54 replies to this topic

[Paolo]

Hi all

having embarked in writing a Steampunk novel, as an Engineer I face a dilemma.

For those not into it, Steampunk is a branch of science fiction where the world is dominated by steam engines, clockwork mechanisms and so on.
Nobody invented the Internal Combustion Engine (nor the Stirling...) or they work poorly. No turbines, also.
So, engines are huge, heavy things with giant boilers and all the paraphernalia.

Now... to be at peace with my professional coscience, I need a plausible reason why IC engines don't work in that Universe. Mind, technique is advanced there, say to a 1930 level. They even have analog computers.
I think I won't allow for (industrial uses of) electricity, though.

Thought to postulate absence of petrol... but alchool is there...

Then thought to postulate a physical law that prevents liquids from burning. Then remembered of gas engines...

Thought to alter the Carnot Law... but it applies to steam engines too.



Then I thought, what better place to ask?

Make your fantasy fly, Gentlemen, if you so like.

You can play at will with the laws of Nature, provided you still allow for an human world resembling the Victorian Era, and for airplanes , airships and firearms...

any takers?

(sorry for the, hopefully slight, OT).

[OfficeLinebacker]

Since it's obviously already been done before, why don't you just borrow someone else's reasoning for the way the world is? The interesting part of the book, the only part that has to be original, is the characters and plot.

[Paolo]

Since it's obviously already been done before, why don't you just borrow someone else's reasoning for the way the world is? The interesting part of the book, the only part that has to be original, is the characters and plot.

Never found an explanation in the many novels I read. Usually they just go without one. I'd prefer a more solid base for the construction of this fictional world.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Could you not set it really far in the future, like an era where fossil fuels have been exhausted? So the technology could exist but not the fuel?

How do you get around not having any nuclear energy?

[Paolo]

Could you not set it really far in the future, like an era where fossil fuels have been exhausted? So the technology could exist but not the fuel?

How do you get around not having any nuclear energy?

Setting will be, for storyline reasons, between 1865 and 1895.
For storyline reasons, there must not be the slightest hint of a weight efficient engine (*) at the horizon. In real world, they came by around 1905, which is too near for what I have in mind.
In this world, engines are heavy and inefficient. Good enough to propel an airship, too heavy for an aircraft or a regular sized tank (very heavy tanks, and even tracked landships, sort of ground dreadnoughts, are possible, anyway).

I know it's a mess, but I vowed to stay in Steampunk tradition.

About the absence of fossil fuels, no it won't work: alchool can be used instead.




(*) Yes, I could make metals weaker, but this does not satisfy the canonic requisite of "steam engines only", per se.

Edited by Paolo, 16 September 2010 - 19:08.

[Paolo]

Maybe I have an hint... not sure...

could there be a reason why, more than having worse IC engines, they have better steam engines? Something like a change in the latent heat of water, to have a "better" steam?

Then, if I also postulate weaker metals, voilà, steam is the only way to go...

Yet, how could water vapour be "improved" ? I wish I remembered more from my applied thermodynamic course...



Or maybe... all liquid fossil fuels, alchool etc. simply are poor fuels? Could it be that simple?

I'd like something more related to the fundamental nature of things...

Edited by Paolo, 16 September 2010 - 19:21.

[Tony Matthews]

I'd like something more related to the fundamental nature of things...

How about if alcohol has an endothermic reaction under pressure - you can burn it at normal pressure, even drink it (!), but it won't work in an IC engine.

[Tony Matthews]

...or, there are no oil-derived lubricants, so IC engines cannot run efficiently, as they only last a ... no, I've just remembered Castrol R.

[McGuire]

How about this: They determined that burning tremendous quantities of fossil fuels might produce excessive carbon dioxide emissions and alter the planet's climate, so they decided not to just to be on the safe side. The only fuels permitted are wood and alcohol. Meanwhile, your villain is a character named Rockefeller, who is plotting a scheme to make the global economy dependent on a new substance he calls "petroleum."

[J. Edlund]

...or, there are no oil-derived lubricants, so IC engines cannot run efficiently, as they only last a ... no, I've just remembered Castrol R.

Castor oil had actually better lubricating properties than petroleum lubricants back in the day.

On the fuel side, aside from ethanol, methanol, town gas, coal powder and various other early fuels, the production of synthetic fuels have been possible since the early 20'th century. Basically the same process that was used in large scale during the WW2 to produce fuels from coal, and what is used today to turn stranded natural gas into diesel fuel.

