The Guardian reviews a collection of short stories in the Steampunk genre and includes this tantalizing summary of one of them:
MT Anderson’s “The Oracle Engine”, multilayered with irony and full of sly jokes, takes us, via Plutarch, to ancient Rome. A vengeful Artificer builds a prototype computer (out of metal, probably brass) and rigs it to bring about the downfall and death of the plutocrat Marcus Licinius Crassus in 53BC. A team of cloistered youths works the Oracle; its creator believing that “an order of male virgins who never see the light of day would be ideal for the operation of a computing machine such as this”. And, of course, there are dirigible triremes. Steampunkum est!
Don’t know about you, but whenever I see photos of some of the big names from the early modern history of our discipline, I can’t help but think that Classics and Steampunk is a natural mix:
rogueclassicism 