Let's Read Fitzpatrick's War (The Only Steampunk with Rights)

[DragonCobolt]

So, I was reading @Geckonator's excellent Let's Read thread on the Domination of Draka and I began to realize that there was a startling similarity to one of my favorite books - Fitzpatrick's War by Theodore Judson. Then I went online and checked: There's no kindle version of this book. Used copies go for bonkers dollars. In short, it's out of print and getting increasingly hard to find.

Which is a huge fucking shame because if steampunk is candy and steampunk fans are children, then Theodore Judson is the crotchety old man muttering under his breath, "Oh yeah...I'll show you some fucking steampunk..." while ominously walking towards his closet full of dossiers on Nestle CEOs and their various crimes against humanity.

"Now, Dragon," you may say. "What does this book have to do with Draka?"

Well, to put it as simply as I can: Fitzpatric's War is what if Draka was good.

Like, not good as in morally good, Fitzpatrick's War is so unremittingly grim that a wikipedia summation of the plot made a twitter mutual rant at me for pushing sinophobic hate speech for a solid ten minutes as I hastily said no no, you're supposed think it's bad! It starts telling you how it's gonna be bleak, then ends bleakly, and only an expert mastery of tone and narrative distance keeps it from being more of a downer. The darkness is balanced quite delicately with a genuinely sweet and charming love story and bits of anachronistic humor and black comedy.

No, it's good as in skillfully written and unlike Draka it doesn't completely fucking lose the plot 2 paragraphs into the first chapter!

So, with that hopefully tantalizing introduction, lets start...with FITZPATRICK'S WAR

(Oooh, pretty! I'm sure only a good and noble civilization can build that many blimps)
​

"We would like to live as we once lived, but History will not permit it,"
-President John F. Kennedy

It is with this quote that we're dumped headfirst into the setting of Fitzpatrick's War not with a first chapter, but instead with

INTRODUCTION TO THE ANNOTATED EDITION
Doctor Professor Roland Modesty Von Buren

The year of our Lord 2591 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of the manuscripts found in the private libary of the celebrated antiquarian Sir Albert Makepeace McDonald. Among the books found in McDonald's collection upon his death in 2540 was Fitzpatrick's War, otherwise known as The Early Life of Sir Robert Mayfair Bruce. As was true of other volumes in the eccentric McDonald's estates, the first edition of Fitzpatrick's War provoked enormous public reaction, albeit it and its brother texts did not measurably advance out knowledge of earlier period in the Age of Steam. Millions of readers reared on Gerald's The Age of Fitzpatrick - still the standard text in most secondary schools - and on Miss Mary Anne Collin's epic poem From The Atlantic to the Pacific were shocked to read accounts of Yukon soldiers disobeying their supposedly deranged supreme commanders and of other soldiers having relations with foreign women. Bruce's portrait of the Fitzpatrick's family so disturbed the Confederacy that seven members of the Senate sued (unsuccessfully) the original publisher for slander...

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So, we know some things.

1) This society is really stuffy, steampunky and British. But I repeat myself.
2) This book is already a book that exists in universe.
3) This is what actually happened and the entire society is built on a pack of lies.

Now, I'm going to do this a lot, but take note on this: Marching Through Georgia has a very similar wraparound section with each chapter beginning with some future historical book to provide additional knowledge and factoids, all told through the lens of this future world - but Judson takes significantly more advantage of the conceit by having the entire book be an autobiography...that's being annotated.

So, yes.

We're gonna have footnotes.

And they are spicy footnotes.

So, in this, we're also introduced to the first character - and the most visible and invisible: Roland Modesty Von Buren. Throughout the introductions, you immediately get the sense that this guy is one big fucking nerd who has never left his university of St. Mathews - and that he's...very...invested in the society he's from. For instance, he explains that the reason why he's making this annotated book is quite simple! To quote: "As Plato taught we must know pain to know pleasure, and as St. Augustine demonstrated that redemption arises from knowing sin...we must know truth by knowing lies."

...also, there's a deliciously snide bit where in the acknowledgements, Professor Von Buren thanks his liege lord with a full name (and paragraph of praise), his fellow professor with a full name and a sentence, his secretary with "Jim" and "the young cleaning girl that Jim found to help me translate Bruce's northwestern vulgarities into polite English. I would thank the child by name, but I seem to have forgotten what it was."

Before the acknowledgements, though, we get another running theme of the novel: attention to technical detail. There are total of SIX PARAGRAPHS detailing how the in-universe book was found in the collection of Lord McDonald: One version that was written by hand and ful of mispellings and corrupt usages, and another that was dictated and typed out. Then detail is given comparing it to other books from the time - including talking about how it compares in events it covers to other memories that are mentioned but never expanded upon, and with cross references to the "official" history. There's even a few quotes from the aforementioned From the Atlantic to the Pacific. These details are all clearly meticulous and well thought out and create a sense that you're in a lived in, breathing world.

...but, unfortunately, it's also clearly one with an ugly underbelly. One of those poetry lines quoted?

"[Fitzpatrick], who set hearts and pagan cities aflame" (emphasis mine)

We also get a preview, in brief, of the life we are about to read about in detail: Sir Robert Mayfair Bruce (I'm going to just call him Bruce from here on out) was born in the Pacific Northwest (aka, the Norwest), of the continental America. This may strike the reader as odd, since there's been a pretty thick scent of Albion over these pages - and more, there is a passing reference to one of the few surviving texts from "The Storm Times" as being by a "degenerate American" - so, what gives? That mystery will have to wait.

Bruce joined the army at 16 (which is apparently normal - yikes) and served with distinction in "one of the innumerable wars against Mexico" (yikes) and "helped drive back the Latin horde" (YIKES!!!) which got him a battlefield knighthood and commendation to the officer's school, the War College. There, he was trained up in engineering and logistics and then went on to become one of Consul Fitzpatrick's inner circle. He then served in an ominously titled "Four Points War", attaining even more glory and rank. Once that war wrapped, his career seems to stall out due to butting heads with Fitzpatrick, who he decried as a tyrant. Then, after some time, he was readmitted back into the inner circle and served as Fitzpatrick's bodyguard until the Consul's assassination. Cleared of fault, Bruce goes on to retire, live in the country, and die in his bed.

