Other Reading: Theodore Roosevelt

Since we have referred to Theodore Roosevelt in relation both to Poul Anderson and to SM Stirling (see here; scroll down), it seems appropriate to reproduce a quotation attributed to TR in other reading:

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in Geoff Jones and Gary Frank, Doomsday Clock (Burbank, CA, 2019), "Not Victory Nor Defeat," p. 28, panel 8.

Roosevelt And The Morlocks

(Dig that cover.)

Here is another obscure sequence of literary allusions:

Poul Anderson mentions Theodore Roosevelt in the Foreword to There Will Be Time;

in that novel, one mutant time traveler gives the time travel idea to a young English writer (unnamed, like the private investigator in "Time Patrol") and another gives the idea of the Maurai Federation to Robert Anderson who passes it to Poul Anderson;

HG Wells' Time Traveler finds Morlocks and Eloi in 802,701 AD;

a trade unionist in a contemporary novel be Wells calls British workers "...the Morlocks. Coming up." (see here);

SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies describes English refugees from the London slums as "...proto-Morlocks..." and features Theodore Roosevelt.

(You didn't think I'd get back to Roosevelt but I did.)

Roosevelt And The Timelines

The Foreword of Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time refers to "...Theodore Roosevelt of happy memory." (p. 5) Anderson's The Shield Of Time has two divergent timelines, alpha and beta.

In the Prologue of SM Stirling's Black Chamber and in the 1912 of divergent timeline (B), Theodore Roosevelt is informed of the premature death of President Taft... The rest is alternative history.

Stirling's Roosevelt reflects that Taft had resembled a walrus. The photograph on the Wiki article confirms this.

Reading about alternative histories obliges us to learn some real history. I had not known (much) about Taft. His premature death has to be one of the most abstruse of alternative history premises but such premises are infinite. Any ruler or leader might have lived longer or shorter than he did. Anderson has a story with Alexander living longer than he did and a DC Comics Elseworld had Cromwell living longer than he did.

The airship in Chapter One reminds us, or at least me, of the airships in Stirling's Angrezi Raj. We are in for another adventure in another world...

An Incompletely Critical Look at DAGGERS IN DARKNESS, by Sean M. Brooks

I am calling this article of mine "incomplete" because I am commenting only on some of the highlights in that book which especially caught my attention the first time I read it. DAGGERS IN DARKNESS is the latest in the series of linked novels by S.M. Stirling which features Luz  O'Malley, an Irish American/Cuban field agent of the Black Chamber, an Intelligence agency created by President Theodore Roosevelt in an alternate universe where he won the Presidential election of 1912, after the premature death of President William Taft opened the  way to TR's victory.

DAGGERS IN DARKNESS gradually shows us how Luz and Ciara were coming into usually violent contact with increasingly senior agents of "The Mad Baron," Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a real, historical person who in our timeline briefly succeeded in making himself ruler of Mongolia in 1921. In the Black Chamber universe he came to rule Mongolia earlier and succeeded in staying in power.  His ambitions of gaining chemical weapons and the steps he took for achieving that were what drew the attention of the US and the Black Chamber to him.

 

DAGGERS IN DARKNESS opens in 1922, after WW I ended in a drastically different way from the Great War of our timeline. The US had conquered Mexico and annexed Canada; a Greater German Reich overran France and vast parts of eastern Europe and Russia; the British Empire was forced to evacuate Great Britain and relocate to India; Japan seized eastern Siberia, Manchuria, and chunks of China.

 

In the US, Theodore Roosevelt's "Progressive Republican" policies were so popular and seemingly successful that he had become virtually President for Life, easily winning every election since 1912. One of the things that first caught my eye and which I thought deserving of comment was this bit from Chapter 1, pages 8-9, about TR's eldest son Theodore: "Organizing the American Legion for veterans in '18 had shown he could move men to action in peacetime by his words and force of personality. The job in Manila [as Governor General of the Philippines] was a chance to show what he could do as an administrator. If he did well in it, there was no reason he couldn't be President himself someday, perhaps after a stint in a Cabinet post... Secretary of State or War, say... or nomination as Vice President in '28, and in either case in '32, when the young man was in his prime."

