Tales of the Urban Adventurer

QUAINT #26: He Yufeng from “The Gallant Maid” by “Yanbei Xianren” (a.k.a. Wen K’ang)

2011-07-13T22:41:15Z

From the Chinese film version of "The Gallant Maid" titled "The Heroine"

He Yufeng was created by “Yanbei Xianren” and appeared in Ernü ying xiong zhuan (The Gallant Maid, 1851-1879). “Yanbei Xianren” was the pseudonym of Wen K’ang (1798- 1872), a local official in Anhui who came from a prominent Manchu family and was appointed imperial agent to Lhasa. The Gallant Maid is little-known outside of China but is popular inside it, having inspired sixteen sequels.

The Gallant Maid is about He Yufeng (“Jade Phoenix”) and An Ji. An Ji is the son of the righteous official and Manchu bannerman An Xuehai. An Xuehai is in charge of the repair of a dam, but a flood destroys the dam and An Xuehai is made the scapegoat for its destruction. An Xuehai is imprisoned and ordered to pay a large fine. An Ji travels a long way to help his father, carrying a large load of silver to ransom him, but he repeatedly runs into misfortune, with his donkey drivers and later some evil monks both trying to rob him. Both times he is rescued by He Yufeng, who also frees an old farmer whose wife and daughter, Chinfeng (“Golden Phoenix”), had been captured by the monks. He Yufeng explains herself to the farmer. Years ago her father, General Ho, had been killed by sorcery. General Ho had been a high official of the Solid Yellow Banner, but his superior had ordered him to marry He Yufeng to the official’s son. The son was crude and barbaric and was unworthy of He Yufeng, who is beautiful and educated. General Ho refused to countenance the wedding, so his superior had him jailed on false charges and then killed him via sorcery. He Yufeng, loyal to her father in the proper Confucian way, retreats to a rustic village with her mother and then goes to the underworld and trains herself as a nüxia, or female knight-errant, to avenge her father. While her mother is alive, however, He Yufeng cannot carry our her revenge, and instead makes a good living robbing corrupt and evil government officials. He Yufeng is so strong and such a good fighter that all the other outlaws greatly respect and fear her. In the underworld she is known as Shisan Mei, “the Thirteenth Sister.”

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QUAINT #25 Pedro Arbuez d’Espila in "The Torture of Hope" by Villiers de l’Isle Adam

2011-07-01T03:56:44Z

Inquisition Scene by Francisco Goya

Pedro Arbuez d’Espila was created by Villiers de l’Isle Adam and appeared in “The Torture of Hope” (Nouveaux Contes Cruels, 1888). “The Torture of Hope” is in many ways the quintessential conte cruel.

There was a real Pedro Arbuez d’Espila, Don Pedro Arbues de Epilae (1441/2-1485, one of the most notorious and vicious of the Spanish Grand Inquisitors. Arbues engaged in compulsory baptism of Jews and used judicial torture to ensure that the conversions were sincere. Arbues was killed by a group of Jews in 1485; Pope Pius IX canonized Arbues as St. Peter of Arbues in 1867.

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QUAINT #22: “Les Xipéhuz” (The Shapes) by J.H. Rosny

2011-06-01T04:11:14Z

Close up of Danae Stratou's "Desert Breath", which would be an apt illustration for this novelette. Image courtesy of io9. Click for link.

The Xipéhuz were created by “J. H. Rosny (aîné)” and appeared in “Les Xipéhuz” (“The Shapes,” L’Immolation, 1887). “J. H. Rosny (aîné)” was the pen name of Joseph Henri Honoré Böex (1866-1940), a French author. For many years after his death Böex was forgotten, primarily because the majority of his work was written in disrespected genres like science fiction and the prehistoric romance. But in recent years critics and academics have begun paying him more attention and giving him the credit he deserves. Böex produced some remarkable science fiction and is considered (with Jules Verne) to be one of the most influential figures in the development of science fiction in France. “Les Xipéhuz” is one of his most famous, and best, stories.

“Les Xipéhuz” is set in the Middle East, circa 5000 B.C.E. A nomad tribe, the Pjehu, discover a group of “translucent bluish cones, point uppermost, each nearly half the bulk of a man...each one had a dazzling star near its base,” clustered around a spring. When the Pjehu draw close to the cones, or “the Shapes” as the narrator calls them, the Shapes attack them, killing many, although they only target warriors and avoid killing women, children, the sick and the aged. But the Shapes do not pursue the Pjehu beyond a certain distance and ignore them if they leave the Shapes alone. The Pjehu, shaken, consult a group of local priests who decide that the Shapes are gods and that they must be sacrificed to. But the Shapes kill those priests who approach them.

The priests experiment with slaves and determine the distance beyond which the Shapes will not pursue humans, and then the priests set that boundary with stakes and decree that the Shapes are to be left alone. But other tribes are not told about the priests’ decree or ignore it, and members of those tribes cross the boundary and are massacred. Then the Shapes begin expanding their territory. When the tribes try to resist, hundreds of their warriors are killed by the Shapes. All the tribes of Mesopotamia begin fearing for the existence of Man, and some men turn to dark cults.