There's also a shout out (or call out) of Bruce's vile, lowborn wife that Professor Von Buren immediately declares is probably 100% responsible for why Bruce started to hate the good and honorable Fitzpatrick. After all, Charlotte Purity Bruce (nee Raft) was even more lowborn than Bruce was! But, grudgingly, Professor Von Buren also goes on to admit that "their union seemed happy" and they had five daughters and a son.

And, I shit you not, he describes the daughters with "they did not disgrace themselves, which is the most a woman can do."

Y I K E S.

So, it seems like we know everything we need to know - even if the exact shape of this future society, the Confederacy (which has both a Senate, and liege lords, and a Consul of all things) remains somewhat vague.

And, of course, we are assured in one thing: Lord Fitzpatrick is definitely, 100% a nice guy who will do nothing wrong.

...right?


Next Chapter: Our Introduction to Bruce as a writer, The War College, and the Eight Stuck Up Pricks Who Will Help Kill A Billion People

 

[Geckonator]

Interesting. I'll be following this thread with great interest, Dragon.

 

[Frumple]

... if I didn't actually read that at some point back in the day, I'm pretty sure saw it several times somewhere. That cover looks incredibly familiar.

Quick check suggests it's fairly likely the latter, though -- I was in the process of transitioning into reading almost entirely digital (was getting difficult to fund my reading addiction with print media, ha, even used starts being an issue when you go through a trade paperback every day or two) around the time it published. Possible it just looks like something from even earlier, I guess, but I'd swear I've seen it before.

 

[DragonCobolt]

I'm not the only one who read it, but there's not many others I've met!

 

[Coyote Niff]

Oooh, this seems FASCINATING!! I might be confusing this with another series, but isn't this the setting where America loses the Revolution and the British proceed to Empire all over everything?

Spoiler: Spoilers in case I'm right.

The one I remember was a detective story with hints of the Kennedy Assassination.

 

[LordInsane]

Oooh, this seems FASCINATING!! I might be confusing this with another series, but isn't this the setting where America loses the Revolution and the British proceed to Empire all over everything?

Spoiler: Spoilers in case I'm right.

The one I remember was a detective story with hints of the Kennedy Assassination.

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That's probably The Two Georges.

 

[Coyote Niff]

That's probably The Two Georges.

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I believe you are correct-TYSM! All I could remember is that Nixon stayed a car salesman ahah.

 

[DragonCobolt]

It's not a series at all! It's a solo book that just...came out, as far as I can tell.

 

[DragonCobolt]

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Fitzpatrick often goes by Fitz, but sometimes by stupid brain will write Fritz instead. I will try and fix this each time I spot it, but if I miss it, that's why! Blame Ralph Bakshi

We begin our book within a book with an acknowledgement after the acknowledgement - this one from Bruce himself. He thanks his liege lord, then apologizes profusely for being a moral coward who did unthinkably vile things personally and allowed through inaction or willful ignorance even more vile things to happen around him. Worrying!

But with that, we launch into the actual narrative itself with the introduction: It's 2415 and our protagonist is attending the War College in Centralia City, which appears to be somewhere near the Missouri river. If you don't know American geography, like me (being Californian, I know only where San Francisco is), here is a map that shows how very little "near Missouri River" narrows it down.

(your guess is as good as mine for now!)
​

We learn here the very interesting social position that Bruce is in. While he's been knighted and honored for his deeds in war (as of yet undefined), he's also from the pacific northwest (near Washington State in modern terms) and very poor. Thus, we learn that not only does he sleep in the pleb dormitory with other lower class students, but he also supplements his income and his food budget by working as a waiter in the cafeteria. And this is how we are introduced to Lord Fitzpatrick and his "Basileus" - a helpful footnote from Professor Van Buren explains that this is likely a subtle reference to Alexander the Great.

This and the gray uniforms that are described are some of our first hints at how...deeply fashy this society is. Because we have learned from Twitter X, anyone with a greek or roman statue head avatar is 100% a big old fasho. And the Yukon Confederacy has both. But who are these Kings Among Cadets?

We have...

Sir Jeremiah Truth Hood: The oldest member of the...can we call them a friend group? Lets call them a friend group for now... at a whopping 40+ years of age. Apparently worked his way up from lower ranks, is an ordained minister, and is considered by both Bruce and Professor Von Buren (who takes a full half the page in a massive historiographic footnote) to be one of the finest soldiers that the Confederacy has. Unlike the other students, he is married and is quite serious. He seems chill, for a future quasibritish theocratic fascist.​

​

Buck: Also known as Pularksi, Buck isn't given a footnote treatment, and all of the attention given to him is purely from Bruce, an immediate and interesting detail. See, Hood is famous. He did all the battles and won all the awards. Buck is just a bodyguard - Bruce writes of how he was never expected to actually pass any classes, nor does he study. What he does have is, and I quote, a "9mm semi-automatic pistol with high velocity explosive tipped bullets" up his sleeve and "were any be foolish enough to attack Lord Fitzpatrick, Buck would have his soul flying from the would-be assassin's mouth before his face hit the floor." We'll see how important Buck and his personality is to the future of the book, and how little Professor Von Buren cares about him, as the novel continues. Put a pin in this theme, it's important. ​

​

Lord Anthony Waverly Mason: We actually got a tiny preview of Mason in the introduction - specifically, he's one of the other members of the Basileus who lives long enough to write an autobiography titled simply My Career. According to the good Professor, it is so horrifyingly vile that it shouldn't even be kept in a house that has a woman in it. Charming!​

​

Valette: We don't get his full name yet, but we do learn two important facts - he's very pretty and he's very cutting. Some of the Basileus simply don't interact with Bruce very much and, thus, don't get a whole lot of on screen action. That's fine.​

​

Lord Paul Peter Stein: We don't get much on Stein in this first chapter, save for this fucking footnote - attached when one of the other Basileus refer to him as "Banker" as a nickname.​

