Steampunk and Time Travel in The Anubis Gates

SPOILER ALERT! If you have not read The Anubis Gates there are spoilers in this essay.


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In the Recent Science Fiction and Fantasy class I took, we had to research the steampunk sub-genre. The Anubis Gates was on many steampunk lists as one of the original novels that started the sub-genre, and I was curious about it then, so I was pleased to have the chance to read it now. Time travel paradoxes also tend to make my head spin, so I was interested to see how Tim Powers handles it in The Anubis Gates.

I must admit, The Anubis Gates is not what I expected from a novel labeled as steampunk. When I think steampunk, I think more the science fiction side of things with the air ships, the interesting gadgets, and the focus on steam as a power source. Therefore, I did not expect to find so much magic in such a novel! I'm quite glad I had the chance to read this novel, though, since it did give me a fresh perspective on the sub-genre. And with it leaning toward fantasy because of all the magic, I enjoyed it immensely.

When I wrote my essay on Boneshaker for the aforementioned class, I used an article I found on the internet called "Steampunk: A List of Themes" to examine how that novel incorporates steampunk elements. I looked at the article again after reading The Anubis Gates to see just how many categories it fits into. It's obviously an alternate history, closing in on the Victorian era, so we see a lot of those antiquities. There's the cannon near the end of the novel and the gunpowder used throughout. Plus the chemistry used in the magic and to alter the humans and animals in Horrabin's "hospital"--Horrabin and his father I think would rightly qualify to be labeled as mad scientists. There is the monster, of course. Dog-face Joe is a wonderful twist on a typical werewolf. There are secret societies, sword fights, and a clear class divide (Doyle himself experiences life on the low and high end of this). All of these things clearly make The Anubis Gates a steampunk novel, and I am even more enamored with the sub-genre after seeing this fantasy side versus the science fiction side.

But before we are steeped in this magically rich Victorian time period, the main character needs to get there first. And even though The Anubis Gates is steampunk, it's also a time travel story. Time travel is a fickle thing. The writer needs to set things up just right to make sure it all makes sense. Paradoxes are easy to fall into. Powers sets up his view on how time travel works in this world right away when Doyle and the others arrive for the Coleridge speech. History already states that Coleridge lectured at that date and time, but if Doyle and friends wouldn't have arrived and paid the money to rent the room for the lecture, it never would have happened. From this example it's clearly seen that Powers' view on time travel (at least in this novel) is that you can't go back and change things--everything has already happened. There is no way to change history because if you travel back in time, you've already effected that history so the result will be exactly the same.

Even though I think the "it's already happened" approach is a great one, since it doesn't mean the writer has to explain the ripple effect, I still found it hard to accept everything concerning the time traveling. Once Doyle was left behind in 1810, I had a hunch that he would actually be William Ashbless. That hunch was obviously correct, and I do think the set-up for it was done quite nicely. However, there were just some instances where I fell into a couple paradoxical holes. First was the poem, "The Twelve Hours of the Night". Since Doyle is Ashbless, he wrote the poem at the coffee house. As he admits, he wrote it from memory. So if he is the original creator of the poem, where did the words come from in the first place? It's like the eternal debate of "what came first, the chicken or the egg?", since you keep going in circles on trying to figure it out. The words had to be originally written at some point. Powers tries to explain things away later: "My God, he thought, then if I stay and live out my life as Ashbless--which the universe pretty clearly means me to do--then nobody wrote Ashbless' poems. . . They're a closed loop, uncreated! I'm just the . . . messenger and caretaker" (273). But the words have to come from somewhere originally, so this assertion fell flat for me. Even later in the book Doyle decides his experiences are what Ashbless must have been talking about in the poem, but it's hard to believe that the poem came before the actual experiences. Even the words in the book from the 1600s has the smell of paradox. Doyle would never have written the Pig Latin words in the book if he hadn't seen them in 1810, but if that was the only reason he wrote them, they shouldn't probably have been written in the first place. It can become a circular mess, and even trying to write about it strains my brain cells.

