a man-sized doll with a functional circulatory system. Stunned the lot of us. Nothing compared with what you lads are doing now, of course, but this was back in the seventies.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Geopolitics happened. The Franco-Prussian war happened. Hector’s daughter and grandson were in Paris when Wilhelm and Bismark’s airships lay siege to the city. Killed in the bombing. I think that was what broke Hector’s spirit, at last– he said he was done with the work of men and generals, cleared out his workshop, and disappeared.”

“That’s terrible,” Bartleby said.

“His critics called him a toymaker, but he was so much more. Skilled in a dozen fields from medicine to chemistry to mechanics… the world is worse off without him.”

“The Home Office believes he’s still alive,” Bartleby said. “We’re trying to find him. There’s a matter of import he can help the Crown with.”

“The Queen?”

“Precisely.”

“Well. If anyone could come up with a fantastic Platinum Jubilee gift it would be Hector.” Bonner seemed ignorant of the irony coming out of his mouth. “I wish I could help you, but I haven’t heard from him in over thirty years.”

“If there’s anything you can remember, any places he used to frequent, other people he used to see…”

“Well, there’s this church down in Southwark-”

“We’ve already been there.” I shook my head.

“Oh. Hm. Then what about his daughter and grandson’s mausoleum?”

“They were transported to London for burial?”

“Well, no. There wasn’t anything to bury. But he had a monument built to them in Abney Park.”

 

***

 

“The more I consider the matter the more sense it’s beginning to make,” Bartleby said as we entered the cemetery.

“What is?”

We walked along the main path through the Egyptian-inspired gates. I was half-listening to Bartleby, enamoured of the fact that the trees around Abney Park seemed to have been planted in alphabetical order. It appealed to my driving need for orderly structure. Acer… Alder… Apple…

“Everything. A brilliant engineer, his daughter and grandchild killed in a war, grows disenchanted by the political world of man. He disappears from the world and comes back to kill the politicians and industrialists who represent the powers that be.”

“I don’t know, Bartleby. Where has he been keeping himself the last thirty years?” Birch… Beech… Box…

“Doing what you do. Playing the hermit, forgetting the world, losing himself in his work. Building himself the perfect assassin.”

Cherry… Elm… Hawthorne…” Building? Bartleby, do you mean to suggest that the Spider is some sort of advanced clockwork automaton?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because it’s not possible. Even the most advanced of clockworks can only run simple mechanical routines. They can’t react to stimuli. They can’t make choices. They just do whatever it is that they’ve been built to do.”

“I’m disappointed in you, James.” Bartleby laughed lightly. “Nothing’s impossible in this age, you’ve told me so yourself. What if you combined a clockwork with one of Babbage’s difference machines?”

I scoffed. “I would hardly think that–”

“And what could you do if you were locked down in your workshop for thirty years, uninterrupted?”

The only answer I had to that was “a good deal.” Bartleby was correct– every day the limitations of science and technology were being pushed further and further back. One simply had to look at the work of the chemist Jekyll or the galvanic tragedies in Germany over the last century to see that the world as it is bears little resemblance to the world as it could be. An autonomous clockwork– it wasn’t entirely impossible, even if I myself couldn’t see a way to do it. Remembering the complexity of Whitney’s masterwork, I had little doubt that if anyone could manage it, it would be he.

The Whitney mausoleum was Gothic in its architecture, long with a high pointed front archway. Its exterior carvings mimicked a trellis of interlaced tracery with a repeating pattern of trefoils and quatrefoils. The doors in particular were made to resemble cathedral doors, and upon inspection, we found them to be slightly ajar.

Bartleby drew his pistol as I shouldered the heavy doors open. A lantern in one hand, I hefted a pry-bar across my shoulders and entered. Despite the length of the chamber within, the interior was sparse and empty, containing but two sarcophagi– one of which was open. I approached it cautiously, length of iron raised, but found that instead of a corpse swaddled in funerary shroud it held a spiral staircase descending down into darkness. Bartleby stuck close to my light, and together we descended deep into the earth.