​

Lord peter Paul Stein's father, Lord Matthew Mark Stein, was actually a general of modest means. Peter's pet name is meant to be ironic. We must reject the notion that the nickname "Banker" is somehow an anti-Semetic slur referring to supposed Jews in Stein's family tree. The Basileus were young gentlemen, and gentlemen do not make vulgar slurs. Nor, for that matter, would gentlemen associate with anyone they suspected of being partly Jewish​

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​

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Davis: He's another "not much" in this chapter, but we will get to learn more about Davis. Spoilers - he's what if Rainbow Dash was a man. Terrifying.​

​

O'Brian: See Valette.​

​

Shelley: See O'Brian.​

​

And, finally, we have Fitz himself...and, well, what better way to learn about him than to cover what happens around these introductions (which are fitted in quite elegantly between actual dialog and character action, it's not just big exposition dumps.) So, between the footnotes and asides, we have this interesting scene where Bruce is held late at a class on civil engineering (which he aces) and arrives at the cafeteria late and the head cook, Mr. Marcello, basically goes, "You're late, no time to change out of your uniform here, take apron, here, take food to the tables."

There, Fitz just so happens to notice that Bruce is a knight of the field! Waiting tables? The affrontery! He calls up Mr. Marcello and dresses him down so visibly that Mr. Marcello actually pisses himself and runs off in terror. Then Fitz invites Bruce to the table, demands that he use "Fitz" rather than "My Lord", and we learn that Lord Fitzpatrick is the son of the current Consul of the Yukon Confederacy, head of the Senate and commander of all Yukon's armies. Big deal, in short. Most powerful man in the world, according to everyone. So, it's slightly worrying when Fitz then goes on to lay out his five step plan for global domination.

The players: The Yukon Confederacy and their allies, the Republic of India, arrayed against the Turkish and Chinese empires. It's not clear how big these boarders are or who controls what on the map and good thing too. As I've seen in the Domination of Draka, drawing a map and putting empires on it is a fantastic way to get absolutely roasted in the comments. Also, it doesn't super matter!

The plan: Set up airbases in several places including the Batan islands, the British islands (which are noted as being both A) the easternmost province of the Confederacy and B) better represented on their ersatz map using a glass of ice water - Fitz is using a salt shaker.) Then bomb everyone who says boo.

Bruce points out the number one problem with this plan he can see, which is that the state of the art superbomber is the Florin - a steam powered rattletrap that is considered wildly outdated and, more importantly, vastly too large. A footnote adds this important detail: The Florin is based on a Chinese design, captured during the "Pacific War."

Due to the viewpoint characters and the narration style, we won't be getting any perspective from the Chinese - but reading through some lines, you can see that Judson really wants to take the woefully common trope of Asiatic Hordes and the Inscrutable East and slowly beat it to death. This scene, in a bright cafeteria, where they're being fed fancy wines and fresh meals by beautiful women (Fitz has his own maidservants, though Bruce hastily goes on to tell us that Fitz makes sure they're wed properly and not taken advantage of), is chilling when you realize that...like, these guys are casually sitting around, laying out the world, and going, "How can we butcher as many people as we want?" and they don't see anything wrong with it, because they're not targeting people, to their eyes.

Think on what you wargame...

Anyway, Bruce is now a part of this friend group - something his roommate in the pleb dorm says was bound to happen: Here we learn that Bruce is basically top of his class in civil and military engineering and brilliant at all the maths and engineering. Fortunately, when writing a novel, you can just say someone is good at something by saying "they do a good job" rather than actually needing to explain the maths, eh!

And then, in the final page of the chapter, we get this.

Time would prove [my roommate] correct on every point. Years later, Buck Pularski would tell me that the scene with Marcello the cook was entirely a show staged to deceive me. Fitz had performed a similar routine in India with another cook, and that was why I saw Fitz and Marcello conversing together a few days after the incident in the mess hall and the two of them got along like the old friends they were. I had been deliberately held late at the exam, deliberately sent by Marcello into the hall with my decorations showing, and I took everything that happened at Fitz's table to be real because I wished it had been real...

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Another theme to put a pin in...

And with that, the chapter wraps!

FOOTNOTE TIME!
So, footnotes are coming up consistently and they're really enjoyable, but including them in the main narrative of my post is a bit tricky to keep the flow. Thus, I will put any that leap out to me and don't quite fit with the thrust of my description down here


FOOTNOTE 2: This references a painting that sounds historical to the characters...but is painted in the future from our perspective. I really like the use of fictional culture to make your setting feel grounded in itself. I kinda wish Star Trek would do that more often, like, why does everyone always love 20th century fiction?

FOOTNOTE 3: We learn that it's common for cadets in military schools (who are, remember, starting at age 16) beat eachother nearly to death with wooden rifles as part of their training. 14-20 deaths, annually. Thinking of how many miliSF loves "training so tough it kills you", and how this footnote deliberately undercuts that by saying "in actual combat soldiers almost never get close enough to use the rifle butt and bayonet - it's merely used to tough them physically and mentally." Yeah. Sure.

FOOTNOTE 5: Bruce is called Robert the Bruce, which is a nickname based on an "ancient king of scottland" and he's not even scottish, that's stolen valor.

FOOTNOTE 8: We learn here that a common mode of execution in the Yukon Confederacy is FUCKING IMPALEMENT. Holy SHIT!?

FOOTNOTE 10: here we learn that the Yukon state was founded in 2081 during the "Storm Times." They have a constitution, and it does say that you SHOULD elect your lord! ...however, these elections are purely de facto, and everyone just votes for the son of the prior lord. Like...what were the original Yukons thinking? Lol, are they stupid? There's also a reference to how the only place where meritocracy exists and it's in the military and the church. However, there is a note that Lords in the army would grant "frontier lands" to their soldiers, who would then transfer their allegiance TO THEM. I'm sure this will have zero repercussions and isn't a worrying trend! The footnote ends with "These abuses were not ended until the fall of the Shay regime." Hmmm...not sure which abuses he's reerring too, cause it sounds like there's two...

