Cyberpunk meets Steampunk in Geek Romance...Say what?

As my better judgment would have it, I have dared to list THE DREAM LAND Trilogy under the categories of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and also Steampunk. Then, after some thought, I went further, labeling the trilogy as being also Cyberpunk. I cleverly announced to the reading world that my trilogy was "Cyberpunk meets Steampunk" in a vain attempt to draw in both audiences. Then I dared further and added "in Geek Romance"--which may [I know I'm seriously tempting Fate by writing this] have gone too far and crossed a line many readers are not prepared to cross.

Now I'm kept awake at night worrying whether or not the new readers of THE DREAM LAND Trilogy will accept my "version" of Steampunk or Cyberpunk or Geek Romance. Perhaps the trilogy could use a bit of explanation, just so we get our sub-genres straight.

We all know what "Geek" means; it's commonly used in popular media today. To me, the word refers to a person possessing scientific or mechanical expertise, whose expertise and attention to such interests waylays his or her interest in other, more popular activities. Another term, "Nerd," is similar in the focus on the scientific and mechanical at the expense of the social and popular but with the added characteristics of lacking in attention to social mores, personal hygiene, and relationship options. Correct me if I'm wrong; neither term existed back when I was in school. And we have "Romance," which is an oft-mistaken word, originally referring to an heroic journey yet today meaning a love relationship. 

Those terms being clear as slightly muddy water, let us proceed to the more disputed terms and their designation of variety of punkness.


For the most part, each term seems to designate the kind of power source used by a society; that is, after the wheel and the horse and all manner of delicate clockwork devices and whatever else there was, there came steam. Specifically, the steam engine: heat some water, make some steam, the steam pushes turbines or pistons and around and around we go, providing endless energy! This coincided historically with the so-called Victorian era (and includes Edwardian, depending on the strength of the purists) in the latter portion of the 19th century and early 20th century--in Earth history.

Hence, STEAMPUNK is a categorization of literary genre, fashion, indeed, a whole lifestyle to some, which appears to be stuck in that era of steam-powered everything. Seeming to replicate that society, fashions include waistcoats, high boots, top hats, long coats, and goggles to protect the eyes in lieu of windscreens. Ladies also embrace the corset and all manner of dresses and apparel about which I am [officially] not privy. In short, Steampunk is the Victorian era revisited, or, as one aficionado put it: Steampunk is "what would have happened if technology had not advanced beyond steam as a power source" with or without advancement in other aspects of a society such as politics and military activity and other rubbish.

When I first encountered what I came to know as Steampunk, I had a simple definition: science fiction or fantasy set in an older (rather than futuristic) setting; that is, anything that did not make use of the kinds of technology we have today. No spaceships. Other good gentlefolk in the genre/fashion/lifestyle have sought to correct me, informing me that after Steampunk comes DIESELPUNK, which, as the name would seem to suggest, involves an advancement of technology to petroleum as a fuel for engines. Following that pattern, we would next come to...let's see...Nuclearpunk? Or...Dilithiumpunk? How about Ram'ot'ixpunk (probably the post-2130 version)? or dare I even speculate about Ogpunk?

Of course, all of these terms originate from CYBERPUNK, they and others playing with variations and derivatives of that first term "cyberpunk"--which appeared in a 1980 short story: "Cyberpunk" by Bruce Bethke. In it, the setting was a highly technologized world rudely contrasted with a dark, fearful cityscape of dilapidation. In essence, high tech crossed with low society. I've always seen the genre as one full of hackers and crackers trying to make it in a world not worth saving. Dreary, indeed--but what else would you expect from postmodern literati? The downward spiral began with T.S. Eliot and his Wasteland, after all.

(In one novel-length work of poetry I produced not too many years ago [Think Nabokov's Pale Fire on steroids], the poet-protagonist looks beyond that dreariness to a bright and optimistic future and dubs it Futurianism: the belief that everything will work out fine and until everything does work out fine we have not yet arrived at the Future. Yes, lots of esoteric gobbledygook, but it was poetry, after all, and I'm digressing....)

Therefore, if we were to proceed backward in time from Steampunk, pursuing a rough, retrograde path through the history of power and energy, we might find ourselves somewhere in BAROQUEPUNK. We would likely be required to wear huge fluffy wigs and too-short pants and play clavichords and lutes, and partake of stately dances. Think Johann S. Bach and you get the idea: a neat and elegant world of trivial lives playing out as stage actors, all the while the peasants starve and so on. It's always the so on that disappoints.... 

