Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [37]
The fascination of these stories wasn’t just for the idea of a Hollow Earth. It was also the intrigue of polar exploration. There were many valiant and often tragic attempts to reach both poles throughout the “steampunk” period. News and speculation about polar expeditions filled papers and magazines. It was not until 1909 that Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole, though Frederick Cook claimed he had reached there a year earlier. Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1912.
George Griffith (1857-1906) was the first major regular British writer of science fiction and much of his work could be classified as proto-steampunk. He was particularly fascinated with flying machines and future wars, explored in The Angel of the Revolution (1893), Olga Romanoff (1894) and The Outlaws of the Air (1895) right through to his last books The World Peril of 1910 (1907) and The Lord of Labour (1911). Like Ranger Gull, Griffith fell victim to the demon drink and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1906, aged only 48. — M.A.
I
“WELL, PROFESSOR, what is it? Something pretty important, I suppose, from the wording of your note. What is the latest achievement? Have you solved the problem of aerial navigation, or got a glimpse into the realms of the fourth dimension, or what?”
“No, not any of those as yet, my friend, but something that may be quite as wonderful of its sort,” replied Professor Haffkin, putting his elbows down on the table and looking keenly across it under his shaggy, iron-grey eyebrows at the young man who was sitting on the opposite side pulling meditatively at a good cigar and sipping a whisky-and-soda.
“Well, if it is something really extraordinary and at the same time practicable — as you know, my ideas of the practicable are fairly wide — I’m there as far as the financial part goes. As regards the scientific end of the business, if you say ‘Yes,’ it is ‘Yes.’”
Mr. Arthur Princeps had very good reasons for thus “going blind” on a project of which he knew nothing save that it probably meant a sort of scientific gamble to the tune of several thousands of pounds. He had had the good fortune to sit under the Professor when he was a student at, the Royal School of Mines, and being possessed of that rarest of all gifts, an intuitive imagination, he had seen vast possibilities through the meshes of the verbal network of the Professor’s lectures.
Further, the kindly Fates had blessed him with a twofold dowry. He had a keen and insatiable thirst for that kind of knowledge which is satisfied only by the demonstration of hard facts. He was a student of physical science simply because he couldn’t help it; and his grandfather had left him ground-rents in London, Birmingham, and Manchester, and coal and iron mines in half-a-dozen counties, which produced an almost preposterous income.
At the same time, he had inherited from his mother and his grandmother that kind of intellect which enabled him to look upon all this wealth as merely a means to an end.
Later on, Professor Haffkin had been his examiner in Applied Mathematics at London University, and he had done such an astonishing paper that he had come to him after he had taken his D.Sc. degree and asked him in brief but pregnant words for the favour of his personal acquaintance. This had led to an intellectual intimacy which not only proved satisfactory from the social and scientific points of view, but also materialised on many profitable patents.
The Professor was a man rich in ideas, but comparatively poor in money. Arthur Princeps had both ideas and money, and as a result of this conjunction of personalities the man of science had made thousands out of his inventions, while the scientific man of business had made tens of thousands