The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum

By D. L. Mackenzie

Phineas Magnetron is an eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor and former Union soldier whose war injury has unaccountably bestowed upon him a strange gift he doesn't completely understand. No stranger to peril and derring-do, Phineas is asked to join a secret organization of crime fighting adventurers by none other than Society founder, Dr. Yngve Hogalum.

Traveling the globe in their Luftigel electric airship, Phineas Magnetron and his Hogalum brothers encounter mistrustful policemen, mentally ill criminals, wood-craving aliens, a witch doctor, a mad oracle, and a cross-dressing female matador, among many others. However, this "steam dream team" always manages to triumph over impossible odds and improbable obstacles as they preserve order in a disorderly world—with all the Steam Age weird science they can muster.

The Magnetron Chronicles is a serialized steampunk tale re-envisioning the future of generations past with all the breathless melodrama and tumult of that Victorian-era pulp fiction staple, the "penny dreadful." The narrative harks back to the grandiose style of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, but gently satirized with a sprinkling of purposeful anachronisms, double entendres, tongue-in-cheek inventions, and droll Twainian humor. Adapted from "The Secret Journals of Phineas J. Magnetron," a web serial characterized by short chapters with cliffhanger endings, the story builds chapter by chapter, volume by volume, as quirky new characters join the fray and perplexing new mysteries and situations arise.

The Magnetron Chronicles is a planned 12-volume series of novelette-length volumes. In this first novelette of the series The Magnetron Chronicles, we are introduced to Phineas J. Magnetron, an eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor blessed with a strange gift he doesn't completely understand. As a former soldier and current member of the Hogalum Society, an inscrutable secret organization of crime fighting adventurers, Phineas is no stranger to peril and derring-do. But when the Society founder dies, Phineas embarks on a daring and improbable caper to bring the good doctor's greatest dream to fruition posthumously. In the process, he not only horrifies his Society brothers, but unearths a haunting and compelling mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. L. Mackenzie
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476271026

D. L. Mackenzie

D. L. Mackenzie pounds on a computer somewhere in the desiccated cultural wilderness of Phoenix, Arizona. When he's not writing or more gainfully employed elsewhere, he enjoys hiking the valley's surrounding mountains, traveling, listening to obscure music, and performing unremarkable household chores with his hyperactive wife. He has a love/hate relationship with American politics and is known to bore and annoy anyone within earshot with his radically sensible political ideas. He has written scads of scandalously intemperate opinion pieces and a short story or two, but remains smitten with classic fiction by such authors as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells. His new (2012) series "The Magnetron Chronicles" brings eccentric inventor Phineas J. Magnetron out of mothballs for new tongue-in-cheek neo-Victorian adventures in the heady Age of Steam.

Book preview

The Magnetron Chronicles, Volume 1:

THE LAST ADVENTURE OF DR. YNGVE HOGALUM

By D. L. Mackenzie

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

D. L. Mackenzie on Smashwords

The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum

Copyright © 2001-2013 by D. L. Mackenzie

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

This electronic book is licensed for your individual enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction. All fictional characters portrayed are completely fictional and any similarity to real people living or dead is unintended and purely coincidental. Events portrayed may include real historical figures, but since the events themselves are fictional, any statements or actions by those historical figures may also be understood to be fictional.

* * * * *

All contents copyright © 2001-2013 by D. L. Mackenzie. All rights reserved.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 ~ Magnetron Speaks

Chapter 2 ~ Magnetron and the Hogalum Society

Chapter 3 ~ Magnetron Hatches a Scheme

Chapter 4 ~ Magnetron’s Grand Deception

Chapter 5 ~ Magnetron Crosses the Rubicon

Chapter 6 ~ Magnetron Averts Ruination

Chapter 7 ~ Magnetron Waxes Irresolute

Chapter 8 ~ Magnetron Summons the Spirit

Chapter 9 ~ Magnetron Ponders the Unthinkable

Chapter 10 ~ Magnetron Uncovers a Secret

Chapter 11 ~ Magnetron’s Curse

Chapter 12 ~ Magnetron Stays the Course

Chapter 13 ~ Magnetron’s Redemption

Chapter 14 ~ Magnetron Courts Destiny

Chapter 15 ~ Magnetron’s Giant Leap

Chapter 16 ~ Magnetron Held Harmless

Chapter 17 ~ Magnetron and Aftermath

Chapter 18 ~ Magnetron Runs the Gauntlet

Chapter 19 ~ Magnetron Gets the Message

Epilogue ~ Magnetron Regains Strength

Afterword

Historical Background Notes

About The Magnetron Chronicles

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Prologue

It is 1877, the Age of Steam. The Second Industrial Revolution is well under way, and science is propelling a dizzying technological renaissance in medicine, communication, electrification, and railroads. There is a palpable sense of expectancy: the promise of great advances, and the shapeless, undefined dread of a world that is somehow getting ahead of itself.

Across this spellbinding, perilous milieu strides the Hogalum Society, men of extraordinary intellect and character, men of letters, men of action. They master science and bend it to their will. They plumb the depths of black mysteries beyond the reach of science, and confront the barbarous depravity of the criminally insane. They defy tyrants and advance the cause of civilization and the general welfare of mankind. They desire neither wealth nor fame nor recompense in any form, save for the satisfaction of doing good—and succeeding when no one else dares even make the attempt.

What follows is the first volume of the only known historical account of these brave, uncompromising, and unconventional heroes: The Magnetron Chronicles.

Chapter 1~ Magnetron Speaks

Thus released by circumstance from my former vow of silence, I hereby declare myself free to divulge the greatest secrets of my time, most of which are interwoven with a common thread….

I am called Phineas J. Magnetron, although my unusual surname was not bestowed upon me in the usual fashion by accident of birth, but rather as a byproduct of an altogether different class of happenstance. As a matter of historical record, I was born Phineas Juchnook Mugglesworth on June 7, 1843 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the United States of America. The circumstances and events that led me to change my name are the subject of a lengthy story which I shall save until a later time.

However implausible it may seem, what follows is my true and unembellished account of actual events I have witnessed with my own eyes. Despite numerous past admonitions against making such recordings, I have set about writing this memoir for the same reason that most men put their thoughts to paper: to