AustLit

Steampunk note: Proto-steampunk. The protagonist is born after only three months' gestation, which his father attributes to the intervention of a violent storm , calling him 'the offspring of the tempest, the child of thunder and lightning'. The neighbours, who initially speak openly about a relationship between his mother and her guardian, later come around to the idea of his uncanny origins, as he pursues a series of elaborate experiments.

Anachronistic technology and fantastic scientific experiments include 'the endeavour to ascertain what became of the smoke after it ascended from the chimney', to which end he 'hastened to the chimney pot on the house top, with an oil skin dress I had secretly prepared, resembling a large bladder, with appertures for the head and feet, and pullies inside to draw the dress close to my skin, when it became sufficiently inflated'. The protagonist's actual travel to the surface of the Sun is undertaken with a vaguely described machine:

As soon as the rosy tinting of the east announced the orb was rising, I regulated the machine I had constructed, to concentrate the beams into one strong focus; and making choice of one which by the test proved the most powerful, I fixed the conductor to my chest, and soon found myself gradually rising from magnetic influence.

No further proto-steampunk components.