Historical Background Notes
The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum contains a variety of historical and scientific references, abstruse jargon, and intentional anachronisms. To enhance the reader’s appreciation of the aforementioned story elements, a more or less scholarly examination of them is presented below. It should be noted that these remarks represent not exhaustive research but good faith attempts at historical accuracy, and that they have been written predominantly in passive voice so as to appear more scholarly than they really are.
Chapter 2
Phineas Magnetron refers to a "corpse-littered battlefield," one of several such American Civil War sites of the Battle of Chancellorsville, fought in Virginia in early May of 1863. This prolonged, bloody engagement was a decisive victory for Robert E. Lee’s Northern Virginia Army over Hooker’s much larger infantry and cavalry forces. Unfortunately for the South, storied general Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded in the battle as well.
The Lasiodora parahybana tarantula used in Magnetron’s initiation ritual is an exceptionally large spider also known as the Brazilian Salmon Pink Bird-eating Tarantula. L. parahybana have been known to sport one-inch fangs and reach leg spans in excess of eleven inches. As a point of historical fact, the L. parahybana was not discovered by zoologists until 1917, but the spiny creature proved too compelling to be edited from the final manuscript, a rare literary instance of an anachronistic arachnid.
The Thrale’s Russian Imperial Stout beer mentioned in regards to Magnetron's initiation ritual may be an anachronism, as Henry Thrale’s Anchor Brewery was sold after his death to Barclay’s of banking fame. Regrettably, the author’s research failed to determine when the name of this historic brew was changed, as eventually came to pass. Also, some beer historians are skeptical that the designation “Russian Imperial Stout” was used before 1900. In the end, the lyrical quality of "Thrale’s Russian Imperial Stout" was deemed too alluring to resist and survived an otherwise ruthless editing session.
Chapter 5
The character General Lucian Southwick was inspired by resolute Confederate General Joseph Shelby, Texas Governor Pendleton Murrah, and others who similarly kept fighting well after the Civil War had drawn to a close; also by Japanese Lt. Hiroo Onoda, who refused to believe that World War II had ended and fought the good fight for twenty-nine years after his comrades had called it quits.
The quotation on Dr. Hogalum’s headstone was indeed uttered by Henry David Thoreau, who died at the age of 44 of tuberculosis. Although quite ill, he continued to write extensively and take visitors, including the Quaker abolitionist Parker Pillsbury, who reportedly prompted him for theories on the afterlife, to which he replied, “Oh, one world at a time.” Thoreau died a few days later, uttering his final words: “Moose… Indian.”
Chapters 8-9
Petión’s voodou (voodoo) lingo represents reasonably accurate usage of such terms and “reasoning” on such topics. A houngan is a voodou priest, whereas a bokor delves into the darker aspects, including the reanimation of the dead. The lwa (also called loa), or spirit, is not analogous to a person’s “soul,” as in major religions, but is closer to an angel, an intermediary entity between humans and Bondye, the Creator. Lwa are summoned by a voodou priest, whereupon they “mount” a nearby participant, in this case, the disembodied head of Dr. Hogalum.
Chapter 10
Magnetron’s remarks regarding “the brain’s ability to direct the body with small electrical discharges” have a historical context dating back to Luigi Galvani’s 18th Century frog-leg experiments in “animal electricity,” which in turn spurred Alessandro Volta to invent the first battery. In Magnetron’s time, Liverpool physician Richard Caton had observed electrical activity in animal brains, although the first electroencephalogram was not recorded until 1912.
Chapter 13
Although Magnetron marks September 30, 1877 as the date of the first manned spaceflight, history records that the first manmade object in space was a V-2 rocket launched by Germany in October of 1942, some 65 years after Magnetron’s notable—but secret—achievement. History credits Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin as the first man in space in 1961.
Chapter 14
The 1825 Perrier-Jouët champagne Mrs. Mackenzie retrieves from the wine cellar is historically accurate, and would have been a very fine sixty-two-year-old bottle of champagne when Magnetron smashed it across the bow of the Caelestis. Indeed, one of the last remaining bottles of this vintage was uncorked in 2009 for a “liquid history” tasting by wine experts, one of whom described the still-bubbly libation as “generous with an intense nose.”
