| Aetheric Mechanics | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Date | October 2008 |
| Publisher | Avatar Press |
| Creative team | |
| Writers | Warren Ellis |
| Pencillers | Gianluca Pagliarani |
| Original publication | |
| Language | English |
| ISBN | 1592910483 |
Aetheric Mechanics is a graphic novella created by Eagle Award-winning writer Warren Ellis. [1] It is 48 pages long, illustrated in black and white by Gianluca Pagliarani, [2] and was published by Avatar Press in October 2008.
Aetheric Mechanics is set in an alternate history March 1907, where steampunk technology is advanced far beyond the technology of the modern real world, including two-way television communications, air- and spacecraft powered by reactionless drives, and large combat mecha. The British Empire (which in this setting, includes realms on other planets) is engaged in a war against Ruritania. The war is not going favourably for Britain, but the British government is covering up just how badly the war is going, including the fact that Ruritania is preparing an invasion of Britain.
Dr. Robert Watcham, a captain and doctor in the British army on the French front, returns to London at the start of the story after his tour of duty is over. His friend, roommate, and colleague, Sax Raker, is the greatest detective in London, and one of the finest minds in Britain, with Watcham having written a number of exploits about him for the popular press. At the time of Watcham's return, Raker has been commissioned by Inspector Jarratt of Scotland Yard to investigate another case. A number of observers witnessed a spectral figure, flickering in and out of existence, murdering an engineer specialising in aetheric mechanics outside of the Royal Society, with several others having gone missing.
Investigating outside the Society, Raker notices traces of mud beneath the victim, then is drawn to a figure standing in the crowd. Raker reveals it to be none other than his persistent rival, Inanna Meyer, whom Watcham (in a period of narration) notes that Raker is obsessed with but is unable to face that fact. Originally surmising that Inanna was hired by the Ruritanian government to destabilise Britain's vital science and engineering community, she reveals that she is now working for the British government: Raker's brother, Dunmow, recruited her into the British Secret Service, and she was also investigating the murder.
With that piece of information, Raker is able to solve the case, deducing that the mud near the victim came from the River Fleet. He therefore surmises that a villain has been kidnapping scientists to create some type of weapon directly beneath London, and the murder was done to silence a failed kidnapping. Raker, Watcham, and Inanna head into the River Fleet's underground channel as the Ruritanian aeroplanes begin a heavy fire-bombing of London in preparation for their final assault on Britain.
Beneath London, they indeed find a large colony of kidnapped scientists, now escaping from the Ruritanian bombing. The "man who wasn't there" is also found, and identifies himself as Jonathan Vogel. Vogel explains that he is actually from the future, and that the reason he is fading in and out if existence is due to an accident he experienced. Vogel was a scientist working on an addition to the Large Hadron Collider which would have enabled ansible-like communication with a space probe being sent to Pluto using a quantum string. However, the "other" end of the string became loose, fixing onto 1905 – the year the special relativity was proposed by Albert Einstein, thus eliminating the theory of aether that had been held before. Vogel was sent back through time, along with his personal handheld computer – containing, among other things, the stories of Sherlock Holmes and Sexton Blake, The Prisoner of Zenda , and a number of old movies and Japanese anime.
Vogel explains that, to 'bridge' between the two realities, the stories contained in his handheld were merged with the real-world 1905, creating the world of Aetheric Mechanics – and that neither Sax, nor Watcham, nor Inanna, nor Ruritania were real. Vogel states that the flickering is him being stranded between two worlds, and he has constructed a computer which, within a few hours, will finish its calculation to repair the damage caused to time, allowing Vogel to return home by destroying the fictional world he created.
Seeing that as a chance to prevent Britain's destruction by Ruritania, Inanna and Watcham agree to let Vogel continue. They do not notice that Raker is horrified and outraged at the thought of not existing. Raker removes his pistol and shoots Vogel in the chest, killing him. He explains that he has finally realised the one thing he can't do: bear to think of a world where Inanna doesn't exist. Leaving Inanna and Watcham dumbstruck behind him, Raker races back through the tunnels below London, promising that using his intellect, he will still manage to find a way to prevent Britain from losing the war.
Luminiferous aether or ether was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space, something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum of luminiferous aether, rather than a spatial vacuum, provided the theoretical medium that was required by wave theories of light.
Ivor Novello was a Welsh actor, dramatist, singer and composer who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century.
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a book on theoretical cosmology by English physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who had no prior knowledge of physics.
The Prisoner of Zenda is an 1894 adventure novel by Anthony Hope, in which the King of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus is unable to attend the ceremony. Political forces within the realm are such that, in order for the king to retain the crown, his coronation must proceed. Fortuitously, an English gentleman on holiday in Ruritania who resembles the monarch is persuaded to act as his political decoy in an effort to save the unstable political situation of the interregnum.
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He derived the Lorentz transformation of the special theory of relativity, as well as the Lorentz force, which describes the combined electric and magnetic forces acting on a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. Lorentz was also responsible for the Lorentz oscillator model, a classical model used to describe the anomalous dispersion observed in dielectric materials when the driving frequency of the electric field was near the resonant frequency, resulting in abnormal refractive indices.
