Cosmic Comparisons

SM Stirling's Conquistador explicitly acknowledges its sources here, including two titles by Poul Anderson. Let us therefore consider the following sequence:

Anderson, Three Hearts And Three Lions
Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest
Stirling, Conquistador

- three novels of cross-time travel.

However, the two Anderson titles are fantasies, involving supernatural beings and magic, whereas Conquistador by contrast is science fiction, assuming only:

an infinite series of parallel universes with identical physical laws;

a technological means of travel between them.

Adrienne Rolfe's experience differs from ours in just one respect: in the existence of the Gate and of what lies beyond it. However, what is beyond the Gate is an Earth where history went differently, not where myths are true. Thus, Three Hearts... and ...Tempest are as fantastic to Adrienne as they are to us.

Her literary predecessors also include the group of extra-temporal exiles in HG Wells' Men Like Gods but these characters are hardly major players in the history of sf. One major predecessor of many science fictional space and time explorers is the original Time Traveler, who could well have encountered a sabre-tooth as the New Virginians do at the end of Conquistador. In the Epilogue to The Time Machine, the outer narrator speculates that the Time Traveler has gone to:

the Stone Age;
the Cretaceous Sea;
the Jurassic Age;
the Triassic Age -

- so we can legitimately imagine him among prehistoric animals even though Wells never wrote a sequel.

Not The Same San Francisco Bay

The image shows San Francisco Bay, FirstSide. On the Other Side, Tom Christiansen stares open-mouthed at the Bay with:

no San Francisco;
a town along the waterfront;
a small airport in place of the Naval Air Station;
no landfills on the shore;
long piers with fishing trawlers and small wooden ships;
cranes taking cargo to sheds and warehouses;
trucks carrying it to the highway;
no bridges;
Alcatraz with only swarming pelicans and guano;
fewer and smaller ships - schooners, barges, tugs, sailboats and fishing boats;
in flight, gulls, pelicans, cormorants, golden eagles and several condors;
a spouting whale;
sea lions;
a sea otter.

Adrienne explains:

"'...it's exactly what it looks like, only it's not the same San Francisco Bay you grew up with. Different...time line. A different history, two different universes existing in the same space and joined only by the Gate.'" You know the concept?'" (p. 243)

In Narnia, they would say that you cannot go there by traveling through space, only by magic.

Tom replies:

"'Yeah, you know I read science fiction.'" (ibid.)

And we know that that science fiction includes "Anderson" (p. 103) so Tom has almost certainly read Valeria's explanation to Rupert:

"'You can picture the cosmoses as lying parallel to each other, like the leaves in a book. That isn't strictly true, either; they occupy the same space-time, being separated by a set of dimensions -'"
-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), p. 101.

A Large Gathering In The Old Phoenix

Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), Epilogue, pp. 228-229.

During a later visit to the Old Phoenix, Valeria recognizes:

a monk with a wolf;
a drunken Chinaman writing a poem;
a rangy fellow with a harp;
a man with an iridescent jewel on his wrist;
a lean Victorian with a lame companion;
a freckled boy with a black companion "...in tatterdemalion farm clothes..." (p. 228);
a warrior with coppery skin, a feather crown, a calumet and an ear of maize.

I recognize only two of them, both fictional in our timeline. There are others whom she does not recognize and some of those are not human.

In Valeria's timeline as in ours, Prince Rupert helped invent the mezzotint. Her and our timelines diverge about 1900. Valeria identifies the real New World as science, "...reason triumphant..." (p. 229), hopeful, challenging and liberating. Yes, if other social forces do not destroy it.

Alternative Shakespeare

(The Old Phoenix sequence, the Time Patrol series and the Technic History in a single image.)

Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), Chapter xii.

Valeria points out to Rupert that he inhabits a world with a particular geography, astronomy, natural laws, people, nations, societies, past, present and future. He agrees although I can imagine him getting puzzled and asking how it could be otherwise. She is used to the idea of multiple worlds; he is not, yet.

Next, she asks him to imagine a divergent history. Since she is starting easy with the idea of alternative histories, not of alternative cosmologies, why does she initially confuse the issue by mentioning geography, astronomy and even natural laws? She prompts him with the obvious example of "'A battle lost instead of won...'" (p. 100) An obvious starting point in England would be 1066: two crucial battles with several possible outcomes. Instead, Rupert goes further back, imagining that:

Hamlet did not die young;
thus he, not Fortinbras, became King of Denmark;
King Hamlet helped his kinfolk to overthrow the usurper, Macbeth;
then the Danes turned their primitive cannon against Norman William...

