Luftigel and Doppelgänger

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 15-volume series of novelette-length volumes. In this fifth volume of Magnetron’s journals, the strange truth regarding Phineas J. Magnetron’s previously unexplained disappearance in 1901 is revealed, as are hitherto unremarked romantic interests. Having journeyed to Berlin, the Hogalum Society members seek to clear their names and hunt down Eldridge Compost before he can wreak more havoc. In so doing, they will be drawn into Compost’s twisted schemes, culminating in a battle to the death over German skies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. L. Mackenzie
• Release date: Apr 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301221615

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 5:

LUFTIGEL AND DOPPELGÄNGER

By D. L. Mackenzie

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

D. L. Mackenzie on Smashwords

Luftigel and Doppelgänger

Copyright © 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 © 2013 by D. L. Mackenzie. All rights reserved.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 ~ Magnetron’s Misadventure

Chapter 2 ~ Magnetron Gets an Eyeful

Chapter 3 ~ Magnetron Takes the Bait

Chapter 4 ~ Magnetron Plunges In

Chapter 5 ~ Magnetron Falls Hard

Chapter 6 ~ Magnetron Lets His Hair Down

Chapter 7 ~ Magnetron Mixes It Up

Chapter 8 ~ Magnetron Improvises

Chapter 9 ~ Magnetron Stirs the Pot

Chapter 10 ~ Magnetron Drags His Feet

Chapter 11 ~ Magnetron Walks the Plank

Chapter 12 ~ Magnetron’s Stock Falls

Chapter 13 ~ Magnetron Mingles Backstage

Chapter 14 ~ Magnetron Prevaricates

Chapter 15 ~ Magnetron Under the Gun

Chapter 16 ~ Magnetron Pops the Question

Chapter 17 ~ Magnetron in the Ghost Ring

Chapter 18 ~ Magnetron Plays with Fire

Chapter 19 ~ Magnetron Sings the Blues

Chapter 20 ~ Magnetron Gets Soaked

Epilogue ~ Magnetron Sifts Ashes

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 been wrongfully accused of dastardly deeds which were actually committed by Eldridge Compost and the League of Miscreants. Arrested, jailed, humiliated, and betrayed by former Society member François Boileau, Magnetron is eventually freed from prison by his fellows but remains a fugitive, still haunted by the specter of Mangaliku’s black magic. Free again, the Hogalum Society wastes no time investigating Compost and his evil plans, finally solving a host of mysteries. But Compost has taken the opportunity to recommence his European reign of terror, implicating the Hogalum Society in new crimes against the people of Berlin.

In this fifth volume of Magnetron’s journals, the strange truth regarding Phineas J. Magnetron’s previously unexplained disappearance in 1901 is revealed, as are hitherto unremarked romantic interests. Having journeyed to Berlin, the Hogalum Society members seek to clear their names and hunt down Eldridge Compost before he can wreak more havoc. In so doing, they will be drawn into Compost’s twisted schemes, culminating in a battle to the death over German skies. And now, the 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’s Misadventure

An exquisite irony, yes? To yearn for the future so ardently, to squander so many years in the pursuance of that hazy objective, and then to inadvertently hurl myself backward, my goal hopelessly out of reach?

Our journey from Borehamwood to Berlin was uneventful, providing me a few invaluable hours of deep contemplation. The mystery surrounding Dr. Hogalum’s death had been resolved and we had dealt a crushing blow to Eldridge Compost and his nefarious League of Miscreants, but fresh puzzles clamored for my attention. The wily Compost remained at large, after all, and the League had intensified their campaign of raining terror on innocent citizens while posing as the Hogalum Society. A titanic confrontation loomed, but of course I could only conjecture the form such a confrontation might take.

I also grappled with another puzzle: The Mad Oracle Caernarvon’s enigmatic personal advertisement in the Telegraph. Some three weeks earlier, as Satyros and I trundled along a muddy Welsh road, I had read his message to me and could make neither heads nor tails of it. "You will die before you were born,