The tribes’ wise men at last consult the hermit Bakhun. Long ago he had abandoned a nomadic life for a pastoral one, and in so doing flourished. Bakhun believes in odd and unusual things, like the sun, moon, and stars being “luminous masses” rather than gods, and that “men should really believe only in those things tested by measurement.” Bakhun tells the wise men that he will dedicate his life to studying the Shapes. He does so, and draws a number of significant conclusions, most important of which is that the Shapes are living beings rather than spirits or gods.

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QUAINT #18 Roots of the Yellow Peril, Part I

2011-05-11T22:36:37Z

Note: Jess Nevins' entry on the Yellow Peril was just too fascinating to be abridged, and so it will be posted in two parts. Follow along next Wednesday for Part II.

Film poster for The Face of Fu Manchu, who is one of the best known examples of the Yellow Peril stereotype. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

The Yellow Peril. Although the anti-Asian stereotype of the “Yellow Peril,” the threat posed to the West by Asian countries and peoples, was made commonplace in the 20th century, the source of the modern Yellow Peril stereotype lies in the literature and cultural trends of the 19th century.

There are actually two different Yellow Perils. The first is of Asians as a group, and though usually applied to the Chinese or Japanese does not differentiate between nationalities and ethnic groups and has been applied to Indians, Vietnamese, and Slavic Russians. This stereotype, of Asians en masse, portrays them as a faceless horde of decadent and sexually rapacious barbarians. The roots of this stereotype lie in the historical threats posed to Western Europe from Eastern Europe and Asia: Visigoths and Huns from the 3rd through the 5th century C.E., and Mongols in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. Although the practical threat of a Mongolian or Asian invasion of Europe was nil by the mid-15th century, the unexpectedness of the Mongolian attacks and their vicious thoroughness left a deep impression on the Western psyche, so that the stereotype of an Eastern threat to “civilization” remained common in the Western for centuries.

In contrast, the more modern Yellow Peril is an individual: the evil Asian mastermind who schemes to conquer the West. Although there are numerous sources for this stereotype, its origins lie in Italy in the 14th century C.E.

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QUAINT #10 Cahina from “A Royal Enchantress” by Leo Charles Dessar

2011-03-09T02:54:29Z

Cahina was created by Leo Charles Dessar and appears in A Royal Enchantress (1900). Dessar (1847-1924) was a New York judge who was a part of the corrupt Tammany Hall political system.

There was a real Cahina (alternatively, “Kahena” or “Kahina”), a Queen of the Berbers in the 7th and 8th Century C.E. who fought against the Muslim invasion. Gibbons wrote about her in Volume 2, Chapter 514 of his The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were not yet masters of the country. In the interior provinces the Moors or Berbers, so feeble under the first Caesars, so formidable to the Byzantine princes, maintained a disorderly resistance to the religion and power of the successors of Mohammed. Under the standard of their queen Cahina the independent tribes acquired some degree of union and discipline; and as the Moors respected in their females the character of a prophetess, they attacked the invaders with an enthusiasm similar to their own. The veteran bands of Hassan were inadequate to the defence of Africa: the conquests of an age were lost in a single day; and the Arabian chief overwhelmed by the torrent, retired to the confines of Egypt, and expected, five years, the promised succours of the caliph. After the retreat of the Saracens, the victorious prophetess assembled the Moorish chiefs, and recommended a measure of strange and savage policy.

"Our cities," said she, "and the gold and silver which they contain, perpetually attract the arms of the Arabs. These vile metals are not the objects of our ambition; we content ourselves with the simple productions of the earth. Let us destroy these cities; let us bury in their ruins those pernicious treasures; and when the avarice of our foes shall be destitute of temptation, perhaps they will cease to disturb the tranquility of a warlike people." The proposal was accepted with unanimous applause. From Tangier to Tripoli the buildings, or at least the fortifications, were demolished, the fruit trees were cut down, the means of subsistence were extirpated, fertile and populous garden was changed into desert, and the historians of a more recent period could discern the frequent traces of the prosperity and devastation of their ancestors. Such is the tale of the modern Arabians.

In the foreword to A Royal Enchantress Dessar wrote that he was struck by Gibbon’s passage: “the meager account of this beautiful Prophetess Queen of the Berbers was inspiring, yet irritating: it suggested so much, yet told so little.” From this Dessar spun an entertaining historical fantasy.

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QUAINT #9 Jigong (“Crazy Ji”) from Jigong Drum Song & other tales

2011-02-22T01:23:19Z

Sculpture of Ji Gong in Ling Yin Temple. Click for source.

Jigong appears in Wang Mengji’s Jigong zhuan (Jigong Drum-Song, c. 1859), Guo Guangrui's Pingyan Jigong zhuan (Storyteller's Jigong, 1898), and the thirty-eight sequels to Storyteller's Jigong which appeared in China (mostly Shanghai) between 1905 and 1926. No information is available on Wang Mengji. Guo Guangrui (?-?) may have been a scholar in Yannan.

There was a real Jigong. Daoji (?-1209 C.E.) was an eccentric Buddhist monk who ate meat and was a regular customer of prostitutes. Daoji did good works along the coastal parts of Zhejiang Province. He became enormously popular with the common people, who called him “Jidian” (“Crazy Ji”), and his fellow monks saw him as a miracle worker. But because Daoji was subversive and disrespectful toward mainstream Buddhism, Daoji was disliked by the Buddhist establishment. After his death he was almost immediately incorporated into popular culture. He became “Jigong,” “Sir Ji,” a figure of folktales, oral performances, and eventually literature. The cult of Jigong spread even to Malaysia, where he was a popular figure for many centuries.

