Eliza Gauger hails from the wilds of the Oort Cloud, currently docking at Orbital Station 1V, where she has a three-room studio and her own coin-operated boy. She has been described by her enemies as a "mercenary artist", is currently worth several thousand dollars to the right people, and not necessarily in one piece. One of these people is John Brownlee, with whom Gauger runs Ectoplasmosis.com through some unholy mixture of animosity and fellowship. Other projects include laborious journalistic stints at Kotaku.com, Wired Blogs, Destructoid.com, and work as an illustrator for various RPG properties. After quitting RPGs forever, swearing dire oaths against ever picking up a .3 for the sake of goblin armies again, Gauger was seduced into art direction and illustration for Unhallowed Metropolis, a work of ingenious horror. She is currently missing her deadlines for the second book in that franchise (which deals with spoooooooky ghosts); working on several other private oil painting commissions; a children's book collaboration with her most hated nemesis; a collection of one-off comic stories tentatively titled THE FUTURE IS STUPID; and a serious graphic novel about the inescapable natural process of everything in the world getting much worse, all the time. She is pleased to be given the opportunity to bring her sweet sci-fi stylings to the Suite 100, and looks forward to the free h'ors d'œuvres.
I am motivated mostly by spite, and the Tantalusian idea that someday, in some obscure way, I will be "rewarded" for the years of fighting to make space in which to sit and draw. At the moment I write this, I am stuck on standby at the St. Louis airport, on my way to a truly joyful family event. It will be a grand celebration of new life, abiding love, and solid familial ties. And I am dreading it. I am looking up earlier return flights. I am agonizing over being taken away from paints for that long. I am wracked with shoulder-cramping, migraine-coddling irritation.
Art has made me a bad person.
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In the single digits, maybe age eight or nine, my father, science fictionist Rick Gauger, explained "steampunk" to me in the context of role-playing games, literature, and movies. He named off some titles: Deadlands, Wild Wild West, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the Time Machine. I listened closely to that, and to the next lecture about "cyberpunk". Shortly thereafter, dad gave me my first leather flight cap, and tank goggles.
Years later, I found myself advising goth-rock band Abney Park to abandon their spooky trappings and pursue more lofty goals. The airship "HMS Ophelia" was born, and buoyed them upwards. The members of AP were recut in tawny leather and oiled copper, tired black vinyl and chrome cast aside. I stayed up late, teaching them to fake a sea-green patina on a copper-coated keyboard. I tore off sketches of stage dressings, music video scenes, and costumes for each newly-minted character. I distributed teastained tuxedo shirts, vintage goggles, amusing hats and sage advice.
Sometime after that, steampunk jumped the shark. It can now be found in every goth club, being worn by furries with glowsticks up them. Let this show refresh a genre in want of a good cull.
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