This is both a crossover and an alternative history/imaginary story/Elseworld/What if? etc for Shakespeare's plays.

Valeria explains that there could be two whole universes but she uses twentieth century terms that Rupert cannot possibly understand:

"space-time" - he will have a common sense understanding only of "space" and of "time";
"galaxies" - he will not know what this means;
"planets" - he will have a different understanding of this term (Sun and Moon are "planets," Earth is not);
"matter and energy particles" - he might know some Greek Atomist philosophy but that does not refer to energy particles;
"dimensions" - will this mean anything?

Holger rightly points out that Valeria is leaving Rupert behind. However, the reader gets the message, more or less.

The Shakespearean Timeline

Our Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the central character of Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), is a grandson of James I. Did I realize that before? His grandmother was Danish which gives Rupert occasion to remark that England and Denmark have been friendly since Hamlet's day. Indeed, Shakespeare's Hamlet visited England. But, "'Hamlet?'" (p. 99) asks Holger.

Holger is not from our timeline and neither, if he regards Hamlet as a historical figure, is this Rupert. Valeria, from yet another timeline but accustomed to inter-historical travel, asks questions and deduces that Rupert's timeline is differentiated by the fact that in it Shakespeare was the Great Historian, not the Great Dramatist. Thus:

fairies exist;
magic works;
Caesar had clocks;
technology started earlier;
Cavaliers have steam trains and balloons;
with Oberon's help, they can win the English Civil War.

When I first bought A Midsummer Tempest, it took me a while to get into reading it. It is different and denser but worth the effort.

Associative Processes

Blogging processes are allusive and associative, not logical or linear. Thus, discussion of SM Stirling's alternative histories generated speculation as to whether any of Stirling's characters might find their way into Poul Anderson's inter-cosmic inn, the Old Phoenix, but this in turn led to discussion of the historical figures that Anderson does show us in the Phoenix and that discussion proved to be far more fruitful than I had expected, despite my relative familiarity with these texts.

"Losers' Night," if read hastily, merely presents disjointed snatches of diverse conversations. I had enjoyed it even on that level. However, when reread carefully, line by line, it turns out to be a summation of the Old Phoenix sequence because it refers to Holger, Valeria, Rupert and Abelard and also reflects on the roles of several individuals in history. They made their marks so were they really "losers"?

This means that I must finish rereading the Old Phoenix passages of A Midsummer Tempest and will then be free to return to Stirling's Conquistador. But first I hope that there will be a family visit to the Wolfhouse Gallery this afternoon and a historical talk this evening.

Some Details In The Old Phoenix

I described the interior of the Old Phoenix here but there are always more details:

of the two globes on the desk, one is celestial, the other terrestrial showing places like Atlantis and Huy Braseal;

the bookshelves have Sokolnikoff's Introduction to Paratemporal Mathematics and the Handbook of Alchemy and Metaphysics;

Valeria, who has her own copy of the Handbook, knows theorems that enable her to travel to a particular continuum or one like it;

she even found the Old Phoenix by deducing that there had to be an interuniversal nexus;

by contrast, Holger travels randomly, using a medieval grimoire;

Valeria can teach Holger some of what she knows but he will be unable to use the knowledge unless he can prove and understand the theorems;

meanwhile, one of their fellow guests is a regular called Clodia Pulcher.

In The Taproom Of The Old Phoenix

Entering the Old Phoenix from one version of seventeenth century England, Will Fairweather closes the door against the storm.

"Windows likewise were tightly shuttered."
-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), Chapter xi, "THE TAPROOM OF THE OLD PHOENIX," p. 90.

Will and his companion, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, must think that the windows are shuttered against the storm that they have just evaded whereas, in fact, the next time the door is opened, it may not be onto that storm or even onto that scenery while the windows, if opened, would show the void between the universes or maybe a cross-section of multi-dimensional space.

