The SpiriGraph

One thing I had imagined for my own setting was based on COMSTAR from the BattleTech universe. Telegraph communication in the late 19th century is still possible but quite different. Telegraph offices spring up everywhere, but they aren't connected by wires. Instead, a kind of Seer operates each telegraph station; a person writes out a message on a slip of paper, pays a fee, and the Seer cranks up the SpiriGraph, contacting a spirit to deliver the message to a particular SpiriGraph at another station. Of course, widespread use of this technology carries the consequence of SpiriGraph operators going mad....

So, I was thinking in terms of Dune which features a modified race of humans which communicate with the dead in this way. Each airship, for example, carries a Communications Officer which is a guy sitting at a typewriter & a SpiriPhone; his leg, by the way, is chained to the airship frame so when he falls to the floor in convulsions with his tongue lolling out of his head nobody else on the ship gets hurt. Of course, he's also relegated to the "SpiriPhone Shack" which is a tiny enclosed room adjacent but very separate from the bridge of the ship. But, with this Communications Office, the airship is able to access supernatural intelligence about the weather, enemy ships in the area, maybe even a hint of precognition. And I had imagined even certain deceased spirits linked somehow to certain ships. Anyway, it's certainly a very different setting than just a modified alternate history of our own world.