Or further backwards, we might land in MONGOL EMPIRE PUNK. They were all punks back in that era, I think most would agree. Not much to do other than ride horses across the steppes, wind in your hair...and once in a while crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. If that sort of thing appeals to you, of course. Note: this is likely the instigating connection which allows stories set in the past or in a primitive world to be included in the otherwise futuristic category of "science fiction"--in my humble opinion. 

Needless to say, we could continue our retrogression through the lineage of punk, perhaps all the way back to CAVEMANPUNK, of which I have an interesting entry: a heroic novella of two caveman brothers who fight over a cavewoman, eventually splitting the tribe. It's set on the edge of the European ice sheet in Neanderthal days. Then the alien spacecraft arrives.... Well, it was quite well-received by two or three people who offered to read it, but I'm digressing once more....

Obviously, there are plenty of Cyberpunk derivatives from which to choose. 

Some people, I'm sure, would even dare to suggest there is a BREWSTERPUNK, named for that cuter-than-should-be-allowed girl of the same name. One would expect, given that theme, a story in which childish, playful energy was used to power everything and cuteness was both the lingua franca and currency of trade. Thankfully, it is not. But I dare digress....

So how do any of these terms possibly relate to THE DREAM LAND Trilogy? That is the question at hand. I have said aloud (and often out loud) the tag line for my "sci-fi" trilogy: "Cyberpunk meets Steampunk in a Geek Romance." How does that all fit together? What laws have been broken? Let me explain.

In Book I ("Long Distance Voyager"), our protagonists journey to a world which is, for most of their adventures, not as far advanced technologically as the world of the late 20th century USA they left. Their new world has primitive vehicles, including steam-powered cars and airships. There are no cameras, radios, motion pictures, telephones, or advanced military apparati. In that respect, I choose to equate that setting with Steampunk, even though the story unfolds on a world different from Earth. Their new world does have a Victorianesque quality to it. So I think I am within the bounds of the broad definition of Steampunk. In fact, I went out of my way during edits to make sure the comparison held true.

In Book II ("Dreams of Future's Past"), our hero revisits that "earlier" era I've just described as Steampunk, so there is not much change from being Steampunk. 

In Book III ("Diaspora"), however, after wrapping up the story lines of the principal cast members from Books I and II, the novel boldly launches into the story of the heroine, Gina Parton, and her adventures in the far future of that world. Ah hah! Her world is full of technological marvels yet the society around her is crumbling and decadent. The reason? A comet is on its way to destroy the planet. They have about 40 years to go when we meet her and begin following her in this era. That high tech / low society dichotomy fits the bill for calling this volume of the trilogy Cyberpunk.

However, our heroine is not a computer whiz, nor is she any kind of cyborg or part machine. Nevertheless, she does carry a few nifty devices, such as communication and personal defense devices. The communication gadget, however, is anachronistic; just for fun, that society's inventors created a device with no direct voice-to-voice connection but, rather, a mechanical interface which artificially replicates vocalization much like a robot voice. Meanwhile, people are giving up and going rogue: doing drugs to forget their fears, praying to the gods and goddesses, digging tunnels, lighting themselves on fire, fighting over food, competing for a seat aboard one of the evacuation spacecraft--

Wait a minute! Spacecraft? But she flies around on an airship, doesn't she?

What's wrong with airships? On a world where petroleum reserves are much more limited than on Earth, society would not be so quick to rely on airplanes for travel. Or gasoline engines in automobiles. Besides, air pollution from such petroleum fueled engines would be dangerous, they may have decided, and so they are perfectly happy with airships and steam-powered cars. And magnetic monorail systems within and between metropolises! 

Cyberpunk enough for you? Steampunk fitting nicely? And Gina Parton, our lovely heroine, certainly fits the model of geek. She and her hero, Sebastian Talbot, provide the proof of the "romance" designation--geeks attract geeks. Something about all that science.... 

And there you have it: Cyberpunk meets Steampunk in a Geek Romance. Wonderful, isn't it?

Paperback or Kindle ebook

US links:

1  http://bit.ly/DreamLandebk_US 

2  http://bit.ly/DreamLandII_US 

3  http://bit.ly/DreamLandIII_US

UK links:

1  http://bit.ly/TheDreamLand_UK

2  http://bit.ly/TheDreamLandBookTwo_UK

3  http://bit.ly/DreamLandBookThree_UK

And remember to rewind some kind for our Myrddin Publishing charity, WATER IS LIFE, by getting a great collection of holiday stories in Christmas O'Clock (Kindle or Paperback).

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(C) Copyright 2010-2013 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Everything you wanted to know about Time compressed for the time you have to read it!