Their host addresses them in what looks like prose but can be rearranged as verse:

"What may your wishes be? Nay, let me guess.
"Ye've fared through rain, in striving and distress.
"A bath, dry garb, hot food, a cup of cheer,
"A bed, then breakfast , ere ye go from here." (p. 91)

Another guest, Holger, claims that giants existed in his timeline but his example is the seven-foot Harald Hardrada so, on that evidence, his timeline could be ours! His companion, a young woman, remarks that his and her worlds were similar or identical till about 1900 and that Abraham Lincoln might visit the inn. This is the first hint to the reader that time travel or something like it is involved. We are used to the idea by now but it is always worthwhile to check how an author first presented such notions.

Parallel Fictions

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman fantasy graphic novels reveal that William Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest for Dream of the Endless, one of seven anthropomorphic personifications of aspects of consciousness. Poul Anderson's alternative history fantasy novel, A Midsummer Tempest, is a sequel to both.

In The Sandman, characters from different universes shelter in the Inn of the Worlds' End during a reality storm caused by the death of Dream. In A Midsummer Tempest, characters from different alternative histories meet in the Old Phoenix Inn between universes. Odin is a character in The Sandman as in three fantasy novels by Anderson.

The Sandman is like Anderson's Time Patrol series in that many of its installments are set in past periods and may feature historical figures. Gaiman has Augustus and Harun al Rashid among others while Anderson has Cyrus and Hiram among others. Gaiman also hints at time travel which does occur elsewhere in the fictional universe to which he contributes.

This explains why reading Anderson reminds me of Gaiman and vice versa.

Desert Island Book

There is a radio program called Desert Island Discs. Do they have it in the States? A guest says which ten or so pieces of music s/he would want on a desert island, plus one book other than the Bible or Shakespeare. My book would have to be Time Patrol. I would reread this omnibus volume from cover to cover, looking for previously unnoticed details on each page, like:

the admirable economy and skill with which Anderson introduces the doubly complex concept of a time travel organization in a mutable timeline;

physical descriptions of locations in diverse periods;

discussions of divergent timelines and the creation of such a timeline in "Delenda Est;"

the increasing subtlety, sophistication and complexity of the series when the author returns to it after a decade-long interval (I am additionally thinking of The Shield Of Time which, by the rules of Desert Island Discs, I would not also have on the island);

comparisons and contrasts with The Time Machine, which ideally I would also have smuggled onto the island.

It is invidious to ask which is the "best" of an author's works. Tau Zero is a classic of hard sf but A Midsummer Tempest is equally excellent in the very different category of literary fantasy. If I were to be allowed not just one volume but two entire series, then they would have to be the Time Patrol and the Technic History, totaling nine long volumes. Each series contains several individual works of extremely high quality. In the Time Patrol, Manson Everard has a protege, Wanda Tamberly. In the Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn has a protege, David Falkayn, and Dominic Flandry is succeeded by his daughter, Diana Crowfeather. And there are others. Two series give us many characters.

Returning to SM Stirling whom I have been reading as a worthy successor of Anderson and in any case worth reading in his own right, I can rank the four novels that I have read so far in order of preference:

The Peshawar Lancers
Conquistador
The Sky People
In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings

And Marching Through Georgia is in the trans-Atlantic post.

Going For Infinity: Miscellaneous

Poul Anderson's Going For Infinity (New York, 2002) is a retrospective not only of short stories but also of novels. Three Hearts And Three Lions and A Midsummer Tempest are represented by excerpts and The High Crusade is represented by its sequel, "Quest." We can think other novels that could have been represented by a shorter prequel or sequel. Anderson uses his phrase, "...a wilderness of stars..." (p. 204), once more in his synopsis of The High Crusade.

The Harold Shea stories by L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt were Anderson's "...main inspiration..." (p. 238) for Three Hearts... Thus, Pratt joins the list of Anderson's antecedents. Anthony Boucher, Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, asked Anderson to include a parallel universes rationale in Three Hearts... Thus, Boucher joins John W Campbell as an editor influential on Anderson. Thanks to parallel universes, the hero of Three Hearts... crosses over into A Midsummer Tempest and there meets a character from Anderson's two Operation... volumes.

