Gaslight Day 2

…And here’s Dr. Calamity, Aerial Support: Mad Scientists Without Borders. “Need a disaster? We’re there for you!”

Yeah, this is what I do in my spare time. Actually, I started the mad scientist costume as Dr. Horrible cosplay at Bent-Con in Burbank. At the time I was writing a chapter on female mad scientists in webcomics for an academic book on Neo-Victorian Humour. I presented a summary of my work as a panel at Gaslight last year, so I steampunked the Dr. Horrible costume up a bit for the presentation. This year it kinda got out of hand….

That said, there’s a reasonable chance I’m going to expand that work into a scholarly pop-culture book as my sabbatical project.

Today I sat on another panel with the same authors plus one (Eric Hendrix, who wrote the graphic novel The Steam Engines of Oz), where we talked about fantasy vs. science as themes in steampunk literature. It’s fun chatting with authors. I caught Tim Powers as he was leaving the con and thanked him for writing Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, one of my favorites. He said “thank you” and shook my hand, which was interesting, because we hadn’t shaken hands on the two panels we’d been on together! Every writer loves a compliment, I guess. Anyway, I hope I brightened his day a little. (Maybe he was surprised anyone remembered that novel; it’s not one of his better-known ones….)