It seems as though I am supposed to post a blog entry today in order to keep the world in balance. However, the balance of the world is not my responsibility. At least not today; I have it on alternate Thursdays. I will, therefore, post something about time, since that is something everyone seems interested in. Specifically, time travel.

Ever awakened from a trance that seemed three and a half days long but by the clock was only 90 seconds? Had a "senior moment" and not been a senior? Felt the day was only 22 hours long and you had much more to do? Or the day seemed like it was 32 hours long? You may have experienced a temporal vortex--an eddy in the stream of time. Time happens, of course.

Now suppose you could predict when those would happen and could prepare for them, even exploit the extra moments of time? Suppose you could do more, like...take an hour from Earth time and indulge your perverse indulgences for 135 days in an alternate timestream. That would be great, huh? But how does that work?

There are two major ways of thinking about time and time travel:

1) time is linear, or

2) time is cyclical.

Stories use either a man-made machine to travel or our hero/heroine finds a natural phenomena, like a wormhole, to travel through. Personally, I find it bordering on implausible to create a machine to bend time so I've chosen to use the natural phenomena method. In the linear structure, time goes on and on like a speeding rocket and you can't jump around so much as try to outrace it to go to the future or slow down and hop aboard if visiting the past. In the cyclical model you can jump from loop to loop going to the future or the past. I tend to believe the linear model, especially for use in my novels, although the cyclical model may work best if you are using a machine.

I have read countless time travel stories. (I could count them, actually, if I could remember all of them, but that is another issue.) H. G. Wells may be considered the father of time travel stories, yet even the Epic of Gilgamesh has some time-bending aspects. One of the best stories I've ever read was in an anthology of sci-fi stories and involved a guy going back to the time of the dinosaurs and encountering a hunting party of aliens; he falls in love with the princess, of course and chooses to stay there. (Can't recall the title or author at this moment--it was in an anthology edited by Robert Silverberg in the 70s; I'll get back to you with it.) Another of my favorites is Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man, a novella in which a Biblical scholar goes back to check on Jesus and through serendipity becomes the person crucified on the Cross. That's an example of cyclical time: the guy from the future goes back to the past and becomes the reason the guy from the future goes back to the past--got it? Wanting to get out of our present structure where we are slaves to time is a major theme in fiction--and the work place.

Or, there is still another view of time, which may prove more accurate:

THE DREAM LAND Book II "Dreams of Future's Past" is about Time. (Book I was about Space; Book III will be about the end of Time and Space.) And, as I learned from Roger Zelazny (especially in the Amber Chronicles), characters often like to sit around discussing profound ideas. I borrowed that concept in this excerpt about time travel:

“What’s all this talk about time travel?” Jason exclaimed, bits of zurrek falling from his greasy lips. “There’s no such thing. I can’t lose weight that way, and you sure can’t change history by going back and doing something different. If you could, everybody’d be doing it.”

Jason swallowed, washed it down with a swig of gor.

“Time is linear—it goes in a straight line—and even if you do a loop-de-loop and go back to the past, it’s still the same straight line, like a tape or ribbon that you have merely twisted around your finger. It’s straight but you’ve bent it. That’s all. You can’t cross over from one part of the ribbon to the next part of the ribbon. It doesn’t work.”

Jason paused to take another mouthful of the zurrek, so succulent when it was grilled the way they did it in Aivana. When he was satisfied, he picked up the conversation as though he had not just put away another plate of the big four-legged bird.

“Everyone’s fate is just that: Fate. I don’t mean that our destiny is pre-arranged...mmm, like a page in some cosmic calendar. I mean, it just happens that way. Nothing can change it. If you change your routine at random so you’re out shopping when an airplane crashes into your house, when you otherwise would be napping on the living room sofa, then that’s what happens. It wasn’t planned by any God of Fate, and it wasn’t anything that you specifically did that made it happen or not happen. It just is. The changes you make are your fate. Changing your fate is part of your fate. It’s just some mind game. It’s the stuff of movies.”

Being the Mexas, he could indulge his host’s wild ravings, but this was different. Jason was on to something. Besides, Jason was more than his host; indeed, being Tammy’s husband now, the palace belonged as much to him as it did to her. More importantly, he wanted his childhood friend’s advice. And assurance. So he put on his salesman’s face and began selling him an idea.

“So all of these events that just happen.... Are they so predetermined that part of the predetermination is we don’t think about them being events that are predetermined?”

He waited for his colleague to reply, but Jason was still contemplating the words, or the next dessert.