Anderson's multiverse is more compact than Michael Moorcock's sprawling Multiverse which has a Conjunction of the Million Spheres comparable to DC Comics Crisis on Infinite Earths. Moorcock's Multiverse has been graphically adapted. I have discussed how Anderson's works might be adapted for comic strips and screen (also here) but it would have to be done very well or not at all. Anderson himself heard that the film of The High Crusade was "...a piece of botchwork..." (p. 203)

For Non-SF Readers

In his Guest of Honor speech at the World Science Fiction Convention in Heidelberg in 1970, EC Tubb asked: which sf book would you recommend to someone who doesn't read sf? John Brunner replied, "Philip K Dick's The Man In The High Castle because everyone has heard of World War II." On the back of Poul Anderson's The Time Patrol (New York, 1991), David Drake is quoted as saying:

"This is my answer to the question, 'What book would I give to a friend who doesn't read SF?'"

Again, everyone has heard of history.

A retired teacher of English and part-time second hand bookseller admires The Time Machine, in particular the almost poetic description of the Time Traveler's return. He recognized the name Asimov, of course, and may also have recognized Poul Anderson. Needless to say, I recommended the latter but, if asked, which book should I suggest that he read first? Not a Dominic Flandry collection, good though these are both as hard sf action-adventure fiction and when read as the middle period of Flandry's career which is part of the History of Technic Civilization which is one of Anderson's several future history series.

A Midsummer Tempest is an obvious starting place for a man who appreciates literature and it would be interesting to find out whether he noticed the peculiar nature of the text. The Time Patrol might work as a second volume although it is never possible to anticipate how another reader will respond to a text. The guy in question disliked CS Lewis' The Great Divorce and my son-in-law did not enthuse about the Time Patrol series.

Prince Rupert And Other Matters

Today we visited the City and Cathedral of Lichfield, where I learned something of interest to readers of Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest. On 7 April 1643, Prince Rupert, leading three thousand troops, attacked the Parliamentarians in the Cathedral Close. The Cavaliers mounted artillery to the north of the Close where one site is still called Prince Rupert's Mound. Rupert's force drove out the Parliamentarians.

I have made some additions to the Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments blog and also to a recent post, "Stepping Stones And Patterns." (See here.) I have finished rereading "The Trouble Twisters" and will shortly try to summarize its complicated political situation. Basically, what van Rijn needs on any planet is a stable civilization to trade with. When Falkayn, negotiating on Ikrananka, learns that human soldiers working for the local Emperor have on Imperial orders conquered a city but have then held the city and declared themselves independent, he, Falkayn, offers to use his superior fire power (without killing anyone) to end the human resistance.

Thus, he is not automatically loyal to members of his own species. But he offers them a fair deal as well. Too acclimatized to Ikrananka, after living there for generations, to return to the technological civilization of Earth, the "Ershokh" (human beings) can remain on Ikranka where they can continue to work as soldiers but now armed by the League to guard the proliferating trade routes. This sounds like another example of van Rijn's "My making a reasonable profit is beneficial to all concerned" philosophy. (I may have already summarized this situation sufficiently.)

If Falkayn, now a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League and leader of van Rijn's first trade pioneer team, had not secured a deal and had even had to be rescued by a relief expedition, then he would neither have earned a commission nor have continued to lead a team. He must continue to excel. But eventually he becomes van Rijn's confidante and grandson-in-law despite breaking his oath of fealty at a crucial historical turning point.

A Play, An Acrostic And A Haiku

I want to compare Poul Anderson to both William Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll. Regular readers already know of Anderson's Shakespearen novel, A Midsummer Tempest. Anderson did not write any corresponding Alice-related novel. However, like both Shakespeare and Carroll, he did write poetically about mortality.

Shakespeare: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

Carroll: "Life, what is it but a dream?"

Anderson: see here.

Life, a dream or summer shadows, is celebrated in drama, an acrostic and a haiku. Before returning to Anderson's hard sf, let's appreciate the poetry.

Multiverse III

Valeria Matuchek tells Holger Carlsen:

"'...God never felt obliged to make the universes easy for us to understand.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), p. 98.

There is some empirical basis for Valeria's reference to "God" because, in her universe, where magic works, it is possible to contact a Heaven, a Hell and their inhabitants. But are these supernatural realms specific to that universe? Another timeline visited by Holger has Aztec gods. Are those supernatural beings autonomous or subordinate to a single multiversal creator, as Bacchus and the river god are subordinate to Aslan, although with a surprising degree of autonomy, in Narnia?

Valeria's father makes the point that:

"...if parallel worlds exist, they must be linked in a very fundamental way; otherwise the hypothesis is unverifiable in principle and therefore meaningless. Deriving from the same source, embedded in the same matrix..."
-Poul Anderson, Operation Chaos (Sutton, Surrey, 1995), p. 2.

