Sunday 19 July 2015

A Potential Series

Potentially, a series of stories about Eric King and Ranjit Singh as narrated by Ranjit to the young Athelstane King and Narayan Singh. Adventures throughout the Empire:

fighting cannibals in North America;
border skirmishes;
raids on Gulf slave-traders;
the Siamese campaign;
African expeditions;
tiger and elephant hunts;
guarding an archaeological expedition to the ruined European cities;
treks through Eastern borders and steppes;
the Afridi ambush in which Eric was killed.

Ranjit trained Athelstane and Narayan and, when the time was right, relayed important information from Eric to Athelstane. The obscure King family has a pivotal historical role but Athelstane and his sister need time to learn it.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree, if Stirling wishes, he could write a series of stories featuring the King and Singh families. And I hope he does.

But, what most immediately interested me was the map you chose for illustrating this blog piece of yours. Exactly what kind of realm is this "Austro-Danubia"? Should it be understood as descending from our real world Austria-Hungary and is it still ruled by the Habsburgs? I simply DON'T recall THE PESHAWAR LANCERS saying anything about Austro-Danubia.

Sean

David Birr said...

According to an entry on the All the Tropes forum, Alternatehistory.com is exploring variations of the *Peshawar Lancers* scenario that its members consider somewhat more plausible, "including bits like a surviving USA and a German Holy Roman Empire in Eastern Europe."

I haven't seen and thus can't evaluate their arguments for the plausibility of their alternatives, but they apparently hold the opinion that Stirling has an UNREALISTIC fixation on cannibalism developing when civilization collapses.

At any rate, the map above MAY be an illustration from one of those alternatives.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, David!

Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated! So, the above map may not truly be the work of Stirling?

If the technological/administrative/logistical base on which a high tech culture of the kind Europe and the US had achieved by the 1870's is suddenly and brutally knocked out from under it,then a truly CALAMITOUS collapse is unavoidable. If, at virtually a single blow, food is no longer able to be shipped to the cities in large parts of the world, then I don't see how cannibalism can be avoided.

Sean