 

***

 

A small light from below grew more visible as we descended, and we found Hector Whitney waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs, in what appeared to be a subterranean workshop. He greeted us with a pistol levelled at my chest.

“Stop right there.” His hands were gnarled but steady. “I’ll shoot if you come any closer. Drop your weapons.”

Bartleby slowly put his gun down on the steps, and I followed suit with my pry-bar and lantern.

“What happened, Whitney?” I asked. Bartleby isn’t very useful when faced with the prospect of violence; I knew the talking would be left up to me. “You were such a genius. Your work was amazing.”

“Life happened. Death happened,” he said. “It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

“Life isn’t fair. Lots of people lost their family in that war–”

“This isn’t about Jessica and William!” He almost screamed, raising the pistol. I braced myself, but he managed to regain some composure. “That’s what everyone is going to think, I know, but that’s not what this is about.”

“Why don’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice level, watching for the slightest droop in his gun-arm.

“It’s about them and what they did to us. What they’re doing. What they are going to do.”

“Them?”

“Them! The plutocrats! The politicians! The aristocrats here, the robber-barons in America. Science was supposed to make us all free! It was supposed to make us all equal! It was supposed to usher in a new era of prosperity and lift up the weakest, and look at what we’ve gotten! Look at the fruits of the industrial revolution! Rich landowners get richer, while the poor fill their lungs with poison, work their children into early graves, and pervert the miracles we give them into weapons of war!”

“Look at the airships!” I said. “The telegraphs! The electric lights! You were a toymaker– you brought joy to countless children!”

“And now those children are grown and it’s time to send them to war with those same toys! It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you, you don’t know— you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. I’ve spent the last three decades building weapons of war.”

“For whom? Aside from a little sabre rattling, between France and Germany, Europe’s been at peace for decades.”

“For us all! They don’t care. They’ll sell them all to anyone. It’s coming, young man. Soon. The great war to end all wars. Guns that can wipe out entire cavalry lines. Toxic air that can clear battlefields. Razor wire so sharp it’ll slice a man to ribbons. Europe is going to become a charnel house– be glad you won’t be there to see it!”

I tensed, staring at his pistol again. “You might shoot me, Hector, but my partner will drop you before I hit the floor. Just give up, and we’ll see you get a fair trial.”

“Shoot you?” He actually seemed a little surprised at the suggestion, and a little contemptuous. “This isn’t for you. It’s mine. My escape. I’ll die before I let them make her kill me.”

Before I could move he had turned the gun on himself. Before I could reach him he’d pulled the trigger. Before I could so much as cry out, the contents of his beautiful genius mind had splattered all over the wall of his hidden workshop.

 

***

 

“That’s it then?” Bartleby asked.

We watched from afar as the police inspectors were bringing up armfuls of evidence from the workshop below the mausoleum. They had found more plans and schematics. I’d only gotten a brief glance before Scotland Yard had spirited them away, but what I saw will be burned into my mind’s eye until the day I die. Bartleby had been right– Hector Whitney had built her, but he was off about how. Way off.

“No. The Spider’s still out there. You heard that poor old fool. She wasn’t helping him escape at the church, she was coming after him. He may have built her, but she isn’t working at his behest. Whomever it was that turned her loose on him can still turn her against whomever they please– and I fear that we may be next.”

“Us? Why us?”

“We’ve tracked down her origins. We might even be able to stop her. It makes tactical sense to go after us before we can ready ourselves.”

“Oh lord.” He scratched his temple with the butt of his pistol.

I stared at it until he sheepishly slipped it back into his pocket. “Fortunately for us, they’re wrong about that.”

“About it making sound tactical sense?”

“About us not being ready. Come, Bartleby. We must prepare for the endgame.”

Okay, yes, I’d exaggerated slightly to Bartleby about being ready, but the poor man’s of no use when he’s facing inescapable death.

 

***

 

The Spider came for us at five minutes past midnight. We were both in the library, Bartleby reading something by Dickens while I played chess against myself. Don’t snicker— it’s great practice, and I never lose. There was little warning before she attacked.

