{"id":27628,"date":"2024-11-13T15:33:26","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T20:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?page_id=27628"},"modified":"2025-08-20T12:54:47","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T16:54:47","slug":"23kpc-a-readers-guide","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/23kpc-a-readers-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8217;23kpc&#8217;: A Reader&#8217;s Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/72c590ad-c674-437d-8df9-f19921717ddd.jpeg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/72c590ad-c674-437d-8df9-f19921717ddd.jpeg?resize=1024%2C1024&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-27633\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/72c590ad-c674-437d-8df9-f19921717ddd.jpeg?w=1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/72c590ad-c674-437d-8df9-f19921717ddd.jpeg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/72c590ad-c674-437d-8df9-f19921717ddd.jpeg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/72c590ad-c674-437d-8df9-f19921717ddd.jpeg?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em data-afsc-id=\"13480\">[Image: one of the alternatives the Bing AI image-generation program offered me when prompted, &#8220;a single stained glass window pane showing the lobby of a spaceship.&#8221; Which may not make much (if any) sense to you, unless you&#8217;re familiar with the context of my novel-in-progress called <\/em>23kpc<em data-afsc-id=\"13594\">. If you&#8217;re <\/em>not<em data-afsc-id=\"13594\"> familiar with that context, I direct your attention to <a href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.substack.com\/s\/23kpc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the weekly installments archived over on Substack<\/a>. Note that the first seven chapters are freely accessible to all readers; the remainders, as of January 2025, require a paid (or comped) subscription. As of March, 2025, the archive includes nearly 40 chapters of <\/em>23kpc<em> and a long short story, &#8220;Open and Shut,&#8221; in which I first explored the world of the novel. The three installments of &#8220;Open and Shut,&#8221; like the first seven chapters of <\/em>23kpc <em>itself, are free to read.<\/em>]\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"toc\">Table of Contents:<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li id=\"the-time\"><a href=\"#the-time\">The time<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#the-setting\">The setting and miscellaneous details<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a data-afsc-id=\"10162\" href=\"#main-characters\">Main characters<\/a>: Guy and Missy Landis; Durwood; Matty Toricelli<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a data-afsc-id=\"10480\" href=\"#secondary-characters\">Secondary (recurring) characters<\/a>: Daina and Idris Cheruiyot; Mercy Bacall; Nathan Swarthout<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a data-afsc-id=\"10649\" href=\"#other-characters\">Other notable characters<\/a>: Tyler Morton; Aloysius (Al) Morton; Warden (Butch) Dalthrop; Jilly Eckles; Orono Jones; Bel Za; Jincks Olderssen<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#about-decopunk\">About <em>Decopunk<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#avenue5\">About <em>Avenue 5<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"thetime\">The time:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>All action in the story occurs <strong>far in the future \u2014 the twenty-<em>N<\/em>th century, let\u2019s say<\/strong>. But it\u2019s a future with a great fondness for past moments in Western &#8212; particularly American, particularly Hollywood&#8217;s view of American &#8212; culture, as preserved in the art, architecture, styles of interaction, and the very language of the characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-setting\">The setting and miscellaneous details:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The events of <em data-afsc-id=\"13920\">23kpc<\/em> take place aboard <strong data-afsc-id=\"13921\">the <em data-afsc-id=\"13922\">ISS Tascheter<\/em><\/strong>, a onetime asteroid retrofitted as a star-cruising luxury liner \u2014 headed to an unspecified destination on the far side of the Milky Way galaxy. (\u201cTascheter\u201d was in ancient Persia the name of the star more recently called Aldebaran; the <em data-afsc-id=\"13923\">ISS Tascheter<\/em>, however, is not headed in Aldebaran&#8217;s direction.) The <em data-afsc-id=\"13924\">Tascheter<\/em> is one of about twenty such asteroids-<em>cum<\/em>-starcruisers our protagonists know about, all launched over the course of a couple decades as a means of carrying human civilization (such as it is) away from Earth and to distant stars. It thus is an example of the &#8220;generation starship&#8221; type of vessels possibly familiar to science-fiction readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ship has already been in transit for decades, perhaps a century or more. The \u201c23kpc\u201d of the story\u2019s title refers to the distance the ship is expected to travel: <em>twenty-three kiloparsecs<\/em>, roughly three-quarters of the way in a straight line across the galaxy. (The actual course will not describe a straight line, however &#8212; more like a smooth arc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <em>Tascheter<\/em> is, roughly speaking, a mile-wide (<em>i.e.