Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #65, "Sita's Strategy"

Steampunk City concept

Steampunk emerged as a genre a few years back. Once I understood what it was, I tried my hand at writing it. Steampunk uses contraptions and devices from the Victorian era: steamships, dirigibles, early submarines, and other such devices. In fact, as with Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, it employs the fantastical and the scientific, combining them to create submarines like the Nautilus or the airship in Master of the World. My story, "Sita's Strategy," takes this idea a quite a bit further. Sita comes up with a much more sophisticated and destructive weapon—one that outstrips a submarine or an airship by light years.

Sita

I decided to bring some racial diversity into the genre, probably because I saw a call for papers that wanted steampunk with an African or Asian setting rather than the traditional European setting and Victorian time frame. The story does take place during the Victorian era, and in England, but I created the character Sita, who is Indian. By adding this character I was able to illustrate some of the challenges Indians living in England during the late 1800s might face.

Sita is a young woman who is half-caste (the term used back then), with an Indian mother and a British father. She has grown up in England and played the convert to British culture, but of late, as a married woman with a British husband, she has tried to identify more with her Indian roots, wears a sari, and does not affect British fashion or manners. Furthermore, she has studied physics at Cambridge and has the ability to transform her theories into mechanisms. The British government relies on her as a technical engineer who can produce superior weapons.

She demonstrates her abilities by defeating a massive Spanish invasion of England (a sort of second armada). One of the fun things about writing Steampunk is that you can alter history and politics to suit the world you are creating. In Sita's world, Spain is a massive empire that encompasses the Iberian peninsula and all of South America. The Spanish assemble a huge fleet of ships to invade England. England has airships, but not enough to stop the attack. Sita is able to transform production techniques so that England produces huge numbers of airships and is able to completely destroy the Spanish fleet. She is a hero but also feels remorse that she has caused so much death and destruction using her technological abilities.

Britain is once again facing an invasion, this time by Serbia, a nation that includes all of Russia and Eastern Europe. The Caliphate of Cordoba has allied with them, so that North Africa and much of the Middle East is in the alliance. Britain's usual allies—France, Germany, Italy, and the Lutheran Federation in Scandinavia—have declared neutrality. America is undecided. The Kingdom of Prester John—a vast Eastern Christian land that includes much of Africa and Central Asia—is not convinced it should come to Britain's defense.

Queen Victoria is meeting with Sita to discuss a weapon that will even the score. She trembles to think of using it and remembers how she developed the idea: Sita had long known energy is matter and matter energy. This was a startling concept in Britain these days, but the sages of China and her own homeland had known it for thousands of years. They had not, however, she reflected bitterly, used this knowledge to produce a weapon. She has worked with radium, studied Marie Curie's work, and knows that some elements are unstable and seem to bleed their energy out. The idea occurs to her that the massive energy of matter might be released. When a French scientist sends her mineral samples from Gabon in French Equatorial Africa, she is convinced she can release the energy in the material. Sita and a group of military leaders set off the world's first nuclear bomb in a remote section of the South Atlantic. The military men are delighted; Sita is appalled that she has invented such a destructive device.

She knows the Queen will want her to use the weapon she has developed against the armies and cities of Serbia and Cordoba. In despair, she goes to see Wu Li, a Chinese philosopher she knew from Cambridge and asks his counsel. He reminds her that the ancients taught that the skillful warrior wins without fighting and defeats the enemy by ruining alliances, cutting supply lines, discouraging and demoralizing soldiers. Sita is confident she can do this and will persuade the Queen to follow a different course than direct attack. Wearing her sari, she leaves for her meeting confident the horrific weapon developed under her supervision will not be used.

"Sita's Strategy" appeared in the September 2011 issue of The Wi-Files. You can read it here.

For more of my books, check out my Writer's Page.

Lybecca of Dunwood

This month I'm promoting my book The Sorceress of the Northern Seas. Lybecca, a village girl, becomes the most powerful witch in England. It's a long, hard road, but she is capable of walking it. Book One chronicles her rise through opposition to acquire massive power.

I would love to hear your comments and perspectives.