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Born of a soldering iron and some unfaithful screws
I know my knowledge of the American nineteenth century is like most people with the Russian Futurists, but can somebody explain to me why it still took me until this afternoon to hear about John Murray Spear's New Motor—a mechanical Messiah built by Spiritualists in a barn in Lynn, Massachusetts, mystically birthed by one of its female followers and eventually smashed to pieces by an honest-to-God angry mob? Steampunk, give it up. You can try on all the brass and goggles you like: actual history was weirder than you.
(Courtesy of Dean Grodzins, who also asked me why I write about ghosts. At first I said I didn't, and then I talked about dybbuks for fifteen minutes straight.)
(Courtesy of Dean Grodzins, who also asked me why I write about ghosts. At first I said I didn't, and then I talked about dybbuks for fifteen minutes straight.)
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Also, what an extraordinarylooking fellow that is. Good conversation?
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I take that as real praise!
Good conversation?
Very. Not enough of it!
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I've sometimes thought I had a respectable knowledge of the American nineteenth century: a fair part of my childhood was took up with reading the period's books, visiting its houses and forts, and collecting bits and pieces of its leavings, and later in life I was paid to rob the rubbish pits and fallen down outbuildings of nineteenth century Americans and to process the resulting artefacts for further study, or at least for storage in acid free boxes in a back room somewhere.
But this, this I've never heard of before, either. It's brilliantly odd, and I thank you for the sharing of it.
Steampunk, give it up. You can try on all the brass and goggles you like: actual history was weirder than you.
Lot of truth, there, although I do still wish I had friends physically proximate who were willing to dress up in a strange parody of Victorian garb and talk about airships.
Actually, it looks to me as if some of John Murray Spear's stuff would be a great jumping-off point for steampunk-ish, or perhaps it's better to borrow a term from the Foglios and say "gaslamp fantasy", alternate history. Levitation via psychic batteries and a worldwide communication network in the 1840s... if one assumes it all somehow works just as Spear would have it, but that humanity continue being our grotty, misbehaving selves, there's all sorts of potential for gritty adventure, para-cyberpunk dystopia, and who knows what else.
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Oh, that is a good term.
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I'm resolved to make more use of it, myself; it really is a more accurate descriptor for some works than 'steampunk'.
I don't know if you like comics or not, but in case you do, have you seen Girl Genius: Phil and Kaja Foglio's Gaslamp Fantasy Comic?
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That's pretty awesome.
It's brilliantly odd, and I thank you for the sharing of it.
You're welcome. I got it from Dean.
Levitation via psychic batteries and a worldwide communication network in the 1840s... if one assumes it all somehow works just as Spear would have it, but that humanity continue being our grotty, misbehaving selves, there's all sorts of potential for gritty adventure, para-cyberpunk dystopia, and who knows what else.
Of course, there's always the possibility it did work in our world—or is going to—just not on the schedule Spear was aiming for. You wouldn't even have to squint very hard to claim the Singularity might be the coming of the wireless Messiah.
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Thanks!
I like to think it sounds better than "Archaeological Technician (Seasonal)", which was my actual Park Service job description. We used to sometimes refer to ourselves as "Raiders of the Lost Garbage Dump".
Of course, there's always the possibility it did work in our world—or is going to—just not on the schedule Spear was aiming for.
Interesting idea, that, if a little bit disturbing.
You wouldn't even have to squint very hard to claim the Singularity might be the coming of the wireless Messiah.
Eschatological speculation aside, I'd suspect there's a paper in there, arguing that the notion of the Singularity is a development of the same impulse in American society as Spear's New Motor, or something like that.
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I wonder if anyone's written it. Paging Peter Watts?
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You write it, I'll read it.
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Interesting idea! If you write it, I'd be interested to read it.
As a kid I briefly thought of writing a story where it turned out that automobile mechanics and people like that actually had to do magical rites as part of repair work, but I quickly realised it wouldn't fly because suspension of disbelief would be impossible--too many people can do a certain amount of work on these things themselves. There's a lot more potential with computers, although maybe I say that because I can't programme to save my life. ;-)
I'm thinking Tom Holt had a throw-away line or two in one of his novels (Who's Afraid of Beowulf? or something like that?) where an evil sorcerer from the Viking Age who was still living in modern times revealed that he'd actually invented computers as part of his plot to take over the world. That still leaves a lot of room for you to run with this.
(a lot of writers described such a world where magic evolved instead of technology... Harry Turtledove comes to mind)
Indeed. Poul Anderson wrote a couple of fun ones as well: Operation Chaos (1971) and Operation Luna (2000).
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Good grief. This demands a book of its own. I'll chase up that link when I'm next on the laptop.
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I know! And nobody seems to have written one! At least, I like to think I'd have heard of it if they had.
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Hell, yes!