<\/em>, 1.6 kilometers) sphere, divided into many decks of various purposes: residential decks of staterooms, obviously, but also \u201cneighborhood\u201d decks resembling those back on Earth. (A neighborhood deck might be devoted to art and cultural experiences, for instance, or to restaurants and entertainment, and so on, or to schools and libraries, and might include parks.) In its original, pre-retrofit form, it was a smaller cousin of an asteroid called 1986 DA: mostly metallic rather than rock, but with most of the metals (other than in the mines) stripped away to form the rooms and corridors of the ship. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/(6178)_1986_DA#Mining_considerations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Per Wikipedia<\/a>, as of 2024 the value of the metals within 1986 DA exceeded three trillion US dollars: much incentive for the firm &#8220;building&#8221; such a vessel, let alone a whole fleet of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are also decks devoted to the ship\u2019s day-to-day functioning: <em>letter<\/em>decks, like E (for \u201cEngineering\u201d) deck, and the mines which provide the <em>Tascheter<\/em>\u2019s fuel and other raw materials. For a very rough approximation of how this would look, see <a href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa32ede7c-e77d-4dda-b1bd-8bb3e1738cd0_1370x2048.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">this stylized 1950s-era image<\/a> (which headed <a href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.substack.com\/p\/resuscitating-an-inert-narrative\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the first post in the <em>23kpc<\/em> series<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Specific named locales aboard the ship<\/strong> (roughly in the order encountered during the story):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>SloGo<\/strong>: a New Orleans-type &#8220;neighborhood&#8221; consisting of restaurants, shops, and storage facilities. It seems a bit down-at-the-heels but charming; the &#8220;building&#8221; exteriors radiate an 18th-Century, Deep-South-USA aesthetic, and there are small trees planted here and there along the pavements. Depending on the time of day, the artificial lighting may be dim (provided mostly by what seem to be cast-iron street lamps), and the atmosphere is probably maintained at a higher than usual temperature and humidity.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Jellyroll<\/strong>: a French Quarter(ish) bar and restaurant, operated by Al Morton.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The mines<\/strong>: the very large lower portion of the <em>Tascheter<\/em>, which provides the fuel used by the ship&#8217;s engines. They also provide limited amounts of water and other raw materials.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Playground in the Park<\/strong>: a theater in the center of a large shipboard park; at the time the story takes place, it&#8217;s featuring a production of Thornton Wilder&#8217;s <em>Our Town<\/em>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>E Deck<\/strong>: the &#8220;E&#8221; is for &#8220;Engineering,&#8221; the workplace of Tyler Morton, Bel Za, and other engineering staff. Bel Za is the deck chief; Orono Jones, the chief engineer.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>AldeBAR<\/strong>: a dining-and-drinking (especially vice-versa) establishment affording lots of spots for quiet and dim-lit conversation. A quiet jazz combo is often set up in one corner. The ceiling is a domed surface built of viewing screens; always displayed there is the simulated sky from the perspective of the star we commonly call Aldebaran (AKA, to the Persians, <em>Tascheter<\/em>).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The Midship Diner<\/strong> (or simply <strong>The Midship<\/strong>): a chain restaurant. There&#8217;s a Midship on every residential deck, and they all offer the same menu: a whole range of items, from breakfasts, lunches, and dinner to soups, salads, light snacks, and desserts. Just like, well, a diner.