 

The US had become so vastly more powerful and larger that it was more an empire than anything else.  What we are seeing here, whether TR himself understood it, were  the old institutions coming to seem too small and inadequate for managing the demands of ruling an empire. We see TR coming more and more to think in dynastic terms, of his eldest son eventually succeeding him as President. If the younger Theodore governed as successfully as his father and was also blessed with an able son, would that son be proclaimed Emperor of America, instead of being only President?

 

Next, on page 27, I saw this: "Luz and Ciara's theoretically and legally adopted orphans were in biological fact half-sisters who now unmistakably resembled their mothers AND their sire, a man named Sven Lundqvist, who'd met her and Ciara under carefully arranged false circumstances. With the expectation that he'd soon be five thousand miles away and under the impression that his extremely entertaining weekend at a hot-springs resort in West Virginia had been just good luck and charm on his part; in fact his ship had disappeared on the way back to Stockholm; possibly a U-boat, probably a mine."

 

In many ways, I found Luz and Ciara's behavior here open to criticism. They wanted children, but refused to get them by either marrying men or honestly asking a man to knowingly become the father of their children.  I did not like the obvious implication that Luz had no intention of ever telling Sven that he had become the father of four daughters. He too had rights over those children!

 

It was too convenient, to have the hapless Sven Lundqvist disappearing on the way home to Sweden.  It meant there would be no awkward personal and legal difficulties in the future if Sven found out about his hitherto unknown children. It also meant there would be no trouble when the twins started asking questions why there was no father in their lives when other children they knew had fathers. And these children might want to know about Sven's parents and possible brothers and sisters. Which again could be awkward for Luz and Ciara. His too convenient death made that less likely, at least for a long time!

 

Candidly, I thought Luz's treatment of Sven callous and cynical, he was a mere sperm donor for her and Ciara. An impression which this bit from page 161 (Chapter Nine) did not lessen, after Luz learned of how the Swedish ship carrying Sven and other diplomats had been sunk by a German mine or U-Boat early in 1918: "...sinking a Swedish flagged merchant liner not far off the Kattegat, while carrying diplomats back to Stockholm in the spring of 1918. She'd been mildly sorry to hear that via naval connections, and hoped it had been quick at least..." A casually used and discarded sperm donor!

 

I also thought it very implausible that both Luz and Ciara would have twins, and that ALL of those children would be girls. it's far more likely that either Luz or Ciara would have had only one child, not twins. And I thought it very unlikely, even granting that,  that none of them were boys. It was far more likely that at least one or two of them would have been boys. It was too neat and schematic, for Luz and Ciara to both have twins and that all four children were girls.

 

Despite my distaste for the methods Luz took for her and Ciara to get children, that does not mean I am hostile to those children! Colleen, Mary, Patricia, and Luciana are thoroughly likable, bright, active, and energetic. I did wonder if they seemed too ideal, too perfect to be entirely convincing. But, I can see how if, the parents were healthy, intelligent, and free of any overt disabilities, that kind of selective breeding would maximize the chances of any children they had also being intelligent and healthy. But I continue to have my doubts about the plausibility of all four of them being girls.

 

And here is as good a place as any to state frankly I did not like the lesbianism of Luz and Ciara. Because I believe homosexuality is a distorting, a warping of the sexual and reproductive drive. So I read through the more lesbian parts of DAGGERS with resignation.

 

And in Chapter Three, page 66, I saw this: "...plenty of Jews but not as many since the Germans and Austrians plagued them now far less than now-defunct Russia and Romania had before 1914."  The question I had being: what happened to the rest of Russia? I would expect a victorious Germany to annex Russian Poland, the Baltic States, and much of Ukraine, but not ALL of Russia (I assume Austria-Hungary annexed Romania). Because I read of how, in the earlier Black Chamber books, Nicholas II abdicated as Tsar in 1916, with his son succeeding as Alexis II, under the regency of their respected cousin Grand Duke Nicholas.  While I would expect the Regent to often be compelled to yield to German demands, I saw no mention of Germany deposing Alexis II and annexing all of Russia at least as far east as the Ural Mountains. But DAGGERS IN DARKNESS seems to clearly indicate that was what happened by 1922. Did Germany seize all of Russia east of Ukraine or not? Was there a Russian remnant state in western Siberia? We see no mention of what happened to Alexis II and the Regent.

 

I don't think Wilhelm II and Paul von Hindenburg would have tolerated a gruesome massacre of the Romanovs, of the kind ordered by Lenin in our timeline, which occurred at Ekaterinberg and Alapayevsk on July 17-18, 1918 in our universe! 

