A newspaper is set, printed and on the street eleven minutes after anything happens.Machine: a press three stories tall. Turn: one edition is eleven minutes early, and the copy boy runs to stop the news.
Searchlights sweep the clouds over the city every night, and a boy on a roof works out that they are spelling.Machine: twelve arc lamps on the harbor wall. Turn: it is two operators playing chess across the river.
A jazz club in a basement sits beside the subway, and the band has learned to play in the gaps between trains.Machine: the downtown express. Turn: the timetable changes, and the drummer rides the line to learn the new rhythm.
A balloonist goes up to take the first photograph of the curve of the world.Machine: a sealed aluminum gondola. Turn: the plate shows the curve, and one other balloon, higher.
A boy who sneaks aboard an airship is put to work as the cook's only helper.Machine: a galley hung on gimbals. Turn: at the far end the cook asks where he was going, and he cannot remember.
A cargo airship drifts off its mooring with only the night watchman aboard.Machine: a freight airship with cold engines. Turn: by dawn he has taught himself to steer and is slow to hand it back.
A crop duster in the dry country is paid to fly over a field that has no crop.Machine: a rattling single-engine duster. Turn: the powder is seed, and the owner is planting a forest in secret.
A flying boat lands on the wrong lake, and the town on its shore has never seen an engine.Machine: a four-propeller flying boat. Turn: the town has something that flies without one, and wants to trade.
A flying circus loses its star pilot to a desk job and trains the ticket seller in a week.Machine: three patched stunt planes. Turn: she flies the whole show upside down by mistake, and it sells out.
A girl sells newspapers on the mooring deck of a skyscraper where the airships tie up.Machine: a mooring mast eighty floors up. Turn: a captain pays her with a ticket instead of a coin.
A light for aircraft stands on a mountain pass, and its keeper has not had a visitor in three winters.Machine: a rotating air beacon. Turn: a pilot lands only to ask why the light is blinking out a recipe.
A long-range airliner has a library, a dining room and a rumor of a deck that nobody has found.Machine: a flying wing with six decks. Turn: the missing deck is the crew's garden, and they would like it kept quiet.
A mechanic keeps an old trimotor flying with parts from a jukebox.Machine: a three-engine transport. Turn: at altitude one engine plays a waltz, and passengers ask for that seat.
A parachute tester has made nine hundred jumps and is afraid of elevators.Machine: a silk canopy with a clockwork release. Turn: her new office is on the ninetieth floor; she takes the stairs.
A pilot delivers one passenger to a floating hotel that never lands.Machine: a hotel hung under nine balloons. Turn: the passenger is the inspector who decides whether it may stay up.
A rocket-pack courier delivers telegrams to the workers on high steel, in the middle of a shift.Machine: a two-bottle rocket pack. Turn: one telegram is addressed to the courier, sent up from the ground.
A signal tower directs a thousand flights a day with flags, lamps and one man with a very loud whistle.Machine: a signal tower above the fog line. Turn: the whistle is lost, and the pilots learn to listen for a flute.
A skywriter is hired to write one word over the city every noon and is never told who pays.Machine: a smoke-trailing biplane. Turn: the words, read in order, are a letter to one window.
A test pilot is asked to fly a plane with no propeller that the engineers swear is finished.Machine: an early jet with a howl. Turn: it flies, and nobody on the ground believes it, as nothing went round.
A woman builds a glider from plans printed in a magazine, in an apartment too small to get it out of.Machine: a spruce and linen glider. Turn: the neighbors vote to take out a wall, and then want rides.
An air race round the world is open to any machine with a propeller, and one entrant has forty small ones.Machine: a kite-winged racer with forty motors. Turn: it loses a motor at every stop and still finishes.
An airship captain is retiring, and on his last crossing every passenger turns out to have flown with him before.Machine: a liner airship on its thousandth trip. Turn: the crew sold the tickets by invitation.
An airship carries the mail along a chain of desert radio towers, and one bag has been aboard, undelivered, for a year.Machine: a six-engine mail airship. Turn: the address is a town that is only there when the river runs.
