Steampunk, steampunk, steampunk.
Though it is the beginning of 2014 and the steampunk ship appears to
have sailed, our pants are still wet from the flood, and as the water recedes,
we try to filter through the driftwood.
Many of the titles deserving of disappearing as quickly as they washed
ashore, some, however, will hopefully remain in the genre’s memory for a long
time. At or near the top of that list is
certainly Ian R. Macleod’s The Light Ages. As stereotypical a steampunk story as any can
appear to be, it trumps the visuals through the literary manner in which
substance complements aesthetics, its relevancy achieving greater heights.
The Light Ages is a frame story, foremost. It
opens with a Guildmaster walking the gloomy backstreets of London, seeking a
changeling child. Finding her in a
makeshift home alongside the Thames, the girl taunts the man before asking to
hear his life story. Robert Morrow the
Guildmaster’s name, he begins with his childhood in northern England in a
mining town. Aether pumped from the
ground in vast quantities, he is being groomed to follow in his father’s
footsteps, a minor guildsman of the tool workers which utilize the
industry-changing substance. His mother not in the healthiest of conditions,
she nevertheless has the energy to take young Morrow on her social visits, one
of which includes a trip to the countryside to visit a woman who may or may not
be a changeling. His mother’s condition
deteriorating rapidly thereafter, Morrow soon finds himself faced with the
realities of his future in the present, and, in a calculated decision, decides
to change it all. From street urchin in
London to printer’s assistant, child confidante to a Guildmaster, debt
collector to revolutionary, Morrow gets what he wants, but not in the fashion
his young mind imagined in a world turned upside down by the powerful aether.
Stated simply, The Light Ages
is gorgeously written. The whole text
suitable, I struggled to find an exemplary quote, but settled on an early
paragraph as Morrow searches the byways of London for the changeling girl.
What waits ahead of
me, distant from everything but this river, is a foul isthmus. Sounds are
different here, and the gulls remain oddly silent as they bob and rise. Here,
it would be said in a forever unwritten history, edged against the wastetips
and outflows, shadowed with cuckoo-plant ivy, scratched against the sky, are
the remains of the unfinished railway bridge which attempted to stride across
the Thames from Ropewalk Reach in another Age. The bridge still rises from the
city's rubbish in a tumbled crown. It fails only where the second span buckles
beneath the river, waving its girders like a drowning insect. I move within the
shadows of its ribs, clambering over slippery horns of embedded concrete and
guild-scrolled bearing-sleeves of greenish brass. Here, rusted and barnacled
but still faintly glowing with aethered purpose, is the crest of a maker's
plate. And a sea-diver's glove.
A textbook example, the entirety of The
Light Ages shows not tells.
Nostalgia and melancholy woven into every word, it exudes a sense of
atmosphere, of being somewhere in fictional history, of feeling what the characters
feel, of seeing what they see, of possessing import despite the surface
simplicity... I could go on gushing, but
will stop.
As mentioned in the intro, The
Light Ages is a core steampunk text.
Whether it ever intended to be is unimportant. Aether, its usage in commerce and industry,
and the manner in which society and politics are affected virtually defines the
sub-genre. A subtle mix of magic and
technology, it propels Victorian England to a higher level of the Industrial
Age, as well as the pages of steampunk history.
With
aether, England prospers, the guilds flourish, the shift sirens chant, the
chimneys plume, the wealthy live lives of almost inconceivable profligacy and
the rest of us struggle and squabble and labour for the crumbs which remain.
Even lands beyond our own, caught within their own wyreglowing tendrils of
aether and ridiculous myths of discovery by some other grandmaster than ours,
smoke and hammer to dreams of guilded industry whilst the savage lands remain
forever unexplored. With aether, this world turns on the slow dark eddies of
Ages beyond conflict and war. Without it – but the very thought was impossible.
But there is more to The Light Ages
than steampunk and the associated commentary on an industrialized society;
there is also an element of faery. Never
presented in high fantasy terms, the changelings are manifested as human but
with auras and distinguishing differences in character to those who know how to
look. Morrow falling in love with a
changeling girl and her steward in the early going, their encounters throughout
the remainder of the story prove pivotal to Macleod’s agenda, all the while
adding a subtly colored facet to the story.
In the end, The Light Ages is a
brilliant book that should survive the exigencies of genre time. Macleod writes a highly engaging tale with
the tropes of steampunk, yet focuses the agenda on the socio-politcal aspects
of Britain’s age of industry. The
streets of London, the countryside, and the living conditions are described in
beautiful flowing prose, and is surpassed only by the superb presentation of theme
through character. An extremely
well-rounded book from a literary perspective, its visual qualities only propel
it higher in the ranks of fantasy in the 21 st century. Get it. Read it.
Charles Dickens and Keith Roberts could never have been prouder.
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