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The Rijksmuseum<\/strong>: a &#8220;virtual art museum&#8221; aboard the <em>Tascheter<\/em> (actually, apparently aboard <em>every<\/em> ship in the asteroids-as-cruise-ships fleet). All the wall displays are digital display screens, showing high-resolution images of real works of art; all the &#8220;sculptures&#8221; are high-res holographs &#8220;mounted on&#8221; or floating over pedestals. This enables the special exhibits to be changed quickly, and also to be temporarily manipulated &#8212; zoomed in and out, cropped, etc. &#8212; to aid in viewing. Besides classic works from back on Earth, the Rijksmuseum also features works created by artists among the <em>Tascheter<\/em>&#8216;s passengers and crew.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The Captain&#8217;s quarters:<\/strong> not so much a residential facility as a social one &#8212; a place where &#8220;events&#8221; (like <em>meet-and-greet-the-Captain<\/em> parties, wedding receptions, etc.) can be hosted. It presumably adjoins the Captain&#8217;s actual living quarters, and is just a short distance from the ship&#8217;s actual &#8220;bridge.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The bridge:<\/strong> the ship&#8217;s command-and-control electronic nerve center, situated literally in the center of the former asteroid and just a short distance from the Captain&#8217;s quarters. It&#8217;s a cross between a powerful server farm and an old-fashioned <em>Star Trek<\/em>-type bridge. To protect the equipment, unauthorized crew and passengers may proceed only along a slightly padded walkway which wends across the floor; to either side of the walkway is a bright yellow line across which such parties can&#8217;t cross without being briefly zapped into unconsciousness.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The total population of the ship<\/strong> numbers around 100,000. People die and are born at the same rate as back on Earth, so the population varies very little over time. (The population sees very occasional additions and subtractions when the Tascheter nears an inhabited planet.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Passengers and crew survive the long interstellar journey, while still living \u201cnormal\u201d lives, by one of two ways: dorming or rebooting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong data-afsc-id=\"14392\">The dorming population<\/strong> periodically hibernates in \u201cdorming cylinders\u201d in their staterooms, in a sort of suspended animation, for weeks, months, or even longer at a time. Their perception of the experience is that they\u2019ve simply slept a regular night. (And between dorming sessions, of course, they do follow regular circadian waking-and-sleeping routines.) The dormers are broken up into many separate cycles of people on a given schedule, so you always \u201cgo to sleep\u201d and \u201cwake up\u201d with the same dormers you knew from the start of the cruise. It also ensures that the ship is always &#8220;tended&#8221; (as well as appreciated) by about the same number of passengers and crew, while the rest sleep.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong data-afsc-id=\"14826\">Reboots<\/strong> are clones, not dorming at all. Instead, when they tire of existence and on no particular schedule, they simply, well, <em>start living all over again<\/em> in a brand-new body. Their minds and memories likewise reset to the state they were in at the time of their cloning. For obvious reasons, reboots tend to be less patient, even flightier than dormers (and, it&#8217;s fair to say, they tend not to learn from past mistakes). While they may develop deep friendships and even loves during the cruise, when they \u201cwake up\u201d post-reboot their emotional and cognitive slates are all back at Ground Zero: on page 1, so to speak.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>A special class of passengers are the &#8220;corporate diplomats&#8221; (like <a href=\"#dandi\">Daina and Idris<\/a> in <em>23kpc<\/em>) &#8212; representatives of EnvoixRy, the company which built the asteroid fleet. Such folks sometimes dorm and sometimes reboot, as the occasion warrants; this enables the ones from a given shift of dormers to interact with the ones from other shifts, thus increasing their base of knowledge about everything that&#8217;s going on within the ship over time. Brief passages in <em>23kpc<\/em> suggest that these diplomats occasionally transfer to other ships in the fleet, although how this is managed is a bit vague. (The asteroids\/ships, after all, are moving too fast to make &#8220;docking&#8221; at a planet very practical: docking would require a lot of deceleration and re-acceleration, thus wasting a lot of fuel.