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    Frock Coat Dreams
    Frock Coat Dreams
    Frock Coat Dreams
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Frock Coat Dreams

    By J. Daniel Sawyer

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The author of The Antithesis Progression and The Clarke Lantham Mysteries brings you delicate, humorous, and brutal visions of a future that never was and a past that might have been. Here you will find collected tales of satire, romance, whimsy, and comic horror to delight every sensibility.

    Contains:

    Train Time

    Sleep, Walk

    On Matters Most Austere

    A Goblet of Fifty-Three

    Angels Unawares

    and Cold Duty, the story that Steampunk Scholar Mike Perschon calls "...probably the single best steampunk short story I've read."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAWP Fantasy
    Release dateJan 13, 2013
    ISBN9781533772701
    Frock Coat Dreams
    Author

    J. Daniel Sawyer

    WHILE STAR WARS and STAR TREK seeded J. Daniel Sawyer's passion for the unknown, his childhood in academia gave him a deep love of history and an obsession with how the future emerges from the past. This obsession led him through adventures in the film industry, the music industry, venture capital firms in the startup culture of Silicon Valley, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the worlds that assemble themselves in his head. His travels with bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, and inventors led him eventually to a rural exile where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a pair of production companies that bring innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world. For stories, contact info, podcasts, and more, visit his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net

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      Book preview

      Frock Coat Dreams - J. Daniel Sawyer

      Frock Coat Dreams

      Romances, Nightmares, and Fancies from the Steampunk Fringe

      by J. Daniel Sawyer

      AWP Steampunk

      A division of ArtisticWhispers Productions, Inc.

      Copyright © 2012 J. Daniel Sawyer

      All Rights Reserved

      The Hills Are Green © 2006 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Phone Fascination © 2004 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Train Time © 2008 J. Daniel Sawyer, first published in Sculpting God, 2008

      Gone To Glory © 2011 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Sleep, Walk © 2011 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Carnac © 2008 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Angels Unawares © 2005 J. Daniel Sawyer, first published in Sculpting God, 2008

      The Mirror and the Wishing Well © 2006 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Cold Duty © 2009 J. Daniel Sawyer, First published in Clonepod, 2009. First print appearance in Podthology by Dragon Moon Press 

      Civil Religion © 2012 J. Daniel Sawyer

      On Matters Most Austere © 2010 J. Daniel Sawyer

      When She Was... © 2006 J. Daniel Sawyer

      A Goblet of Fifty-Three © 2011 J. Daniel Sawyer

      Book Design by ArtisticWhispers

      Digital painting The Lady in the Park © 2010 J. Daniel Sawyer

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

      This file is licensed for private individual entertainment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording, or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted to the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.

      The Hills are Green

      The hills are golden

      Summer heat has parched their vibrant hue

      Covering the horizon in a memorial

      Gazing thirsty ever skywards

      A prayer for moisture - blood for the drying land

      The night is longing

      A long road home lined in scarlet

      Dutch windows offer rest and comfort

      A last meager meal arousing

      Deeper hungers - prayer for blood in drying hearts

      A ghostly whispering

      Awakening sleeping forest fauns

      The ache of Bacchus unsanctified by ecstasy

      The spirit shape becoming now

      Solid, arresting—a whispered prayer made flesh

      The light is growing

      Sax-stained notes of bleeding blue

      Your spectre in the fog dances just beyond my reach

      A promise unsaid enticed me

      The future calls, singing dreamscapes with your voice

      The hills are greening

      Dancing rains have brought them emerald true

      Springing anew from summer's fallowing mystery

      It is a dream for waking days,

      A phantom prayer in vain on God's deaf ears

      Dedication

      Because it's long overdue

      This one's for Mike Perschon and Chris Garcia

      Frock Coat Dreams

      Romances, Nightmares, and Fancies from the Steampunk Fringe

      J. Daniel Sawyer

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Phone Fascination

      Train Time

      Gone To Glory

      Sleep, Walk

      Carnac

      Angels Unawares

      The Mirror and the Wishing Well

      Cold Duty: Selected Readings from the Diaries of a Gelusian Repairman

      Civil Religion

      On Matters Most Austere

      When She Was

      A Goblet of Fifty-Three

      Introduction

      If you're a longtime steampunker, welcome! It's probably safe for you to skip this introduction. If this is the first time you've picked up a book with the word steampunk on the spine, you might find a bit of explanation in order.

      Like you, I was mugged by steampunk. Someone sprang it on me out of the blue, and it seemed a completely nonsensical term (even with its obvious connection to cyberpunk). In my case, it all started with a party. A Steampunk party. In fact, the first time I ever heard the word was on the invitation. When I asked what the hell steampunk was, the sender of the invitation—one Gail Carriger (whose Parasol Protectorate books have since caused something of a sensation for their singularly delightful sense of fun and frivolity)—explained with a single phrase: Captain Nemo in the future. The explanation might have been imprecise, but it got the message across to this longtime student of the Victorian era.

      Thus, I thought I was well-prepared for the experience of hanging around with a bunch of retrohistorical re-enactors. I really wasn't. I was expecting to find a Victorian analog to Civil War re-enactment, but steampunk culture bears the same relationship to Victorian history as Disney's Sword in the Stone bears to the 6th-8th century British Isles. It took a bit of getting used to. But once I found the groove (and added pretty nifty fashion statement to my mental map of corsetry evolution, which previously ran from over-elaborate structural underwear through fetishwear to Klingon battle armor) I had a marvelous time.

      Steampunk has as many definitions as there are people with affection (or antipathy) for it. It's a Live-Action-Role-Play culture. It's a club for enthusiasts of historical science fiction. It's a brass finish on cyberpunk goth rebellion. It's left-wing libertarianism mixed with right-wing militarism and spiked with a sense of individualistic communism. It's a fashion statement. It's a literary genre. But for my money, Mike Perschon (the world's first Ph.D. In Steampunk Literature) summed it all up with his simple definition: Steampunk is an aesthetic.

      Five years later, I'm a confirmed dabbler. Steampunk gratifies my desire to return to that world of emergence and complication that was the Victorian era. The aesthetic is a marvelous gateway to the fantastical, and the fan culture is an even greater mass of contradictions than was the era itself. Particularly, I find myself struck again and again by the poignancy of a culture caught between agrarian feudalism and industrial modernity—the sense of loss and promise, the oppression and freedom, the poverty and opportunity jammed up side-by-side in a world unfolding both too quickly and too slowly for all concerned.

      You'll find those concerns reflected in these six stories that range from the mundane to the fantastical, the tragic to the comic, the personal to the satirical. Step into my parlor and have some tea, and allow me to regale you with these tales from a past that never was, a future that might have been, and worlds just two steps to the left through the cupboard door.

      These are my Frock Coat Dreams—may they send you to yours with visions of possibility playing behind your eyes.

      -J. Daniel Sawyer

      San Francisco, California

      January 2013

      Phone Fascination

      Mangled mutterings;

      associative, asinine

      repetitive ramblings

      tripping tongues

      lightly leaping

      subjectless substance,

      measured meaning

      inferred iterations

      bemused before

      softly slumbering

      lingering limbs

      narrating nothing

      germane, just

      lively living

      dappling daylight

      silent singing

      offering of

      lovers longing.

      Wizened wizards

      alchemist allies

      healing hearts

      magic marvels

      lost in loving,

      languorous lyrics,

      warming words.

      Train Time

      For Wendy

      Tap, tap, tap.

      The cane foot tapped measuredly on the plank, hammering out a steady tick-tock rhythm. It was

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