Steampunk/Alan Moore

[Carvill John]

Yep, Alam Moore is well worth investigating, and his work has some Pynchon 
resonances. Here's a not-too-bad article on Moore from the UK's Independent 
newspaper a few weeks ago, based around Moore's new book 'Lost Girls', a 
'pornotopia' starring adult versions of Alice (in Wonderland), Wendy Darling 
(Peter Pan), adn Dorothy (not in Kansas any more):

"Alan Moore: Three go mad in...

What would happen if Alice, Wendy and Dorothy met as adults? Alan Moore, 
Britain's greatest graphic novelist, reveals the story behind his most 
controversial work yet. "


"Before Alan Moore, comics were hardly well-known for their writing or their 
writers. Few probably realised that such a profession existed. But for much 
longer than the usual 15 seconds in the late 1980s, Moore endured hysterical 
celebrity as the first great modern author of comics in the English 
language, before the pressures drove him to withdraw from the spotlight and 
rarely be seen at public events again. A writer who shapes and remoulds 
myths himself, his reclaimed privacy helped to build up a distinct mythology 
around him: that he is a recluse, perhaps a madman, avoiding his readers, 
shunning the media, never leaving his house,.."


"These three different ages and types of woman, each with her own secrets 
encoded in her fairytale youth, meet and share their erotic fantasies at the 
luxury Hotel Himmelgarten on the Austrian border in 1913. Setting it amid 
the imminent First World War allows Moore and Gebbie to comment on the human 
imagination in its sexual phase and the absolute lack of imagination 
represented by war. Moore mentions one arresting contrast: "The last chapter 
shows a big dildo on a dressing table in an opening shot, and by the end, 
when we show the battlefields, there's a human penis outside the context of 
an attached body which mirrors it but in an appalling way. You start to 
think, which of these is obscene?"


http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article1770034.ece





>Steampunk comes in two varieties, the rigorously speculative and the more 
>satirically fantastical.  My book is of the latter kind, while THE 
>DIFFERENCE ENGINE is of the former.
>
>Also check out:
>
>Alan Moore's THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (original comics, not 
>hash of a movie).
>Tim Powers's THE ANUBIS GATE.
>
>If you can get a hold of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION, by Clute and 
>Nichols, the entry on steampunk therein is informative.
>

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