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QUAINT #7 “A Question of Reciprocity” by Robert Duncan Milne

2011-02-15T23:44:26Z

The Almirante Latorre (Chilean Navy), as the HMS Canada by the time this photo was taken. This was one of Chile's first modern battleships, built in the early 1900s. Click for source.

“A Question of Reciprocity” was a serial written by Robert Duncan Milne and appeared in San Francisco Examiner, November 15-22, 1891. Milne (1844-1899) was a San Franciscan journalist and writer whose alcoholism first destroyed his substantial talent and then killed him. During his lifetime Milne was the best of the surprisingly large number of science fiction writers of end-of-the-century San Francisco.

The new Chilean government, brought to power by a revolution, refuses to pay for a huge new battleship that the previous government had ordered. The battleship is instead purchased by a group of Chilean business magnates. They are embittered with the United States because of America’s economic and political policies with Chile, and they have decided to use the battleship to recoup some of their financial losses by holding part of the United States for ransom.

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QUAINT #6 Hajji Baba from "Hajji Baba of Ispahan" & "Hajji Baba in England" by James Morier

2011-02-09T03:55:49Z

Hajji Baba enjoys the company of Zeenab. After Ḥabl al-matin Persian tr., Calcutta, 1905, opp. p. 142. Caption & Image courtesy of Encyclopaedia Iranica. Click for source.

Hajji Baba was created by James Morier and appeared in Hajji Baba of Ispahan (1824) and Hajji Baba in England (1827). Morier (1780-1849) was a British diplomat, adventurer, and author. He first went to Persia in 1807 and visited it and surrounding countries several times over the next decade. His desire to write something in the Persian style of Arabian Nights produced Hajji Baba of Ispahan.

Hajji Baba is a charming rogue, someone who began life as a barber/surgeon but whose wanderlust and desire for money led him to leave home on a caravan when he was only sixteen. But the course of roguery doth ne'er run smooth, and he is almost immediately captured by a band of Turcoman bandits. Hajji Baba lets himself be captured a second time by a shahzadeh (prince) and is taken to Meshed, where he becomes a water carrier. Hajji Baba sprains his back carrying water–his boastfulness leads him to take on far too much weight, including that of his main rival–and so he becomes an itinerant vender of smoke. But he cuts his tobacco with dung once too often and is caught by the Mohtesib (“the Mohtesib is an officer who perambulates the city, and examines weights and measures, and qualities of provisions”) and bastinadoed for his fraud. So Hajji Baba becomes a dervish, telling colorful stories and shaking down listeners for money; he stops in mid-story, just when things are getting good, and asks for donations in exchange for his continuing. He then becomes a doctor to the Shah of Persia, a position he loses due to an imprudent love affair. And so on and so forth, for hundreds of pages, through colorful stories and attractive boasts and genial swindles and painless mendacity and jovial hypocrisy and maidens fair and wry observations at the foibles of the mighty and the poor.

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QUAINT #5 Ayesha from She: A History of Adventure and other Novels by H. Rider Haggard

2011-02-02T01:36:01Z

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Ayesha was created by H. Rider Haggard and appeared in She: A History of Adventure (in The Graphic, Oct. 1886 to January 1887, and then as a novel in 1887), Ayesha: The Return of She (1905), She and Allan (1921), and Wisdom’s Daughter(1923). Haggard (1856-1925) was a prolific, popular, and influential novelist whose works are still read for pleasure today.

She: A History of Adventure is about Ayesha, She Who Must Be Obeyed, the Queen of the Amahagger people of Africa. Centuries ago Ayesha (pronounced “ASH-sha”), then the “mighty Queen of a savage people,” met and fell in love with Kallikrates, an Egyptian priest who had fled Egypt with his love, the Princess Amenartas. Kallikrates would not leave Amenartas, however, and the enraged Ayesha kills Kallikrates. The pregnant Amenartas flees, but the heartbroken Ayesha remains, mourning Kallikrates and waiting for him to return. Amenartas meanwhile charges her descendants with avenging Kallikrates’ death. She takes place in the modern day as Cambridge Don L. Horace Holly and his adopted son Leo Vincey discover that Leo is the descendant of Amenartas. Holly does not initially believe it, but Leo does, and the pair travel to Africa, accompanied by their servant Job, to find the truth behind the story.

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QUAINT #4 Kala Persad from "The Divinations of Kala Persad" by Francis Edward Grainger

2011-01-26T05:08:59Z

Kala Persad was created by “Headon Hill” and appeared in The Divinations of Kala Persad (1895), a collection of short stories. “Headon Hill” was the pseudonym of Francis Edward Grainger (1857-1924), an English author of romance, mystery, and detective fiction.