An airship's ballroom has an orchestra that must sit evenly on both sides, or the ship will lean.Machine: a ballroom slung under the gas cells. Turn: the tuba player is moved to the middle and made an officer.
An autogyro taxi driver knows every roof in the city and has never once seen a street.Machine: a two-seat autogyro cab. Turn: a fare asks to be set down at ground level, and she has to ask the way.
The city's weather is made by a fleet of cloud-seeding planes, and one pilot stops flying her route.Machine: a silver seeding plane. Turn: her district gets its first unplanned rainbow and votes to keep her grounded.
The night mail plane steers by a line of bonfires that farmers light, and one night there is an extra fire.Machine: an open-cockpit mail plane. Turn: it marks a field a boy cleared himself, hoping the plane would land.
The radio operator of an ocean airship picks up a dance band that went off the air ten years ago.Machine: a tube radio the size of a wardrobe. Turn: the band is in the cargo hold, rehearsing a comeback.
In the city 25
A chrome diner on wheels follows the night shift from factory gate to factory gate.Machine: a diner built into a bus. Turn: one factory closes its gate for good, and the regulars ride on to the next.
A city bans horses, and the last milk-wagon horse is given the one job the machines cannot do.Machine: the new diesel milk trucks. Turn: the horse knows the route in fog, and leads the trucks.
A city of rivets and searchlights runs on one enormous engine under the main square, and it has started to knock.Machine: a diesel as big as a cathedral. Turn: a girl who lives above it can tell which cylinder by her rattling cups.
A dark, rainy city has a rule that every tenth streetlamp belongs to somebody who must keep it lit.Machine: an arc lamp on an iron post. Turn: a newcomer inherits a lamp, and with it the corner's quarrels.
A department store puts a mechanical family in its window, and the crowd outside begins writing to them.Machine: four clockwork mannequins. Turn: the night watchman answers every letter, in four different hands.
A detective keeps his office on the fortieth floor because clients who climb that far mean it.Machine: an elevator broken for a year. Turn: the client who is not out of breath is its inventor, with a case.
A girl sells batteries from a tray at the station, the kind that run a pocket radio for one song.Machine: a pocket radio with one tube. Turn: she knows which song each customer is saving for.
A hotel's revolving door runs on a motor, and one guest has been going round in it since lunch.Machine: a brass revolving door. Turn: he is the motor's designer, counting turns before the guarantee runs out.
A jazz club in a basement sits beside the subway, and the band has learned to play in the gaps between trains.Machine: the downtown express. Turn: the timetable changes, and the drummer rides the line to learn the new rhythm.
A mechanical fortune teller in an arcade starts giving advice that is specific, correct and unwelcome.Machine: a coin-fed automaton in a glass case. Turn: the arcade's cleaner has been writing the cards.
A network of pneumatic tubes carries every message in the city, and a clerk notices which tubes go nowhere.Machine: nine hundred miles of brass tube. Turn: the dead tubes lead to a second post office that answers lost letters.
A newspaper is set, printed and on the street eleven minutes after anything happens.Machine: a press three stories tall. Turn: one edition is eleven minutes early, and the copy boy runs to stop the news.
A power cut stops every machine in the city for one evening, and people find out what the buildings sound like.Machine: the central generator, silent. Turn: when it restarts, one neighborhood asks for an hour off every week.
A private detective is hired to find out who leaves the lights on in an empty tower every night.Machine: a searchlight on the tower's crown. Turn: the lamp is signaling, and the answer comes from a ship in the bay.
A radio serial about a masked detective is so popular that somebody begins solving real cases under his name.Machine: a studio microphone on a brass arm. Turn: it is the sound-effects man, who knows what a lock sounds like.
A robot doorman of riveted steel has opened one hotel's door for thirty years and asks for a day off.Machine: a seven-foot mechanical doorman. Turn: he spends the day standing across the street, watching the door.
A sign painter is hired to letter one enormous word on the tallest wall in town.Machine: a motor scaffold. Turn: he is told one letter a day and tries to guess the word before the city does.