FOOTNOTE 18: The motto of "The New Age of Chivalry" which appears to be one of the founding documents of the Yukon Confederation is a thousand wars to keep us strong for three thousand years. Like some kind of...empire...like some kind of...thousand year empire, a thousand year REICH if you will, like some kind of THOUSAND YEAR REICH, maybe a THIRD-

COMING UP NEXT: The history of The United States of Super America and how she overcame her most hated hated foe, The United State of America

 

[DragonCobolt]

Oh and I forgot to mention: there's some neat descriptions of fun steampunk stuff, like steam powered lamps that use heated noble gas! Which I believe means these cities are both steampunk as they have gears and British accents, and cyberpunk, because they're lit by neon at night.

 

[Coyote Niff]

Bruce points out the number one problem with this plan he can see, which is that the state of the art superbomber is the Florin - a steam powered rattletrap that is considered wildly outdated and, more importantly, vastly too large. A footnote adds this important detail: The Florin is based on a Chinese design, captured during the "Pacific War."

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Oh boy, reverse-engineering a design from an opposing faction that, as later portions note, this "Confederacy" seem to see as inhuman probably won't end well-your scientists are likely to go "why did these fools do it like this" with a side order of slurs, and break the whole machine trying to "fix" it-see Germany's attempts to reverse-engineer various Allied tech during the Second World War, such as making it impossible to fire your anti-tank weapons from a covered/enclosed position.

Due to the viewpoint characters and the narration style, we won't be getting any perspective from the Chinese - but reading through some lines, you can see that Judson really wants to take the woefully common trope of Asiatic Hordes and the Inscrutable East and slowly beat it to death. This scene, in a bright cafeteria, where they're being fed fancy wines and fresh meals by beautiful women (Fitz has his own maidservants, though Bruce hastily goes on to tell us that Fitz makes sure they're wed properly and not taken advantage of), is chilling when you realize that...like, these guys are casually sitting around, laying out the world, and going, "How can we butcher as many people as we want?" and they don't see anything wrong with it, because they're not targeting people, to their eyes.

Think on what you wargame...

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I've met people who act like this IRL when discussing geopolitics. I love a good wargame as much as the next milhist girlie, but you have to always keep in mind that you're discussing, well, a war, and war means death. Too often, people are ready and willing to dispense with the important question of "how many people will be hurt by this for us to get what we want?" Commonly, when you ask them that, they'll default to the same answer as these characters; that "those people" who will be hurt either are subhuman by nature or have been rendered such by their actions on the global stage. This is a refreshing takedown of that common problem in sci-fi, as well as military history circles generally.

FOOTNOTE 18: The motto of "The New Age of Chivalry" which appears to be one of the founding documents of the Yukon Confederation is a thousand wars to keep us strong for three thousand years. Like some kind of...empire...like some kind of...thousand year empire, a thousand year REICH if you will, like some kind of THOUSAND YEAR REICH, maybe a THIRD-

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Don't forget that their uniforms are grey and they're somewhere in the Midwest-to-South, and in a Confederacy! They aren't just Nazis; they're Secesh-Nazis!!! That's a double Shermaning when I gets my hands on 'em!!!

 

[DragonCobolt]

See why I say things like what if Drakka was good and made sense?

 

[Coyote Niff]

See why I say things like what if Drakka was good and made sense?

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Indeed I do!!

 

[Geckonator]

And this is how we are introduced to Lord Fitzpatrick and his "Basileus" - a helpful footnote from Professor Van Buren explains that this is likely a subtle reference to Alexander the Great.

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Noun
βᾰσῐλεύς • (basileús) m (genitive βᾰσῐλέως); third declension

1. chief, master
2. king, lord, patron

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Eight of them... And Bruce makes nine. And perhaps there's someone else lurking behind the scenes at Fitz's side? So ten kings?

He answered me thus:

"The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on earth,
different from all the others;
The whole earth it shall devour, trample down and crush.
The ten horns shall be ten kings rising out of that kingdom; another shall rise up after them,
Different from those before him, who shall lay low three kings."

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Then I saw a beast come out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads; on its horns were ten diadems and on its head blasphemous names. The beast I saw was like a leopard, but it had feet like a bear's and its mouth was like the mouth of a lion. To it the dragon gave its own power and throne along with great authority.

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The ten horns that you saw represent ten kings who have not yet been crowned; they will receive royal authority along with the beast for one hour. They are of one mind and will give their power and authority to the beast.

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Now, this book was published in 2004... August 3rd, to be precise, if ISBN lookup is accurate. What was going on... oh, how long does it take to get a book from brain to market especially 20 years ago... let's just say a year and four months before.







How did Bush justify the war, especially in private to other leaders when people weren't looking?

Bush Gog and Magog | Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown: Just when you thought it couldn't get crazier, a well-sourced story claims Bush invaded Iraq because of Bible prophecies

www.theguardian.com

President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding.

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And what were recurring number one bestselling books in 2003 and 2004...

Armageddon (novel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Glorious Appearing - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I'm not saying that this whole plot and structure of Yukon as a reactionary WASP world conquest engine merging North America and Britain was blatantly intended by the author as ironic commentary on Bush and Blair's wars making them into the Biblical-literalist Antichrist the former's religion (or rather, political religion; Bush is a Methodist as far as I can find, which is to say he was/is a Yankee mainstream Protestant cosplaying and pandering to Evangelicals) is obsessed with being just around the corner--I actually found Judson's old blog and his concerns about American society, while vocal, never mention the war(s) or religion directly--but it does seem like something cooking in the brainpan for one like me who's heard about/been exposed to a decent amount of the genre of "Revelations Sci-Fi."

 

[DragonCobolt]

I'm not saying that this whole plot and structure of Yukon as a reactionary WASP world conquest engine merging North America and Britain was blatantly intended by the author as ironic commentary on Bush and Blair's wars making them into the Biblical-literalist Antichrist the former's religion (or rather, political religion; Bush is a Methodist as far as I can find, which is to say he was/is a Yankee mainstream Protestant cosplaying and pandering to Evangelicals) is obsessed with being just around the corner--I actually found Judson's old blog and his concerns about American society, while vocal, never mention the war(s) or religion directly--but it does seem like something cooking in the brainpan for one like me who's heard about/been exposed to a decent amount of the genre of "Revelations Sci-Fi."