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Miscellaneous terminology\/concepts:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Pooches:<\/strong> see <a href=\"#durwood\">the description of Durwood, below<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>v-coms<\/strong>: hand-held communication devices equipped with digital screens, something between cell-phones and full-blown computers<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>wikons<\/strong>: &#8220;information beacons&#8221; scattered through space (one dropped every light year&#8217;s distance) by passing starliners. Their purpose is to spread human knowledge and culture across the galaxy &#8212; as a ship passes a wikon, it both (a) dumps its own information load to the wikon, and (b) receives whatever else the wikon is transmitting after having gotten it from previous ships.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><em>tr\u00fa<\/em>: <\/strong>a word in the Icelandic language which translates roughly to <em>false<\/em>, <em>fiction<\/em>, <em>faith<\/em> &#8212; all those concepts which seem diametrically opposed in meaning to the English word <em>true<\/em> (suggesting <em>factual<\/em>, <em>scientific<\/em>, and so on).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>remote leashes:<\/strong> like the electronic-device remote controls of earlier centuries &#8212; small, handheld, easily transported, and wireless &#8212; but restricted to the control of only one sort of device: Pooches, like Durwood (see below). Each leash is paired to a specific Pooch.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Personas:<\/strong> &#8220;quantum-electronic behavioral subsystems on a chip,&#8221; <em>i.e.<\/em>, miniature microchips specifically engineered to govern how Pooches behave. The psyches of Pooches, like those of their flesh-and-blood counterparts, are a mashup of common elements (barking, tail-wagging, etc.) but shaded by a plethora of idiosyncratic tics such curiosity, receptivity to strangers and other Pooches, and so on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>[<a href=\"#toc\">back to Table of Contents<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"main-characters\">Main characters:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Guy and Missy Landis:<\/strong> private investigators even when they were back on Earth \u2014 and our protagonists. (Guy, in fact, is the narrator.) We don\u2019t know much about Guy\u2019s background; in general, though, if you know the premise of the old <em>The Thin Man<\/em> films, you should be comfortable without much more information about him. (In particular, the author hopes you can hear William Powell speaking much of Guy\u2019s dialogue and narration.) But we do know that Missy\u2019s family is ridiculously wealthy \u2014 in fact, the family&#8217;s company fitted out the <em>Tascheter<\/em> (after first mining much of its interior for precious metals). \u201cWealth\u201d doesn\u2019t mean much on a cruise like this, but Missy is held in high regard, especially among the crew, because of her family history.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li id=\"durwood\"><strong data-afsc-id=\"15481\">Durwood:<\/strong> Guy and Missy\u2019s \u201cPooch\u201d \u2014 a spaniel-sized, furry, electromechanical companion. (Guy once characterizes Durwood as their &#8220;motley ragamuffin,&#8221; if that helps.) Pooches serve the same emotional purposes for humans on the <em data-afsc-id=\"15482\">Tascheter<\/em> as their real live counterparts did on Earth. (Again referring to <em data-afsc-id=\"15483\">The Thin Man<\/em>: think of the dog <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Skippy_(dog)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Asta<\/a>.) But Pooches have some other useful and decidedly non-canine abilities as well \u2014 levitation, for instance \u2014 and of course, they don\u2019t need to breathe, or to be fed (just recharged), watered, or, well, <em data-afsc-id=\"15484\">cleaned up after<\/em>. Only dorming passengers have Pooches, and, while any of its associated humans are dorming, a Pooch occupies a dumbwaiter in the suite. (From there, it can be taken to a maintenance deck for refurbishing as needed.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Matthew (Matty) Toricelli:<\/strong> the purser on Guy and Missy\u2019s residential deck, and probably their best friend. Pursers are among the most important crew aboard in regular contact with passengers: each knows a lot about the people on their deck and about how the ship functions \u2014 and what they <em>don\u2019t<\/em> know, they can almost always more easily learn than can regular passengers. Matty is thus not just a good friend, but a valuable resource in their investigation. He is not a fan of Pooches, who can sometimes introduce&#8230; <em>disorder<\/em> to shipboard routines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>[<a href=\"#toc\">back to Table of Contents<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"secondary-characters\">Secondary (recurring) characters:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li id=\"dandi\"><strong data-afsc-id=\"15927\">Daina and Idris Cheruiyot:<\/strong> spacegoing diplomats\/trade ambassadors\/<em