A signalman in a tower over the busiest crossing in the city conducts ten thousand cars a day with two levers.Machine: a traffic tower with two levers. Turn: on his birthday every lane holds still for a minute, and waves.
A skyscraper goes up a floor a day, and a family of riveters lives on whichever floor is newest.Machine: a coal-fired rivet forge. Turn: at the top there is nowhere left to move, and the owner offers the penthouse.
A street-sweeping machine works the avenues at four each morning, and its driver returns what it swallows.Machine: a three-brush sweeper. Turn: a ring goes back to the wrong woman, who knows the right one.
A streetcar conductor finds a suitcase left aboard with a whole city's worth of blueprints inside.Machine: a streamlined streetcar. Turn: they are plans for a park, and their owner is afraid to show them.
A telephone operator can connect any two people in the city and has never once been called herself.Machine: a cord switchboard forty seats long. Turn: a wrong number asks for her, by her voice.
An automat restaurant has no staff in sight, and a regular becomes sure that the pie window knows her.Machine: a wall of coin-fed glass doors. Turn: behind it works one cook, who has been saving her the corner slice.
The elevated train runs so close to the tenements that a driver and a woman at a window have waved for six years.Machine: a riveted elevated train. Turn: the line is rerouted, and he has one last trip to say something.
Searchlights sweep the clouds over the city every night, and a boy on a roof works out that they are spelling.Machine: twelve arc lamps on the harbor wall. Turn: it is two operators playing chess across the river.
At sea 25
A bus with a propeller drives off the pier every hour as a ride for tourists.Machine: an amphibious bus. Turn: one day it is the only thing that can reach a picnic cut off by the tide.
A cable ship is laying the first telephone line across an ocean, and the crew may test it once a day.Machine: a cable drum the size of a house. Turn: the tests are the cook's bedtime story to his daughter, in episodes.
A canal city replaces its boatmen with motor launches, and the launches cannot sing.Machine: a varnished motor launch. Turn: a boatman is hired to ride along and sing, at twice his old pay.
A car ferry crosses a strait so wide that people get married, quarrel and make up between ramps.Machine: a double-ended car ferry. Turn: the ferry's band has played all three for the same couple.
A diving bell crew salvages a sunken orchestra's instruments, one a day.Machine: a bell on a steel cable. Turn: the tuba comes up with an octopus that will not be parted from it.
A dredger at the river mouth brings up a city bell that was lost a hundred years ago.Machine: a bucket-chain dredger. Turn: two districts claim it, and it rings in neither until they share a tower.
A fishing fleet gets engines, and the last boat under sail keeps coming home first.Machine: the fleet's new diesels. Turn: its skipper knows where the wind is, and trades lessons for fuel money.
A flying-boat base on a coral island has a hotel, a fuel dock and one resident who was only changing planes.Machine: a refueling barge. Turn: his connection comes at last, eleven years late, and he has a garden to water.
A harbor crane operator has loaded every ship in port and has never been told where any of it goes.Machine: a hundred-ton gantry crane. Turn: she chalks a question on a crate, and an answer comes back on the next ship.
A harbor pilot brings the great ships in through fog by the sound of the city alone.Machine: a foghorn that can be felt in the teeth. Turn: the city fits a new horn, and she must learn the harbor again.
A herring boat is fitted out as a floating cinema and shows its one film in every port down the coast.Machine: a projector run off the boat's engine. Turn: when the engine races so does the film, and the last port asks for the fast version.
A liner's swimming pool tilts with the swell, and the lifeguard is the only member of the crew who gets seasick.Machine: a liner with a tiled pool. Turn: she feels fine on land, and misses the tilt.
A liner's wireless officer falls for a voice on another ship and knows only its call sign.Machine: a wireless set with a brass key. Turn: the ships pass at night, close enough to wave, and both are on duty.
A mail steamer drops a waterproof drum of letters off an island that has no harbor.Machine: a coastal mail steamer. Turn: the island floats a drum back, and one day it holds a cake for the crew.
