Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [23]
Fred C. Smale
Many of the science-fiction stories that were written at the end of the nineteenth century looked forward with optimism toward the wonders that technology might bring. Top of the list, ahead of such benefits as an endless supply of food, moving walkways, television and longevity was the personal aircar. This was at a time when everyone was still aglow with the freedom provided by the bicycle. The motor-car had yet to establish itself but it was the aircar or other form of personalised air transport that everyone desired.
We all think of Wilbur and Orville Wright as the first to fly a heavier-than-air machine, but others had achieved it before them, though not in such a controlled manner. Clément Ader managed to get his beautiful bat-winged Avion off the ground in 1890 and it is supposed to have flown about 50 metres. Later attempts were only marginally better. There were several others who made valiant attempts during the 1890s, including Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, so the idea of powered flight was very topical. Earlier, in 1852, Henri Giffard had created a steam-powered airship, and for decades many believed the airship would be the transport of the future. Like the automaton, it is another iconic steampunk image. The airship remained fashionable throughout the 1920s and until the Hindenberg disaster in 1937, but there are those who believe its day may yet return.
Little is known about Fred C. Smale. He may be the 35-year-old nurseryman from Torquay in Devon who lists himself as a florist and author on the 1901 census. He contributed occasional stories to the popular magazines and wrote a humorous fantasy The Mayor of Littlejoy (1899) about a man who discovers he is descended from fairies. — M.A.
“HEIGHO! This is gruesome work,” exclaimed Bowden Snell, as he leaned back in his old Victorian chair and placed a cocaine lozenge in his mouth.
A particularly atrocious crime had been committed that morning in the suburb of Slough, and Snell, in his capacity of graphist to the Hourly Flash, had been sent to procure a record of it, by means of the Antegraph, then coming into general use with the news offices.
He had the advantage of possessing a good instrument, and five or six minutes had been sufficient in which to obtain good retrospective views of the crime, from the first frown of the murderer to the last dying throe of the victim.
Bowden Snell was now developing the film in his room at the Flash office, and the aerocar that had brought him was still outside the large bay window swinging gently to and fro at its moorings in the summer breeze.
It was now sixteen o’clock, and the pictures were needed for the seventeen o’clock edition. The murderer had been caught of course; a constable, equipped with the new collapsible wings, had swooped down on the guilty ruffian ere he had reached Windsor, whither he was making, doubtless with the intention of taking an aerocar from the rank on Castle Hill.
Bowden Snell was not young, being over fifty, and the more rapid methods of the times made it difficult for him to compete with younger men; but the Flash people retained him chiefly because of his extensive knowledge of the great province of London.
His films completed and dispatched by tube to the lower offices, Bowden Snell mechanically pressed a button in the wall beside him, and commenced to apply himself voraciously to the resulting salmon cutlets. The apartment and its conveniences were placed entirely at his disposal by the proprietors of the Flash, and being a lonely man — a widower in fact — Bowden Snell made it almost his home.
He had scarcely eaten a mouthful when the room was suddenly darkened by the apparition of a second aerocar of strange old-fashioned construction, which bumped clumsily against Snell’s own machine, and ultimately drew up at the window.
Immediately a young man, clad in white from head to foot, leaped into the room. His face was brown with exposure to the sun, and he looked anxious and travel-worn.
“Arbuthnot!” Exclaimed Bowden Snell, “You here? What on