Kala Persad is a wizened old Indian man, “at least sixty...he must have been a grown man as far back as the Mutiny days.” Persad is being pursued by a trio of “bad Mahometan budmásh” (evildoers) when he stumbles across Mark Poignand, an Englishman who has come to India to investigate possible murder attempts against a friend. Poignand, an overly-self-assured young man, does not do much to save Persad. Poignand simply stands there and watches as the murderers, “seeing that they had a Sahib to deal with, vanished without more ado across the adjoining fields.” Persad is so grateful for Poignand's “help” that he solves the mystery of who was trying to kill Poignand's friend. After that, Poignand presumes on Persad's gratitude and returns to England with him.

QUAINT #3 Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

2011-01-19T06:08:56Z

Hawkeye was created by James Fenimore Cooper and appeared in Cooper's five Leatherstocking novels, including The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Cooper (1789-1851) was one of the major early American writers, although he is known today primarily for Last of the Mohicans.

Set in 1757, The Last of the Mohicans is about Natty Bumppo, a.k.a. “Hawkeye,” and his adventures alongside his friends Chingachgook, a Delaware Mohican, and Uncas, Chingachgook’s son. Against a backdrop of the events of the French and Indian War (1756-1763), Hawkeye, Uncas, and Chingachgook battle Mingo Indians and the wily, evil Magua, and help Major Duncan Heyward, an officer in the British Army, and Cora and Alice Munro, the daughters of Colonel Munro, the commandant of Fort William Henry. At the end of the novel Magua, Cora, and Uncas are all dead, Heyward and Alice are engaged to be married, and Chingachgook and Hawkeye are mourning the coming demise of “the wise race of the Mohicans.”

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Africans in Ancient China & Vice Versa, Part 2: -Guest Post by Eccentric Yoruba

2011-01-14T03:05:38Z

Note: This is the second in a four-part series by Eccentric Yoruba, cross-posted with her permission. Part 1 is here. Check out the rest of her Ancient Africa & China series appearing every Friday throughout this month.

Tao Xian purchasing Mo He." Ink sketch by Chen Xu

Kundun Servants as Magical Knight-Errants & Slaves

In my previous post I mentioned that I had read somewhere that two slaves given as gifts to the a Chinese Emperor by an Arab delegation were the first Africans to enter ancient China. This may have been wrong really because dark-skinned people were talked in China as early as the 4th century. They were referred to as kunlun, a term which had many previous meanings but by the 4th century was at attached to the people with dark skin.

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QUAINT #2 Buena Rejon from "The Mexican Ranchero" by Charles E. Averill

2011-01-12T04:57:04Z

ejon the Ranchero from The Mexican Ranchero. Image from "American Sensations." Click for link.

Buena Rejon was created by Charles E. Averill and appeared in The Mexican Ranchero; or, The Maid of the Chapparal (1847). Averill (?-?) was a popular dime novelist. He is best known for his Kit Carson, Prince of the Gold Hunters (1849).

The Mexican Ranchero is set in Mexico in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, after the American troops have occupied Mexico City. The truce between the Mexicans and the Americans is broken when Raphael Rejon attacks a squad of American soldiers. Raphael Rejon is the “Lion of Mexico,” the “mortal foe” of Americans. The American soldiers burned his home, his parents died in the fire, and he and his sister were left both orphaned and homeless. Since that time Raphael and his sister, Buena Rejon, the “Maid of the Chaparral,” waged a guerrilla war against the occupiers; “hundreds of Americans…have become the victims of her unerring lasso.”

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Beyond Victoriana Special Edition Odds & Ends #6

2010-08-15T21:06:53Z

Work has been hectic as of late, and I'm also in the midst of preparing for Dragon*Con. I don't have as much new stuff planned out for this week as I had hoped, but have you checked out my essay series about multiculturalism in steampunk yet? And see the links below for more good things to read/watch/run in the streets shouting about.

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Beyond Victoriana #32 Wounded Range, Part 2 — Guest Blog by Noah Meernaum

2010-06-27T22:29:31Z

Note from Ay-leen: This is part 2 of Noah Meernaum's essay about minority representations in Weird West. Part 1 can be read here. For those interested in the Works Cited resource information for the full essay, please contact me.

7. Occidental Outlines – Asian defacement in American popular periodicals, run from the story papers and bound ‘yellow-backs’, to the periled portrayals wrapped in America pulp. ¹

For even as the Occident regards the Far East, so does the Far East regard the Occident, - only with this difference: that what each most esteems in itself is least likely to be esteemed by the other.--Lafcadio Hearn/ Koizumi Yakumo, Kokoro ²

The stereotyped imprint of Chinese immigrants was initially contentedly rendered in the pictured accounts in mid-nineteenth century America through publications such as Harper’s New Monthly in the 1850’s that showed the distinctive pig-tail and conical basin hat of “John Chinaman’” and this picturesque “Celestial” was a widespread Western rendition in American periodicals, drawn from imparted occidental accounts of the “mystical men of the Orient”. ³ With the increased influx of Chinese people entering the American west, specifically within California, in search of golden prospects, promises of abundant land, and industrious opportunity their expanding population was leading to unsettling the sedate Western imprint of removed mysticism shown of oriental representation as the advancing closeness of Chinese residents were informing fearful features upon its distantly complacent cast.

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Beyond Victoriana #30 and #31

2010-06-20T21:47:48Z

#30 Anti-Racism in 19th Century Britain–Guest Blog by Sandrine Thomas

Ida B. Wells-Bennett. African-American activist who worked with anti-racist
British Quaker Catherine Impey. Image courtesy of eqadams63. Click for
source.

