Here I go again...

[kumakami]

For those new to the bored, or old lurkers who've recently rejoined...the old indifference engine (aka me# has a habit of coming up with a LOT of random ideas....here is another one.

I was thinking about steampunk the other day, analyzing it as it were. Like cyberpunk, it is a cultural/tech themed Sci-fi genre. It has two main inspirations, Victorian culture and the concepts of a mechanical universe. Ok a lot to digest but stay with me.Steampunk rest more on the latter then former. It is the universe mechanical that stays its main focus, you can add other cultures and still have it be steam punk. I my self have though of what it would look like to change steampunks culture #roman, Mezo-American, etc), but a new slant has hit me. What if we change the Psuto-science.

Three stories of Victorian time come to mind, each deals with similar ideas. Each having to do with the body then cold steel. The Island of Doctor Moreau, Frankenstein, and the strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, each paint a world were the flesh is more adaptable then we now know....so what if Tissue rejection was rare? What is you could bring back fresh dead flesh? What if bio-chemistry could alter and replace?

Sit my friend and welcome to the Nation of Dr. Moreau

Transportation: steam is still the master here, metallurgy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry have only improved it.

Information tech: the computer is present, not in the form of a metal gearbox, but in the form of a machine; part metal and part flesh. The grey matter of simple animals replacing the microchip.

the body: Want to be stronger? graft bull muscles to yours! need to see in the dark? get cat eyes! a dead mans hand can fetch a good price if its fresh enough....

what do you think?

[Onix]

Interesting, the basis of the idea is what Evil Scientist have been discussing for . Other than the brain in a box, this is in essence one of the possibilities described if just a little more explicit.

I made up an alien race that did this with genetics in my first game Galactic Legions. Brain based computers can be pretty hilarious in games, especially when they talk back.

[Evil Scientist]

[kumakami]

[Thought]

Might I suggest considering how radiation would influence such a world? True, it was discovered right at the end of the Victorian era, but stories like The Metal Man seem to fit nicely alongside The Island of Dr. Moreau and also contain the theme of flexible flesh. Early on, radiation was sometimes seen as a catalyst for biological processes. Adding a bull's muscle to your own body for improved strength is all well and good, but imagine instead a slightly-irate scientist irradiating ants, causing them to grow to human-size, and then prying off their limbs and adding them to soldiers.

Just a thought.

[Evil Scientist]

Finally my childhood spent reading every Verne novel in sight pays off!!

"The Chase of the Golden Meteor" has a machine with a special magnetic ray that's able to move objects from a great distance. It's a different radiation, but too cool not to mention.

[Onix]

[kumakami]

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

A big theme of the Victorian age, its literature, and of the punk social movement is categorization. (Mostly us vs them, or haves and have-nots, but there are others) This is the time of the rational enlightenment, and the idea that the universe is orderly and every facet will soon be discovered by science.

There is the industrial revolution and the idea of new money vs old, owners versus workers, craftsmanship against the new automation. New explorations create the wild west versus civilized east in the USA, or the "African Savage" vs the European colonist. It is in this era that we get the modern public school system that separates people by age rather than ability/desire and further sees a split between the intellectual and the laborer. Much of Charles Dickens's writing is about poor versus rich, and finding a way into the proper life.

In turn, a lot of the revolutionary literature and thought of the time is stuff that breaks this pattern. "The Adventures of Huckleberry FInn" and its break down of racial barriers and the idea that civil people know better than a young truant boy. Dr. Moreau breaks down the line between people and animals, "The Strange Tale of Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde" looks at dual nature of people. HG wells in war of the worlds turns the categories upside down, and asks what if some advanced race tried to colonize the UK the way England was taking taking over India and Africa.

Your new setting could look at this from the idea of "The poor get poorer, and the rich get grafted" like a number of cyberpunk settings. Or perhaps, the well breed are just too genteel to undergo such gross surgeries, but augmented poor workers are getting uppity and challenge the order.

I believe AFMBE has a dead-world that is Victorian in nature, but manual labor is replaced by controlled Frankenstein like ghouls. Or at least they were under control, but have been getting a bit too smart and independent as of late. And hungry. Given limitations of the medical sceinces, there could probably be similar problems/side effects in your world...

[Onix]

I was thinking about a (or clockwork) and it's implications but one thing I couldn't figure out was if vacuum tubes relied on quantum effects.