"On the wall hung several bad prints set in heavy gold frames, of the famous Constable paintings of Starbridge Cathedral..."
-Susan Howatch, Glittering Images (London, 1996), PART TWO, NINE, IV, p. 370.
In our timeline, the city of Starbridge and its famous Cathedral do not exist. Thus, any narrative references to Starbridge could count as alternative history. However, Glittering Images is classified as a contemporary novel. A novel is a long prose fiction. Fictional settings include Starbridge, based on Salisbury.
Like Poul and Karen Anderson's Ys, Starbridge is a city that we know although it does not exist. I agree with Howatch's narrator:
"So I came at last to Starbridge, radiant ravishing Starbridge..."
-op. cit., PART ONE, ONE, IX, p. 22.
Notionally, all the events of the twentieth century are accessible to the Time Patrol and are in the past of the Technic History. Patrol agents might coexist with the rogue Section of Swedish Security in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy and Starbridge might still exist in the Duchy of Britain in the Terran Empire.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
What was Great Britain called during the Commonwealth era of the Technic series, the London Integrate? We know that during the Empire the aristocrat representing Britain was not a duke, but a Mayor Palatine. And possibly descended from the royal family.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
OK. The Mayoralty of Britain!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
"Mayor Palatine" has stuck in my mind as being a slightly odd title to use. After all, "Duke of Great Britain" makes just as much sense!
Ad astra! Sean
Using fictional locations in ‘mainstream’ novels is an old trope - William Faulkner did it all the time.
It is common and is an interesting overlap between mainstream fiction and alternative history.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
As did Anthony Trollope in his novel BARCHESTER TOWERS, set in the mid 19th century in a small Anglican bishopric.
Ad astra! Sean
Howatch is a successor of Trollope.
Kaor, Paul!
I looked up Susan Howatch, and I think you are broadly right. Albeit, I don't think Howatch wrote political novels of the kind Trollope also did.
Ad astra! Sean
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