The concept of the British Empire arouses pride, pomp, and nationalism, but the darker side of the spread of English customs and mores across the globe was the specter of racism. Though British society focused more on class than race as their home-grown minority population remained small, and the relationship between the ruled and the rulers ran more towards paternalistic respect, racism and race prejudice cannot be denied. Much of the conditioning to promote and advance Imperialism had the tinge of social Darwinism, and the growing interest in eugenics (1890s-1900s) further enhanced the notion that race was biological, and whites were biologically superior to “savage blacks and yellow.” Since post-colonial studies are more interested in breaking through the influence (bad or good) the British had on their colonial possessions, it ignores the existence of people who actively fought not only slavery but racism.

Read here.

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Beyond Victoriana #31 Wounded Range, Part 1 -- Guest Blog by Noah Meernaum

Note from Ay-leen: This is the first of a two-part essay from Noah Meernaum of the Steampunk Empire about the history of Weird West. Part Two of this essay will be posted next Sunday.

Wounded Range: A backtracking survey into the outlandishly penned or set trail of the Weird Western in American popular culture proposed to readdress its multicultural representations, taking in its past shadowed forms cast of lone two gun heroes, (or antiheroes), curious carriages, disfigured renderings, dying curses, sundered souls, vengeful spirits, and other unnatural varmints sifted from lost lore to the ragged pages of dime novels, pulps, and other two bit books. A notorious twisted trail turned inward with an outlook toward its past and present course.

Read here.

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Beyond Victoriana #28 Harun ar-Raschid and the Golden Age of Islam — Guest Blog by Jaymee Goh

2010-05-30T04:41:43Z

Note for Ay-leen: There has been a little switch in the guest post schedule, and Michael Redturtle's post has been moved to next week.
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Harun Ar-Raschid (also spelled as Harun Al-Raschid) was a caliph of Baghdad during the Abbasid dynasty who reigned from 786 to 809 A.D. His court was arguably the most memorable of the Abbasid dynasty, and he was the inspiration for many tales in One Thousand and One Nights.

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Beyond Victoriana Special Edition Odds & Ends #4

2010-05-01T02:44:15Z

I'm preparing for some big events in May (like co-hosting two panels at the Steampunk World's Fair. Will you be coming? It's bound to be INTELLECTUALLY STIMULATING and IMMENSELY ENTERTAINING.) Thus, the next post will be delayed. But never fear, I have some nifty reads that have been building up in my inbox for you to check out after the cut.

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Beyond Victoriana: #15 Ghosts and the Machine—a Review of Dan Simmons' Black Hills

2010-02-23T02:29:09Z

This post has been been cross-posted to Beyond Victoriana's own website. Please submit all comments there.

I had the chance to get an advanced copy for Dan Simmons' latest book Black Hills, which pubs this month, a book that easily falls into several bins: historical fiction, supernatural suspense, and Weird West. In fact, Dan Simmons is one of those writers who has spanned multiple genres in his career, leaping easily from sci-fi to horror to historical to crime thrillers and even blending them all at once. Much of his success lies in his clever inspirational play between classical forms and fantastical content. After all, he's best known for the Hyperion Cantos, a four-book space opera that's structured after Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, and his sci-fi epic Illium/Olympos draws from Homer's Iliad. Recently, the settings for his latest novels have roamed throughout the nineteenth century. The Terror, which landed Simmons on the New York Times list and gave his publishers an excuse to market him as "speculative fiction", is about the ill-fated lost voyage of Sir John Franklin's expedition to find passageway through the Arctic in 1847. His next book, Drood, is a Victorian gothic mystery thriller narrated by Wilkie Collins as he tries to puzzle out the mental stability of his friend Charles Dickens, who had taken a turn for the worst after surviving a horrific train accident. Now in his latest book, Black Hills, Simmons continues his fascination with the nineteenth century, but this time, he writes about the heartwrenching life and times of Paha Sapa, a Sioux Native American who lived through the bloody days of the American West.

The drama of Paha Sapa's life begins when he's a child on the battlefield of Little Big Horn (in a place he knows as Greasy Grass), "counting coup" to prove his bravery. Paha Sapa, however, is no ordinary child; he had experienced moments of "small-vision-backward-touching"—times when he'd accidentally absorb people's memories or suffer from visions of the future. After witnessing the death of one of the officers, he goes to "count coup" and instead of a mere touch, he feels the ghost of the dead man flow into him. And it turns out not to be just any dead officer now living inside him, but the soul of General George Custer himself. Thus, Paha Sapa is literally and figuratively haunted by the legacy of the white man throughout his entire life as he tries to figure out a way to fight for the Sioux (who call themselves the Lakota). His lifelong efforts culminate at the construction site of Mount Rushmore, where he plots to save the sacred hills he was named after by blowing them up in front of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Despite being an interesting twist to the narrative, Custer's ghost only serves as a foil to Paha Sapa's perspective and never becomes fully a character of his own. But that is Simmon's intent from the start: Paha Sapa is the focus and his struggles provide the emotional drive of the novel as the story jumps constantly between different time periods of Paha Sapa's life. Obviously, it's rough going at times; Paha Sapa finds happiness and joy, but a lot of the time, he just never gets a break. He fails his vision quest, gets separated form his people, witnesses the destruction of his homeland, suffers from discrimination from other Natives and white men alike, and slowly loses everything he ever knew in the name of progress and some mystical fate.

