Coming over all Victorian

I (and those around me) have been having a very Victorian weekend.

Apart from the alternate Victorian timeline I've been working on for the world domination project, a friend had a Victorian role-play evening to mark his 50th birthday, which was jolly fun. Met lots of people I hadn't seen in years too, which was nice. My, how they've grown.

It is the Teacher's birthday today, and she received a ton of stuff for the Victoriana role-playing game (quite incidentally co-authored by someone I know). And I received a copy of Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel through the post.

Boilerplate is a steampunk movie project that J J Abrams has in the pipeline. Although to call it steampunk is a little disingenuous. Boilerplate is a robot from history. It is not a comic book, nor is it a major deviation from history, it's just a single robot in history. Boilerplate started as a website with the robot being beautifully photoshopped into old photographs. It details Boilerplate's presence at historical events from 1893 onwards.

However what I find particularly interesting is the book's educational value: apart from the addition of Boilerplate, it provides an accurate description of US-related historical events. More accurate than you usually find in places like ... oh, Wikipedia, say.

It would not be revealing too much to say that Nikola Tesla is a major player in the alternative history that I have been working on - and the inventor of Boilerplate meets up with Tesla in about 1893...

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What's on the turntable? "Sogg" by Amiina from "Kurr" (I'm coming over all Icelandic again)