 

I especially loved the Chinese parts of DAGGERS, because of how I went through a Chinese phase earlier in my life, leading me to read a lot about Chinese history, including translations of parts of historical works such as Ssu-ma Chien's RECORDS OF THE GRAND HISTORIAN.  But I do have one quibble: Stirling's use of Pin Yin for Romanizng Chinese names and words jarred on me, felt like a false note. Because, in OUR timeline (and presumably the Black Chamber's), the Wade-Giles system for Romanizing Chinese words and names is what was actually being used a century ago. Lastly, I simply don't like Pin Yin, "Beijing" strikes me as inelegant and poor English compared to "Peking."

 

Next, a minor point. In Chapter Five, on page 96, I read this: "A big Marine marching band in smart dress blues and billed saucer hats cane first..." It was a mistake for Stirling to say Marines wore HATS, because the Navy (of which the Marines are a part of) insists on calling head wear "covers." A US Navy officer I used to know online made a point of stressing Navy personnel wore COVERS, not "hats."

 

 Mr. Stirling is a scrupulously careful writer. After showing so many of the seemingly beneficial things brought about by the New Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt's so called "Progressive" Republicans, he was careful to show us some of the darker things underneath the glossy surface. For instance, in the same Chapter Five, on page 103, I read this: "...San Francisco had always been a strong union town, and the Party heartily approved of labor unions, as long as they were safely Party-affiliated." 

 

"SAFELY Party-affiliated"?  I don't like that. It sounds all too ominously like the puppet "unions" controlled by the Communist Party both in and out of the USSR. It looks menacingly like the United States becoming a de facto one party regime ruled by TR's so called "Progressive" Republicans. The text quoted below came from the same page 103 of DAGGERS.

 

   "The International Workers of the World hadn't been. The Wobblies had tried

to call strikes during what they called the capitalist-imperialist Great War. Many

of the Wobbly leaders and militants had been summarily shot in the back of

the head for that under the Espionage Act, as de facto enemy agents, so estab-

lished in nice fair fifteen minute executive-court hearings. Others had been

lynched by local patriots on a free-enterprise basis; one group had been

locked in boxcars and left in the Arizona desert to die of thirst and heatstroke

just to drive home the neighbors disapproval.

 

 "Most of the remainder were still repenting their sins in Federal Bureau

of Security corrective-labor camps in very remote places doing very hard

work for very long days in very unpleasant climates on a diet of just

enough scientifically enriched and fortified corn-and-soy mush to keep

them going; it was also scientifically designed to be absolutely tasteless.

You didn't die of starvation on that, or of scurvy or pellagra, and the

profoundly unsympathetic FBS guards didn't beat you to death with their

lead-weighted rubber truncheons or shoot you or lock you in a small iron

box to broil or freeze... unless you tried to escape or shirked or disobeyed

orders... but after a while you might not want to live very much."

 

The understated sarcasm in the passages I quoted above makes it plain Stirling himself did not approve of how the Wobblies were treated.  And I agree with him!  However much I would disagree with the views of the so called International Workers, they had every right to their own ideas and beliefs, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. They should never have been treated so brutally and any trials of the Wobblies should have been in the regular state or US courts, with all the protections granted to accused persons in United States law. AND only for charges based on actual crimes allegedly committed by the Wobblies. Not for mere political opinions.

 

In Chapter Seven, page 136, I saw this: "This is Universal Imports," a voice said at the other end." As all readers of Ian Fleming's James Bond stories should immediately see, Stirling was having a little joke with the "Universal Exports" used as a cover by 007 and other agents of the British Secret Service.

 

Here I digress to touch on a minor misprint I noticed on page 276 (Chapter Fourteen): "Beds of chrysanthemums glowed gold and white and red in the dusk against the green LAWS...."  Of course I realized at once this was simply a misprint and Stirling had meant "lawns."

 

Some of my comments above, especially of Luz and Ciara, were critical. But I don't want readers to think I did not enjoy reading DAGGERS IN DARKNESS. I did! So much so that I stopped taking as many notes as I should have for writing a really satisfactory article about this book. I loved the story and it was a true page turner.