In fact, if there were characters who earned a place beside Paha Sapa, they are Progress and Technology. Paha Sapa is fascinated by machines and engineering; as part of the plot, he becomes a powderman who works with dynamite in order to build Mount Rushmore. Simmons spends great portions of the book talking about a various technical details about mechanical things but they, surprisingly, don't drag the story down. The only times that I felt he was tangenting a bit too much was when Paha Sapa visits New York and then relates the story of how his former boss built the Brooklyn Bridge. Still, Paha Sapa (and, in turn, Simmons) manages to engage and I was impressed about the meticulous amount of research that went into the book, both in describing the development of nineteenth century technology in America and the nuances of Lakota culture (there's a substantially long Acknowledgments section at the end of the book for the academically curious). Simmons also uses the technique of incorporating Lakota words into the book, but they don't feel like window dressing and actually has significance in the novel, especially when Paha Sapa talks to his half-white, half-Lakota wife Rain.

In this book, Simmons also proves that there are no small roles, only small actors. The other characters are portrayed vividly, from the wistful and occasionally sardonic Custer to the proud and violent Crazy Horse to the cheeky and intelligent Rain and their brilliant son Robert. The best character moment for me was Rain's: on her first date with Paha Sapa at the Columbian World's Exposition, they both ride the Ferris Wheel and she stands on top of a chair when their car stops at the top of the wheel so she could be—at least for a few moments—the highest person in Illinois. With dozens of moments like that scattered throughout the book, it made me wish that these characters played a larger role. Also, Simmons takes care not to fall into the "noble savage" trap, especially with a sympathetic character such as Paha Sapa. For as much discrimination and hardship Paha Sapa faces in the white man's world, Lakota culture is not painted as the bright and sunny antithesis but deeply flawed with its own complex problems as well.

As the book comes to a close, Simmons takes an especially sci-fi twist to the narration that feels like a heavy-handed silver lining painted around the dark cloud that pervaded Paha Sapa's life. But then Simmons blurs the lines between historical characters doing fictional things and present people doing real things in a way that was still satisfying at the end.

Linkspam

Dan Simmons discusses BLACK HILLS on YouTube
Dan Simmons' official website
Dan Simmons on Wikipedia

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Beyond Victoriana #14: The Wind-Up Girl -- Guest Review by Jaymee Goh

2010-02-13T21:46:39Z

This post has been been cross-posted to Beyond Victoriana's own website. Please submit all comments there.

I'm taking this week off to celebrate Lunar New Year's with the loved ones. To fill in, then, I've invited Jaymee Goh to guest blog with her review of Paolo Bacigalupi's The Wind-up Girl.

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In all fairness, I probably should not have been reading and watching several other fun books before embarking on Paolo Bacigalupi's Windup Girl. Or rather, putting Windup Girl down after the third, infuriating chapter and letting my resentment fester while reading more fun books and watching Avatar the Last Airbender.

Paolo Bacigalupi is clearly an excellent writer. (He has to be, after all, because he's been published in plenty of places, and has been nominated for a Nebula.) Windup Girl is filled with suspense, with convoluted politics that only keen minds can cook up, with gritty scenarios that really show the worst of humanity. This is a world where economies run on calories for energy, where tinkering with genes in order to create food (hence, more calories) is a large-scale industry, where gene samples have all sorts of potential and are thus regarded as treasures. Windup Girl piqued my interest for one primary reason: it is set in a science-fictional Thailand, and I was curious to see how my neighbour would be treated. Of course, most people would be reading it for the story; I would be reading it to pick on details. If you don't care about tiny details like accuracy, narrative trends and revisionism, move along right now. Steampunk Scholar Mike Perschon has a much more kinder review.

( Click to read Jaymee's unkinder review. Minor spoilers ahead. )
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You can reach Jaymee at her blog Rebellious Jezebel Blogging. She is also a contributor to Tor.com.

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Beyond Victoriana: Odds & Ends #1

2010-02-05T00:53:33Z

This post has been been cross-posted to Beyond Victoriana's own website. Please submit all comments there. While gathering materials and suggestions for things to feature on Beyond Victoriana, fellow steampunks offered quite a few delicious tidbits that were interesting reads and looks, but not quite enough for a full post. So here are some Odds & Ends from the aethernets and elsewhere for you to enjoy---

The Reads:

The Effluent Engine, part of A Story for Haiti project
N.J. Jeminsin (author of One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms) wrote this steampunk tale about pirates set in New Orleans, originally for a lesbian steampunk anthology. Enjoy reading it, but better yet donate, donate, donate.

Pimp My Airship
Another entertaining read featuring African steampunk by Maurice Broaddus.

Distant Deeps or Skies
This just in today -- Mexican steampunk story by Silvia Moreno-Garcia that's featured in Expanded Horizons magazine.

Moon Maiden's Mirror
An evocative steamy fairytale in an Asian setting, written by Joyce Chng as part of Semaphore Magazine. Link goes to PDF of the September 2009 issue.

