Victorian Sci-Fi Adventure

Bainbridge didn't trust this savage. "Lord Graystoke, my eye, sir!"

This weekend, after much delay and excitement (on my part) I finally saw the movie John Carter. There are tonnes of blog column inches already on the topic of this movie, good and bad, so I'm not going to add to them other than to say that I was hoping for an non-taxing enjoyable epic adventure and I received it in spades. I can only hope that Disney see the flop status that so many critics seem to want to bestow on it as their own marketing fault and make a sequel - although I doubt it, unfortunately.

Anyway, it all had me thinking about the suppressed love I have for Victorian Sci-fi. A good few years ago now I was seduced by the world of the roleplaying game Space 1889, originally released by GDW in the 1980's and later reprinted by Heliograph. (the game world has also been coverted into a Savage Worlds sourcebook). "Science-Fiction Roleplaying in a More Civilised Time" the tag line read. All the politics of 19th Century Eath with a developed colonial map on Mars and Venus. I even managed to run a session in a pseudo "Lost World" type adventure. All the books were RPG books were bought, the war game rules, the boardgame, the aerial combat game and loads of Victoriana style figures (mainly from RAFM's licensed line or Wargames Foundry). Unfortunately after that one adventure was run there was scant opportunity to play again and my VSF interests and projects have been put on the back burner for more popular (but still fun) genres with more players.

So has this trip to the cinema rekindled the warm embers? Well, not until I can find room in my current project schedule. I'll just have to gaze wistfully at by painted and unpainted figures and imagine. Maybe one day I'll get round to painting those Martian forces (and scratchbuilding the flyers)