A milestone, in the weeds

This is the one hundredth post on this blog. Epic. I should probably reminisce or something, but I'm not really in the mood. Forward, forward, forward.

I've been talking to people about steampunk, science fiction and fantasy. The relationships between. I've often said that I write fantasy as if it were science fiction, but when approaching something like the Veridon stories, there's no question in my mind that those are fantasy. But the thing that I'm writing right now, well, it's as if the fantasy world of Veridon extrapolated out into a science fictional world. And it's interesting. I have to say, I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

Let's think about steampunk for a minute. I'm still not comfortable with that term, but it's the common parlance, so we'll leave it alone. There's a very clear historical connotation with steampunk. Victoriana, yes? But most of what people think of as steampunk is really just the trappings of steampunk. You know, airships, cogwork arms...uh. Steam. More of a scientific fantasy though, isn't it? A fantasy of what science could be, rather than what it is, or ended up being. The postmillenium before the Titanic and mustard gas.


So what do you get if you take the trappings, the optimism, and then strain it through tragedy? What if you still have the big science and the airships and...uh...steam, but history has caught up to it and you're left with, I don't know. The Titanic.

It's just what I'm thinking about. The thing I'm working on now, it isn't pretty, and it isn't science. But it's something. Something I like quite a bit.