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There are elements to this, and there's definitely gonna be some...mmm...shall we say WMD-ey energy to the future war against the Turks and Chinese. Lots of inside jobs vibes, you know. However, there's a deeper and more pointed theme about America, guilt, genocide, empire and more fundamentally, steampunk as a genre itself, so the book doesn't feel particularly dated!

 

[bookwyrm]

Based on the dynamics displayed between the footnotes and the text I think we are obviously to assume that nicknaming Lord Stein banker was 100% a fucked up Antisemitic 'joke', and also maybe that Stein was in fact the like second or third generation born after conversion and ennoblement in much the same way as like Prime Minister Disraeli? Which makes the redoubled strict racial hygiene antisemiticism of Van Buren here curious, is this merely the vile shit being pulled up to the surface in defence of the perfect legendary hero-king Fitzpatrick, or is there something here about a now well established hegemonic empire kinda retreating into redoubled racial hierarchy in the inability to continue as purely a warrior nobility with that dog in them fighting the world?

 

[Coyote Niff]

I'm not saying that this whole plot and structure of Yukon as a reactionary WASP world conquest engine merging North America and Britain was blatantly intended by the author as ironic commentary on Bush and Blair's wars making them into the Biblical-literalist Antichrist the former's religion (or rather, political religion; Bush is a Methodist as far as I can find, which is to say he was/is a Yankee mainstream Protestant cosplaying and pandering to Evangelicals) is obsessed with being just around the corner--I actually found Judson's old blog and his concerns about American society, while vocal, never mention the war(s) or religion directly--but it does seem like something cooking in the brainpan for one like me who's heard about/been exposed to a decent amount of the genre of "Revelations Sci-Fi."

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This is a fascinating element of the book!!! Props to you @Geckonator for tying all those strings together!

 

[DragonCobolt]

We're onto Chapter Two!

Bruce is getting to enjoy being friends to the rich and famous - his early morning physical training (which involves kilometers of running with a heavy pack and being beaten up by wooden rifles, as you do) is cut short by being called to Lord Fitz's table to enjoy breakfast and being waited on by beautiful women. But it's not all just nice food - there's also studying.

It seems that a final exam in the most dreaded course is coming up...for our hero is, I must regret, not just a future mass murderer and current quasi-fascist theocratic white supremacist from Sesh-Naziland...oh no.

He's also...

a GODDAMN STEMLORD

At breakfast my new companions put aside world affairs and talked of the semester finals that were coming up in January as soon as we returned to the campus from Christmas vacation. AS an engineering student, I particularly feared the oral exam in History and Other Literature, for I did not have the humanities background most other cadets did. I listened to Fitz and Valette and hood banter about Thucydides and Guicardini and envisioned only failure in my immediate future...

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So, like another semi-reliable narrator with footnotes I love, there's big Ciaphas Cain energy about Bruce in that he often feels like his shame about his actions color his own perspective of his character and his own genuinely good characteristics. Yeah, he's a moral failure and a coward and is party to terrible crimes - but at the very least he's not the kind of STEM dipshit who thinks that studying things that don't involve math is fucking stupid.

...this isn't just me making fun of tech-bros, I actually do think that it is meant to underline that if Bruce hadn't been born a Yukon, he'd probably be a much better person. And it makes you wonder: What about you might be different if you weren't born where you were? Can you change that perspective? Think on it!

We learn that Fitz's old tutor, JONATHAN NEHEMIAH MURREY (these Yukon names are wild), is going to be sitting in the examination. A helpful footnote informs us that Murrey is an incredibly famous historian, and that "History" (with the capital H) is the most important and honorable thing to study. This, unlike a lot of hte footnotes, is an opinion shared by more than just Professor Von Buren. More on that in a bit.

We have a short scene with Bruce, Davis, Mason and Fitz studying. Davis, the Male Rainbow Dash, has a cute nickname of Watchcharm because he's teeny tiny and I find this unreasonably cute. We also learn that Mason is a terrible student and not a very good Christian, even by modern standards. Fitz tries to give him a hint to one of the exam questions by saying "where the walls came tumbling down" and man, even I know that's fucking Jericho, get your head in the game Mason. With it pretty clear that Mason, Bruce, Davis and Pulaski are all absolutely screwed, we move on to the exam and learn it's also total bullshit.

I'm no expert, but I bet you 5 dollars that one of you reading this is going to go, 'Wow, this is exactly like how [Some British People] did exames back in the Ye Olden Days" and I'll go, "Aha! See! See!"

For those readers of this book spared the experience of the junior midyear orals on history and Other Literatures, I should explain that it is the most unfair test the dons have devised in the long story of the Confederacy. A group of twenty five students is packed into a classroom with their instructor, and he questions them one by one concerning a specific Historical era from the twenty five eras deemed worthy of study. The instructor begins by drilling one student upon the History and literature of the ancient middle east and proceeds from there up to contemporary times. The process takes an entire day, and is obviously unfair because one pupil may be grilled upon the second or sixteenth centuries A.AD, wherein there were dozens of great writers producing thousands of quotes and important ideas that must be recalled from memory, and another student may be asked about the sixth or the twentieth and twenty first centuries, when very little that was written survived. The instructors whims dictates which students get the difficult eras and which receive the easy ones...

Click to shrink...

Sounds hellish! Also, it sounds like it preferences regurgitation and rote memorization rather than critical thinking. Surely that's not the case though, I mean, it's not like the Yukon Confederacy is going to be horribly biased or anything. Still, as the test comes up, Fitz tells Bruce to not worry. Each of his friends, you see, has a special talent. We know Bruce is the STEM lord, and we know that Davis is Rainbow Dash But what of Mason?

"He has friends and family," Fitz says.

Professor Von Buren notes for us that said family form the core of the previously mentioned but not elaborated on DESTESTIBLE SHAY REGIME. This Fitz! He sure can pick em, can't he?

Still, the class begins and wouldn't you know it!