But is the single source a common creator? If every possibility exists, does this include universes where statements like "God does not exist" or "God is dead" are true?

I thought that "God is dead" meant something like "God never existed but now more people realize it," but apparently some "God is dead" theologians mean that a powerful supernatural being literally ceased to exist. I think that every possible interpretation is put on unverifiable statements of this kind.

James Blish's Black Easter ends with a demon announcing God's death but the sequel ends with Satan wondering whether He has merely withdrawn. In Mike Carey's Lucifer, a character says that God is dead whereas He has merely withdrawn - but will not return. Could such options exist within Anderson's multiverse?

Multiverse II

A multiverse incorporating parallel Earths with some characters and events that are fictions on one Earth but real on another has existed in:

the film, The Last Action Hero, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger;
a number of monthly comic books with a common publisher;
A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson.

What this scenario needs for its fullest development is a team of competent authors writing parallel series that periodically overlap like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan At The Earth's Core but done much better. Alan Moore, explaining comics crossovers, asked his readers to imagine Frankenstein kidnapping the Little Women, investigated by a team-up of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

Despite Poul Anderson's massive output, he did not have much time or, probably, inclination to cross-refer between his fictional universes. However, he does capture the essence of the multiversal scenario in two short chapters and a one-page epilogue of A Midsummer Tempest:

Holger, real in the Carolingian universe but a myth in several others, has spent some time on an Earth where there was a World War II against Nazi Germany, is now traveling between universes trying to return home and has just encountered real Aztec gods;

Valeria Matuchek, born on an Earth where World War II was against the Saracen Caliphate, meets Holger while traveling between universes for research purposes but also meets a Prince Rupert of the Rhine from an Earth where Shakespeare's plays were true histories;

in the Epilogue, Valeria addresses a group that includes Sherlock Holmes and Huckleberry Finn.

We are free to imagine an endless multiple series in which these characters mostly lead their own lives but occasionally meet either by accident or in common response to some vast multiversal crisis. In fact, Anderson's Operation Chaos, during which Valeria is born, begins with an attempt to broadcast a lesson and a warning to other universes before it has even been verified that they exist...

Multiverse

Poul Anderson's inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix, is the setting for:

"House Rule"
"Losers' Night"
A Midsummer Tempest, xi THE TAPROOM OF THE OLD PHOENIX.
A Midsummer Tempest, xii LATER.
A MidsummerTempest, Epilogue THE TAPROOM OF THE OLD PHOENIX.

In A Midsummer Tempest, the inn is a meeting place for:

Prince Rupert from the Shakespearean universe of the same novel;

Holger Carlsen from the Carolingian universe of Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions;

Valeria Matuchek from the magical universe of Anderson's Operation Chaos and Operation Luna.

In "House Rule," the inn is a meeting place for:

Nicholas van Rijn from the hard sf universe of Anderson's Technic History;
Sancho Panza from Don Quixote;
Erik the Red, possibly from our universe.

Other guests from our universe or nearer ones include:

the first person narrator of the two short stories;
Leonardo da Vinci;
Albert Einstein;
Heloise and Abelard;
Francois Villon;
Winston Churchill;
an unnamed but identifiable Irish political leader.

Anderson wrote that he hoped to return to the Old Phoenix again...

The inn could have provided a framing sequence for a collection of new stories to display each of the different genres that Anderson wrote. Neil Gaiman used his Inn of the Worlds' End as a Chaucerian venue.

Today, I have read in Latin Caesar's and Tacitus' accounts of the Druids and their resistance to Roman rule.

Swords And Humour

I have read to the end of The Alchemist's Revenge by Peter Cakebread. An initially straightforward plot becomes increasingly elaborate - wheels within wheels. Apart from the Mafia-like criminal gang, the Association, there is a secretive organization of powerful people called "the Tinkers." Are they the Clockwork & Chivalry universe equivalent of the Masons?

I have found two other parallels with Poul Anderson. One is vividly described battle scenes and sword fights - although such passages should be common enough in historical fiction?

The second parallel is unexpected humor. In A Midsummer Tempest, this is mainly at the expense of the Puritans. Told that France is a Catholic land but tolerates Protestants, Nobah Barker replies:

"'A Catholic land. That means they tolerate Catholics too, does it not? Wherein lies freedom there?'"
-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), p. 139.