A port city floods its dry dock once a year so that the children can sail in it.Machine: dock gates driven by a ship's engine. Turn: one year a liner is in for repairs, and the children get the liner.
A racing hydroplane is built to take the water speed record, and its builder has never been in a boat.Machine: a three-point hydroplane. Turn: the record run needs a passenger for balance, and nobody else fits.
A radio station broadcasts from a rusting freighter anchored just outside anyone's waters.Machine: a transmitter mast on a freighter. Turn: its one announcer is three people, and one of them wants to go ashore.
A salvage diver finds a safe on the sea floor and brings it up unopened, as the contract says.Machine: a brass-helmet diving suit. Turn: the owner opens it on the dock; it holds recipes, and he weeps with relief.
A steel diving sphere goes down to where the light stops, and the two inside take turns at its one window.Machine: a sphere on a winch. Turn: the best thing swims past during the handover, and each describes it differently.
A submarine liner offers the first undersea crossing with a dining room, and the windows show nothing but dark.Machine: a passenger submarine. Turn: the steward paints fish on the glass, and one morning something is looking in.
A tide-driven clock on the sea wall sets the hour for the whole port, and it runs slow at the full moon.Machine: a clock driven by floats. Turn: the port decides the moon is right and keeps moon time once a month.
A tugboat captain is hired to tow an iceberg to a city that has run dry.Machine: a deep-sea diesel tug. Turn: the ice arrives the size of a piano, and the city holds the parade anyway.
A weather ship sits on one spot of ocean for a month at a time, and its crew invents a town.Machine: a weather ship with a balloon shed. Turn: they elect a mayor, and the relief ship brings the mayor mail.
An icebreaker cuts a channel to a town that is frozen in for eight months of the year.Machine: a diesel-electric icebreaker. Turn: the town asks it to come a week late; the ice is how they visit each other.
An ocean liner is so large that it has a newspaper, a tram and a deck the crew warn passengers about.Machine: a liner with nine funnels. Turn: the deck to avoid is where the stokers hold the best dance aboard.
In the laboratory 25
A chemist makes a fuel from seaweed that runs any engine and smells of low tide.Machine: a test engine on a bench. Turn: the city adopts it, and the tourists stay away until she adds mint.
A cleaner sweeps every night around a robot that is switched off, and she is sure it has moved.Machine: a riveted laboratory robot. Turn: it has been tidying her broom closet, to be useful.
A doctor of engineering fits a diesel to a bicycle to win a bet about hills.Machine: a bicycle with a one-cylinder diesel. Turn: it wins uphill, will not stop downhill, and ends in a haystack.
A food laboratory invents a pill that is a full dinner, and the tasters miss chewing.Machine: a pill press with a menu dial. Turn: the laboratory's best seller is the gum that goes with it.
A girl answers a newspaper advertisement for a laboratory assistant who is not easily surprised.Machine: whatever is under the tarpaulin. Turn: she is surprised daily, and promoted for never showing it.
A laboratory at the pole can talk to the world for ten minutes a day, when the sky allows.Machine: a shortwave set in a hut. Turn: the crew votes to spend the ten minutes listening to a city street through an open window.
A laboratory builds a lamp bright enough to write on clouds and cannot agree on what to say.Machine: a carbon-arc projector. Turn: the junior draftsman writes good night, and the city asks for it nightly.
A laboratory builds a thinking machine out of telephone relays, and its first sentence is a question about lunch.Machine: a relay brain that fills a gymnasium. Turn: it learned the word from the engineers and asks what one is.
A laboratory's wind tunnel is the only cool room in a heatwave, and the staff find reasons to test hats.Machine: a wind tunnel with a ten-foot fan. Turn: the hat results sell better than the wing results.
A patent clerk must decide whether a machine that does nothing at all is new.Machine: a box of gears with a crank. Turn: its inventor says it is restful, and the clerk orders one.
A professor's time-saving machine does every task in half the time and takes an hour to warm up.Machine: a motor-driven desk with arms. Turn: his staff are faster by hand and let him believe otherwise.