By some zany coincidence and random happenstance, Davis gets the first history era and just has to answer some questions about Gilgamesh and Ur. And, hah, wow, okay, he gets to answer those in English. Turns out, if the writing was in Latin or Greek, you need to answer those questions in Latin or Greek! That sounds...fun! Still, the test goes reasonably well for all students as the instructor, Manheim, quizzes them and Murrey, the mysterious tutor of Lord Fitz, watches silently and ominously from the corner.

Then we come to a cadet whose name Bruce has forgotten. He gets Bible times as his history era. (Slightly edited for brevity and to avoid getting the mods mad at me.)

"What are the most important books in the New Testament?" Manheim asked him.

"The four Gospels and the Book of Acts, sir," replied the Cadet.

"Why?"

"because they are Histories, sir. The other books are merely letters and prophecy, sir."

"And why is History more important than epistles and prophecy?"

"Because History teaches us the past, sir."

"Why," interrupted Murrey, "Is it important to know the past?"

"Otherwise," responded the cadet. "We will commit the errors of those coming before us."

"True enough. What I am asking is why it is important for us, the Yukons, to avoid the errors of the past."

"Because errors could destroy our civilization, sir."

"And?" Asked Manheim, leaping upon the wound that Murrey had opened.

"Sir...it is the nature of civilization to wish to survive, sir?"

"Oh!" said Manheim, now making his final fatal move for the jugular. "Are you saying we Yukons simply want to survive as other nations have always wanted? You consider our nation no greater than, say, the Hittites? Or do you recall a grammar school lesson from your wool gathering youth? Something to the effect of our being God's last earthly bastion?"

Click to shrink...

And there we have it: When we say avoiding the mistakes of the past, in our modern era, I feel like most of us are talking about moral errors. Repeating crimes and injustices that we've seen before, that are clearly awful in hindsight and distance - to look upon the inquisition and the holocaust and the genocide of natives, and to go, "Oh!" and see those patterns again when they happen in our day to day life. That's...that's what we're all about, right? It should be, anyway.

...the Yukon see it specifically as a tactical and strategic thing. They study history to win wars.

So, at the end of the day...even their humanity courses are nakedly about force, violence, conquest, imperialism.

Anyway, did you know Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 came out three years after this book not sure why that leaps to mind, moving on.

Spoiler: Redacted

Actually, despite my snark, I think COD4:MW1 is the only COD game in a long that genuinely has any rights whatsoever - it is actually more critical, even if subtly, of the war on terror than...most things from its era, which is pretty impressive. I mean, it's no Gears of War, but it's something.

And finally, we come to the most involved questioning scene. Bruce's!

And because Judson is a good author who is smart and crafty, Bruce's questioning is about the twentieth and twenty first century. I.E the exact time period we want to know most about!

Which, notedly, is SPECIFICALLY the easiest possible course. HMMM! What...wildly good fortune! I guess Manheim just likes Bruce! Still, we get a quick summation of why it's easy: Almost nothing of written record survives because of a combination of records of the time being largely electronic and we are now steampunk, but also, worryingly, because "the so called Histories of that era were perfected by sthe strange ideologies of the day, sir. Those that still exist are on the proscribed list...they were so deeply influenced by the writer's twisted worldview [they] had to be destroyed."

The only surviving works are: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, Yeats, O'Connor, Evelyn Waugh, H.L Mencken, and a single novel called Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell.

And the only official history by the Yukons of this time period is...VOMITING OUT THE PAST by Agnes Sternwill.

Also, uh, the unofficial name of the Age of Electricity?

The Age of Shit. And the culture of the time? The Culture of Shit.

You may notice a slight bias in the Yukon perspective.

So, we get the rundown

In 2018, a movement is founded called the New Agrarians who would then grow to become the Yukon. This always struck me as an oddly innocent place for the Yukon to start from in my youth but as I grew up, I learned that apparently "small farmer" is up there with twitter CEO for sheer concentration of Hitler particles. By 2040, they had large numbers of communities scattered across the world and were filling an economic niche in the world. Then in 2047 a man named Dr. Jessup in Perdue University built the first Personal Pulse Weapon or PPWs: A long ranged EMP gun that can suppress electronics at range. He then immediately began selling them on the open market.

This, as you can imagine, immediately started fucking everything up!

By 2060, the Yukons (named thus by a comedian saying "they're so rural they might as well be from the Yukon") had become a primary agricultural provider. Since they didn't use electricity as much as possible, they shifted to steampunk to avoid the PPWs being used by roving bands of brigands, rouge elements of the government, private citizens, and so on. The Yukon also began to provide infrastructure support for the failing American government thanks to the Timmermen, a secret organization of engineers and scientist founded by...wouldn't you know it, Dr. Jessup! From Perdue University!

(There have been references to the Timmermen before, specifically that several students believe that Dr. Murrey is one of them, hmm.)

The Yukons and the Timmermen start growing biomass for fuel to run their steampunks, and we get some neat technical descriptions of how their steampunk technology works and, this is where Judson has his cake and eats it: A lot of Fitzpatrick's War is really about how this steampunk stuff works, and how neat it is - but it's contrasted with the society that builds it. Keep that in mind.

These Yukon communities stay in contact because the Timmermen launch hundreds of satellites (how is left vague, but the Yukon still have access to electricity, even if they don't use it in their main settlements. One can presume they secured launch sights, possibly even operating them for the failing US government.) These satellites are called the Blinking Stars: Using directed ultraviolet light, they communicate using dots and dashes visible on ammonia treated paper strips in specialized domes that the Yukon build. They also have optical sensors and detectors that pick up movement of enemy troops and artificial electrical fields and, thanks to the PPWs and their initial toehold in space, the Timmermen have kept everyone out of the orbital theater since the 2080s.

So, you may note, that this steampunk society that disdains the electrical age as the "Age of Shit" has a VAST AN EXTREMELY POWERFUL ORBITAL SURVELIANCE AND COMMUNICATION NETWORK THAT RUNS ENTIRELY ON ELECTRICAL COMPUTERS.

So, in 2050 to 2060, the Yukons and a massive international crimegang called the Yellowjackets (they have a wasp theme, I like it) teamed up to take down the Brain Lords, who are figures modern Yukons don't really understand. They just go, "Uh, they used computers somehow to control people, we don't know." I choose to believe this was a dark alliance between desperate foes to finally bring down Elon Musk and his cryogenically preserved head. But afterwards, relationships soured. The Yellowjackets...they keep calling them a gang, and referring to their criminal evilness, but since the Yellowjackets included all the non-white people, it's not exactly clear HOW evil they actually are...at first.