“Look at what happens to people in the world. Things like earthquakes, and that airplane crashing into my house—do they just happen, as you say, or are they actually accidents? That’s what the word means: it’s something that happens without anyone expecting it. We say ‘it’s just an accident,’ right? Well, suppose that someone somewhere in some distant time zone has done something by design or by accident which causes that airplane to dive into my house. There’s no reason—no logical reason why that airplane should crash, or that it should crash into my house instead of an empty field. And there’s no particular reason that I should decide that particular morning to alter my routine and go out shopping instead of taking my nap. It’s an accident, like you say. It’s not planned, it’s an accident. That is why we call them ‘accidents.’“

Jason was nodding, either understanding or simply to acknowledge he was listening, since his mouth was full of the next course, something creamy, peach-colored.

“You see,” the Mexas continued, finished with his meal, “accidents are caused by something unexpected, unplanned. They just happen, as you say. But they must have some cause and the only such thing that can be a cause is some action by another thing or person. Every action has an opposite, equal reaction, they say. You’ve studied that a little, haven’t you?”

Jason wiped the dupoi from his lips, nodding his head.

“Doesn’t matter,” the Mexas continued. “You understand, right? What about in time? If it were possible, then one mere extra blink of my eye sometime in the past may catch someone’s attention, and taking their attention away for one extra millisecond may cause them to not hear what their friend was saying, such as, ‘Watch out for that airplane about to crash on us!’ You see, anything could be an instigator of some reaction that assumes itself in another time as what we call an accident.”

Jason cleared his pallet with a ghot wafer and motioned for the servants to remove the dishes he had emptied. He belched loudly, not an Aivana custom but one of his own. A nearby maiden brought a cloth to wipe his crumb-spotted face, like a mother and her dirty little boy. Once cleaned, he returned to their discussion:

“You’re saying that every time someone has an accident it’s actually someone’s responsibility in some past time?”

“No, there’s no responsibility,” the Mexas replied. “I’m saying there are no accidents. Things just happen, as you say. Those are your words. By design or accident these things happen. But something still causes them to happen. Now, suppose that if someone who knew something bad was going to happen had the power—and by ‘power’ I mean they had the knowledge and ability as well as the will or desire to assert themselves against whatever inconvenience might be involved to perform the act, not ‘power’ like with magic—if someone had the power to do something that would result in that future bad thing not happening and went ahead and did it...? That person would be a hero. I mean, if he prevented the bad event, right? He’d be a hero.”

Jason thought for a moment, let out gas, grinned.

“So you want to be a hero? Is that it?” Jason asked. “I thought you did that already. Why do you want to be a hero again?”

“Not me. I’ve had enough of that. Too many close calls at hero-dom. Accidents are what I’m talking about. And the power to change them. It’s not some theoretical debate. It’s real.”

“You are talking some theoretical debate—because it can’t be done.”

A maiden brought a new bottle of something, and Jason grabbed it to scan the dark blue liquid inside.

“It’s wishful thinking, like prayers or flipping a coin into a fountain,” said Jason. “The power of will cannot change the straight line of fate—and I use the word ‘fate’ loosely for your benefit; be aware—” he popped the cap on the bottle, spilling some of its contents over the fine saffron robe that stretched over his belly—“be aware that I’m not attaching it to any mystic or religious ritual or dogma. By ‘fate’ I mean ‘whatever happens to us now, whatever will happen to us in the future, or whatever has already happened to us in the past’...regardless of how or why it happens.”

“Happenstance, eh?”

He poured the drink into the silver chalice of the Mexas, then filled his own vessel: the old white ceramic mug made in Taiwan, inscribed with ‘World’s Greatest Grease Monkey’ that he had rescued from the garage where he once worked.

“All right,” he grunted. “Does that satisfy you for now?”

They raised their drinks and clinked them, but only Jason sampled it.

The Mexas sighed, set his drink down on the table. “Here all theory ends and reality begins.”

Jason finished the mug, reached for the bottle. “What are you talking about?”

“It can be done.”

Jason took up his full mug in both hands. “Only in your dreams.”


Note: Mexas is the Ghoupallean word for 'king' though it comprises a different way of thinking about royal duties than merely being born to them. One is usually appointed Mexas because of administrative prowess.

P.S. Still another schematic of the nature of time and how we specks of universal dust dare think of it, pesky as we are:

If you need to catch up with THE DREAM LAND Book I "Long Distance Voyager" you can get it here. Book III "Diaspora" is almost finished and should be available by the end of 2013.

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 (C) Copyright 2010-2013 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.