Cakebread describes a Cambridge in which "...the only religious orthodoxy...was a lack of an orthodoxy."
-Peter Cakebread, The Alchemist's Revenge (Swindon, 2013), p. 168.

Street preachers rant, spectators cheer and:

"William wondered if these ranters were fulfilling a need for public entertainment..." (p. 169)

(That sounds like a joke but is probably historically accurate.)

I was amused by this passage:

"Perhaps Ma Grindrake would have invited them to stay for another night, if they hadn't been such a sour-faced bunch. The only traveller who wasn't wearing a grim expression was Ralph - but then again, he was covered in bandages, so who's to say?" (p. 144)

And there is a comical climax when William and Ralph each sit in a "'...fancy little cage...'" (p. 184) above great striding metal legs. Warned that first gear called "slow" is quite fast, that second gear called "fast" is very fast and that third gear is dangerous and to be avoided, they manage to attack their enemies in third gear which makes them unstoppable and, when Ralph's gear lever breaks off in his hand, he can stop only by crashing into something.

So the "First Book of the Companie of Reluctant Heroes" ends and when can we expect the Second?

Peter And Poul II

The previous post highlighted some parallels between A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson and The Alchemist's Revenge by Peter Cakebread. Both novels can be characterized by saying that the English Civil War of the seventeenth century is being fought in a version of history where magic works. (Such a historical difference presupposes a corresponding cosmological difference but let's not go that far right now.)

One difference between the novels (so I initially thought) was that A Midsummer Tempest also places more recent technology in the seventeenth century. But so does The Alchemists' Revenge! Reading further, I find that not all of the anachronistic mechanisms are alchemically empowered. Some of them are merely ingenious engineering - although still suspected of Satanic influence, of course.

Each of these novels is one part of a vaster fictional universe but the ways in which this is done could not be more different.

A Midsummer Tempest...
...is set in a universe where all of Shakespeare's plays were literally true. Specifically, it is a sequel to A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. Further, this Shakespearean universe coexists with the Carolingian universe of Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions and with the magical universe of his two Operation... volumes. Prince Rupert meets Holger Danske and Valeria Matuchek in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix.

The Alchemist's Revenge...
...is the "First Book of the Companie of Reluctant Heroes." Further, this series is set in the universe of the Clockwork & Chivalry Role Playing Game (RPG) by Peter Cakebread and Ken Walton. Since RPG's are interactive dramas, maybe there is some connection with Old Will after all!

In both cases...
...the fiction must be understood in the context of the history:

"...for all the differences, much remains the same as the real history. Traditional society and values are crumbling; religious and political factions vie for supremacy; kin fight kin, in a bitter struggle for England's future; and ordinary folk struggle to get by, in a world turned upside down...
"...if we were going to do history, even alternate history, we needed to get the history right, before going on to change it."
-Peter Cakebread, The Apprentice's Revenge (Swindon, 2013), pp. 214-215.

Right on.

Peter And Poul

I have now read two alternative historical fictitious accounts of the English Civil War. In Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, Shakespeare was the Great Historian. It follows from this fantastic premise not only that Auberon, Titania, Puck etc existed and that Prospero's magic worked but also that there was knowledge of the Earth's sphericity in Lear's time and that there were clocks in Caesar's time. This early knowledge of science and mechanics led to an industrial revolution in the seventeenth century. The Roundheads had steam trains and balloons.

In Peter Cakebread's The Alchemist's Revenge, there was an alchemical revolution in the seventeenth century. Cavaliers and Roundheads fought each other with magical mechanisms, philosopher's stones and elementals.

In all three seventeenth centuries, ours, Anderson's and Cakebread's, the Roundheads were led by Oliver Cromwell whereas the Cavaliers were led by Charles I and Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Rupert is Anderson's hero but a minor character in Cakebread's novel. All three Ruperts could meet in the Old Phoenix, Anderson's Inn between the parallel universes.

As I have said before on this blog, Anderson's characters meet in many colourful dives and inns, including the Old Phoenix. Cakebread matches these with the Throttled Pig, the most dangerous pub in Oxford, whose landlord is rumoured to be in the pay of cutthroats. I have just started to read The Alchemist's Revenge and will look out for any more parallels of interest to Anderson fans - although, meanwhile, since the novel is also well written, I will enjoy it in any case.