The invention of the internal combustion engine actually predates that of the steam engine, Huygens gun powder powered piston engine was invented in 1673, Newcomens steam engine was invented some thirty years later in 1712, and Watts steam engine came in 1769. In 1791 the gas turbine is invented and in 1856 the first functional internal combustion engine was built by Barsanti and Matteucci. These early engines typically used town gas or coal powder until Maybachs carburetor in 1883.

[Paolo]

Hi Tony,

the endothermic thingie is interesting... could be true for fossil fuels too...

While for lubricants, no, as you noticed, castor oil is quite a good one already. And there's whale fat, too...

[Paolo]

@ J. Edlund

Coal powder? Uh-oh, if this is a feasible fuel for IC engines my paper castle is going to collapse. Steampunk needs coal!

Could it be that coal powder IC engines work badly, despite using the same fuel of steam engines? After all, coal powder was abandoned there, as well as gunpowder (of which I was aware).


@Mc Guire, I already have villains! Anyway, burning wood and coal will pollute more than burning oil.

Edited by Paolo, 16 September 2010 - 20:19.

[J. Edlund]

How about this: They determined that burning tremendous quantities of fossil fuels might produce excessive carbon dioxide emissions and alter the planet's climate, so they decided not to just to be on the safe side. The only fuels permitted are wood and alcohol. Meanwhile, your villain is a character named Rockefeller, who is plotting a scheme to make the global economy dependent on a new substance he calls "petroleum."

Hmm, only wood and alcohol permitted and used only by steam engines. A good recipe for large scale deforestation I say!

Well, obviously someone would have got a stroke of genius and replaced the costly wood with this black stuff that can be digged up from the ground much cheaper.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Just play the video game Civilization over and over. You'll quickly find you develop technologies and industry in strange orders. Like when I was based on an island, I had a damn impressive air force but no nautical cartography. So I could blow seven shits out of the neighboring countries but could never actually invade them...

[Tony Matthews]

Wood and alcohol... I could just about live on that. But not wood alcohol...

[McGuire]

Hmm, only wood and alcohol permitted and used only by steam engines. A good recipe for large scale deforestation I say!

Well, obviously someone would have got a stroke of genius and replaced the costly wood with this black stuff that can be digged up from the ground much cheaper.

So you are unfamiliar with science fiction. It's a form of literature where things are made up.

You know how in Star Trek, spaceships travel faster than light all the way across the galaxy, only to land on a planet where everyone somehow speaks English? They were having you on. Sorry.

[Tony Matthews]

So you are unfamiliar with science fiction. It's a form of literature where things are made up.

You know how in Star Trek, spaceships travel faster than light all the way across the galaxy, only to land on a planet where everyone somehow speaks English? They were having you on. Sorry.

Science Fiction? Pah! (First and only time I have written or spoken Pah!) Science Fantasy. SF is much more sophisticated...

[Tony Matthews]

So you are unfamiliar with science fiction. It's a form of literature where things are made up.

You know how in Star Trek, spaceships travel faster than light all the way across the galaxy, only to land on a planet where everyone somehow speaks English? They were having you on. Sorry.

Science Fiction? Pah! (First and only time I have written or spoken Pah!) Science Fantasy. Science Fiction is much more sophisticated...

Edited by Tony Matthews, 16 September 2010 - 20:48.

[J. Edlund]

@ J. Edlund

Coal powder? Uh-oh, if this is a feasible fuel for IC engines my paper castle is going to collapse. Steampunk needs coal!

Could it be that coal powder IC engines work badly, despite using the same fuel of steam engines? After all, coal powder was abandoned there, as well as gunpowder (of which I was aware).


@Mc Guire, I already have villains! Anyway, burning wood and coal will pollute more than burning oil.

Coal powder isn't ideal but they are possible. They can be used dry (mixed with air by compressed air), or in a slurry with water or a liquid fuel. The main problems are high wear and the formation of deposits in the engine which will require a clean coal with low ash content and a small particle size. Diesel used coal powder in some early engines, but some later engines used peanut oil which certainly must have been easier to deal with.

[Tony Matthews]

Most substances will, I think, combust if reduced to an aerosol. Many millers have been destroyed by flour explosions.

[McGuire]

@Mc Guire, I already have villains! Anyway, burning wood and coal will pollute more than burning oil.

Good. The black soot everywhere will set the proper mid-industrial era mood. However, I didn't say anything about coal. My gimmick was 100 percent bio-fuel. It doesn't have to be terribly realistic or even practical, only plausible, which is your job. You need a parallel technological path and there it is.

But if you want everything to run like crap and have all kinds of odd, vaguely Victorian hardware hung all over it, coal oil.

But really, if you plant your story right on 1880 you have pretty much what you want. Relatively advanced steam technology, no IC to speak of. Can aircraft and submarines and unholy war machines run on steam? In a novel they can.

