GUEST BLOG: Steve Harper on Writing Steampunk

THE SPEED OF STEAM, by Steve Harper







A couple weeks ago on a Friday afternoon, a file landed in my email.
Big one. It was the copyedited manuscript for THE IMPOSSIBLE CUBE, the
sequel to THE DOOMSDAY VAULT (which is now on sale and has mad
scientists and zombies in it). Could I go through the manuscript and
pop it back within ten days?



Whoa.



A number of writing blogs have already commented on the speed of writing
these days, how just a few years ago, I would have received a big pile
of paper in the mail with red marks all over it, and after I went though
it, I would have had to make a trip to the post office. Now I read and
upload a file, yada yada yada.



I just want to add that it feels wrong.  For steampunk, I mean.



See, I think part of steampunk's appeal is the way it slows us down.
Steampunk puts us in a world before telephones and jet planes. When
communicating with someone on the other side of town meant dashing off a
postcard. When newspapers lived by the telegraph wire. When
international travelers went by train or ship or even dirigible, and
going around the world took eighty days instead of eighty hours. When a
new advancement in processing speed meant the Royal Mail had worked out
a more efficient sorting system. Our world goes so fast, it's nice to
take a break in a place in which everything goes a little slower.



As a result, it feels like all steampunk should be written at a rolltop
desk on a big, clunky typewriter with a sticky H and a crooked M while a
Victrola plays scratchy music in the background.  Manuscripts should be
bundled into boxes tied with brown string.  Letters to one's editor
should be scribbled with a fountain pen and dropped into the afternoon
post.



And yet, I flip words into a 2-terrabyte computer with dual-core
processor hooked up to the Internet via high-speed DSL cable modem while
four speakers croon a mix by Danny Elfman, and I toss letters to my
editor into the aether of the Internet  It makes me feel out of sorts
and wrong.



Not wrong enough to make write the long way, mind. Anachronism does
have its limits.



But I'm a writer with a good imagination. So when I write steampunk, in
my head my computer becomes a typewriter and my contact lenses become
spectacles. My sweatshirt becomes a tweed jacket and my study with
central heat becomes a drafty garret. My dog and my pot of tea become .
. .



Well. I suppose not everything has to change.





Steven Harper usually lives at http://www.theclockworkempire.com . His
steampunk novel THE DOOMSDAY VAULT, first in the Clockwork Empire
series, hits the stores in print and electronic format November 1.