Steampunk: A Mobile Device Concept for Rural India
The technology blog Adaptive Path wrote an interesting article about how engineers use concepts of steampunk technology to design mobile cell phones in India.

The Pics:

Frist mentioned by Jess Nevins (you may know him as the editor for the Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana) on the speculative blog community No Fear of the Future, about Lu Shi'e's Xin Ye Sou Pu Yan (1909), with the following blurb:

"In this tale, Europe is a Chinese colony and it describes the Chinese government’s suppression of an uprising planned by European "restoration" rebels. The Chinese Emperor orders the generalissimo in charge of Europe, Wen Suchen, to suppress the rebellion with flying warships. Generalissimo Wen not only conquers all seventy-two European nations but continues on to the moon and Jupiter as well. The most marvellous part of this tale is that Jupiter is described as being covered completely with gold and abounding with flora and fauna–the perfect destination for migration. Wen is then appointed Governor of Jupiter. From then on, the means of communication and transportation between Earth and Jupiter is, naturally, by flying ship."

Sent in from Professor Von Explaino in Australia:

"Found this picture in a holiday home my wife and I were staying in and thought it would be something you'd like or have a use for. The tattoos definitely seem Maori."

"Punk Tribe" by 343GuiltySpark

And, as always, any suggestions for this blog are welcome! Drop me a link on the announcement page or send me a email. ^-^

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Beyond Victoriana #11: From One Other to (An)other: Review for Jaclyn Dolamore's Magic Under Glass

2010-01-24T15:02:37Z

This post has been been cross-posted to Beyond Victoriana's own website. Please submit all comments there.

The intelligent automaton—one of the many symbolic Others in sci-fi literature. When characterized sympathetically, the automaton represents humanity without being human, the lone outsider puzzling the world around it. The Othered Automaton pops up in steampunk lit too, like Boilerplate and Mattie from The Alchemy of Stone. In both cases, the automaton finds camaraderie with people who feel similarly alienated by the societies they live in; Boilerplate had his Buffalo Soldiers, Mattie had her mechanic dark-skinned lover Sebastian. But what Jaclyn Dolamore brings to the table is a new perspective to this relationship in her fantasy steampunk novel Magic Under Glass: the protagonist is not the Othered Automaton, but that of Nimira, the human Other seeking her fortune in a strange land.

In this YA novel, Nimira travels west from her Middle East-inspired homeland of Tiansher to the Victorian-esque Lorinar, a land where an uneasy conflict is brewing between it and the neighboring fairy realm. Lorinar, however, isn't as welcoming as she had hoped. Its citizens are familiar with Tiansher only as the "exotic Tassim" and Nimira can only find work at a cheap sideshow as a "trouser girl" singing her country's native songs to ignorant audiences. That is, until she meets Hollin Parry, a sorcerer who takes her in to sing alongside his clockwork automaton. The previous girls Parry had hired left, claiming the machine to be haunted. Nimira discovers, however, that the automaton is not a possessed machine, but an elaborate prison. Inside is Erris, a fairy prince long thought dead. Now, Nimira must figure out a way to free Erris before war breaks out between Lorinar and the fairy world.

What makes Nimira so memorable is her resilience against the daily prejudice and ignorance she faces. What makes Magic Under Glass commendable, however, is the fact that her outsider struggle is not the point of the novel, but another layer of social complexity that Nimira must navigate through in order to accomplish her goals. Nimira, for her part, does not forsake her identity to assimilate into Lorinar culture: she carries the world of Tiansher inside her, drawing strength from her memories of home. On the other hand, she also has to deal with those who try to exoticize and diminish her existence, such as when she's asked to perform in her "trousers" instead of her elegant Lorinar dress during an important performance. Her complicated feelings toward her employer are another case in point: echoes of Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester resonate in the relationship between Nimira and Parry, but I along with Nimira questioned the root of Parry's fondness toward his "Tassim" girl.

Her position as a foreigner in a Western-based culture is more interesting to read than the reverse—that of the "Eurocentric" traveler in the "Othered" foreign land, which is more frequently represented in fantasy. Moreover, her background paves the way for her sympathy toward fairies and Erris. Nimira also wins major points for being a strong character that doesn't wait passively for the action to happen, yet she can still show vulnerability and cry when she needs to. All the women in Magic Under Glass are sharply defined; only the villainous Miss Rashten seems a bit flat. Also Parry, as misguided as he is, earned my sympathy.

The magic of this novel is a bit sketchy for my tastes, and I'd rather have more detail about its system and details about the fairy world. The vagueness I encountered can be explained by the open ending that's the set-up for a second book. Usually I'd be upset by this, but I'm more than willing to wait for the next installment of Nimira's journey.

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On another note, I first heard of this novel because of the US cover's whitewashing controversy, and after reading the book, I find it even more insulting to the reader and disrespectful to the author that Nimira was represented as a light-skinned white girl instead of her dark complexion. However, the YA blogosphere unleashed a furious wave in response, culminating in Bloomsbury's announcement that the hardcover jacket will be changed immediately. That is why, for the curious, I linked the UK cover instead of the US one for now. I can't wait to see the revised cover, though.

