Spurious Contraptions & Other Steampunk Oddities
- Thread starter KingArthur
- Start date
Blue Monkey
Archon Without Portfolio
If you recognize any of the actors there's always ixquick. 
If no one guesses I'll give the answer in a couple of days. Any suggestions for a Steampunk Christmas?
30 C at night! That sounds like So. California in the summer. After a few years of drought we're finally getting rain. Going on 2 weeks so far. Haven't had so many days in a row since I was a kid.
If no one guesses I'll give the answer in a couple of days. Any suggestions for a Steampunk Christmas?30 C at night! That sounds like So. California in the summer. After a few years of drought we're finally getting rain. Going on 2 weeks so far. Haven't had so many days in a row since I was a kid.
Balthasar
Wise Man
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2005
- Messages
- 3,293
It doesn't really count as steampunk, but one of my fav X-mas flics is Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, a movie I saw as a kid, and which regularly hits the "Worst Movie of all Time" lists*. For extra enjoyment, find and watch the Mystery Science Theater episode that features that movie....
Edit: It seems that most of the original cast of MST is now involved in a new group called Cinematic Titanic that does live shows. They've recorded a new riff on SC v. Mars, so my stocking over-floweth......
Edit: It seems that most of the original cast of MST is now involved in a new group called Cinematic Titanic that does live shows. They've recorded a new riff on SC v. Mars, so my stocking over-floweth......
Butterball
Bear
Seasons Greetings & Happy New Year.
I've just read 20 000 siècles sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Centuries Under the Sea), a recent (last october) French comics starring Captain Nemo and Prof. Aronnax in an undersea adventure where Innsmouth isn't just a small decaying village.
It's a nice read. The story is quite classic but good We'll see how it ends in the second and final issue. There are small nods here and there to a good bunch of literature and movie works. Not as much as Moore's League, but enough to keep me smiling and exclaiming myself. Overall, if you like steampunkish crossover, you can get it without regrets.
By R. D. Nolane (story) and P. A. Dumas (illustrations).
Soleil Editions, 1800 Collection, 48 p.
BM > That's "We're no angels". A good flick, but I fail to see how it's steampunk, though.
Spoiler :
It's a nice read. The story is quite classic but good We'll see how it ends in the second and final issue. There are small nods here and there to a good bunch of literature and movie works. Not as much as Moore's League, but enough to keep me smiling and exclaiming myself. Overall, if you like steampunkish crossover, you can get it without regrets.
By R. D. Nolane (story) and P. A. Dumas (illustrations).
Soleil Editions, 1800 Collection, 48 p.
BM > That's "We're no angels". A good flick, but I fail to see how it's steampunk, though.
Blue Monkey
Archon Without Portfolio
You're a gentleman & a scholar! I agree it's not steampunk - just the only holiday film I could think of that even came close. OTOH, we never see what kind of ships are used for the import/export business, or even if they are air- or sea- going vessels. A little of this, a little Great Train Robbery (Connery instead of Aldo Ray?), and a little 19th c. Topkapi... it'll be great when making new films with deceased actors becomes common.
I've got a better match, even if most of the action takes place in modern times : Santa Claus : The Movie (1985 - Jeannot Szwarc). Although it involves probably more magic than classic steampunk technology, you cannot see the Vendequm workshop and not feel a certain Victorian charm. Maybe it's because I first saw this movie as a kid around the same time I watched Levin's Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) and Endfield's Mysterious Island (1961).
Blue Monkey
Archon Without Portfolio
If only I had a TARDIS when I was watching films to get in the holiday mood...
wrapping
Spoiler :
present
Spoiler :
tag
Spoiler :
Blue Monkey
Archon Without Portfolio
French house untouched for 100 years opened to public. Wonder if there's a first edition Verne in the library? Or perhaps - since he gathered a lot of art - a previously unknown Robida lithograph.
Sir Sam Vimes
Duke of Ankh
@ Takhisis: lol
@ everyone: I know I'm WAAAAY behind the times here, but check out The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, they're a steampunk alt-rock band. And I compose sci-fi themed ambient music, influenced by the books I read and my grounding in punk rock (seems contradictory? Look up Angels and Airwaves on wikipedia...) so if that's any use...
"If your enemy has an impregnible fortress, see that he stays there"
@ everyone: I know I'm WAAAAY behind the times here, but check out The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, they're a steampunk alt-rock band. And I compose sci-fi themed ambient music, influenced by the books I read and my grounding in punk rock (seems contradictory? Look up Angels and Airwaves on wikipedia...) so if that's any use...