Even though I had some issues accepting some of the time travel paradoxes, I overall did find The Anubis Gates a great read. The story was compelling, even when you did know things were already "written in stone", so to speak, and it was hard to put down. I can see why this steampunk fantasy is considered a classic, and it makes me want to read even more in the sub-genre.

Works Cited

EvilEgg. "Steampunk: A List of Themes." Writing.com. 2007. Web.
Powers, Tim. The Anubis Gates. The Berkley Publishing Group: New York, 1983.


NEXT UP: A review of a few more episodes of Once Upon A Time.

Steampunk

Last week I looked at the steampunk elements found in Boneshaker. Steampunk is such an interesting sub-genre that I thought I'd take a closer look at it and offer some links.

When I think of steampunk, the first thing that comes to mind are all the neat contraptions people have built that I've seen pop up across the internet - the copper and brass computers, modern technology with a historical/Victorian flare. I haven't had much experience with the steampunk genre otherwise (aside from a neat episode of Castle a few months ago) before reading Boneshaker (at least I didn't think I had until after my research!).

Steampunk.com covers the definition of steampunk well in their article "What Is Steampunk?" They touch on all of the aspects of what it represents, starting with the literature. Here were the general bullet points copied directly from the website:

"* Take place in the Victorian era but include advanced machines based on 19th century technology (e.g. The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling);
* Include the supernatural as well (e.g. The Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger);
* Include the supernatural and forego the technology (e.g. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, one of the works that inspired the term ‘steampunk’);
* Include the advanced machines, but take place later than the Victorian period, thereby assuming that the predomination by electricity and petroleum never happens (e.g. The Peshawar Lancers by S. M. Stirling); or
* Take place in an another world altogether, but featuring Victorian-like technology (e.g. Mainspring by Jay Lake)."

It was great to see some examples for each of the types of steampunk. The movie Sherlock Holmes was also mentioned in the article. I never thought of that movie as steampunk, but it clicked and made perfect sense when I saw it listed here.

Near the end of the article, they say, "Another criticism has been that steampunk focuses on the best of the past and quietly sweeps the bad (i.e. slavery, child labor, widespread disease, etc.)." I found this statement interesting, since Boneshaker doesn't fit this at all - it's very much a book that shows the bad side of things. This observation was paired with a link, though, to "The Future of Steampunk" by Paul Jessup.

In Jessup's article he talks about how steampunk needs to veer away from focusing on the good of the era. "But I do see a disturbing trend towards Empire worship and a hidden undercurrent of racism." He also includes Boneshaker as an example of one of the novels that goes against this current trend.

So, like many other sub-genres, steampunk is also one that is still growing and being defined. Jessup insists that it needs to take a new direction, to look at the bad in the era, like in Boneshaker: "And for it to thrive without hate or tyranny, it is a road we need to follow."

Some links I came across in my searches that I thought were fun:

Steampunk Magazine - Yes, the sub-genre has its own magazine! Did you write a steampunk story? This is probably a good place to submit to.

Steampunk: 20 Core Titles - Yup, Boneshaker is on this list.

Top 25 Novels for Steampunk Aficianados - I never would have thought of The Golden Compass as steampunk (great book), but it does make sense! And yes, Boneshaker is on this list too.

12 Classic Steampunk Books - Can never have enough book lists.

Steampunk: A List of Themes - Great list to see the particular things that tend to crop up in steampunk literature.

Clockwork Couture - Fun corsets in the steampunk style. I know, not literature based, but I had to include one of the awesome clothing sites in my links.


NEXT UP: A look at the novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

Searching for Steampunk in Boneshaker

SPOILER ALERT! If you have not read Boneshaker there are spoilers in this essay.


