Babbage's Difference Engine, Rendered in Lego.

I have no words. NO WORDS. You do not know how much this warms my geeky heart.



******

Have you ever had the experience of realizing that a particular writing/art style you liked was actually a genre with a name you had never heard of? (Although I'm not as fond of the "punkier" aspects of it; I still remain basically an optimist about human nature). But: Miyazake, yeah. The Difference Engine, yeah. Verne and Wells: haven't read them in years but yeah. Series of Unfortunate Events: yeah. The old tv show "The Wild Wild West": yeah.

It's definitely the Neo-Victorianism more than anything for me, and also the idea of alternative histories, the use of steam power, and the whole historical hook that interest me. And the idea that machines that do stuff could be, you know, kind of beautiful. And be something a human without advanced electrical engineering knowledge would understand - and potentially tinker with and fix. (And I don't know, it seems kind of a stretch to amalgamate all those things - the Lemony Snicket books, and "Spirited Away," and "The Wild Wild West" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" into a single category, but at the same time it kind of works.)

perhaps I was, in a past life, one of those chaps who ran around in an early version of denim overalls and leather gloves and always had steam burns on my face. The inveterate tinkerer. But there's something kind of romantic about the old machines. (Heck, for me, there's even something romantic about the idea of an old VW Beetle or Karmann Ghia: a car where you can actually FIX a lot of stuff yourself, that's not all computerized so that you void your warranty if you open the hood yourself.)

Will probably not be joining the "subculture" though. Doubtful that a branch of it exists anywhere near me anyway.