Mash up

I conceived 'The Gentlemen Rankers' as a steampunk mash-up. Mash-ups seem to occur more often in steampunk than in most other genres. Mash-up means bringing together several characters from real life and / or works of fiction. An example is Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which brings together characters including Alan Quatermain (King Solomon's Mines) Mina Harker (Dracula), Dr Jeckle and Captain Nemo (20,000 leagues under the Sea). There are earlier examples such as in the works of Phillip Jose Farmer or even William Rushton's Dr WG Grace's Last Case.

What these offer an author such as myself are powerful memes (more about memes later) that can be deployed to intensify the thought streams within a story. n "The gentleman Rankers" most characters aside from the gentleman rankers themselves are real people or famous fictional characters. The derivation of the gentleman rankers themselves I'll discuss another time.