Ars Memoriae by Beth Bernobich.
Commander Adrian Dee (who is pestered by false memories) is sent by her Hibernic Majesty to investigate some mysterious political machinations in Austria and Montenegro, though the trouble might actually be treachery closer to home.
One of the elements of steampunk is clocks, and while this story does not contain an orrery, it has balloons and mathematical mysteries concerning the nature of time, as well as spies and action.
I compare it to Shostakovich's 11th--deceptively slow beginning, as Dee waits upon the young queen with whom he has some sort of past, and visits each member of her inner council. Then he travels to Europe, using disguises and code words set up according to diplomatic useage . . . which gets him into trouble. Somewhere along the line, he's been betrayed. He has no idea if he's been sold out locally--or back at the capital, so he can trust no one. Communicate with no one.
As he travels on, using his wits and experience, he's still pestered by weird memories. The story builds to a crashing crescendo, like the Shostakovich piece, which was inspired by politics at that very time.
There is easily enough material here for a full novel; readers might wish the climax was explored more fully, but overall I am left longing for more about this world, how it works, and above all, more about Commander Adrian Dee.
I asked the author some questions about this novella and about steampunk in general, in hopes that our exchange might spark off some discussion.
Smith: Why is steampunk sexy?
Beth: I've wondered that myself. I think it's because of the contrast between the strict, staid Victorian era and the exuberance of steampunk fiction. And the technology used in steampunk is so very rugged and physical and...
*pauses to fan self*
Smith: Heh! ‘Rugged and physical’ and
stylish. My son was watching the
Back to the Future Trilogy recently. I walked in just as the last film was ending—and there was the Doc and his teacher wife and their futuristic flying train. It hit me that that picture absolutely captured Steampunk—the immensely stylish retro clothing, the beautiful pre-art nouveau design work on the train, the combination of steam and magic.
My understanding is, steampunk is nor just about steam, but about
fin de siecle styles, and nascent governments breaking the economic and political as well as cultural traditions of empire. It seems to me that breaking the hold of super-powers is relevant today. Same with the sense of the working man feeling helpless against those powers—and finding ways to harness it. And as for the sense that machines are one step from magic, as tech changes accelerate rapidly . . . well, I see parallels.
On the other hand, some say Steampunk is all about clocks. Gears. Wheels and time. One of the strong draws of your stories set in this milieu is how you use numbers and time. Did your exploration of mathematics and the limitations of time arise out of the setting, or did the idea come first, and you imposed the vaguely Ruritanian, pre-WW I setting?
Beth: As usual, the whole thing came to me backwards, and in pieces. I had never heard of steampunk, and I had no grand ideas about addressing the limitations of time. I just had an image of a young woman whispering prime numbers, which eventually, and with a great deal of struggling, turned into the first Eireann story ("A Flight of Numbers Fantastique Strange").
Smith: That is one of my favorite stories of the past ten years.
Beth: It was Oliver Sacks’s book,
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, that gave me the image I described. There’s a chapter where Sacks tells about his encounter with two brothers, twins, who could visualize multi-digit prime numbers--and this was back in the days before supercomputers. I decided to write about a different pair of twins, mathematical geniuses who were obsessed by prime numbers, to the point where the sister was driven mad by them--or so her brother and the doctors believed.
At first, I set the story in the real world in England, but as I struggled through the first draft, a second image came to me--that of a red balloon drifting through the sky--which gave me the story of the queen and her lover. From there all the details of the alternate world just spilled out.
Smith: Purely for the fun of the history geek, did your timeline diverge around 1603?
Beth: Further back, actually. I decided that Henry II’s invasion of Ireland didn’t succeed because the Irish formed an alliance with the Danes of Northern England. They divided England between them, with the southern part of England becoming the Anglian Dependencies.
Smith: I so hope there going to be a novel about these people and this setting?
Beth: I am currently waiting for word about a proposal for just that. The plan is to base the novel on the existing three Eireann stories (“A Flight of Numbers,” “The Golden Octopus,” and
Ars Memoriae), with a fourth, new segment that will finally address the problem of the Anglians, tie up all the loose ends, and bring Eireann fully into the 20th century.
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ellen_datlow writes about my collection The Journey to Kailash in her introduction to Best Horror of the Year 1: "an excellent new collection by one of the best cross-genre poets in the genres of fantasy and dark fantasy."
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