A proving ground tests a car that steers itself round a track while the engineers play cards in the back seat.Machine: a streamlined sedan that follows a buried cable. Turn: it stops for a turtle, which nobody taught it.
A robot built to shake hands at a world's fair meets forty thousand people and remembers one.Machine: a chrome greeter on a plinth. Turn: the girl comes back on the last day, taller, and it says so.
A rocket club builds a mail rocket to carry letters across a river in nine seconds.Machine: a tin mail rocket. Turn: it lands in the right town and the wrong chimney, and the baker reads the mail aloud.
A scientist builds a helmet for hearing what plants want.Machine: a headset wired to a fern. Turn: the fern wants the window open, and everything else is static.
A sound engineer builds a machine that can remove one noise from a city.Machine: a cabinet of tuned horns. Turn: the vote picks the factory whistle, and nobody knows when to go home.
A television set is switched on for its first test and shows a room that is not in the building.Machine: a spinning-disc television. Turn: it is the laboratory next door, where a rival is testing a camera.
A weather machine is tested on one city block, which gets the snow meant for the whole county.Machine: a tower of coils and vanes. Turn: the block charges admission and pays for the next experiment.
An engineer builds a mechanical chess player that always loses politely.Machine: a chess cabinet with one steel arm. Turn: a child beats it honestly, and for once it asks for a rematch.
An engineer invents a pocket telephone and cannot find a second person who wants to be reachable.Machine: a telephone the size of a book. Turn: her mother takes the other one, and calls hourly.
An institute records every promise made inside the building on wax cylinders.Machine: a cylinder recorder in the lobby. Turn: the director asks to hear one of his own, and the room goes quiet.
An inventor builds a robot to carry her tools, and it starts handing her the right one before she asks.Machine: a tracked tool cart with one arm. Turn: on the day it hands her a sandwich, she takes the afternoon off.
An inventor's ray will make anything small grow huge, and her only volunteers are from the garden club.Machine: a growth ray on a tripod. Turn: the giant squash wins the fair and then has to be lived in.
The laboratory's night shift is one woman and nine experiments that must each be stirred on the hour.Machine: a rack of nine flasks on timers. Turn: the tenth flask is her soup, and it is the one that makes the news.
Two rival laboratories on one street each believe the other is years ahead.Machine: two identical dynamos, back to back. Turn: the janitor they share could tell them, and plans a dinner.
How it works
These 100 dieselpunk story ideas are set in a machine age that never ended: airships on the mail routes, a city of rivets and searchlights, liners under the sea, a laboratory with something under a tarpaulin.
Read the full guide
What goes in a dieselpunk story
Engines you can hear, Art Deco towers, radio and a little noir. Each premise names its machine: a mooring mast eighty floors up, a wall of coin-fed glass doors, a diesel as big as a cathedral. The trouble is small and human. Somebody wants a day off, or a letter answered.
Sky, city, sea and laboratory
The sky has the mail planes and the airships, the city the elevated trains and the detectives, the sea the liners and the diving bells. The laboratory has the inventions that almost work. None is a war story.
Describe the machine by its sound first: a knock, a howl, a hum through the floor.
Keep one thing stubbornly old: a milk-wagon horse, a boat under sail, a man with a whistle.
Questions and answers
What is dieselpunk?
A subgenre of science fiction that combines the look of diesel-based technology with retro-futuristic technology. The term was coined in 2001, and the name derives from cyberpunk.
What is the difference between dieselpunk and steampunk?
The power and the period. Steampunk is science fiction based on industrial steam power, often set in the Victorian era. Dieselpunk has been defined as set in the interwar period, with fuel-powered machinery and Art Deco in place of steam.
What time period is dieselpunk set in?
It borrows from the years between the First World War and the 1950s, when the diesel engine for transport was Western culture's chief technology. The diesel era itself coincides with the interwar period, 1918 to 1939.
Are dieselpunk stories dark?
Some are. These lean toward the strand of the genre that takes a positive view of technology and is enthusiastic about the future: a robot doorman of riveted steel asks for a day off and spends it watching his door.