There's a large, noisy, technically-too-advanced-for-this-era machine in my novel, and every time I tell people that, they're like, "oh, so you're writing a steampunk novel, yeah?"
NO.
NO NO NO NO NO.
I know a lot of people are really into steampunk, but I ... I just can't stand steampunk. I hate the goggles, I hate the corduroy/maudlin pants, I hate the stupid black duster jackets uggggh ... OKAY I MOSTLY HATE THE FASHION/weird Victorian shit that's always interwoven in there, and it doesn't help every time I think steampunk I think Wild Wild West.
I was dead-set on not making the machine in my novel steam-powered, even though fossil fuels (i.e., the coal that fuels steam engines) are a major theme of this book. Luckily! The first internal combustion engines were being conceptualized/built in the mid to late 1850s, and early 1860s. Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci were hard at work on the design for the first 4-cycle engine, aka what would become an internal combustion engine. Barsanti and Matteucci's patent was apparently lost; Nikolaus Otto would build the first working, marketable model 10 years later, of which is pictured in the video above.
Most engines from this period ran on coal gas rather than petroleum, because folks were JUST BEGINNING to drill for oil during this time period as well.
Ok, I know this is boring, but my point is, not all cool old-time fantasy machines have to run on steam!!!
