Prelude. A Note from the Historian
“Chronological living is a kind of lie. That’s why I don’t do it anymore. Existence doesn’t have more meaning in one direction than it does in any other.”
— Charles Yu How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010)
Brian and I set out from that dinner stuffed full of questions, with just the slightest lingering aftertaste of a few hypotheses. It was time to get down to business—this was a project in earnest. So earnest, in fact, that I left my job at Microsoft and took to the road as an itinerant historian. Talk about a dream job. I immersed myself even deeper in steampunk—talking to everyone I could, reading piles of fiction and watching hours of video, spelunking the web and attending every convention ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access