What was life really like for citizenry who worked on Graf Zeppelin back in the 19th one C ? Was it all swashbuckling escapade , or were they He - poisoned prisoners of the sky ? In her incredible novel poor story , Genevieve Valentine has the answer .
This week , Lightspeed Magazine have Valentine ’s poor story “ The Zeppelin Conductors ’ Society Annual Gentlemen ’s Ball , ” an vivid , prompt portrait of the human whose experience with zeppelin traveling are about as unromantic as it gets . This story offers a rare dose of steampunk Platonism , and it ’s a dour , stir up ride . Here ’s the first section :
So hook yourself up to an airship
Strap on your mask and your knife
For the wide open sky are a - calling
And oh , it ’s a brilliant liveliness !
The balloon of a Phoenix - social class airship is better than any purview from its cabin window ; half a Roman mile of silk get out taut across three hundred metal rib and a hundred gleaming spines is a beautiful matter . If your masquerade party filter is muddy you get lightheaded and your sight goes cherry-red , so it looks as though the balloon is falling in love with you .
When that fall out , though , you tap someone to let them have intercourse and you go to the back - cabin Underneath and specify your mask , if you ’ve any brains at all . If you ’re helium - intoxicated enough to see blood-red , soon you ’ll be hallucinating and too light to move , and even if they get you out before you die you ’ll still spend the rest of your life at a infirmary with all the regulars staring at you . That ’s no life for an airship man .
I think back back when the masks were metallic element and you ’d freeze in the winter , end up with layers of tegument that peeled off like wet sock when you pass landside and took the mask off . The polymer prophylactic are much cleverer .
I ’ve been a conductor for years ; I was conducting on the Majesty in ’ 78 when it was still the swelled ship in the sky - you laugh , but back then people would show up by the one C just to watch out it fly out of dock . She only had four gills , but she could cut through the air well than a lot of the six - Little Phoebe , the Laconia too .
They put the Majesty in a museum already , I try .
Strange to be so old and not feel it . At least the helium keep us unseasoned , for all it turns us spindly and cold . God , when we realized what was happening to us ! But they had warned us , I suppose , and it ’s fathom well now then it was . Back then the regulars called you a behemoth if they saw you on the street .
The coin ’s not unsound , either , compare to factory oeuvre . They say it ’s terrible what you end up like , but if you wreak the atmosphere you get pulled like taffy , and if you work in the mill you go deaf as a post ; it ’s always something .
I ’m saving a bit for myself for when I ’m finished with this life , enough for a small house in the Alps . I need some elevation if I ’m going to be landlocked ; the air ’s too heavy down here .
register the balance of“The Zeppelin Conductors ’ Society Annual Gentlemen ’s glob ”
lightspeed magazine
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