 

DAGGERS is very much an action/adventure novel, and not all readers might care for that, especially the more violent incidents to be found in the book. But Stirling, like Poul Anderson, always added so much more than simple blood and thunder and derring-do to his stories. Many times, through out the tale, readers will find historical and philosophical asides adding richness, depth, and nuance to the plot.  The example I quoted below, selected almost at random, came from Chapter Thirteen, page 268 of DAGGERS, Luz speaking first.

 

"What I've heard is that the Red Gang...the Honghang...and a faction within the

Green Gang...don't want to cooperate with Mr. X. Partly it's a regional thing; the

Red Gang are linked to southern China and the Canton triads, and so are some

elements within the Green Gang. Politics are involved too; the Green and Red

gangs were allied for a while to support Sun Yat-Sen and the Kuomintang a few

years back, before and during the war...they called it the Mutual Progress Asso-

ciation of the Chinese Republic. The Honghang want to revive that."

    "We heard about that," Tommy said. "Didn't come to much, after Yuntai's Dad

declared himself Emperor."

 

Here Stirling shows his knowledge of Chinese history, in particular of how Sun Yat-Sen's base of support was mostly limited to southern China, with the northern provinces either indifferent to or hostile to his aspirations of founding a Republic of China after the fall of the Ch'ing Dynasty in 1911-12.  And "Yuntai's Dad" was none other than the treacherous Yuan Shikai who, after deliberately not fighting as hard as he could have for the Ch'ing, made a deal with the naive Sun that in return for forcing the abdication of the last Ch'ing Emperor, Sun would agree to Yuan becoming President of China. In our timeline Yuan tried to secure his grip on power firmly enough that he could proclaim himself Emperor, but failed. In the Black Chamber timeline, he succeeded, but only at the heavy cost of becoming a puppet of Japan. To quote some more from page 268:

 

    It's ever so common, just being a President,"  Holly said, with an ironic quirk

at the corner of her mouth, as she glanced sidelong at the Americans. "Even a

President for life with a son being groomed for the job."

"As opposed to being Lord Protector," Ciara said, her tone equally pawky-dry.

    The fact that he'd chosen Cromwell's title didn't endear Viscount Milner to her,

and she hadn't liked him to begin with. The Irish Republican Brotherhood had

sympathized with the Boers during the South African War and its guerrilla after-

math, and she'd heard a good many stories--some even true--of Milner's and

Kitchener's cruelties when she was an impressionable child.

 

In the Black Chamber's timeline Theodore Roosevelt had become de facto President for Life and was grooming his eldest son to eventually succeed him. And in our history the British had been harsh in breaking Boer resistance to their rule, including the use of concentration camps as a means of doing that. And anyone knowledgeable in British history understands at once what "Lord Protector" means!  All these are good example of how much Stirling could "pack" into his stories.

Fiction And Reality II

I missed a connection between two recent posts. Fiction And Reality is about fiction becoming reality. Future City is about the contrast between the vision of a future city and the long process of its construction. The second post also mentions the contrast between two kinds of sf futures. However, the building of the City of the Future is itself another interaction between fiction and reality. President Roosevelt said in 1915 that the wonderful Exposition buildings would:

"'...be rebuilt in imperishable marble and granite...'"

-Daggers In Darkness, CHAPTER THREE, p. 54.

- thus initiating the transformation of mere images of a possible future into the actual future. However, Roosevelt began this process only within a work of fiction. Theodore Roosevelt was not President of the United States in 1915 and we are invited to imagine him in that role only through the medium of alternative history fiction. The relationship between fiction and reality becomes more complicated. Willingly suspending disbelief, we temporarily accept a fictional situation as if it were a reality. Within the imagined reality of Daggers In Darkness, buildings that were transient structures in our history are in the process of becoming permanent towers at a later date. We can handle such complexities because we have been accustomed from earliest childhood to hearing stories and to knowing that they did not really happen - although sometimes people get confused. I once asked a guy to accept as a fictional premise that The Time Machine was a true account mistaken for fiction because the Time Traveller had not returned. Almost immediately, he was asking me in puzzlement whether I thought that The Time Machine had really happened.

Theater Of Spies: Prologue

OK. A couple of observations from the Prologue won't reveal any plot developments.

Authors can use alternative history to comment on real history. Thus:

Stirling's President Theodore Roosevelt entertains the "...horrible thought..." that "...if Taft had lived Woodrow Woodenhead Wilson might be president now..."!;

in Poul Anderson's "Eutopia," a cross-time traveler contrasts his North American civilization of Eutopia with "America the Dreadful";

Alan Moore's vigilante, the Comedian, thinks that, if the Americans had lost in Vietnam, they would have gone mad as a nation...