Also, don't forget black-powder rocketry. It's awesome.

[gruntguru]

Yet, how could water vapour be "improved" ? I wish I remembered more from my applied thermodynamic course...

Condense, add alcohol and ice cubes.

[Tony Matthews]

Condense, add alcohol and ice cubes.

Raise glass, sip and...relaxe.

[Greg Locock]

I like the idea of a more efficint steam engine. I have at home the spec of what my lecturer claimed was the ideal working fluid for a steam cycle, it may be in Rogers and Mayhew as well. Let's see, condenser operates above atmospheric pressure, temperatures for the hot end are fairly far from metallurgical limits, something clever to do with behaviour in boilers, more chemically inert than water.

[desmo]

Condense, add alcohol and ice cubes.

Philistines. Wave a Vermouth bottle (needn't be opened) in the general vicinity before imbibing.

[cheapracer]

.

You know how in Star Trek, spaceships travel faster than light all the way across the galaxy, only to land on a planet where everyone somehow speaks English? They were having you on. Sorry.

Bastard. Well at least I still have Santa and Lotto.

Obviously the parallel dimension's Humans with ever slightly different biological makeup are easily keeled over by NOx produced by IC engines.

[Tony Matthews]

Obviously the parallel dimension's Humans with ever slightly different biological makeup are easily keeled over by NOx produced by IC engines.

True! I've seen it happen...

[MatsNorway]

I would have said that alcohol was to precious. Together with a low food supply making it hard to justify the waste of food to make fuel.

Add in some improvements made by a mad scientist on the steam engine and your good to go.

Edited by MatsNorway, 17 September 2010 - 13:41.

[cheapracer]

True! I've seen it happen...

I meant another dimension not your local.

[Tony Matthews]

I meant another dimension not your local.

[McGuire]

Bastard. Well at least I still have Santa and Lotto.

Obviously the parallel dimension's Humans with ever slightly different biological makeup are easily keeled over by NOx produced by IC engines.

I always marveled at how many species across the universe were anatomically compatible with Capt. Kirk.

[Tony Matthews]

The sex scenes in all Science Fantasy and , disappointingly, a lot of Science Fiction, is usually ludicrous and cringe-making. I suspect a lot of SFan. was written as an excuse or cover for low-grade soft porn.

I'm going to set my Phaser to 'tickle' and get stuck in...

[ray b]

steampunk comic that I like

http://www.girlgeniu...p?date=20021104

[Slumberer]

Tax.
(Or is that just cynical?)

[Bob Riebe]

How about simple economics and there is lots and lots and lots of coal, and easy access good water, so the people are firm and tough enough, i.e. bullet to the head stubborn, and its not their head, not to let the government tax the crap out them to force fund some other bucks-up on tax payer expense mode of using the coal.

Edited by Bob Riebe, 17 September 2010 - 19:34.

[Grumbles]

Corruption. Some top level government people have a vested interest in steam and effectively outlaw IC engines on the grounds that they are dangerous. To prove their point they stage some Edison-like demonstrations where animals are killed using the exhaust fumes of a horrendously noisy, frightening IC engine. IC development continues of course, but it's done in secrecy by the few whose imagination and curiosity can't resist the IC..

I visited one of those historic tourist towns (Sovereign Hill) a few years ago - the whole town was basically operating as it did during the gold rush days in the mid 1800s. Everything was steam powered of course, and I was struck with how quiet and graceful the engines were, even the bigger ones (and no, they weren't being motored by electricity). The early IC engines must have seemed coarse and crude in comparison.

Edited by Grumbles, 17 September 2010 - 20:42.

[Anthem]

"High altitude" environment where steam power is less affected by reduced air pressure.

Caused by atmospheric changes. Or the livable ground surface is higher because the water level has risen.

[gruntguru]

Corruption. Some top level government people have a vested interest . . . .

Too far fetched. Couldn't happen.

[saudoso]

Blame it on gaskets. You can come up with gaskets that hold up to 200c or so but will burn when exposed to highier temperatures and direct flames.

[Bloggsworth]

Simultaneous non-development occured throughout history and pre-history. Written/pictorial communication existed in the east for millennia and only reached the Americas with the discoverers of the new world, similarly, the wheel. I'm no student of pre-settlement America, but I haven't read of any sailing vessels either - On the other hand, Newton and Leibniz "invented" calculus at the same time, as did Swan and Edison with the light bulb. Priestly is generally acknowledged as the discoverer of oxygen, although Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier also have a claim to the discovery.