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The classic unanswerable question! I was very impressed by Khlebnikov when I really started reading his poetry last November (although I know I'm hampered not being able to read it in the original), but I seem to have imprinted oddly on Aleksei Kruchonykh, both because of zaum—I discovered the Futurists because of Victory Over the Sun—and because in every single photograph I've seen of the man, he looks as though he was auditioning for an eccentric clerk in a stage production of Dickens. I just came into possession of a translation of Benedikt Livshits' memoir The One and a Half-Eyed Archer (1933) for Christmas, so I am really looking forward to that. Is Akhmatova ever counted among the Futurists, or did she just hang out with a bunch of them?
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"The Thing Moves!"
The excerpt doesn't describe the New Machine--off to look elsewhere...
http://whofortedblog.com/2010/08/10/the-new-motor-building-the-god-machine/
OH DEAR YOG. He was taking orders from the ascended spirit of Benjamin Franklin to bring God's word to the world via better technology. History, I adore you, don't you ever stop amazing me:
The final stage of the nine-month long experiment took place on June 29th, 1854 and involved a ritual during which Spear encased himself in a suit made of metal, gemstones, plates and copper strips. He was then brought into gradual contact with the machine before slipping into a deep trance. Clairvoyants present at the ritual reported seeing an “umbilical like cord linking Spear to the machine.”
Perhaps I'm strange or something, but I'm over here going "Awwww!" I'm unilaterally declaring John Spear the (ecumenical) saint of hilarious millennial cults.
(It's not fair: the nineteenth century gets the spiritualists and the Shaker revival and John Murray Spear and that woman who decided she was the Messiah and could walk on water and tried and fell through. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have had their cults but they've all been much shorter on delightful silliness, and much longer on death and violence.)
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Okay, did I actually mention that I heard the author of that book at the same seminar in November where I went to hear Dean on Theodore Parker, or is it just a small, small history-geek world after all?
OH DEAR YOG. He was taking orders from the ascended spirit of Benjamin Franklin to bring God's word to the world via better technology.
I know. I am strangely disappointed in the internet that there's not a webcomic about his quest. You had better call it for Yuletide.
(Also, that blog has a juvenile, but great title.)
History, I adore you, don't you ever stop amazing me
Amen!
Perhaps I'm strange or something, but I'm over here going "Awwww!" I'm unilaterally declaring John Spear the (ecumenical) saint of hilarious millennial cults.
Are you kidding? That's adorable. If you get to the biography before me, please send back a full report!
[edit] Re the excerpt: I also can't believe there's not some kind of punk or art-rock band called Human Crotch Fact.
(It's not fair: the nineteenth century gets the spiritualists and the Shaker revival and John Murray Spear and that woman who decided she was the Messiah and could walk on water and tried and fell through. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have had their cults but they've all been much shorter on delightful silliness, and much longer on death and violence.)
Well, I'm pretty sure the Second Great Awakening had its share of violent fuckery, because most millenarian movements do, but I do agree with you: I'm way more charmed by people who take their orders from Ben Franklin (and call themselves "Electricizers") than by people who take their orders from whatever they think Jesus is like this week.
Man, I have to write that John Adams dybbuk poem now.
Re: "The Thing Moves!"
Wow! How L. Frank Baum, somehow! It's like the Tin Man and Tick Tock together. Only real.
Now I really, really want Kate Beaton to illustrate it.
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I am shocked that she hasn't.
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Dude, I would visit a godmachine. Or at least I'd like to know it was in the world.
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Ehehe. I am still amused that no one (that I can tell) has taken on the steam-powered vibrators. I am so putting those into a story this year.
steam-powered vibrators
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I just know some folksongs. Go for it!
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Oh, do share.
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I'd like to see this illustrated by Kate Beaton!
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The link is the introduction and first two chapters of a biography about John Murray Spear which I will be reading as soon as I can find a copy, but it's quite good!
aughh! The annoying Wakanomori
This conversation was just had at the wanderer's hut. The context was that the ninja girl was just recalling that in Sweden they've just recognized a religion revolving around file sharing.
W: I'd heard of that guy in Lynn, that you were saying Sovay mentioned, by the way.
A: No! You're kidding! Oh, the wonders of the Oxford education.
W: No, I think it was as a kid--
A: Aughhh! English education!! It's so superior to American education!
W: --I think it was in a "Look and Learn," actually.
Such an annoying man.
Re: aughh! The annoying Wakanomori
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Yep!
(They are clearly the crusading wing of the Pirate Party.)
--I think it was in a "Look and Learn," actually.
I saw George Méliès' Le Voyage dans la lune (1902) for the first time on Reading Rainbow. I didn't know it was famous. I'm not even sure I knew it was (then) eighty-five years old; I might have thought it was just done in that herky-jerky silent style. These things turn up.