data-afsc-id=\"15928\">whatever<\/em>. They\u2019re actually employed not by one or more governments but by a company, sort of, called EnvoixRY \u2014 a subsidiary of the company which built and launched the <em data-afsc-id=\"15929\">Tascheter<\/em> and its siblings in the asteroid fleet. (The &#8220;RY&#8221; of the name is a common Finnish abbreviation for a <em><strong>r<\/strong>ekister\u00f6ity <strong>y<\/strong>hdistys<\/em> &#8212; a &#8220;registered association,&#8221; that is, a non-profit corporation.) D&amp;I (as everyone calls them collectively) are very elegant, always well-dressed, attractive in pretty much any way that humans can be considered attractive \u2014 and (because of their work) very well-informed about things not just aboard the ship, but around the galaxy. They\u2019re also exempt from the dorm-cycling\/rebooting schedules of the other passengers and the crew.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Mercy Bacall:<\/strong> Guy and Missy\u2019s next-door neighbor and friend, a rebooter with a taste for \u2014 oh, say \u2014 <em>evening cocktails and whatever might follow<\/em>. Although free to reboot whenever and however often she\u2019d like, Mercy always likes to be awake for Guy, Missy, and Matty\u2019s dorm cycle: their adventures are just too, y\u2019know, <em>interesting<\/em> to be missed. As a reboot, especially a gossipy and well-connected one with a preference for dorm-cycling companions of a certain, well, <em>caliber<\/em>, Mercy is also a meticulously organized record-keeper of things which happen and the people they happen to.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>(Dr.) Nathan Swarthout:<\/strong> a &#8220;Pooch neuropsychiatrist,&#8221; for want of a better term &#8212; a specialist with quantum-electronics training who understands what makes Pooches behave as they do, and thus can diagnose and (maybe) &#8220;fix&#8221; them when they seem to be behaving &#8220;wrongly&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><s>Angela<\/s> Letitia (&#8220;<s>Ange<\/s> Lets&#8221;) Chilmark:<\/strong> Missy&#8217;s favorite aunt &#8212; the &#8220;fun&#8221; one.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>[<a href=\"#toc\">back to Table of Contents<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"other-characters\">Other notable characters:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Roughly in order of appearance <em>(list added to as they show up or are otherwise introduced)<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Tyler Morton:<\/strong> a propulsion engineer on the ship, whose disappearance sets the plot in motion<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Aloysius (Al) Morton:<\/strong> Tyler\u2019s brother, a friend of Matty\u2019s, and proprietor of a restaurant named Jellyroll in a French Quarter-style neighborhood called SloGo<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Warden (Butch) Dalthrop:<\/strong> deck chief in the level of the ship\u2019s mine where Tyler Morton&#8217;\u2019s spacesuited body is found<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Jilly Eckles:<\/strong> rebooting actress and love interest (before he disappeared) to Tyler Morton<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Orono &#8220;Orrie&#8221; Jones:<\/strong> Tyler Morton\u2019s supervisor in Engineering, although a communications engineer rather than a specialist in propulsion<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Bel Za:<\/strong> deck chief on the Engineering deck and an acquaintance of Matty\u2019s<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Jincks Olderssen:<\/strong> the captain of the <em>ISS Tascheter<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Gretl:<\/strong> Tyler Morton&#8217;s one-time Pooch; later, Matty Toricelli&#8217;s<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Mister Barks:<\/strong> Aunt <s>Ange&#8217;s<\/s> Lets&#8217;sPooch<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Dr. Marchooy Coren:<\/strong> the inventor of the Pooch &#8220;Persona&#8221; chip, and now a passenger aboard the <em>Tascheter<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>[<a href=\"#toc\">back to Table of Contents<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"about-decopunk\">About <em data-afsc-id=\"11286\">Decopunk<\/em>:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>From <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cyberpunk_derivatives#Decopunk\">Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Decopunk is a recent subset of dieselpunk, centered around the art deco and Streamline Moderne art styles. Other influences include the 1927 film <em>Metropolis<\/em> as well as the environment of American cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston around the period between the 1920s and 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Steampunk author Sara M. Harvey made the distinction that decopunk is &#8220;shinier than dieselpunk;&#8221; more specifically, dieselpunk is &#8220;a gritty version of steampunk set in the 1920s\u20131950s&#8221; (i.e., the war eras), whereas decopunk &#8220;is the sleek, shiny very art deco version; same time period, but everything is chrome!