Escape from Xanadu

By D. L. Mackenzie

Phineas Magnetron is an eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor and former Union soldier who sustained a war injury which 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 the Hogalum Society, an inscrutable 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 third volume, "Escape from Xanadu," Phineas Magnetron and the Hogalum Society are quite literally drawn to the incomparable lost city of Zhen Atu. There they find the lost passengers and crew of the Salmagundi, and learn that the laws of physics are not as straightforward as previously believed. Indeed, the very nature and genesis of mankind are called into question.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. L. Mackenzie
• Release date: Jul 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476042527

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 3:

ESCAPE FROM XANADU

By D. L. Mackenzie

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

D. L. Mackenzie on Smashwords

Escape from Xanadu

Copyright © 2002-2012 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 © 2002-2012 by D. L. Mackenzie. All rights reserved.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 ~ Magnetron Gets the Jitters

Chapter 2 ~ Magnetron Glimpses Paradise

Chapter 3 ~ Magnetron Stops Cold

Chapter 4 ~ Magnetron's New Frontier

Chapter 5 ~ Magnetron and the Frozen Fire

Chapter 6 ~ Magnetron Combs the Dome

Chapter 7 ~ Magnetron's Usual Mandate

Chapter 8 ~ Magnetron Under Siege

Chapter 9 ~ Magnetron of Earth

Chapter 10 ~ Magnetron Defies Circumscription

Chapter 11 ~ Magnetron and the Unbearable Lightness

Chapter 12 ~ Magnetron and the Unknown Tongue

Chapter 13 ~ Magnetron and Revelation

Chapter 14 ~ Magnetron Gains Perspective

Chapter 15 ~ Magnetron's Dilemma

Chapter 16 ~ Magnetron Stoops to Conquer

Chapter 17 ~ Magnetron and the Eighth Wonder

Chapter 18 ~ Magnetron's Lament

Chapter 19 ~ Magnetron Stops Over Down Under

Chapter 20 ~ Magnetron's Time out of Mind

Epilogue ~ Magnetron Gives Thanks

Afterword

About The Magnetron Chronicles

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Prologue

In the previous volume of The Magnetron Chronicles, Phineas Magnetron and the Hogalum Society have crisscrossed the globe to find President Grant's stolen West Point ring and have taken the vulgar General Southwick into custody. Magnetron's encounter with his old nemesis Eldridge Compost has revealed some clues regarding Dr. Hogalum's murder, and raised new questions as well. Furthermore, Compost appears to have gained an occult secret weapon in the form of Mangaliku's black magic masks. Magnetron longs desperately to resolve these burning questions, but will have to put them aside for the time being as he has been diverted by a new Hogalum Society mission.

In this third volume of Magnetron's journals, the Hogalum Society is drawn into an even greater mystery. As the story opens, Magnetron and his stalwart allies are steering for the lost city of Xanadu aboard their electrified Luftigel airship. They'll find that the laws of physics are not as straightforward as once presumed. Indeed, the nature and genesis of mankind itself will be thrown into question in this thrilling continuation of the only known historical account of the brave, uncompromising, and unconventional heroes of the Hogalum Society: The Magnetron Chronicles.

Chapter 1 ~ Magnetron Gets the Jitters

Suddenly, I was seized by an urgent sense of dread, struck by the unaccountable feeling that Mozi was attempting to communicate with me, to warn me of some impending catastrophe.

I freely admit that mine is a weak mind, undisciplined, and often quite inadequate to the tasks put to it. I have been called monomaniacal, such characterization arising from my propensity to focus upon a single endeavor to the exclusion of all else. But this is merely a further manifestation of my mental frailty; I am simply quite incapable of addressing more than one task at a time to any useful conclusion.

At times, I bamboozle my own feeble brain, convincing myself that this lamentable shortcoming is an admirable strength. Only a fool would speak of focusing on more than one thing, as indeed—by definition—to focus on two things is to fail to truly focus on either thing. Neither receives one's full attention. This is what I tell myself, that my meager intellect is counterbalanced by a unique ability to cast aside distraction and apply myself fully to the task at hand.

That I am susceptible to such