The Great Eastern Q5: The Great Age of Wreckage

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The author described the 19th C. as The Great Age of Wreckage in an interview. How does the novel capture that idea? Do you agree with the sentiment? Do you know of any other literary or gaming settings that see the 19th C. this way?

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    I think the notion is progress rendering things rapidly obsolete (the Great Eastern itself), and the costs and cruelty of Empire (Nemo's story). There are other things I can think of that treat the 19th Century this way. The first I can think of actually comes from the 19th century - War of the Worlds. It's definitely about the horrors of imperialism, with England invaded by a technologically superior foe out to exploit human resources.

    In gaming, I think the Kerberos Club setting handles some aspects of this really well, with future shock explicitly addressed. And the world gets increasingly stranger in that setting over the course of the 19th century.

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    I'm not a great fan of steampunk: the colonialist entitlement is too strong for me. A great reaction to it is Renegade Jennys and Boilerplate Jacks a sadly-unfinished steampunk game about the people at the bottom and edges of society, trying to survive and correct injustices.

    It's unfinished because the author decided they couldn't justify the time, effort, and money needed to get it into a publishable form. I didn't like the mechanics much, but the setting is great. The manner of presentation, with the Ports of Call, is a fabulous idea.

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    If the novel captured any ideas in particular, the author was unable to communicate them to me.

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    I think what he's trying to get at here is how the momentum of the industrial and scientific age callously sweeps away what was before - Here we have the empire (and its military action made possible by the telegraph) sweeping away the Princely States (of which, by the way, there should be a setting!) Industry grows, and fails, and grows upon itself, engulfing the wreckage of it's recent past. The Great Eastern is already obsolete. Ahab speaks of steam as being an abomination, but The Nautilus is electric and has already blown steam away. Then there's the scene of the cable spool tumbling into the deeps, dragging everything down with it - a metaphor for human hubris?

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    More on this: The last paragraph of chapter 51 - Ahab's death scene.

    In time the silt will cover him up. He lies there, a man of the sea buried at sea. He lies between a spool of cable, eighty foot wide, the dream of Mr. Field, and a sub-marine vessel, now crushed, the dream of he who was born Prince Dakkar, but now was not even Captain Nemo. In time, the silt will cover them all. As all our dreams are buried, lost, with no salvage save the powers of memory, care, and human labour - which, from time to time, can resurrect the dead.

    I feel this is the heart of the novel. This, and two pages later, the dead eyes of Ahab meed those of Nemo as they descend to their supposed deaths.

    Both sets of eyes disclosed, full on, the panoply within. All that had been lost. By slaughter, storm, and fire; by murder, by devastation; by beast, by man; by ambition unchecked; and by failure in the simplest duties of love.

    Is that how we'll feel when Biden beats Trump?

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    @Apocryphal said:
    Is that how we'll feel when Biden beats Trump?

    You're Canadian. Probably what the Trumpers would feel if somebody beat Mr. Trudeau, eh?

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    @Apocryphal said:
    Here we have the empire (and its military action made possible by the telegraph) sweeping away the Princely States (of which, by the way, there should be a setting!)

    Amen to that! A great potential setting, full of wonder and struggle. I tried running a game in 1840s Mysore, but it collapsed for external reasons after a few sessions.

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    A friend of mine (mostly online but we have actually met once or twice) writes naval fiction set in the 1880s/90s and frequently comments how fast naval technology changed. You could easily have (and did have in reality) a character who first entered the Royal Navy sailing ships that were essentially the same as Napoleonic Era vessels ("The Age of Fighting Sail") and who finished his career on steel hulled vessels, driven by steam, firing turret-mounted guns, and having to deal with submarine warfare as well. Only a few more years and you'd have air power joining the game. So yes, positing a steamship (with secondary paddles and sails) and a submarine vessel, pitted against each other, is a valid setting, and an interesting one for any author to tackle.

    I'm not convinced about the Age of Wreckage bit, unless it is meant as a metaphor for social wreckage. During this same era, advances in ocean safety began to actually take effect and be seriously implemented. Earlier days, with no real enforceable safety protocols, and a lack of longitudinal calculations, were much more likely to end in wreckage.

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    @Apocryphal said:
    More on this: The last paragraph of chapter 51 - Ahab's death scene.

    In time the silt will cover him up. He lies there, a man of the sea buried at sea. He lies between a spool of cable, eighty foot wide, the dream of Mr. Field, and a sub-marine vessel, now crushed, the dream of he who was born Prince Dakkar, but now was not even Captain Nemo. In time, the silt will cover them all. As all our dreams are buried, lost, with no salvage save the powers of memory, care, and human labour - which, from time to time, can resurrect the dead.

    I feel this is the heart of the novel. This, and two pages later, the dead eyes of Ahab meed those of Nemo as they descend to their supposed deaths.

    Both sets of eyes disclosed, full on, the panoply within. All that had been lost. By slaughter, storm, and fire; by murder, by devastation; by beast, by man; by ambition unchecked; and by failure in the simplest duties of love.

    And after all that, neither one of them is actually dead at all...

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