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The most interesting things for me in Boneshaker by Cherie Priest were the steampunk elements. Once we ventured into Dr. Minnericht's underground, I was fascinated. So, I thought it would be fun to examine what makes Boneshaker steampunk. I utilized the article "Steampunk: A List of Themes" as a starting point. It's a long list, and Boneshaker includes many of the ideas listed.

First and foremost, Boneshaker takes place in an alternate universe, as it's an alternate history. The American Civil War, or the War Between the States, is raging and Washington still hasn't become a state. The thing is, the war has been going on for 15 years. In our timeline, the war only lasted for about 4 years. At one point in the book it mentions a certain Confederate General not dying during a battle he dies in in our timeline, and that the English came to help the south, which is what likely stretched the war out longer.

Zeppelins and sky pirates are also often found in steampunk, and Boneshaker doesn't disappoint in this area. Briar needs to ask the help of sky pirates to get into the walled up city to rescue her son, Zeke. We even have a rollicking scene between two balloons fighting it out because one was stolen (again, as the captain it was stolen from originally stole it from the Confederate army). "'Some miserable goddamned son of a bitch thief flew off with the Free Crow!...The only warship ever successfully stolen from either side, and someone had the temerity to steal it from me!" (Priest 392-393).

The world in Boneshaker is also a dystopia. Aside from the war continuing on, Seattle has been walled up, due to a Blight being released from underground--a gas that causes death or zombification, what the people in the story call Rotters. These Rotters are monsters, yet another element sometimes found in steampunk.

But we can't forget what released the Blight gas in the first place, and one of the bigger things people think of when steampunk is mentioned--the Boneshaker, a huge machine was created by Leviticus Blue, Briar's husband. It burrowed deep under Seattle 15 years ago, releasing the Blight on the city. "Its grinding drills--each one the size of a pony--had twirled and twisted around everything near them; Briar remembered thinking of giant forks twirling at a bowl of spaghetti. And although rust had taken the biting edges off the grooved, bladed drills, they still looked nastier than a devil's dream" (Priest 403). Briar even comes across some of Levi's other old machines near the end of the novel.

Big machines, though, aren't the only gadgets prominent in steampunk. Smaller things, like Lucy's mechanical arm also permeate this sub-genre. "She flexed her fingers, and the knuckles popped with a tiny clack. 'The whole thing's mechanical. It gives me a little leak every so often'" (Priest 189). There is also Jeremiah's Daisy, which uses static electricity to charge up and releases a loud noise to down the Rotters for a few minutes. Near the end we're also introduced to the destructiveness of the Sonic Gusting Gun.

Of course we have to have a mad scientist to create these things, and Dr. Minnericht fits that role perfectly. He has a bit of an obsession with lights, which is only one example of how crazy he is. "Lamps of all shapes and sizes blazed around the room on pillars and poles. They were strapped to the walls and to each other, and bundled into groups. Some functioned with an obvious power source, and their lemony flames cast a traditional glow; but others broadcast beams made of stranger stuff. Here and there a lamp burned blue and white, or created a greenish halo" (Priest 304). He attempts to convince the inhabitants of Seattle that he's Leviticus Blue, another mad scientist from Briar's account, but Briar knows otherwise.

Even some small things are examples found in steampunk. Briar's goggles, the lenses acting like a magnifying glass to see the Blight, her corset-like top, as well as the detail of the oriental rugs and the velvet couch when Briar finally enters her old home after 15 years have passed. Even Dr. Minnericht's watch exemplifies the small intricacies and details that show up in this sub-genre. The Blight itself is used to make a type of drug, bringing in the chemistry side of things.

These are some of the main elements found in Boneshaker that can be considered steampunk. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and if you look closely, you can see other themes and tidbits that tend to show up often in steampunk. It's an interesting genre, and I hope I find the time to explore it more thoroughly one day.


WORKS CITED

EvilEgg. "Steampunk: A List of Themes." Writing.com. 2007. Web.

Priest, Cherie. Boneshaker. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2009.


NEXT UP: A closer look at steampunk!