Some Newtonium Engine Fiction

Those of you who have read the description of Newtonium Engine in my previous post may be wondering what "Clock-Punk Post-Humanist" means...

Well I intend to illustrate these two components with a couple of pieces of short fiction from the book. The first, entitled "Gall" shows the clock-punk side of the setting as a small, jury-rigged-together colonial hill fort is attacked by a unit of clockwork soldiers. You can download the story in the link on the right.

This is one element, at least, of what is meant by "Clock-Punk": exploring how clockwork technologies, if they had been able to develop in scale an power to modern levels of technology, might have changed the world.

In 1754 the world stood on the brink of a global war, but in our history it was a war of several small skirmishes in colonial regions and a small number of large battles in mainland Europe. This was the age of lines of musket infantry and cavalry in bright-coloured uniforms. Imagine the devastation that could occur if the generals were still using those same line tactics when the technology had the power to slaughter them by the thousand? Well perhaps we don't as we can recall the history of 1914-18. But what if clockwork technology could wreak death on the same scale? Would the Seven Years War be remembered as the Great War?