So, from that standpoint, it is quite plausible that nearly 200 years after Newcomen, nobody had thought to put the fire inside the cylinder rather than outside. H G Wells never explained how the time machine or the spaceships from Mars were powered, we just knew that they were; your job as an author is to write so well that the matter is irrelevant; readers of fiction, and science fiction/fantasy in particular, are ready, willing and able to suspend disbelief for the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, so one novel should be no problem..... After all, we do live on a disc world supported by elephants.

Edited by Bloggsworth, 22 September 2010 - 11:42.

[Tony Matthews]

readers of fiction, and science fiction/fantasy in particular, are ready, willing and able to suspend disbelief for the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, so one novel should be no problem.....

I thought that was a documentary...

[zac510]

Paolo, what if the city was built on an area of high geothermal activity and steam could be piped up from the ground cheaply and efficiently, making fossil fuels seem expensive by comparison.

My inspiration for this is Iceland, of course

Edited by zac510, 22 September 2010 - 13:14.

[Bloggsworth]

The sex scenes in all Science Fantasy and , disappointingly, a lot of Science Fiction, is usually ludicrous and cringe-making. I suspect a lot of SFan. was written as an excuse or cover for low-grade soft porn.

I'm going to set my Phaser to 'tickle' and get stuck in...

Perhaps with the exception of The Excessive Machine....

[BlackCat]

for the last dozen years or more I fill my days translating science fiction. so I can say: too many technical details can kill a good novel. people living in a world do not usually think too much about how things work. if - in our world - you take a cab from the airport and the cabdriver starts to tell you about Otto cycle in the IC engine that pushes the cab forward you'll probably consider the guy crazy. so would people in some fictional world. (and readers too!) on the other hand, for the author it's of course good to know how and why things are just that way in his fictional world.

in the beginning etc steam, electric and gasoline engined cars were about equal, each having a chance to become the leading technology. Edison was promising Ford better batteries "for the next year" to make electric cars en masse and so on. so it was kind of a random thing which one "made it". just one genius of an engineer in a right place would have been sufficient. and later it's just common sense. if, after 15-20 years of using safe, reliable, serviceable etc steam cars, somebody came up with an idea of sitting on a barrel of highly flammable liquid and then let the liquid to explode in somewhat controlled manner... such an idea would seem plain crazy, too dangerous for the people to use, no matter what the inventor would say. (and then there would be the necessity of building even bigger tanks to keep that highly flammable liquid close to populated areas... no way!) so, it's not a problem, really

[Tony Matthews]

Make your fantasy fly, Gentlemen, if you so like.

Have you read 'Last and First Men' by Olaf Stapledon? It is a 'future history' of mankind, at one point all nuclear fuels are lost in a cataclysmic event, and mankind is relegated to a previous, pre-fossil-fuel life-style. Why can't you arrange for the loss of all liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons?

[SteveCanyon]

.... in our world - you take a cab from the airport and the cabdriver starts to tell you about Otto cycle in the IC engine that pushes the cab forward you'll probably consider the guy crazy.

And indeed a fair few of us here would say, "no, you're wrong about that" as he tried to get all technical on us. And a few others would say, "no your wrong about that."

[gruntguru]

And indeed a fair few of us here would say, "no, you're wrong about that" as he tried to get all technical on us. And a few others would say, "no your wrong about that."

Bullshit!

[fredeuce]

It seems you have overlooked some other features of ordinary life over the eons. That of our spirituality and the development of mythology.

That should allow you to come up with some mythological and false truth about the use of oil being evil and will destroy the climate and bring about catastrophic change which can't be reversed .

Hmm sounds a bit like present day mythology.

[Paolo]

Thanks everyone for the inputs.

Well, I am aware of the danger of giving too many explanations: I plan to not detail them in writing, but just to have a storyline which is based on a congruent, rational background. Which will stay, well, in the background.

I came up with a good background at the moment, which includes different physic laws; I'm now in the process of actually writing, cruelly short on time (I plan to participate in a contest) and am discovering how hard it is to come up with interesting writing when one has to.

I usually have no problems in writing in quite a personal way, but doing so under time pressure seems very difficult.

[Bloggsworth]

Thanks everyone for the inputs.

Well, I am aware of the danger of giving too many explanations: I plan to not detail them in writing, but just to have a storyline which is based on a congruent, rational background. Which will stay, well, in the background.

I came up with a good background at the moment, which includes different physic laws; I'm now in the process of actually writing, cruelly short on time (I plan to participate in a contest) and am discovering how hard it is to come up with interesting writing when one has to.

I usually have no problems in writing in quite a personal way, but doing so under time pressure seems very difficult.

The big problem with half inventing a technology, is that if you get the slightest detail wrong, you will never get any peace from anoraks whose life's work is to correct misunderstandings over the laws of thermodynamics...