Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [0]
Aurorarama
Copyright © 2010 by Jean-Christophe Valtat
All rights reserved
First Melville House Printing: July 2010
Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
mhpbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Valtat, Jean-Christophe, 1968-
Aurorarama : a novel / Jean-Christophe Valtat.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-935554-88-2
1. Steampunk fiction. I. Title.
PQ2682.A438A97 2010
843′.914–dc22
2010025659
v3.1
To Serge, who built this city with me.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
A Prologue: That Is Just That
Book One - Qarrtsiluni
Chapter I - A Mysterious Airship
Chapter II - The Gentlemen of the Night
Chapter III - Unhappy Hunters
Chapter IV - A Teacher’s Pet
Chapter V - Phantasus & Phobetor
Chapter VI - Boreal Bohemia
Chapter VII - An Appointment At The Pole
Chapter VIII - Hypnotized!!!
Chapter IX - The Arctic Eden
Chapter X - A Starmap Tattoo
Book Two - Magic & Mayhem
Chapter XI - Nordlicht
Chapter XII - Eskimo Thieves!!!
Chapter XIII - The Recording Riot
Chapter XIV - Unwelcome Guests
Chapter XV - The Blazing Building
Chapter XVI - The Hollow Earth
Chapter XVII - The Ghost Walks
Chapter XVIII - Lessons Of Darkness
Chapter XIX - The Magician’s Menace
Chapter XX - The Failure of the Feast
Book Three - No Earthly Pole
Chapter XXI - Qivigtoq
Chapter XXII - The Kinngait
Chapter XXIII - A Wizard in Strange Trance
Chapter XXIV - The Phantom Patrol
Chapter XXV - Eskimos to the Rescue!
Chapter XXVI - The Ariel
Chapter XXVII - The Crystal Castle
Chapter XXVIII - The Aurorarama
Chapter XXIX - Terrorists!!!
Chapter XXX - Fairy Tale Tactics
Epilogue: The Not So Serene Republic
It was shewed us by Vision in Dreams, and out of Dreams, That that should be the Place we should begin upon; And though that Earth in view of Flesh, be very barren, yet we should trust the Spirit for a blessing.
A Blast on the Barren Land, or the Standard of True Community Advanc’d, Presented to the Sons of Adam by Henry Hotspur, Being a Platform to Plant the Waste Land Of the Northern Isles & Septentrional Parts, & to Restore the Regiment of Commonwealth, Printed in the Yeer 1649
Is not human fantasy,
Wild Aurora, likest thee,
Blossoming in nightly dreams,
Like thy shifting meteor-gleams?
Christopher Pearse Cranch,
To the Aurora Borealis, 1840
A Panorama of New Venice
by Samuel Elphinstone
A PROLOGUE
That Is Just That
“Here is the true City of the Sun.”
William F. Warren, Paradise Found, The Cradle of
the Human Race at the North Pole, 1885
In New Venice, every year around February 15, when the sun goes up for the first time after four months of polar night, it is customary for the inhabitants to gather on the bridges and embankments and take off their mittens and hats to salute the benevolent star. By this, as the Inuit do, they manifest their respect and also their hope that they will be alive at the same time next year. It is a well-known piece of local lore that, having mocked this ritual, the German explorer Mr. Wulff died from cold, hunger, and exhaustion a few months afterward.
As far as Gods go, the Sun may not have, it is true, the most impressive record. He has certainly none of the gift of the gab that runs in the Jehovah family and when it comes to throwing lightning bolts Jove-style, He is as inept as the average mortal. But, down to earth as He is, when one needs a God who is punctual, reliable, and handy around the house, and that is exactly the kind of deity one needs above 80° North, good old Ray is likely to be the connoisseur’s first pick. This is why, whatever confessions they claim to belong to, the New Venetians are at least once a year sun-worshipping heathens of the purest ilk. The sun, on this day, just stays around—more than up—for an hour or so, but when the night comes down again, the crowds throw a party in the streets that is noisy, spectacular, and messy, full of dominoes, fireworks, confetti, screams, laughter, brawls, trysts, and vomitus.
There is, however, a corporation