historical fiction;
sf about time travel which can be historical;
other fiction which can be about historians who discuss their work.
Poul Anderson's Time Patrol agents have to intervene in the Second Punic War to prevent Hannibal from sacking Rome.
A dinner guest of Isaac Asimov's Black Widowers is a historian who comments that:
Rome and Carthage were "'...nearly equally matched powers...'" -Puzzles Of The Black Widowers (London, 1991), p. 94;
Hannibal, Napoleon and Robert E. Lee were the three great generals who lost but kept their reputations.
And I did not know all of that. It is good to find some common ground between series as diverse as the Time Patrol and the Black Widowers.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteI'm dubious about Napoleon. I recall Stirling calling him so harsh a despot that he made Louis XIV, with his fussing about laws and precedents, look like a pussycat! And Napoleon's judicial murder of the luckless Duke of Enghien was a serious blot on his reputation. Still, I am willing to think that was more because of overzealous subordinates.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
ReplyDeleteI think we just mean reputation as a general.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteI can see that! And we see a bit of that "mythologizing" of Napoleon in THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS.
Ad astra! Sean