By 2074, things had gone truly to hell. With the social structure disintegrating, a figure known as Bartholomew Iz (whom Yukons later named the fucking Anti-Christ) took control of America by decapitating the President on live TV and declaring himself President. There was an undeclared war between Iz and Yukon as civilization continued to swirl down the drain.

Then, on October 1st, 2081, Iz launched nuclear weapons on the Yukon.

And on October 2nd, 2081, the Timmermen turned on the Storm Machines.

The Storm Machines are giant satellites fixed in orbits that are just below those of the Blinking Stars, Sir. They contain nuclear generators that power enormous damper units that emit positive particles - positrons if you will - which interrupt the flow of negative charge that constitute electrical current in metal circuits. The Storm Machines send these positrons through long cables similar to those attached to the Blinking Stars downwards onto the Earth's surface ... electricity on the earth and up to a height of three hundred and eighty miles in the atmosphere could not be used for human purposes....

Click to shrink...

With that, the Storm Times came. The Yukons stormed Washington DC, butchered the Senate, impaled Iz, and watched as the world burned around them. Without electricity, the already tottering civilization of the world collapsed. Viral pandemics had been raging without check through the world and hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people died.

Reading this, a question comes to my mind.

Hey.

Uh...

What the fuck did you think would happen if the President of the United States - however he came to power - learned you were building a DOOMSDAY DEVICE IN ORBIT. You will note, the Timmermen did not begin building the Storm Machines on October 2nd. They did not design them on October 2nd. They didn't go, "Oh shit, Iz is invading, quick, lets do something about it." The power struggle didn't go nuclear until for a full seven years after Iz took over.

Seven years is a long time.

Long enough to build Storm Machines?

Long enough to launch them?

Long enough for the last vestiges of non-Yukon power to notice they're about to destroy the world?

Lots to think about.

After the big crash and die off, the Storm Machines were turned off - but they are kept in orbit, to turn back on if they detect any electrical activity down on Earth. Thus, the Timmermen control the sky, the stars, and the future. Meanwhile, Bruce talks about how actually, the world's much better now! Less crowded. Wonderful. He does also cite that the Yukon have continued to advance in material science and biotechnology (well, breeding new plants at least, not actual genetic engineering), and...in war.

Then Dr. Murrey interrupts again. He steps up and interrupts this easy pitch of a questioning (as a note, students have been muttering in the background about how fucking easy this has been for Bruce, literally every child knows this stuff) with his own question: Do the early Yukons bear the guilt for their crimes? As he points out, ignoring Iz's mass murder and the viral pandemics, they still killed so many people. Then they killed even more when they turned away non-white, non-Christian refugees fleeing form other disaster zones. They killed and killed and killed and killing is wrong, no?

Bruce, feeling put on the spot, does what anyone raised in Ameri- I mean The Yukon Confederacy would do: He squirms ("well, the viral pandemics killed most people!"), he equivocates ("well, any white, Christian who accepts our system we did take in as refugees!"), he engages in bothsidesism ("Iz killed millions every day in death camps!")

Finally, Dr. Murrey pins him down: Bruce admits it he...regrets what the early Yukon did.

He doesn't want to be descended from mass murdering genocidal maniacs who wanted to carve out a frontier to support some bullshit Jacksonian idyllic homesteading lifestyle. He wants to be descended from heroes.

Big mood, huh.

"Regret," Dr. Murrey says. "We can work with regret."

Ominous!

Fitz does stand up for his buddy Bruce. There's some back and forth, where Fitz declaims about how he believes that are certain special souls who are free from guilt due to their special perspective and how they can work great deeds and do great things. He declares the interviewing over and Dr. Manheim, somewhat nonplussed, moves on to Buck Pulaski (we learn his full name now! ...it's Winfried Righteous Pulaski) who gets the next easiest course of Yukon Literature from 2100 to 2400.

The class wraps and Bruce, shaken, thinks that he's doomed. He basically was birddogged into admitting that he thinks that Yukons have once done something wrong in their history in public. But before he can pick out how he's going to spend his civilian life, Davis shows up with the test scores and they all passed. Every one of them.

"We're all Fitz's men now!" Davis says, quite cheerfully because, like Rainbow Dash, Davis only cares about two things: Flying and women. He's quite happy to have his grade bought and paid for by Fitz's obvious machinations. This gets a real long, really irate footnote from Professor Von Buren - how dare Bruce imply that Fitz might CHEAT on an exam! On History of all things! Complete fabrication, totally absurd, slander! Bruce, meanwhile, notes to himself that...now, if Fitz ever wanted too, he could slip a quiet word in someone's ear, reveal the cheating scheme, and totally ruin Bruce's life.

Carrot. Stick. Bruce is caught by both.

And so, Davis and he head off to Mason's room - apparently, Mason has some moving pictures to show off in celebration. Bruce is not enthused.

FOOTNOTE TIME!

FOOTNOTE 3: This here cites that academics haven't really changed much in 175 years. It's the first example of...uh...lets say...stagnation in Yukon society. It's a running theme.

FOOTNOTE 5: Here, Professor Von Buren gets really stuffy because Bruce is making a snide reference to "academic colleges for rich halfwits" and Ro goes, "Uh, ACTUALLY, St. Mathews is a VERY GOOD SCHOOL, and it's VERY REPUTABLE!!!"

FOOTNOTE 7: Professor Von Buren notes that Age of Shit is called the much classier Age of Excrement in St. Mathews, the much better school that he went too.

FOOTNOTE 8: Apparently Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell makes fun of the Byzantine working of an American university and Professor Von Buren takes great pains to note that TRUE academics do not find it funny AT ALL.

FOOTNOTE 14: The last president before Iz, Mohammad Rauf, was (despite his name) not a Muslim and...this book's too early for that to be an Obama reference, right?

