Reading List: Superhero Fiction

“Twin daughters,” Doctor Fantastik said. “That’s very sad. A friend of yours?”
“I bring him spices from the Southern Isles when I come up from there. Saves him on the merchanting mark-up.”
“And the duty, no doubt,” Doctor Fantastik said.
The sailor shrugged. “I’ll give you the address, and you tell ’em Cyril sent ya. They’ll see to my fee. They’re right desperate.”
“How so?”
“At least one of the girls been turned poltergeist,” Cyril said.

“Not both?”
“I wouldn’t believe it of Ellie, she was sweet as punch,” Cyril said. “But that Kim, she was a handful and half of hellion. If the poltergeist’s one of them ““ and the timing’s right as rain for that ““ my money’s on Kim.”
“I’ve extracted poltergeists before,” the doctor said reflectively. He fingered the pin on his lapel.
The girl leaned close. “You detach them,” she said.
He nodded.
“You put them in bottles.” Her breathing quickened and she licked her smile wider.
“Parts of them, certainly,” the doctor said. “I capture certain effluences that are useful in some experiments.”
He looked at the sailor, who was taking quick gulps of his fish tea. Dots of green seaweed clung to his moustache.
The girl pursed her lips as the doctor turned back to her, ignoring the man. His tone when he addressed her was as firm as though he were instructing a dimwitted and unruly child. “Go and find us a place to sleep tonight, Charlotte. Make sure that the rooms are clean and that the fees are under a silver apiece.”
She slid from her seat with an attitude of resignation, ignoring the newspaper, which the man was currently folding into a new shape as though to catch her notice. Her silk skirts rustled, nigh-inaudible ““ or perhaps that was her sigh? ““ as she moved back to the door.
The man gave up on folding his newspaper and laid it down on the counter in front of him, extracting his cup of fish tea from among the folds. “She your apprentice?” he asked.
Doctor Fantastik shook his head, indicating with a delicate shudder the impracticality of such a notion.
“Your daughter?”
“Charlotte is a patient who I am treating for a pronounced and malignant affliction,” the doctor said mournfully.
“A ghost affliction?”
“Indeed.”

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I’ve been writing a lot in a steampunk world lately; this is the fourth story set in this world. The passengers are headed to Seattle, but a version much grimier and war-ridden than our own. The Civil War is three years over; another war, over a substance called phlogiston, has arisen.

Jemina noticed the Very Small Person the moment she entered the train.The child paused in the doorway to survey the car before glancing down at her ticket and then at the other half of the hard wooden bench, high-backed, its shellac peeling, that Jemina sat on. Jemina tucked the macrame bag beside her in with her elbow.

The child was one of the last on, which was why Jemina had been hoping against hope to have the bench to herself, at least all the two day trip to Kansas city. The train began to roll forward, a hoot of steam from the engine, a bell clang from the caboose at the back of the train, the rumble underfoot making the little girl pick her way with extra caution, balancing the small black suitcase in one hand against the pillowy cloth bag in the other.

She arrived mid-car beside Jemina and nodded at her as she struggled briefly to hoist her suitcase up before the elderly man across the man did it for her. She plumped the cloth bag in the corner between sidearm and back and sat down with a little noise of delight as she looked around. Catching herself at the noise, she blushed, fixed her gaze sternly forward as she folded her hands in her lap, and peeped at Jemina sidelong.

Jemina tried to imagine how she might appear. She knew herself thin but nicely dressed and pale-skinned. The lace at her throat was Bruges, the cross around her neck gold. She looked like a school-teacher, she imagined, and not a particularly nice one. She felt her lips thin further at the thought.

The child, interpreting the flattening of Jemina’s mouth for disapproval, fished in her bag and took out a small blackbound Bible. She began to read.

“Oh, it’s all right,” Jemina said. Her boldness surprised her, but this was a child, after all. “I’m Jemina Iarainn and I’m a scientist, headed to work at the War Institute in Seattle. Who are you are where are you going?”

The smile bestowed on her could have lit a room. The Bible slid back into the bag. “Oh thank goodness! I’m Laurel Finch and this is my very first train ride ever, up to Seattle too, and I was hoping I’d have an agreeable companion on my voyage.”

She stumbled a little over the solemnity in the last words. Jemina said, “Trips are much, much nicer with someone to talk to. Where are you going in Seattle? To visit relatives?”

“To the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home there,” Laurel said, and her mouth drooped before she summoned her smile again. “I’ve been staying with my uncle for the last three years but he is traveling to China as an ambassador. It’s all right, he’ll come back for me, but in the meantime I’m to live there for a few years.”

“Seattle is very nice,” Jemina said. Her mind raced along the years before this child, living among orphans with no chance of adoption herself. Bleak, as bleak as any of Jemina’s childhood years. “You will meet Princess Angeline, Chief Seattle’s daughter. She lives down near the market and is a real Indian princess.”
“Do you know Seattle well?”

Jemina shook her head, then nodded. “My twin sister is out there already and she has been writing me long letters.”

“Is she also a scientist?”

“She writes for the newspaper.”

“Oh! Like Nellie Bly!” Laurel clapped her hands and Jemina sighed internally. A daredevil reporter was more exciting than a scientist, but she was the one constructing giant killing war machines, after all, even though she was not at liberty to talk about any of that.