Chapter 16
Coburn’s revolver is a Belgian-made LeFaucheux with twenty chambers and two over-and-under barrels firing 7mm pinfire cartridges. Fully loaded, it weighed almost three pounds. This model saw some limited usage in the final year of the American Civil War, far less than the earlier LeFaucheux .44 caliber six-shot revolver which was imported by the tens of thousands by both the Union and Confederate armies.
Chapters 18-19
Magnetron was well ahead of his contemporaries with his wireless telegraph, which improved on existing telegraphy by replacing transmission wires with electromagnetic waves. He accomplished this notable feat fifteen years before Nikola Tesla’s public demonstration of such a device. The historical record is deafeningly silent with regard to any collaboration between the two men.
About The Magnetron Chronicles
The Magnetron Chronicles is a trilogy in fifteen parts, a multi-volume series of steampunk tales. It would be wise to read every last one of them, in the correct sequence of course! Please note that Book 1: Rise of the Hogalum Society contains all of the first five individual volumes as listed below.
Book I: Rise of the Hogalum Society
Vol. 1: The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum
Vol. 2: Spring-heeled Jack and the President’s Ring
Vol. 3: Escape from Xanadu
Vol. 4: High Crimes and Miscreants
Vol. 5: Luftigel and Doppelgänger
Book II: The Quest for Ultima Thule (wt)
Vol. 6: The Kraken of Cape Farewell (Coming 2013)
Vol. 7: The Flying Trains of Oaxaca (tba)
Vol. 8: The Curse of Al-Andalus (tba)
Vol. 9: The Black Colonel’s Labyrinth (tba)
Vol. 10: Summit at Nazca (tba)
Book III: Apogee and Perigee (wt)
Vol. 11: The Affine Connection (wt)
Vol. 12: The Dragons of Takamatsu (wt)
Vol. 13: The Flower Warriors (wt)
Vol. 14: The Universal Germ (wt)
Vol. 15: The Möbius Transformation (wt)
(wt) Working title
(tba) Publication date to be announced
Did you enjoy this volume of The Magnetron Chronicles? If so, please rate it at Amazon, Goodreads, and Shelfari. You are cordially invited to visit the official Magnetron Chronicles website to get advance notice of new installments in the series, and gain trivial insights into the apocryphal life and times of Phineas J. Magnetron and his larger-than-life contemporaries.
About the Author
D. 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.
You can follow him at Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Wattpad, and AuthorsDen.
Acknowledgments
The Magnetron Chronicles series
was birthed and nurtured in an incubator known briefly as “The Hogalum Society Travelling Air Show and Speculative Fiction Workshoppe,” an informal group collaboration by the author, D. L. Mackenzie, and Jeffrey Nerone, John Kalman, and Curt Dänhauser. I am deeply indebted to all of these men, the original Hogalum Society.
Many major characters are based on character sketches by Mr. Nerone, and several situations and story elements were suggested by Mr. Nerone as well. The Secret Journals of Phineas J. Magnetron—the web serial from which The Magnetron Chronicles series is adapted—was created, developed, and written by D. L. Mackenzie with frequent and invaluable help from Mr. Nerone, and less frequent but no less invaluable input from Messrs. Dänhauser and Kalman. Thanks, guys. This simply wouldn’t have happened without you.
Special thanks to Gabriela Holderegger Pajarola at Lia Rumantscha for her help with the Romansh language, and to John Kalman for help with every other language.
Thanks also to my wife Gina, a practical woman to whom my writing is unintelligible gibberish, but who nonetheless believes with all her heart that I am the finest writer the world will ever know.
And a special words-cannot-convey kind of thanks to my mom, who believed in me when I said I was going to become a writer at my advanced age and who never stopped encouraging me. I wish you were here to read this, Mom.
Finally, I want to thank my dad, who willingly turned his comfortable life upside-down to become part of my life once again, and who not only encourages my writing but actually reads the stuff.
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