"If your enemy has an impregnible fortress, see that he stays there"
Sir Sam Vimes
Duke of Ankh
Balthasar
Wise Man
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2005
- Messages
- 3,293
Moderator Action: OT snip
re Steampunk Palin article: reminds me of a quote, which I think comes from Michael Crichton: "A nuclear plant is the world's most expensive kind of water boiler" or somesuch. Too bad Einstein isn't around to design a energy efficient boiler that heats just as well as his refrigerator cools. Otherwise, that's just disturbing...
re Steampunk Palin article: reminds me of a quote, which I think comes from Michael Crichton: "A nuclear plant is the world's most expensive kind of water boiler" or somesuch. Too bad Einstein isn't around to design a energy efficient boiler that heats just as well as his refrigerator cools. Otherwise, that's just disturbing...
Balthasar
Wise Man
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2005
- Messages
- 3,293
Hey, I just had to share this with you guys...
Last night I was mucking with the stand-alone Barsoom map, and made the great Volcano Mons Olympus:
Nine Tiles - that's gotta be a record of some sort, don't'cha think?
Sorry about the large image size, but I wanted to include some regular size stuff in the picture so that you can see the scale of it...
Last night I was mucking with the stand-alone Barsoom map, and made the great Volcano Mons Olympus:
Nine Tiles - that's gotta be a record of some sort, don't'cha think?
Sorry about the large image size, but I wanted to include some regular size stuff in the picture so that you can see the scale of it...
KingArthur
Searching for the Holy Grail
Very nice!
Olympus Mons is a lot less impressive than people usually think, because although it is extremely high, it is more like a big bulge in the planet than a mountain. The slope is so gentle you could cycle up it. If you were standing near it, you wouldn't really be able to see it, except that the horizon would be a bit higher in that direction.
Olympus Mons is a lot less impressive than people usually think, because although it is extremely high, it is more like a big bulge in the planet than a mountain. The slope is so gentle you could cycle up it. If you were standing near it, you wouldn't really be able to see it, except that the horizon would be a bit higher in that direction.
Balthasar
Wise Man
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2005
- Messages
- 3,293
Moderator Action: OT snip
The stand-alone Barsoom map is my laboratory for all things Barsoomian, like those trees, and for testing Tharks and such without having to wade through 500 units to unravel those inevitable damned vague error messages...
Yeah, I finally wised up and took a scientific approach: if Barsoom is largely dry, the trees would be like those you find in dry areas. They would be water-retaining, for one thing, and sure enough, Burroughs says that the majority of Barsoomian trees have stout water-retaining trunks. Many also have rock-hard woods, like some african trees. So I found a bunch of trees that fit that description and recolored them to account for an iron-rich environment. I'll be adding them to the Lost Worlds terrain as well, as I really like them. I'll put up a better screenshot of them.
Thanks, Plot. I was trying to get that slope-y effect, glad you noticed.
The stand-alone Barsoom map is my laboratory for all things Barsoomian, like those trees, and for testing Tharks and such without having to wade through 500 units to unravel those inevitable damned vague error messages...
I like, I really like
Is that some martian vegetation I see in the pic as well?
Yeah, I finally wised up and took a scientific approach: if Barsoom is largely dry, the trees would be like those you find in dry areas. They would be water-retaining, for one thing, and sure enough, Burroughs says that the majority of Barsoomian trees have stout water-retaining trunks. Many also have rock-hard woods, like some african trees. So I found a bunch of trees that fit that description and recolored them to account for an iron-rich environment. I'll be adding them to the Lost Worlds terrain as well, as I really like them. I'll put up a better screenshot of them.
Thanks, Plot. I was trying to get that slope-y effect, glad you noticed.
tom2050
Deity
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2005
- Messages
- 5,516
Now that is impressive. You don't really get the size of how big it is until you glance over at the tiny little mountains. It looks in great harmony with the style of the rest of the terrain. I know how tough doing that with landmark terrain is. You should enter it into the PCX contest.
Plus it looks just as I remember it from last time I visited that mountain.
Sir Sam Vimes
Duke of Ankh
Yeah, you're right (we need more people who know about science on this thread...) Its a bloody brilliant representation, most people go for making it look like its really tall and thin, which is useless. One thing to remember is that Mons is actually a pimple on a much larger structure, the Tharsis Bulge, which is so big it makes mars massively asymetrical...
For anyone working on the Barsoom map, I'd humbly recommend you check Mapping Mars by Oliver Morton (see: http://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Mars-Science-Imagination-Birth/dp/0312245513 and: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/nov/30/featuresreviews.guardianreview16) and also Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars). Morton's book is fascinating and the Trilogy is a brilliant piece of ecotopian sci-fi that's a damn good future history and also uses real, very accurate, topographic descriptions
Steampunk fans should check Robinsons's Years of Rice and Salt... its not strictly steampunk but its a brilliant alternative history of the Earth from Timur the Lame to the modern day told as a gripping novel.
