Forgotten Science Villains of the Steam Age: Chapter 9 - "The Sinister Simian"

[jack_babalon]

Professor Aesop Meridian
(???- January 23rd, 1901)

It has been over a hundred years since his fiery death across the skies of London and yet the origin of Professor Aesop Meridian, arguably one of the deadliest science villains of the Victorian Era, remains shrouded in a fog of unpenetrable mystery. Just who was this fully conversant Pan troglodyte, fluent in over a dozen human languages and was once described by Scotland Yard as being "... the most dangerous primate in Great Britain"?

Professor Aesop's first recorded appearance was on the date of December 18th, 1861. He appeared floating over the rooftops of Clerkenwell in his carriage sized air-ship The Therion, quoting Proudhon through a crude voice amplification system and flinging black, spherical bombs into the streets below. He made no demands but his very presence, however, was sufficent cause to generate a riot from the lower classes that bore witness to and were mesmerized by the antics of the criminal chimpanzee. It was only the timely intervention of the Gentleman Pugilist that the Professor's aeronautic rampage was thwarted.

What little we know about the Professor can be gleamed from recently declassified Interpol files: He was a genius in the arts of Aeronautical Engineering (rivaled perhaps only by the infamous Robur-le-Conquérant). He once defeated Sherlock Holmes in a game of chess when he had infamously kidnapped Charles Darwin (see "The case of the Primate Professor"). He had commisoned Oscar Wilde to write a play based on his exploits (subsequently the play was outlawed and at this time only three known copies of the script remain in existence today). He once threatened to kill George Bernard Shaw when he was refused membership in the Fabian Society and The Therion was spotted over Trafalgar Square during the Bloody Sunday riots of 1887. He often took great joy in sending Friedrich Nietzsche anonymous letters covered in monkey feces as well as sending delicate love poetry to the Irish revolutionary, Maud Gonne. He was inducted into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1896, the first known non-human to join its illustrious ranks. He was a known smoker of the hashish, a vegetarian and was fond of the poetry of Rimbaud.

Also it was believed that his fez was a gift from the Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed himself and is said to have once belonged to Major General Charles Gordon.

At the time of his death, in spectacular aerial combat against Britain's amazon champion Lady Boudica, he was seen screaming "No Future" from the helm of the flaming Therion shortly before the air-ship plummeted and sank beneath the Thames River. This date has been commemorated ever since as 'Professor Aesop's Night' and the event is marked with a series of firework displays and fezed, monkey masked children who gather along the Thames to light up wooden replica's of the Professor's airship.

Though it is popularly believed that the Professor was a inhabitant of a parallel universe where Chimpanzee's were the dominant evolutionary lifeform there is another school of thought that suggest that Professor Aesop was a Tulpa, a thought form creature created by the mounting social anxieties prevalent through the Empire at the time.

Comments

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

less hairy but much cooler (for my tastes) was professor miguelito loveless of 'wild wild west' infamy
(loooooooooooong before the tales were destroyed by will smith and kenneth brannagh's movie version)

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

But it had a giant steel spider that was chewing up the scenery... no, wait... that was just the acting.

[animeoni.livejournal.com]

Monkey power! Oh yeah.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Rarh-rarh-rahhhhhhh....

which is monkeynese for "Right on sister!"

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

What the hell is with all the monkeys on LJ lately? gamera_spinning's journal has been positively infested...

(welcome back to the Blagotubes, by the way)

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Monkeys are the new ninjas (who were the new pirates who in turn were the new vampires...)

Seriously I just saw the picture and made up the background story from there.

[hermeticus-noir.livejournal.com]

Fucking hilarious. A Crowleyan Simian. Cool picture. Great writing.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Thanks man, really glad you enjoyed my little effort at Steam Age Simians. I find a lot of these old photos from an LJ community called vintage_photos. You should check it out some time.