Roosevelt also reflects that HG Wells' The War In The Air "...was starting to look horribly prophetic..." It was prophetic and has been cited on this blog as such. See here. With this reference, Stirling connects his current alternative history novel back to the Homer of sf.

The good folk at Penguin Random House sure know how to write promotional prose. In the covering letter for the Advance Reading Copy:

"Wonder Woman meets The Man in The High Castle with a splash of James Bond in this thrilling series..."

Since the 2017 Wonder Woman film is set during WWI and features General Ludendorff, this comparison is more valid than it might seem.

A Good Leader In Another Time

This is the first in a series of occasional posts about SM Stirling's alternative history novel, Daggers In Darkness. See also here.

The edition that I have opens with:

front cover, blank inside

title page

publication information

contents

dedication

quotation

blank page

p. 1 of the text

The quotation is from Theodore Roosevelt:

"The best leader is one who has good sense enough to pick the right people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."

Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn would share this sentiment. His Solar Spice & Liquors prospers because he picks people with initiative.

I googled and confirmed that Roosevelt did say this or something like it in OTL (our timeline).

An author has to convey what it would be like to live in another timeline and must sometimes show his characters reflecting on the turning points, e.g.:

"V-gas. Vernichtungsgas. Annihilation gas. Horror-gas. The devil's instrument and the devil's own luck. Without it, we would have won the Great War, beaten Germany to powder by 1918 at the latest. With it... the world we have instead. Stalemate."

-SM Stirling, Daggers In Darkness (Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press, 2021), PROLOGUE, p. 4.

The key concepts here are the lost possibility of winning the Great War by 1918 and the phrase, "...the world we have instead." That is how life would feel to a US President in 1922(b).

People In Different Timelines

(Nikola Tesla.)

There is a reference to a "Father Flandry" in SM Stirling's Black Chamber, TEN, p. 204. An ancestor of Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry? No. Father Flandry is a celibate Catholic priest and not in the same timeline as Dominic. But there could be a third timeline in which they are directly related.

In the Black Chamber timeline, Nikola Tesla works for President Theodore Roosevelt's National Advanced Research Projects Institute. We anticipate rapid technological advances in the twentieth century of that timeline.

In Lancaster Real, I will visit Ketlan on the Marsh Estate and attend the Zen group at the Friends' Meeting House tomorrow and meet the guys in the Gregson on Wednesday and we will have a big family birthday party here at Blades Street (scroll down) on Saturday. As ever, I strive to blog.

Alternative World Wars

HG Wells wrote The War In The Air before World War I.

In SM Stirling's Black Chamber Trilogy, President Theodore Roosevelt fights World War I.

In Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, alien invasion interrupts World War II.

In Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, World War II is fought with magic against the Caliphate.

In James Blish's Black Easter, black magic initiates World War III as part of Armageddon.

Anderson's Psychotechnic History begins immediately after World War III.

Anderson's Shield begins after World War IV.

Stirling's Draka fight in the Great War, the Eurasian War and the Final War.

Now imagine that these eight timelines coalesce and combine.

Future Historical References

In Poul Anderson's works, future musical instruments include the omnisonor and the sonador (The Avatar, V, p. 41.) Both can be programmed to imitate other instruments.

SM Stirling's Black Chamber references 1984 as does his Draka History. For the latter, see here.

It is generally thought that the British made a mistake by executing the leaders of the 1916 Dublin Rising. (For where the Rising happened, see image.) Stirling's Theodore Roosevelt persuades them not to.

A few diverse historical references over breakfast.

Starting Over

The Boat Of A Million Years, XIV.

Hanno and Wanderer work behind the scenes to bring to an end the conflict between whites and Native Americans. Wanderer helps Quanah Parker who covers up for Wanderer's longevity. Quanah knows Theodore Roosevelt. Wanderer is active in the Native American Church which I first read of in a book by Aldous Huxley.

Having done what he can for his people, Wanderer leaves with Hanno, saying:

"'It's time for me to start over.'" (8, p. 314)

Leaving that period of history behind them, the immortals move forward. They will come together. The remaining chapters of Boat are set in:

1931

1938

1942

1975

      ?

