“An absolute page turner!”
Saiya Floyd
Scientific Dragons: The Adventure of Ensum Castle
In 1888, Jack the Ripper is terrorizing the cobblestone streets of Whitechapel, and a Filipino living in Europe is being recruited by a Japanese American spy and an immortal female pirate to join them in defending a small kingdom. It is being threatened by a global secret organization that has a vast army at its borders. There is a giant airship of war hovering in the sky above. There is fantastic weaponry, automatons, and clockwork minds. How can our heroes stand against all that? Well, that’s the story left to tell.Why Steampunk?
Excerpts from an interview with Rachel Bond
I’ve always liked the visuals of steampunk. My first encounter was seeing steampunk on my black-and-white TV. I was watching the Walt Disney version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, with Kirk Douglas, Peter Lorre, and James Mason. I liked the look of Nautilus. The action. The brass. It was all very appealing to me. I enjoyed it, but could not find my way into it. And by me, I mean Asian people and Asian Americans specifically. We did not appear in such stories unless we were foreign or villains. Fu Manchu, for example. A character devised by Sax Rohmer was first seen in a novel published in 1912. It set the stage for similar ethnic evildoers that fit nicely into the steampunk age. So, I suffered from a severe case of FOMO (fear of missing out). That was until I found out that, historically, Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, toured the United States and that he was living in Europe studying in Spain and Germany in the mid-1880s. He wasn’t the only one. A number of Filipinos, specifically, were living in Europe. Some were merchants, some were students. There were enough Filipinos in Europe to form clubs and organizations. Now, I am an artist. I’m a writer. I can write any story about anything. But what is more fascinating to me is that the world is, factually, more multi-ethnic than what is presented. And I feel I can write about people like me in that setting, grounded in reality. It is very exciting and a pleasure to write.About the Author
Dom Magwili is the resident acting teacher for the Los Angeles-based East West Players Theatre Conservatory, the nation’s premier Asian American theatre company. He has taught for nine years at Cal State Fullerton in the Department of Asian American Studies. He has lectured at UCLA on the history of Asian American theatre. He designed and taught the first course about Asian American theatre at California State University, Long Beach. A native of Oakland, California, Magwili has worked as a playwright, screenwriter, and actor across a variety of genres.
