CORSAIR AND THE SKY PIRATES

In Piggott’s historical SF novel, an airship crew of outlaw freedom fighters opposes evil schemes by Thomas Edison to build a global corporate empire.

The author envisions an epochal meeting in the late 19th century between visionary author Jules Verne and young inventor Nikola Tesla to pool their ideas and create mechanistic miracles made possible by an alien element (“Uriel”) found in fragments shed by a passing comet that provides a seemingly inexhaustible power source. Now, in 1907, a transformed Earth’s skies are crisscrossed by airships, and there are steam-power-armored warriors, cybernetic limbs, punch-card “Thinking Machines,” and other steam- and battery-based technological wonders. The ruthless and amoral Thomas Edison leads a cabal of industrial elites who want to rule the world absolutely—and possibly incite a global Great War between Germany, Britain, and France to bring this about. Opposing them are Tesla’s “Vernians,” among them a flying fleet of rogues tagged as “pirates” (though a Robin Hood comparison is more apt). The most prominent is a mysterious figure nicknamed Corsair, whose multicultural team on the airship Galeru includes a blind Australian Aboriginal navigator and an Asian who styles herself a samurai. The pirates’ sophisticated intel network indicates that Edison’s corporation is developing a nuclear bomb, and the key is harvesting Uriel fragments. A cache may reside in the sacred lands of the Apache Nation in the American West, so the chase is on. The clever and somewhat overstuffed narrative features cameos by or references to real-life figures such as Geronimo, Pancho Villa, Teddy Roosevelt, Jack the Ripper, Henry Ford, William Randolph Hearst, Buffalo Bill, and Mata Hari in addition to characters out of fiction, like ancestors of the Corleone crime family. The heroes and their foes indulge in much speechmaking, even in their duels to the death; fatalities are mostly limited to the numerous “Pinkerton” mercenary troops in the pay of the villains. The narrative should certainly please the steampunk SF readership, especially those fond of Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen cross-media franchise.

A diverting SF romp with touchpoints of Victorian/Edwardian history and popular media.