Clockpunk Unlimited

These two speculative fiction genres: steampunk and clockpunk seem obsessed with their respective powertrains. Steam power, clockwork? Who cares? The new digital era may as well be powered by vast ranks of donkeys treading on wheels for all we care. The power supply is finally completely and utterly divorced from myriad mechanisms. We can all go back comfortably to the aeons that came before the Victorian production line, and its indentured labourers without worrying a whit. All of the craftwork is now powered by magick as far as we are concerned. Let’s get on with it by fully embracing perpetual energy, a new civil disobedience of antiquated laws of physics.

We can draw inspiration from the well of things that once were clumsy and declumsify them immediately:

Magick hourglasses that turn themselves over, that regulate the flow with invisible hands.

Watches that speak perfectly in English and in their turn understand our alarm-setting and adjustment instructions.

Spyglasses that record the real world, that can transmit simultaneously to other spyglasses. Not a timepiece, but still.

Pendulum clocks doggedly tracking the orbit of Saturn. To the millisecond. Forever. Effectively Mortality Clocks — You will Never Hear their Fourth Chime.

Moon clocks that mirror the moon’s phase, precisely. Reminding us when to act like rural witches and collect herbs or plant new remedies.

Actually I now realise with my initial clockpunk timepiece ideas that still I haven’t completely ignored the drivetrain, my mind is still compelled by ancient rotary constraints. They can go as well!

We demand:

Levitating Things — like elevators but with invisible support.

Reciprocating Things — like trains but wheels unneccessary.

Swarming Things — flocking, things coordinated in their multitudes like birds flying south.

Intelligent Things — observing how we use them, remembering everything, adjusting their own behaviour, trying-to-please-us.

Beautiful Things — at ease with fractal geometry as pioneered by nature, effortlessly intricate, gratifyingly over-complex in unfathomable adherence to chaos theory.

Antique Things — patterns that evolve over centuries, heirlooms that refuse to go stale.

Living Things — Bayesian & neural network things that evolve like infants, painstakingly, into eventual utility, that accrue extreme value, that we can trade with others. That we can cross breed and experiment with diabolically.

Join the movement. It’s not a revolution — that would be far too constrictive.