The names Nelson, Trafalgar, Wellington and Waterloo (1815) have entered the language. Thus, here is another fertile area for Time Patrol activity, not only the Sarajevo incident that ended a long peace but also the decisive events that had preceded that peace. What would have happened if the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo had had different outcomes or if Nelson had heeded advice to make himself less conspicuous on the deck of HMS Victory and therefore had not been shot and killed by a sniper at the moment of victory?
This afternoon, I must read some more Caesar but, before breakfast, I wanted to publish this post about Nelson.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't know if you have ever read it, but Poul Anderson touched on similar ideas in "When Free Men Shall Stand," about a US living in a world where Napoleon avoided making certain mistakes and made alternate decisions. A world where FRANCE won the Napoleonic wars. The story speculates about what might have happened if a powerful and victorious France had not sold Louisiana to the US and kept her to the east bank of the Mississippi River. The story shows us a US anxiously struggling not to fall under French domination and to seize the city of New Orleans as the necessary prelude for expanding west of the Mississippi in the 1850's.
The story can be found in Volume 3 of WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN; ALTERNATE WARS (Bantam/Spectra, 1991), a series of alternate history stories edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg. It even includes a piece by Winston S. Churchill!
Sean
Sean,
I have not read it. Yet another themed anthology. And yet another Poul Anderson alternative history story.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Maybe I should have included "When Free Men Shall Stand" in the list I compiled for my article "The Uncollected Works of Poul Anderson." I probably didn't because of thinking the WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN books being still too easily obtainable for the story to be thought hard to find. But 1991 was a long time ago. I'll think about it.
Sean
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