&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Feel free to imagine the <em data-afsc-id=\"11905\">ISS Tascheter<\/em>\u2019s interior decorated accordingly. For what it&#8217;s worth, the author himself pictures the passageways, staterooms, and common areas lined with gleaming torchieres, sleek drapery, stained-glass accents, comfortable but very angular furniture, and wall art <em data-afsc-id=\"11906\">\u00e0 la<\/em> Ert\u00e9, Tiffany, and Barbier \u2014 something like, say, the interior of a luxury hotel in the mid-1930s. Of course, with a nod to the <em>-punk<\/em> half of the term, many walls simply function as large, high-definition viewing screens: offering simulated views not only of space (comets, galaxies, a gazillion stars) but also of Earthly outdoors scenes, especially (around the outer edges of the residential decks) the ocean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>[<a href=\"#toc\">back to Table of Contents<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"avenue5\">About <em>Avenue 5<\/em>:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Up until March 8, 2025, I&#8217;d never heard of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Avenue_5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">this HBO show<\/a>, which debuted in 2020 and lasted two seasons. That&#8217;s a Wikipedia link; my actual introduction to it, though, came via <a href=\"https:\/\/screenspeck.com\/2022\/03\/10\/hbos-avenue-5-underrated\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">this appreciative look back at it<\/a> (especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which it debuted). It summarizes the premise this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The series takes place in the year 2060 when space travel has become common enough that the setting for this futuristic screwball comedy is a luxury cruiseliner spaceship (the Avenue 5 of the title). The season\u2019s main conflict happens within the first ten minutes of the premiere episode. A glitch in the ship\u2019s anti-gravity equalizer causes a gravitational shift so powerful it knocks the ship off its original trajectory. A space cruise that was meant to be two months long will now take three years, and as the season progresses, we begin to see the unraveling of all onboard.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This isn&#8217;t an exact match for the <em>23kpc<\/em> scenario, but it&#8217;s sorta-kinda there &#8212; it&#8217;s even a sorta-kinda comedy! &#8212; for comparison of one element or another; <s>I&#8217;m looking forward to watching the show<\/s>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Update:<\/em><\/strong> All right, so I&#8217;ve watched both seasons of <em>Avenue 5<\/em> and can safely assert that &#8212; superficials aside &#8212; it&#8217;s <em>nothing<\/em> like <em>23kpc<\/em>. Like a lot of high-concept TV series, it sort of skidded off the rails by the time the second season wrapped; it was more farcical and slapstick than my own little bit of froth, for sure, and I imagine it&#8217;s quite difficult to sustain the adrenaline level of such a thing across the production schedules of streaming television. Still: fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>[<a href=\"#toc\">back to Table of Contents<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-white-color has-midnight-gradient-background has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-9f70e99f02c10f2c68879bf19379819a\" style=\"font-style:italic;font-weight:300\"><em>[Page last updated: June 25, 2025]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<p><!-- \/wp:post-content --><\/p>\n<p><!-- wp:paragraph --><\/p>\n<p><!-- \/wp:paragraph --><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Image: one of the alternatives the Bing AI image-generation program offered me when prompted, &#8220;a single stained glass window pane showing the lobby of a spaceship.&#8221; Which may not make much (if any) sense to you, unless you&#8217;re familiar with the context of my novel-in-progress called 23kpc. If you&#8217;re not familiar with that context, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27633,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-27628","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"entry"},"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P6kZSG-7bC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27628"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28765,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27628\/revisions\/28765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}