Introduction!

Victorian Science Fiction has an appeal that is hard to quantify. Inspiration is found in the works of authors like Burroughs, Verne, Wells, Haggard & Doyle, along with movies like At the Earth's Core, King Solomon's Mine & The Assassination Bureau and comics such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Girl Genius. Venus can have dinosaurs, Mars might be populated by fierce warriors & the Earth may well be hollow. Transport between the worlds can be as complex as a monstrous cannon, as mundane as a regularly scheduled aethership, as fanciful as a flying carpet or simply a though. Mechanical devices are usually big & bulky, powered by steam, often with brass flourishes and encrusted with rivets.

The miniatures shown on these pages are (or happen to be near) 28mm scale; roughly 1:60 or "S" scale for all you model train buffs. Their availability, selection, enjoyment of painting and use for both skirmish & tabletop role-playing games is why the author collects this particular scale. Of course, any of the examples shown here can readily translate into whatever size of figure you prefer. Using toys as the base for contraptions has become a habit, while exploring the clearance isles and ding & dent bins keeps said habit affordable. And, yes, the monster above is a vinyl Titanasaurus figure from Bandai's Godzilla line.

One can be as gritty or as whimsical as suits their style of play, thought the author confesses that his games tend to be on the "Doug McClure, Peter Cushing & Caroline Munro" end of the spectrum. Enjoy!