Lord Kelvin's Machine is a science fiction novel by author James P. Blaylock. It was released in 1992

1992 in literature

The year 1992 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Ben Aaronovitch - Transit*Julia Álvarez - How the García Girls Lost Their Accents*Paul Auster - Leviathan*Iain Banks - The Crow Road...

 by Arkham House

Arkham House

Arkham House is a publishing house specializing in weird fiction founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to preserve in hardcover the best fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. Arkham House...

 in an edition of 4,015 copies. It was the author's first book published by Arkham House. The novel is the third in Blaylock's Steampunk

Steampunk

Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...

 series, following The Digging Leviathan

The Digging Leviathan

The Digging Leviathan is a science fiction novel written by James Blaylock. It was first published in 1984 by Ace Books. The source was Blaylock's first novel The Chinese Circus, which was never finished.-Plot summary:...

(1984) and Homunculus (1986). A substantially different novelette version first appeared in the Mid-December, 1985 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

Plot summary

In Victorian London, Alice, the wife of scientist-explorer Langdon St. Ives, is murdered by his arch-nemesis, the hunchback Dr. Ignacio Narbondo. St. Ives and his valet

Valet

Valet and varlet are terms for male servants who serve as personal attendants to their employer.- Word origins :In the Middle Ages, the valet de chambre to a ruler was a prestigious appointment for young men...

, Hasbro, pursue Narbondo across Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, contesting Narbondo's plot to destroy the earth and, later, efforts to revivify Narbondo's apparently frozen corpse. In the process St. Ives gains access to a powerful device created by Lord Kelvin

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin OM, GCVO, PC, PRS, PRSE, was a mathematical physicist and engineer. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging...

, which allows St. Ives to travel through time.

Note that the plot description of this book as described in S. T. Joshi

S. T. Joshi

Sunand Tryambak Joshi — known as S. T. Joshi — is an award-winning Indian American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction...

's Sixty Years of Arkham House

Sixty Years of Arkham House

Sixty Years of Arkham House is a bibliography of books published from 1939 to 1999 under the imprints of Arkham House, Mycroft & Moran and Stanton & Lee. It was released in 1999 by Arkham House in an edition of approximately 3,500 copies. The book updates Thirty Years of Arkham House, 1939-1969: A...

is wrong.