Ruritania is a fictional country, originally located in central Europe as a setting for novels by Anthony Hope, such as The Prisoner of Zenda (1894). Nowadays the term connotes a quaint minor European country, or is used as a placeholder name for an unspecified country in academic discussions. The first known use of the demonym Ruritanian was in 1896.
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. is a 1974 novel by American writer Nicholas Meyer. It is written as a pastiche of a Sherlock Holmes adventure, and was made into a film of the same name in 1976.
The history of special relativity consists of many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. It culminated in the theory of special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein and subsequent work of Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others.
The deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, also known as Hempel's model, the Hempel–Oppenheim model, the Popper–Hempel model, or the covering law model, is a formal view of scientifically answering questions asking, "Why...?". The DN model poses scientific explanation as a deductive structure, one where truth of its premises entails truth of its conclusion, hinged on accurate prediction or postdiction of the phenomenon to be explained.
According to ancient and medieval science, aether, also known as the fifth element, quintessence, void, space or sky, is the material that fills the region of the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere. The concept of aether was used in several theories to explain several natural phenomena, such as the propagation of light and gravity. In the late 19th century, physicists postulated that aether permeated space, providing a medium through which light could travel in a vacuum, but evidence for the presence of such a medium was not found in the Michelson–Morley experiment, and this result has been interpreted to mean that no luminiferous aether exists.
In physics, aether theories propose the existence of a medium, a space-filling substance or field as a transmission medium for the propagation of electromagnetic or gravitational forces. "Since the development of special relativity, theories using a substantial aether fell out of use in modern physics, and are now replaced by more abstract models."
What is now often called Lorentz ether theory (LET) has its roots in Hendrik Lorentz's "theory of electrons", which marked the end of the development of the classical aether theories at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Burney Relief is a Mesopotamian terracotta plaque in high relief of the Isin-Larsa period or Old-Babylonian period, depicting a winged, nude, goddess-like figure with bird's talons, flanked by owls, and perched upon two lions.
The Prisoner of Zenda is a 1979 American comedy film directed by Richard Quine that stars Peter Sellers, Lynne Frederick, Lionel Jeffries, Elke Sommer, Gregory Sierra, Jeremy Kemp, and Catherine Schell. It is adapted from the 1894 adventure novel by Anthony Hope. The novel tells the story of a man who has to impersonate a king, whom he closely resembles, when the king is abducted by enemies on the eve of his coronation. In 1952, an earlier adaptation of the story was made into a film starring Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger, and directed by Richard Thorpe.
"Apparat Singles Group", a.k.a. "Apparat", is a fictional comic book line and a label used to publish four one-shot comic books created by Warren Ellis and published by Avatar Press.
Dumuzid or Dumuzi or Tammuz, known to the Sumerians as Dumuzid the Shepherd and to the Canaanites as Adon, is an ancient Mesopotamian and Levantine deity associated with agriculture and shepherds, who was also the first and primary consort of the goddess Inanna. In Sumerian mythology, Dumuzid's sister was Geshtinanna, the goddess of agriculture, fertility, and dream interpretation. In the Sumerian King List, Dumuzid is listed as an antediluvian king of the city of Bad-tibira and also an early king of the city of Uruk.
Glamorous Night is a musical with a book and music by Ivor Novello and lyrics by Christopher Hassall, Novello's collaborator in six of the eight Novello musicals staged between 1935 and 1951. Glamorous Night was the first of several Novello musicals in the 1930s given an expensive, spectacular production, with several scene changes and a large cast, including many extras and dancers. Scenes included villas on a suburban street where a horse-drawn carriage was driven, the set of an operetta performed in the fictional country of Krasnia, shipboard skating and assassination scenes, the sinking of the ship, a bustling gypsy wedding and a Royal ballroom.
Ignition City is a five-issue science fiction comic book limited series, written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Gianluca Pagliarani. It was published in 2009 by American company Avatar Press.
James Bond is a line of spy thriller comic book titles by Dynamite Entertainment featuring the eponymous character originally created by Ian Fleming. It is licensed by Ian Fleming Publications and debuted in November 2015. Additional series and graphic novels are planned.
A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity is any of three books written by British mathematician Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker FRS FRSE on the history of electromagnetic theory, covering the development of classical electromagnetism, optics, and aether theories. The book's first edition, subtitled from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1910 by Longmans, Green. The book covers the history of aether theories and the development of electromagnetic theory up to the 20th century. A second, extended and revised, edition consisting of two volumes was released in the early 1950s by Thomas Nelson, expanding the book's scope to include the first quarter of the 20th century. The first volume, subtitled The Classical Theories, was published in 1951 and served as a revised and updated edition to the first book. The second volume, subtitled The Modern Theories (1900–1926), was published two years later in 1953, extended this work covering the years 1900 to 1926. Notwithstanding a notorious controversy on Whittaker's views on the history of special relativity, covered in volume two of the second edition, the books are considered authoritative references on the history of electricity and magnetism as well as classics in the history of physics.