Tyre, Carthage, Gallia, Britannia, Roma and Byzantium are gone. The remaining year dates are familiar to Poul Anderson's readers: our twentieth century and a science fictional future.

Three Fictional Secret Agents

Having repeatedly reread Ian Fleming's James Bond series and Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry series, I am more familiar with Bond and Flandry than with any other fictional secret agents like, e.g., Richard Hannay or George Smiley. Having just read SM Stirling's Black Chamber, I am now also familiar with Luz O'Malley Arostegui.

Bond
British
male
heterosexual
in "the present" (the time of writing)
progresses from defeating Le Chiffre in France to killing Scaramanga in Jamaica
meets the President of the United States briefly after foiling a raid on Fort Knox

Flandry
Terran
male
heterosexual
in a future
progesses from saving the Terran fleet to sponsoring his daughter and her companions
becomes an Imperial advisor

Luz
American
female
bisexual
in an alternative history
foils a massive German gas attack on the US
has known Theodore Roosevelt since her childhood

So far, only Flandry's story advances to the next generation. 

Real And Fictional Politics

In one future history: a military coup in Washington. See here.

In an alternative history: Theodore Roosevelt's "...triumphant return to power." (SM Stirling, Black Chamber, THREE, p. 66. See here.

Today: President Trump in London. See here.

OK. Totally dislocated. But my brain connected those three items before passing out for the night.

I hope to be more coherent tomorrow.

Alternative Lives

Alternative histories include alternative lives and careers for historical figures. There are too many examples to list here.

In Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, there is Prince Rupert of the Rhine. See here. Also, by implication, there is the William Shakespeare who was not the Great Dramatist but the Great Historian.

SM Stirling's Black Chamber has, among others, alternative versions of Theodore Roosevelt and Colonel Nicolai. The author must keep such characters consistent with their real life counterparts while at the same time presenting their responses to altered histories.

This is essentially the same procedure as when one author writes another's character, e.g., Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series features not only Cyrus the Great and Hiram of Troy but also Sherlock Holmes.

Action-adventure fiction is endless. We accept not only new stories of old characters but also new characters like Stirling's Luz who kills men and spies on Nicolai's war preparations. The World Wars are endlessly re-fought in memory, recorded history, historical fiction and alternative history. Will the German's secret weapon be deployed against American cities?

Three Fictional Truths

The human mind creates and contemplates some paradoxical propositions.

"In 1984, the world was divided into three permanently warring super-states called Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia."

This statement is untrue - unless we are summarizing the plot and background of George Orwell's 1984, which was not so much a possible future as an oblique comment on the year in which it was written, 1948.

"Shakespeare's plays were true histories."

They were in Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest which is a work not only of fiction but also of fantastic alternative history fiction.

"In 1917, Theodore Roosevelt was serving his second term as President of the United States and Mexico was a US Protectorate."

This statement has recently become true in the Black Chamber Trilogy, a work of realistic alternative history fiction by SM Stirling.

The possibilities receded to infinity. Anyone can imagine alternative histories but not everyone can set novels in them.

Over Breakfast

Over breakfast, I like to post but, this morning, breakfast has generated no posts (apart from this one) because:

I have been reading and responding to combox comments;

Sean Brooks and I also correspond by email, in this case about statues and Theodore Roosevelt who  has been a big blog topic.

Now it is time for other activities but I expect to return to Holger Carlsen's adventures in the Carolingian universe before long.

The Bellamy Salute

Daggers In Darkness, CHAPTER FIVE.

We can learn some history by reading alternative histories. I learned about the importance of the Scipios by reading Poul Anderson's story about time travellers who eliminated the Scipios. In SM Stirling's Daggers In Darkness, a crowd in 1922(b) salutes Theodore Roosevelt by making the Bellamy Salute:

"...stand to attention, eyes front, put the right hand over the heart, and then extend that arm stiffly at a forty-five degree angle, palm up." (p. 97)

I read this passage in haste just before going out to drive my daughter and granddaughter to Morecambe seafront for a Burrito and a view of the sunset and I missed the crucial significance of that single concluding two-letter word. I misremembered the passage as stating that the palm should be "open." I practiced making the salute to see if it came out any differently to what I expected. Aileen told me to stop doing it. (Don't try this in public, folks!)

Stirling has educated me and maybe some others about the Bellamy Salute. It is so easy nowadays to google and (sometimes) clear up misunderstandings.