FOOTNOTE 15: This footnote informs us that nuclear weapons were "electronic weapons" and that several areas remain uninhabitable due to their impact.

FOOTNOTE 24: As Mason's movie film is brought up by Davis, we learn something interesting: Acting is illegal! And apparently, only done by...they use a different name in the book, both Bruce and Von Buren, and I'm going to stick to Romani. Romani are often allowed to be acting, assuming a cop doesn't decide to brutalize them. Charming.

FOOTNOTE 25: Bruce says that by age twenty, his talent for self deception had made him a cheat. By thirty, it would make him a murderer of millions. And here comes footnote 25 to hastily point out that enemies killed in wars can't be called MURDER. The people of the world know how DEADLY Ameri- I mean Yukons are! If they don't want to be killed in the millions, they should just stop trying to fight us. Obviously! God, who does this guy write for, PragerU?

 

[Kadmus]

It's fascinating to see a steampunk book that actually, like, engages with the horrors of 1800s colonialism; it's even more interesting to have it be a future history, instead of an althist 1800s.

It is also very funny that one of the few things they have left that they're allowed to read from the 20th/21st century is fucking Jeeves and Wooster books.

 

[DragonCobolt]

It is also very funny that one of the few things they have left that they're allowed to read from the 20th/21st century is fucking Jeeves and Wooster books.

Click to shrink...

Later on, we learn that they actually do have more books, collected in a novel they call the "Underwater Boat", which is a collection of scraps of LOTR, the Hobbit, Verne, H.G Wells...and specifically, it's all there so they can make fun of how stupid they think it is. Which like...rude!

(also, uh, I'm an uncultured lout and have no idea what fucking books they're allowed to read are actually like, so if anyone has read them please share!)

 

[edofthesquid]

You will note, the Timmermen did not begin building the Storm Machines on October 2nd. They did not design them on October 2nd. They didn't go, "Oh shit, Iz is invading, quick, lets do something about it." The power struggle didn't go nuclear until for a full seven years after Iz took over.

Seven years is a long time.

Long enough to build Storm Machines?

Long enough to launch them?

Long enough for the last vestiges of non-Yukon power to notice they're about to destroy the world?

Lots to think about.

Click to shrink...

Oh wow I can't believe I missed the timeline when I read the book myself. Like it was obvious their history was BS and self serving, but I always assumed it was meant to hide the things even "hard men" wouldn't agree with, and that the EMP weapons had basically already largely Mad Maxed the world

 

[Ben Who Devours]

Later on, we learn that they actually do have more books, collected in a novel they call the "Underwater Boat", which is a collection of scraps of LOTR, the Hobbit, Verne, H.G Wells...and specifically, it's all there so they can make fun of how stupid they think it is. Which like...rude!

(also, uh, I'm an uncultured lout and have no idea what fucking books they're allowed to read are actually like, so if anyone has read them please share!)

Click to shrink...

Jeeves and Wooster is funny and charming to this day, but it's also fundamentally about posh WASPs bumbling around and while the memory is hazy, I seem to recall it had the same casual attitude to non-whites you might expect. Perhaps these militaristic folks see the cast as an example of how the 'Age of Shit' went wrong, the nobility reduced to witless oafs being manipulated by their own servants… or maybe they consider it an AoS satire that shows just how alien they were for mocking the correct order of things.

Mencken is interesting. He despised both organised religion and democracy, and was a champion of science who believed there was no such thing as objective truth. Absolutely ripped into the Creationists at the Monkey Trial to the point there were fictional characters based on him, also hated the New Deal. Not read Fitzpatrick's War myself, so my perspective is limited, but it's intriguing that that is one of their Sanctioned 20th Century Authors.

 

[Kadmus]

Later on, we learn that they actually do have more books, collected in a novel they call the "Underwater Boat", which is a collection of scraps of LOTR, the Hobbit, Verne, H.G Wells...and specifically, it's all there so they can make fun of how stupid they think it is. Which like...rude!

(also, uh, I'm an uncultured lout and have no idea what fucking books they're allowed to read are actually like, so if anyone has read them please share!)

Click to shrink...

The Jeeves and Wooster books are satirical/comical novels about a well-intentioned but idiotic posh bloke and his very sensible and competent valet; they were made into a TV series starring Hugh Laurie as Wooster (idiot posh boy) and Stephen Fry as Jeeves (competent valet) if that gives you any better an idea of the dynamic. You may have also seen the Tumblr posts updating the idea to a more modern concept.

PG Wodehouse wrote a number of other novels, too, all of them comedic; I dread to think what the Yukon guys make of them.

WB Yeats is of course an exceptionally famous Irish poet and writer; the film 'No Country For Old Men' takes its title from the first line of his poem Sailing to Byzantium, for example, and he won a Nobel Prize for his works. Again, likely completely re-interpreted in a very strange light by the Yukon.

EDIT: The idea of that fragmentary novel is legit fascinating, I'd love to see something like that, but of course instead of treating it the way we might the Epic of Gilgamesh they use it to make fun of it.

 

[DragonCobolt]

WB Yeats is of course an exceptionally famous Irish poet and writer; the film 'No Country For Old Men' takes its title from the first line of his poem Sailing to Byzantium, for example, and he won a Nobel Prize for his works. Again, likely completely re-interpreted in a very strange light by the Yukon.

Click to shrink...

To be fair, I actually know Yeats, ACTION POET, thanks to Hyperion.

...wait, no that was Keats...

There are too many poets, please remove 90% of them.

 

[bookwyrm]

The Yukons aren't above mad-science-ing their steampunk when needed to break the old world or to maintain the necessary sinews of empire, it seems. I imagine within the stemlord tracks of like artillery school trig and topography as what would have been more Bruce's crowd if he didn't get picked out by Fitz, there is absolutely room for muscular technocratic ideas and cargo cult scientism and even such Mencken-esque free-thinkers/"free-thinkers" behind closed doors as long as they still uphold social Darwinism and such, much as how a great deal of the actual Victorians were technophiles who loved trains and how as long as you were still a member of good society there were plenty of avenues for an aristo to get philosophical about the existence of god with nothing more than a slightly risque and sleazy repute, unlike those disgusting poors.