Nodal Bits

Google has launched a logo that is designed in Steampunk style, to celebrate the birthdate of Victorian-era Science Fiction writer, Jules Verne:

I have a particular affinity for all things Steampunk, so I love this logo treatment.

If you don’t know what “Steampunk” is, Wikipedia says it’s a sub-genre of Science Fiction, often executed as a type of “alternate history” where steam engines stayed as the dominant basis of technology, perhaps even advancing further down vestigial arms of history-that-never-was.

One part of my family was very closely involved in steam engines — I’ve got photos of my grandfather when he was five in a steam-driven machine shop, and he was friends with a Mississippi steamboat captain.

But, my attraction for Steampunk is more on the literary and stylistic fronts. Those who know me are aware that my favorite living author is James P. Blaylock, an author of fantasy fiction. Blaylock, and his longtime friend and sometimes collaborator, Tim Powers, are considered the founders of the Steampunk fiction movement. Their friend and author, K.W. Jeter, coined the “Steampunk” moniker to describe their retro, Victorian novels where steam-powered technology seemed to’ve developed further along an evolutionary line than what happened in real-world history (Jeter also wrote a novel in Steampunk style, too). I’m such a fan of their works that I have been working upon (more…)