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Beyond Victoriana #9: First Nation Sci-Fi & Technology Resources

2009-12-20T15:48:02Z

This post has been been cross-posted to Beyond Victoriana's own website. Please submit all comments there.
Image courtesy of Kory Lynn Hubbell

One of the interesting challenges non-Eurocentric steampunk faces is how technology can be re-imagined for peoples that did not develop industrialized technology during the nineteenth century. Case in point this week: First Nation peoples. There has also been the assumption that First Nation peoples “lack” technology, and so therefore what role can they play in any science fiction genre, nevermind steampunk?

Notwithstanding the imaginative block (and racist subtext) implied by those who say FN peoples didn’t have technology—which is argued against by Kay Marie Porterfield in her article Ten Lies About Indigenous Science – How to Talk Back —concepts like time travel, tech, and alternative histories aren’t confined to any particular culture. This week is a linkspam featuring discussions concerning First Nation peoples in sci-fi and reading suggestions to get those mental gears turning.

For research resources, I have included a selection of articles concerning FN sci-fi, history, and technology at hand; for reading suggestions, I’ve listed examples that can also be considered under general sci-fi, alternative history, or Weird West.

UPDATED 15 February 2010: I've updated this post with the most relevant suggestions given by readers included below. Enjoy!

( Read more below the cut )

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Beyond Victoriana #8: Captain Sakuragi's Underwater Warship

2009-12-13T05:28:40Z

This post has been been cross-posted to Beyond Victoriana's own website. Please submit all comments there.

When Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was published in Japan in 1878, science fiction fever infected Japanese writers, and within a few years, imitations of Verne's mysterious submarine and its Captain Nemo cropped up in their adventure stories. The most famous is Captain Sakuragi from Oshikawa Shunro’s six-part series Kaitei Gunkan (The Underwater Warship, 1900-1907).

Like much of Japanese sci-fi literature at the time, one of the prevailing themes of the Captain Sakuragi series reflected Japan’s rising nationalism and its own imperialist goals to defeat foreign threats in order to safeguard Japanese interests.

The premise of the first novel begins with a frustrated Captain Sukuragi leaving the Japanese navy when he decides his country is weak against the potential threat of Western governments. Moreover, he considers the West in competition with Japan’s expansion into Asia. With a group of fellow scientists, he flees to a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean and builds the Denkotei (also translated as denkopan): an underwater battleship similar to the Nautilus in design, complete with its own rotating screwdriver-like horn. The Denkotei is decked out with torpedoes and bombs, and, on a private martial mission, Captain Sukuragi and his crew set off to confront those set against Japan. In the first novel, they successfully fight pirates interfering with Japanese shipping, but later confront British, the French, and Russian forces, defeating them all. Later on, the Denkotei even fights alongside Filipino nationals against American occupation.

This series was highly popular in Japan, especially when the novel’s battles against the Russians predicted the country’s own victory in the Russo-Japanese War. The unintended irony in the captain’s battling the “foreign imperialists” is how the books stridently promoted Japanese imperialism over others’. As Owen Griffith’s notes in his academic article Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media, 1894-1925:

“Oshikawa’s purpose was to ‘oppose those who oppressed freedom’ and to inculcate in young readers ‘the spirit of resistance at all costs.’ Yet neither Ito nor Oshikawa himself acknowledged Japan’s own imperialist endeavours or its brutal treatment of its own subject peoples. The tendency to lionize one’s own and demonize the other has many antecedents in Japan and elsewhere.”

Later, Captain Sukuragi’s underwater warship inspired a live action film in 1963 (titled “Atragon” in the US) and the anime OVA series Shin Kaitei Gunkan in 1995.

Linkspam:

Oshikawa Shunro on Wikipedia

Atragon on Wikipedia

Kaitei Gunkan’s trailer and info page on IMDB.com

Shin Kaitei Gunkan on IMDB.com

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Beyond Victoriana #3 -- Boilerplate: Readdressing the Victorian Era

2009-11-07T04:55:46Z

This post has been been cross-posted to Beyond Victoriana's own website. Please submit all comments there.

In 1893, Archibald Campion believed he created an invention that would “prevent the deaths of men in the conflicts of nations”: the Campion Mechanical Marvel, later to be known as Boilerplate the Victorian-Age robot. Constructed with the aid of close friends and inventors Edward Fullerton and Nikola Tesla, Boilerplate was unveiled during the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago that summer and fought in several major combat missions between the Spanish-American War in 1898 until its disappearance in 1918 on the battlefront of World War I.

Of course, Boilerplate never really existed except in Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett’s book Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel, published by Abrams Books last month. Based on an extensive website that had created and expanded upon the Boilerplate character since 2000, Boilerplate the book is an illustrated history of this Victorian curiosity, who fought in several wars, traveled from China to Saudi Arabia to the brink of the South Pole, and even had his own series of dime novels and silent movies.

My general reaction: the book was a joy to read. It's chock full of interesting historical details and many ingenuous illustrations, many of them cleverly manipulated to look like authentic images of the robot alongside familiar historical figures such as Teddy Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia.

The book trailer for Boilerplate

What is just as interesting as these photos is the way Guinan and Bennett used Boilerplate’s story to highlight marginalized histories, emphasize the pursuit of social justice issues during that time period, and dispassionately narrate the full consequences of American expansionism.

( Cut for spoilers )

Additional linkage

Boilerplate official website
Boilerplate’s MySpace
Boilerplate Historical Society on Facebook

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