[DL] Re: London

[Michael Robert Blair <pellinoire@yahoo.com>]

I can't really recall having read anything
specifically about London in any Deadlands book so
this is largely a generic steampunk view with a
Deadlands 'wash' applied.

Lets see, Britain is rich and powerful, the industrial
revolution would have 'Made in England' stamped on the
bottom (though that is as always a more complicated
story - that I would argue started with the Black
Death in the Middle Ages'). Yet it is dependant on
foreign raw materials and food - American cotton for
the Lancashire mills, refrigerated meat from Australia
(now there is a scenario - things reanimating on a
reefer) and most importantly American grain. Its
position is already starting to slip, cheap clocks
will almost all be American, but it is still the main
producer of heavy machinery.

The engineers will be crazy over ghostrock but though
their inventions may not be as wacky or as useful to
adventures as the products of Yankee tinkereers they
will be potential more harmful in the long run - whole
areas tainted by the 'fall out' from ghost rock
powered mills - in the Black Country things might rise
from ancient graveyards... Mind you there are crazy
British inventors as well - look at the life of
Charles Babbage for a start.

London is a city of contrasts, the poor are still
living in crowded slums, even though the old rookeries
have been cleared while the middle classes are moving
into the suburbs made possible by cheap public
transport.

Strange new and/or foreign religions and beliefs are
gaining popularity - spiritualism is a case in point
though we might are a bit too early for Theosophy.

I have been working on a 'League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen' knockoff setting for a while now but beyond
adding some weird science I didn't think of making any
great changes, I did toy with having the
Franco-Prussian war a French victory and keeping the
French in Mexico though, the latter almost mandating a
Confederate survival as well though I discovered doing
an essay on slavery that I was a rabid abolitionist
which I had not been aware of which has shifted my
stance to a more pro-union bias rather than
pro-Confederacy. A bit of a pity as apart form Lincoln
himself (my second favourite American president after
Teddy) the Union seemed to have fewer sympathetic
characters and a lot of nasties led by the hideous
'Spoons' Butler and that bloody fool Autie Custer.

Back to London. Read anything by James McDonald Frazer
but especially his Flashman books and probably
especially ?Mr. American? though I have not read it. A
lot of his stuff is not particularly relavant but all
is good. Even the McAuslan stories though set just
after WW II give a very good insight to the British
regimental system.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics.


Michael
Now eagerly awaiting 'Cold Mountain' and hoping it is
as good as the book.


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