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Mar. 12th, 2008 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynHuh. Apparently there were more people in Manhattan in 1905 than there are today. To the tune of 2,112,967 then and 1,537,195 as of the 2000 census. I suppose this was the time when the Lower East Side was the single most crowded place on the planet...
Memo to self: there is enough housing in the weird 1905 version of Manhattan that's just erupted in Ray's New York. It's just that most of it is nowhere near modern standards and a lot of it isn't where it's supposed to be.
Memo to self: there is enough housing in the weird 1905 version of Manhattan that's just erupted in Ray's New York. It's just that most of it is nowhere near modern standards and a lot of it isn't where it's supposed to be.
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Date: 2008-03-12 05:29 pm (UTC)I was thinking of having her "notes" be in the form of ticker tape, and having a dumbwaiter appear in her top for the delivery of...well, anything.
Also, do you have any suggested readings for Mike, who will be kind of thrust into this sort of thing head first?
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Date: 2008-03-12 05:41 pm (UTC)Big events of 1905 can be found here for an idea of what was going on at the time and an overall tone of things.
Jules Verne is pretty much the god of the steampunk aesthetic, so any of his books are a good place to start. Edgar Rice Burroughs is the right time frame, although not particularly affiliated with what he'll be seeing and dealing with, since Tarzan was too busy learning to kick ass and John Carter was running around naked on Mars at the time. H. G. Wells is the right spirit, if a bit early. And there's always Sherlock Holmes, of course.
Gangs of New York is much too early for this, so don't even bother with that.
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Date: 2008-03-12 06:35 pm (UTC)(Wikis) Oops. Sorry, that was 1896. Although its sequel, The Angel of Darkness, may be closer to the date.
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Date: 2008-03-12 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 09:08 pm (UTC)Oh hey, the waitrats have to wear starched aprons and black ties and tails. Er, not their ratty tails, but the clothes kind. Because 1905 was formal and stuff.
OH, and if Mr. Julia needs to wrassle some Nemo-esque submarines, he really ought to.
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Date: 2008-03-12 05:35 pm (UTC)And certainly there were areas that were still underdeveloped back then, so while there might be enough housing overall, there would be a lot less in some areas, such as the Upper East Side, which relies on the sort of tall apartment building that didn't come into vogue till after WWII.
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Date: 2008-03-12 05:42 pm (UTC)The head of the Greater New York chapter of the Red Cross is going to go berserk over this.
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Date: 2008-03-12 05:55 pm (UTC)*snickerfits*
Oh, this will be a LOVELY image.
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Date: 2008-03-12 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 06:08 pm (UTC)The image of sudden and idiopathic iron lungs is a wonderful and terrible one, and may stay with me for days.
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Date: 2008-03-12 06:18 pm (UTC)(And yes, I'm aware that iron lungs were first used in 1928. I occasionally tweak things in Ray's universe to happen earlier or later than they ought to, or to have come out differently. F'rexample, Finland has an Arctic territorial claim, and Sweden does not. New York City has a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene with a Sanitation Division, as opposed to having a Sanitation Department. The US Public Health Service was an outgrowth of the Marine Corps. The giant coffee chain of doom in Seattle is Queequeg's, not Starbucks. The events of Knight Rider happened in his world- with a Gulf War vet named Michelle Long, and twenty years later than they did in Michael Long's world. Etc. I keep track of these things.)
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Date: 2008-03-12 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 07:47 pm (UTC)1. The approximate levels of Awesome and Suck must remain overall in balance. If amazingly Awesome things happen in his world, it is either because amazingly Sucky things happen, too, or because some Awesome thing that might otherwise have happened in the real world did not happen there. Example: There is no live-action LOTR trilogy of movies- but the Star Wars prequels took multiple Oscars, including Best Picture for Revenge of the Sith. (It helped that Fran Walsh wrote them instead of Lucas.)
2. Wherever possible, the politicians are fictional. The Mayor of New York is still Lenny, from the first movie. The governor of New York is Mitchell Hundred, albeit slightly different from his portrayal in Ex Machina. The President is the former mayor of New York, namely Randall M. Winston, Jr., of Spin City. The Secretary of Defense is John Keller, from the 2007 Transformers movie. Ohio has a Republican senator named Alex P. Keaton, and Illinois has one named John Blutarsky. A Democratic senator from New Jersey is named Tom Wright. The current Republican frontrunner for the presidential candidacy is Lacey Davenport. The Democrat frontrunner is Dave Kovic, of Virginia. The president of Russia is named Antonov, a la the Dirk Pitt novels. I am debating whether E. Blackadder or S. Baldrick is the current prime minister of England...
3. If I use a real politician, it is solely because I think they would be amusing or because I like their names, not because I am trying to prove some kind of point. So far the real politicians have been restricted to Mitt Romney, Bill Frist, and Ben Nighthorse. (Romney dropped out of the presidential race a few weeks ago, and Bill Frist lost an argument with a brain in a jar.)
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Date: 2008-03-12 07:53 pm (UTC)I am now going to look up Bill Frist. But you could resurrect Samuel Gompers, simply because of his name.
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Date: 2008-03-12 07:06 pm (UTC)Oh, I had a fascinating idea for the next time Ironhide and Mary Lennox meet up. Reading her OOM's and her re-entrance posts, it occurs to me that "proper" education of females in her world is remarkably similar to that in Lissar's world. Ironhide might not particularly like Mary, but I'd think he'd have a few things to say about that. ;)
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Date: 2008-03-12 07:08 pm (UTC)Ooh. Yeah, that's true. I'll have to see what can be arranged on that front...
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Date: 2008-03-12 07:13 pm (UTC)*cackles*
I find the idea of Archibald Craven being confronted by an angry Ironhide delicious.
Craven: These fantasies she keeps entertaining...well, they're hardly proper for young ladies.
Ironhide: What the fraggin' scrap is improper about being a MEDIC? From what I hear, you could slaggin' use some good ones!
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Date: 2008-03-12 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 07:19 pm (UTC)Oh, have you ever read Mercedes Lackey's short story "Dumb Feast"? That would be a lovely one to slip to Ironhide shortly after talking to Mary.
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Date: 2008-03-12 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 07:31 pm (UTC)I love the last bit of her introduction to it. "This is not a nice story. I am sometimes not a nice person."
Another hijack but...
Date: 2008-03-12 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 06:38 pm (UTC)Oh shit. What about the UN? That'll be unpleasant.
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Date: 2008-03-12 06:41 pm (UTC)*innocent look*
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Date: 2008-03-13 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 07:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 07:08 pm (UTC)Not that that didn't lead to chaos on the river, but still.
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Date: 2008-03-12 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 07:14 pm (UTC)No one is sure why some of the currently partial bridges haven't collapsed yet. No one wants to ask, in case it invokes the Wile E. Coyote effect and makes them fall down.
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Date: 2008-03-12 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-14 01:01 am (UTC)Now -that-'d be entertaining...