leading and misleading with quotes

Posted on | 4 years, 1 month ago, in the evening | No Comments

As part of the backdrop for the the steampunk novel-in-progress, I establish early on that the American Civil War has been raging for significantly longer than it did in real and proper history. The reasons for this are manyfold and they include (but are not limited to) my desire for an inappropriate degree of late 19th century technology.

I don’t require microchips and atomic bombs, but I do want to create a credible excuse for the widespread use of war dirigibles, some mech-style / steam-powered weaponry, and a few unlikely communication advances. In short, protracted war and an ensuing arms race make an obvious and natural narrative thruster to account for fantasy world tech that outpaces the historical tech.

With this in mind as a world-building backdrop, Andrea has once again demonstrated her Civil War historian prowess and unearthed the quote with which I’m going to introduce the novel. I don’t usually bother with such things, but this is too perfect not to borrow, and I rather strongly doubt we’ll run into any copyright issues.

“In this age of invention the science of arms has made great progress. In fact, the most remarkable inventions have been made since the prolonged wars of Europe in the early part of the century, and the short Italian campaign of France in 1859 served to illustrate how great a power the engines of destruction can exert.”

Thomas P. Kettell, 1865
From History of the Great Rebellion.

Actually, the full title of the book is rather markedly longer than the quote itself, because (as Andrea put it), when they titled a book in the 19th century they went whole-hog and that book By God stayed titled. Here’s the whole shebang:

History of the Great Rebellion,
From its commencement to its close, giving an account of its origin,
The Secession of the Southern States,
and the
Formation of the Confederate Government,
the concentration of the
Military and Financial resources of the
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT,
the development of its vast power, the raising, organizing, and equipping of the contending armies and navies; lucid, vivid, and accurate descriptions of battles and bombardments, sieges and surrender of forts, captured batteries, etc., etc.; the immense financial resources and comprehensive measures of the government, the enthusiasm and patriotic contributions of the people, together with sketches of the lives of all the eminent statesmen and military and naval commanders, with a full and complete index from Official Sources.

Ah, it is to laugh. Nowdays, you’d never shoehorn that title past marketing. Anyway, here’s the daily progress upon the west coast steampunk Victoriana book with zombies, air ships, toxic gas clouds, mad scientists, dead folk heroes, secret criminal societies, and now Bonus! extended deleted scenes from the Civil War.





For the idly curious, that’s roughly 100 pages, double-space typed.

Category: misc

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