She came from the fireplace, as I had assumed she would, it being the least conventional means of ingress. The flames flared up as she landed, momentarily blinding me, and I felt a sharp pain as a thrown knife struck me with enough force to knock over the chair I was sitting in. The weapon penetrated the thick leather under my surcoat almost half an inch– were I without it, it would have surely killed me.

Bartleby was moving even before the back of my chair hit the floor— he can be fast when needs be. From the ground I watched as the Spider spun and danced towards him, firelight reflecting off of steel knives held between gloved fingers. He made it all the way to the hall archway before she attacked, launching herself like a cannonball, hitting him in the small of the back with her knees as she had struck me in the church. By the time I’d regained my feet she’d rebounded and was heading back in my direction. I wrenched the knife out of my leather chest-piece and threw it back at her. A clumsy toss, barely on target, but she ducked from it instead of throwing her knives at me and that was all the distraction Bartleby needed.

He lunged from the ground towards the bell-rope at the entrance to the hall. A deep resonating bass note filled the room, its resonance amplified and reflected by the concealed megaphones I’d secreted around the library’s tapestries. The effect on the Spider was immediate and dramatic: she collapsed, like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Bartleby, panting,watched her still form for a long moment before scrambling his way over to where I sat against the wall.

“Is she done? Is that it?”

He gathered up the first aid kit from the coffee table and sat next to me as I removed my vest, leather chest-piece, and shirt.

“She’s done. The Synaptic Disruptor temporarily interrupts the flow of information between the body and the brain.”

I winced as Bartleby placed an alcohol soaked cotton swab against my chest wound. “Not a big deal for the living– us– our bodies are producing the necessary charge for the connection to resume. We don’t even notice the break.”

“I don’t understand. Why would that affect a clockwork?”

“Galvanic clockwork.” I leaned my head back against the wall and let the man patch me up. “Mostly mechanical, but with a human brain and spinal column. Her motions build up the galvanic charge to keep her clockworks moving and to keep her brain functioning. It’s why she was always in motion– she had to keep building that steady charge. The more she moved, the faster and stronger she’d get. The Synaptic Disruptor breaks that cycle, and grounds her charge– unless someone winds her again, she can’t move or think.”

“That’s monstrous!” Bartleby finished wrapping my wound.

“It’s a perversion,” I agreed, interrupted by the timely arrival of the Metropolitan Police officers the Home Office had insisted be waiting nearby.

Just as I’d thought, though, the entire affair was over long before they even managed to arrive.

 

***

 

They took the Spider, of course. I asked permission to study her workings, but the request was lost in the bureaucracy, along with my request to look at her schematics or any of Whitney’s other affairs. The broadsheets exposed Whitney as the mastermind and an anarchist sympathiser, and he was the talk of the London gossips for a time. The Platinum Jubilee went off without a hitch, and everyone agreed it was a spectacle that would not soon be matched in the early twentieth century. I fear that Hector Whitney’s predictions of a Great War will prove them wrong, however. Fields of toxic gas, galvanic soldiers both dead and alive, weapons of war designed by a secret think tank — it’s all almost too fantastic to believe, and yet I’ve seen the proof. I’ve seen what my fellow engineers can create for the good of mankind, and what the ignorant and powerful see fit to do with it.

Something tells me that the poor old bastard took the easy way out, but I could never join him. I’ve too much hope. Too much trust, perhaps. There’s great evil and greed in men, but great good and compassion as well. Cheers to the wonders of the new age!

 

This concludes “And They Called Her Spider.” Bartleby and James’s adventures continue high above the streets of London in “Maiden Voyage of the Rio Grande,” available in the Steampunk Omnibus collection.

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Buy a Print Book, Get a Discount on the eBook

Amazon’s MatchBook program goes live today. Authors who choose to participate can offer big discounts on the .mobi ebook versions of their titles if the reader chooses to buy them with the print version. Hopefully this will create an investment for people to buy more print editions, as they’re not sacrificing the instant gratification of being able to read a book with a click.

All of my titles are enrolled in this program, with discounts of at least 50% being offered. Traditionally most people buy the ebook edition, so hopefully this will lead to more print sales.

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