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The Magnetron Chronicles #3
Escape from Xanadu
Short
In this third novelette in the Magnetron Chronicles series, Phineas Magnetron and the Hogalum Society are quite literally drawn to the incomparable lost city of Zhen-Atu. There they find the lost passengers and crew of the Salmagundi, and learn that the laws of physics are not as straightforward as previously believed. Indeed, the very nature and genesis of mankind are called into question.
Extended description
Phineas Magnetron is an eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor and former Union soldier who sustained a war injury which has unaccountably bestowed upon him a strange gift he doesn't completely understand. No stranger to peril and derring-do, Phineas is asked to join the Hogalum Society, an inscrutable secret organization of crime fighting adventurers, by none other than Society founder Dr. Yngve Hogalum.
Traveling the globe in their Luftigel electric airship, Phineas Magnetron and his Hogalum brothers encounter mistrustful policemen, mentally ill criminals, wood-craving aliens, a witch doctor, a mad oracle, and a cross-dressing female matador, among many others. However, this "steam dream team" always manages to triumph over impossible odds and improbable obstacles as they preserve order in a disorderly world with all the Steam Age weird science they can muster.
The Magnetron Chronicles is a serialized steampunk tale re-envisioning the future of generations past with all the breathless melodrama and tumult of that Victorian-era pulp fiction staple, the "penny dreadful." The narrative harks back to the grandiose style of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, but gently satirized with a sprinkling of purposeful anachronisms, double entendres, tongue-in-cheek inventions, and droll Twainian humor. Adapted from Mackenzie's "The Secret Journals of Phineas J. Magnetron," a web serial characterized by short chapters with cliffhanger endings, the story builds chapter by chapter, volume by volume, as quirky new characters join the fray and perplexing new mysteries and situations arise.
The Magnetron Chronicles is a planned 12-volume series of novelette-length volumes. In this third volume, "Escape from Xanadu," Phineas Magnetron and the Hogalum Society are quite literally drawn to the incomparable lost city of Zhen Atu. There they find the lost passengers and crew of the Salmagundi, and learn that the laws of physics are not as straightforward as previously believed. Indeed, the very nature and genesis of mankind are called into question.
In this third novelette in the Magnetron Chronicles series, Phineas Magnetron and the Hogalum Society are quite literally drawn to the incomparable lost city of Zhen-Atu. There they find the lost passengers and crew of the Salmagundi, and learn that the laws of physics are not as straightforward as previously believed. Indeed, the very nature and genesis of mankind are called into question.
Extended description
Phineas Magnetron is an eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor and former Union soldier who sustained a war injury which has unaccountably bestowed upon him a strange gift he doesn't completely understand. No stranger to peril and derring-do, Phineas is asked to join the Hogalum Society, an inscrutable secret organization of crime fighting adventurers, by none other than Society founder Dr. Yngve Hogalum.
Traveling the globe in their Luftigel electric airship, Phineas Magnetron and his Hogalum brothers encounter mistrustful policemen, mentally ill criminals, wood-craving aliens, a witch doctor, a mad oracle, and a cross-dressing female matador, among many others. However, this "steam dream team" always manages to triumph over impossible odds and improbable obstacles as they preserve order in a disorderly world with all the Steam Age weird science they can muster.
The Magnetron Chronicles is a serialized steampunk tale re-envisioning the future of generations past with all the breathless melodrama and tumult of that Victorian-era pulp fiction staple, the "penny dreadful." The narrative harks back to the grandiose style of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, but gently satirized with a sprinkling of purposeful anachronisms, double entendres, tongue-in-cheek inventions, and droll Twainian humor. Adapted from Mackenzie's "The Secret Journals of Phineas J. Magnetron," a web serial characterized by short chapters with cliffhanger endings, the story builds chapter by chapter, volume by volume, as quirky new characters join the fray and perplexing new mysteries and situations arise.
The Magnetron Chronicles is a planned 12-volume series of novelette-length volumes. In this third volume, "Escape from Xanadu," Phineas Magnetron and the Hogalum Society are quite literally drawn to the incomparable lost city of Zhen Atu. There they find the lost passengers and crew of the Salmagundi, and learn that the laws of physics are not as straightforward as previously believed. Indeed, the very nature and genesis of mankind are called into question.
- GenresSteampunkScience Fiction
63 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 13, 2012
156 people want to read
About the author
D.L. Mackenzie
9 books52 followersD. L. Mackenzie pounds on a computer somewhere in the desiccated cultural wilderness of Phoenix, Arizona. When he's not writing or more gainfully employed elsewhere, he enjoys hiking the valley's surrounding mountains, traveling, listening to obscure music, and performing unremarkable household chores with his hyperactive wife. He has a love/hate relationship with American politics and is known to bore and annoy anyone within earshot with his radically sensible political ideas. He has written scads of scandalously intemperate opinion pieces and a short story or two, but remains smitten with classic fiction by such authors as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells. His new (2012) series "The Magnetron Chronicles" brings eccentric inventor Phineas J. Magnetron out of mothballs for new tongue-in-cheek neo-Victorian adventures in the heady Age of Steam.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 2, 2012
I am now thoroughly hooked on the adventures of the Hogalum Society! The marvelous journey on the Luftigel takes them beyond their wildest imagination and challenges their concept of how the world works. Can the laws of time and space be bent? Will this adventure leave them completely fustigated? And just what is up with those cats? Find out in this third installment of the Magnetron Chronicles!
Displaying 1 of 1 review