Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the short story....

"Harry And Marlowe Meet The Founder Of The Aetherian Revolution" by Carrie Vaughn

From the scifi anthology The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination, part of our discussion of The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination anthology.

"Harry And Marlowe Meet The Founder Of The Aetherian Revolution" by Carrie Vaughn is available to read on-line @LightSpeed.

Some background: Harry and Marlowe are recurring characters in stories by Carrie Vaughn. They're an alternate Victorian era history in which Aetherian technology was discovered in the wreckage of an alien spacecraft, and has led to considerable technological changes. Harry is Princess Maud of Wales, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and was apparently affectionately known as Harry among the royal family. Marlowe is a lieutenant in Her Majesty's army. (Historically, beyond the timeframe of Vaughn's short stories, Harry eventually married the King of Norway.)

Harry and Marlowe become adventurers on behalf of the Empire, mostly searching for other pieces of Aetherian technology. If you're curious, the story of their first meeting is also available online at Lightspeed Magazine: Harry and Marlowe Escape the Mechanical Siege of Paris . (That also has the advantage of being, in my opinion, a more entertaining story.)

Certainly a creepy mad scientist. Possibly the most horrific so far.

Yet another approach to the mad scientist archetype, the fallen hero. In Victorian England, Ernest Carlisle was a hero of the Empire, having unlocked and adapted the Aetherian technology found in the wreckage of an alien spacecraft and giving the British Empire it decided military technological advantage in its various colonial wars with Continental powers. But then Carlisle killed thousands in a lab accident, and has since an in house arrest.

Harry and Marlowe are almost a cliché from a buddy movie, this sort of Lara Croft & Indiana Jones team up, scrounging up bits of Aetherian technology from around the world. They arrive at Carlisle's country estate, "unofficially," convinced he had discovered other Aetherian secrets he had chosen not to reveal for leverage. They find him even stranger than they suspected, in a really gruesome way.

Sort of like "what if Thomas Edison had spent his later years trying to reanimate the dead in Melo Park?"

A mostly serious story for the collection. In some ways it could've been a Victorian horror story, though it has a lighter tone & lacks the creaking floorboards.

***1/2*

G33z3r wrote: "Some background: Harry and Marlowe are recurring characters in stories by Carrie Vaughn."

Ok, so it didn't just *feel* like I was in a story with well established characters, I actually was in one. Thanks for posting that link G33z3r, I will definitely read that too.

I enjoyed it, including the dilema of having a mad scientist on your hands that did something really evil but also produced technology that changed their world and improved their lives, so they are kind of indebted to him too. But I felt it failed to match the rest of the theme of this collection where you're supposed to turn the tables and have the villain tell the story. This really belongs in the "superhero" equivalent anthology.