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 There were steamers, electrics, Maxim whirling machines, ships powered by guncotton reciprocators and naphtha engines, and electrical lifting-screws of strange hyperboloidal design for drilling upward through the air, and winged aerostats, of streamlined shape, and wing-flapping miracles of ornithurgy.

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Imagine, if you will, a description of a sex orgy. It'd be pretty much the same, right?!

"steamers"
Steam-powered flying machines. This is not the same as Piers Anthony's use of "steamers" which mean a kind of dragon that breathes steam. It is also not the same as the steamer used in the phrase "Cleveland steamer" which is something that Brigadier Pudding is probably into.

"electrics"
Machines powered by electricity. I know I don't need to be describing or defining these for anybody; they're pretty obvious! But you'll be thanking me when we get to the hyperboloidal what-nots and the naphtha doohickeys. By 1893, quite a few different kinds of batteries had already been invented. I don't know how heavy they would be versus the amount of power they could generate but then none of that really matters here. This is that part of Pynchon's fiction that reminds the reader that this is not quite historical fiction but fiction awash in a constant stream of well-researched history.

"Maxim whirling machines"
This is probably where I should just start posting pictures, especially because of the word "Maxim." Oh baby, this is going to be a sexy flying machine! Except that I can only find pictures of Maxim's later flying machines that didn't whirl at all and were built after 1893. It seems the "whirling machines" were a prototype design of his father's (who, I'm assuming, was also a Maxim! So I'm just writing about the wrong Maxim, I guess?) which used "two counter-rotating rotors" but, at the time, there was no engine strong enough to provide lift for the machine. Hiram Maxim (the son!) provided a sketch for this machine in 1872 but never went about building it. I guess some other aeronauts in Pynchon's novel took the bull by the horns and built some themselves. By 1893, there were quite a few engines to choose from to power your fictional helicopter. I mean whirling machine!

"guncotton reciprocators"
This would be a kind of engine that uses cylinders propelled by guncotton. Guncotton is cotton soaked in nitric acid so that it instead of burning slowly like a regular piece of cotton, it goes up in a quick burst of energy. It was mostly used as a replacement for gunpowder. As for being used in engines, my quick and dirty research (you know, reading the Wikipedia article exclusively) didn't turn up anything except that Jules Verne used it as a propellant in From Earth to the Moon. So once again, Pynchon is looking toward science fiction writers of the time to fill his own little historical science fiction novel with "what if this stuff really existed" ideas. This returns to my theory that Pynchon's world in Against the Day is one where natural laws match humanity's belief of them and literally change only after a scientist disproves what was believed. So the world surrounding 1893 is one that is changing dramatically as science and technology continue to disprove old beliefs and establish new scientifically proven models of the world and the universe.

"naphtha engines"
Naphtha is a flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture. It's a pretty old source of liquid fuel, describing various types of petroleum fuels used across different cultures throughout civilization. If I hadn't already admitted to being a complete ignoramus, it would have been surprising that I'd never heard of this ancient fuel. These "naphtha engines" were probably used for the more rocket-like flying machines, would be my idiotic guess.

"electrical lifting-screws of strange hyperboloidal design for drilling upward through the air"
Most of us can probably picture a flying machine shaped like a screw. But these specific flying machines are hyperboloidal in shape which means they're shaped like a rotating hyperbola. That just means they look like a more aerodynamic spool for thread.

So this but imagine if it were carved out like a screw so the air could sluice through it as it turned, propelling it upward. Like a drill through the air!

"winged aerostats"
Like Icarus! But more successful.

"wing-flapping miracles of ornithurgy"

This is Otto Lelienthal from 1894. So Merle is probably seeing a bunch of these weirdos flapping about the place. Admittedly more successfully than poor Otto here, being that this is a work of fiction.

This is my favorite Ornithopter. In the early days of Magic the Gathering, I'd estimate that 95% of all the decks I made revolved around this little guy, the Millstone, or Power Leak.

I managed to get through this entire post without mentioning one of my favorite cartoons as a kid, Dick Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines, also known by many as Catch That Pigeon.

