{"id":150,"date":"2012-09-24T10:38:39","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T17:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/?p=150"},"modified":"2012-09-29T10:32:48","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T17:32:48","slug":"who-would-have-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/who-would-have-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Would Have Thought?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 1984, I took the second of about five creative writing classes during my college career. The instructor was an author named <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sybertooth.com\/blaylock\/\" title=\"James P. Blaylock\" target=\"_blank\">James P. Blaylock<\/a>. If you haven&#8217;t heard the name, then you&#8217;re not a fan of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.steampunk.com\/what-is-steampunk\/\" title=\"What is Steampunk?\" target=\"_blank\">Steampunk<\/a> fiction. What is Steampunk, you ask?<\/p>\n<p>Steampunk stories tank place during Victorian times, often but not necessarily in London, and features technology that are advanced, steam-powered equivalents of modern devices. That&#8217;s it: Victorian society, semi-modern steam-powered tech. Within those parameters, it&#8217;s a pretty big sand box.<\/p>\n<p>So this Blaylock character writes Steampunk, right? Is that all? Oh, no. It&#8217;s better than that. <\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The guest lecturer that semester was another author named <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theworksoftimpowers.com\/\" title=\"The Works of Tim Powers\" target=\"_blank\">Tim Powers<\/a>. If you&#8217;ve heard of Jim, then you&#8217;ve heard of Tim. Back in the 70s and 80s, they were hanging out with another writer named <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kwjeter.com\/\" title=\"K. W. Jeter\" target=\"_blank\">K.W. Jeter<\/a>, sharing ideas and drinking beer (not necessarily in that order). They didn&#8217;t know at the time they were inventing a new genre. No one knew until about 1988 when Jeter coined the term &#8220;Steampunk,&#8221; riffing on the term &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cyberpunkreview.com\/what-is-cyberpunk\/\" title=\"What is Cyberpunk?\" target=\"_blank\">cyberpunk<\/a>&#8221; (I don&#8217;t have time to explain that one. Google it).<\/p>\n<p>I guess all I&#8217;m saying is I had no idea I was learning writing from a guy who help give birth to a new genre of fiction. If I had known, I swear I would have been even more impressed than I was. I just thought they were really, really good writers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1984, I took the second of about five creative writing classes during my college career. The instructor was an author named James P. Blaylock. If you haven&#8217;t heard the name, then you&#8217;re not a fan of Steampunk fiction. What is Steampunk, you ask? Steampunk stories tank place during Victorian times, often but not necessarily &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/who-would-have-thought\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Who Would Have Thought?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[39,41,40,38],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors-and-other-persons","tag-blaylock","tag-jeter","tag-powers","tag-steampunk"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Who Would Have Thought? - Paul McElligott Dot Com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/who-would-have-thought\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who Would Have Thought? - Paul McElligott Dot Com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 1984, I took the second of about five creative writing classes during my college career. The instructor was an author named James P. Blaylock. If you haven&#8217;t heard the name, then you&#8217;re not a fan of Steampunk fiction. What is Steampunk, you ask? 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