The world of my forthcoming novel Velikat (currently seeking representation!) is inspired by countless works of fact and fiction, but most of all by these three books I read many decades ago. These were all, in different ways, prototypes of steampunk.

The Difference Engine

The Difference Engine (William Gibson & Bruce Sterling) was perhaps the first work of fiction to think about what if Babbage’s Difference Engine had worked – not only worked, but been able to do as much as early(ish) electronic computers.

It’s steampunk in the original sense of “cyberpunk with steam”. Both Gibson and Sterling were of course mainly cyberpunk writers, exploring what happens to a society when technology shatters old certainties.

In the alternate-Victorian society Clio lives in, there are difference engines more at a 1940s-equivalent level of maturity than a 1980s one. (Clio’s automaton Miss Constance is, well, an exception – she uses a level of technology not found until the 2010s). Then in Velikat itself – well – as you will find out, immense computational power is used to try to solve some even bigger problems.

Anti-Ice

Anti-Ice (Stephen Baxter) looks at an even less happy what-if. What if the Victorians had something as powerful as a nuclear bomb?

Anti-Ice (the substance, not the book) is a stable form of antimatter, which can be used for peaceful purposes – but as the plot unfolds, it is inevitably subverted for military use, with “Gladstone Bombs” mounted on missiles siloed on English farmland keeping an unsteady peace.

The plot of Velikat revolves around what to do with such a powerful substance, though with the added complexity of its effect on the aether and thus on the link between dimensions. Not until the sequel will I look at what the Victorians might have done with nuclear bombs. But I am not optimistic that they would have found answers.

Warlord of the Air

Michael Moorcock is often better known for his cross-multiverse fantasy, but my personal favourite is his Warlord of the Air series.

A late-Victorian officer is hurled into an alternate dimension where European powers dominate the world with fleets of airships, challenged by revolutionaries. Moorcock’s alternate world is in fact one where history delays rather than advances – travelling from historical-1903 to alternate-1973, the protagonist finds almost-modern technology but, as World War I never happened in this timeline, geopolitics and colonialism that are still fundamentally Victorian.

There is no ‘steam’ here, but Moorcock does look at the ‘what if’ of what if Victorian society persisted with advanced technology. And, of course, Moorcock loves travel between time and dimensions – interdimensional travel being at the heart of Velikat.

Arcanum

Arcanum is an isometric RPG set in a Tolkeinesque world where mankind has used ancient Dwarven technology to start an industrial revolution.

A steampunk Shadowrun, and quite antique as games go today. It does establish that any airship must inevitably suffer a dramatic crash .

And finally – 80 Days is a steampunk-ish narrative travel game, based on Jules Verne’s novel but far more adventurous in the societies it depicts.

Conclusions

Sometimes I feel Velikat simply the three novels listed above, mashed up and stewed together over the course of decades. But there is more!

Why is there a multiverse and how do people move between it is, to my mind, a question that requires an answer. Another is, in this age of towering multidisciplinary genius, what if some of those geniuses were women?

If you would like answers… read on…