James Blaylock: The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

Late in the 1990’s I received a letter from the University of Bologna inviting me to speak at a conference that was to be put on by the Department of Utopian and Dystopian Studies. The subject of the conference was Steampunk, and there was to be a day (out of three) dedicated to my work with me as keynote speaker. My Italian publisher, Mondadori, would host a party. I’d be the talk of the town. I was pleasantly bowled over. I imagined Umberto Eco reading Homunculus with his eyes bulging out — perhaps the scene in which Dr. Narbondo (a name I had borrowed from Borges) tries to animate the skeleton of Joanna Southcote with a bladder full of chemical gas. Eco, of course, would see immediately that the episode was not only a subtle nod to Borges, but to Flaubert, also — to Madame Bovary’s lengthy and fairly hilarious death scene. With tears in his eyes he’d wave me onto the stage: thunderous applause, chants from the audience of “Steampunk! Steampunk!” (rendered into Italian).

Unfortunately the University could only offer me several million lire to pay for the trip, which turned out to be about thirty dollars, give or take fifty cents. I couldn’t afford to go, which was just as well, because my memory of Umberto Eco goggling over my books, by then fixed in my mind, has remained unsullied all these years since. Certainly that was the best conference I never attended. It was also my first inkling that Steampunk was “big in Europe” and apparently still is.

Lord Kelvin’s Machine is my most recent effort (although ideally not my final effort) to write out another episode in the life of Langdon St. Ives. It’s hard to believe that I wrote that book fifteen years ago, a time of great change in my own life. As ever, I didn’t foresee the change or perceive it occurring (although I can see its shadow in the novel, now that I reread it). Coming to understand change is always a matter of looking back, which is just what I’ve been doing in this afterword, with no other motive, really, aside from nostalgia.

Jim Blaylock

Orange, California

December 10, 2007