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 Against the sun as yet low across the Lake, wings cast long shadows, their edges luminous with dew.

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"Against the sun" comes mighty close to Against the Day. Should I be squealing with joy?! Is this where the title comes from? No, no! I won't allow myself the luxury of accepting it that easily since it's obviously different. The sun is not day even if they're intrinsically bound together.

This scene, even though simply a brief description, reminds me of the moment in Gravity's Rainbow when Slothrop and Geli watch their shadows extend across Germany with the rising sun behind them. Pynchon obviously loves this interplay between light and dark, and the way the edges of darkness are lit up the most, the suns rays arcing past the obstacle to light up the morning dew. It's a radiant image.

I wonder what meaning can be garnered by images Pynchon evokes time and time again, across multiple books. Is there any greater meaning than that he just loves these particular images? Another he uses in this book and Mason & Dixon is the star splattered pattern across a landscape, either by, as in Against the Day, dropped and exploded sandbags across the plains, or by, as in Mason & Dixon, snowballs lobbed against the sides of barns and the sides of cousins.

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 Far-off sounds of railway traffic and lake navigation came in on the wind.

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What is the sound of lake navigation? Lookouts yelling from the mast? Sails whipping in the wind? Oh, maybe steam engines chugging. So kind of the same sound as railway traffic, minus the clacking of metal wheels on metal rails, I suppose. Both would have steam whistles because you can't have a steam engine without using some of that steam to make a loud, high-pitched, annoying noise!

The important part of this sentence is how the sounds came in on the wind, just like the balloons. Air travel is the travel of nature and the future! Unless the most important part of the sentence is simply the word "came" because, remember, this seems to be a metaphor for a huge sex orgy.

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 Babies could be heard in both complaint and celebration.

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What in the hell? When did babies become a part of this story?! Does this mean a bunch of these balloons are actually separatist civilizations?! The indication is that the occupants of these balloons are not necessarily youngsters, although, I suppose, teenagers do have children, especially in older times.

Perhaps the mention of babies crying and giggling at sun-up is meant to say how quiet it is otherwise. People waking up over breakfast, having their morning coffees, sitting in quiet contemplation . . . the only disturbance would be those damned babies.

Unless all the lifting and landing of balloons was a sex metaphor earlier! And the babies are a result! This balloon convention is just a gigantic sex orgy, isn't it?! Like an SCA event!

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 The smoke from breakfast campfires rose fragrantly through the air.

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The entire place probably smells like burning wood and bacon, two wonderful natural smells that might be the most hideous and disgusting of smells when mankind tries to artificially reproduce them. I still don't understand how anybody thinks "bacon-flavored" anything has any relationship to the actual taste of bacon.

Speaking of artificial things that don't taste like the actual thing, I used to wonder, as a kid, why banana-flavored candy tasted so wonderful and yet tasted nothing like bananas. And then I learned about the Gros Michel banana and how it basically went "commercially extinct" in the 60s. So the bananas I've eaten my entire life, the Cavendish, do not taste like banana-flavored candy. The candy is only somewhat reminiscent of a real banana and much, much tastier. So did Gros Michel bananas taste like banana flavoring?! Probably more so than the Cavendish but I'm sure, like most artificial flavors (especially those developed over a hundred years ago), it's not exact. Apparently the thing we think of as banana flavor was initially thought of as pear flavor in Great Britain back when the flavor was developed. If you want to learn more about banana monoculture or the creation of artificial flavors, visit your local library!

"Guaranteed to start conversation" doesn't assure it's going to be a good conversation. Maybe one that begins, "What the fuck are these disgusting appetizers, you monster?!"

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 "Some social, ain't it! Why, every durn professor of flight from here to Timbuctoo's flying in, 's what it looks like."

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If this were a Nicholson Baker novel, I'd expect this to be a metaphor for a writing convention. But it's Pynchon so it's probably a metaphor for penises. Although, what if all of Nicholson Baker's sex and penis references that were metaphors for writing were just double metaphors coming back around to penises and sex?! Now I want to re-read The Everlasting Story of Nory!