Ever heard of CSS Hunley? A hand-cranked submarine from the U.S. Civil War, it accomplished the first successful submarine attack in history.
I’ve written a fictional story set aboard that sub. One of my few ghost stories, Rebel Spirit follows the experiences of a man nicknamed Scowler, a member of the sub’s first crew.
In 1864, Northern warships blockaded Charleston harbor, permitting no waterborne trade. In desperation, the South tried an unprecedented attack from underwater, by submarine. Earlier inventors had attempted submarine warfare without success. Many in Charleston hoped the Hunley, named for its inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley, would prevail.
Think of Rebel Spirit as historical horror. Well, mild horror. For the most part, I’ve adhered to historical accounts while telling Scowler’s story. My tale makes no reference to the politics of the war and does not glorify the South’s cause. As a former submariner with an interest in history, I’m awed by the bravery of the men who served aboard such a dangerous, cramped, man-powered craft.
In real life, researchers have salvaged the Hunley and it resides in a museum in Charleston. I hope to visit that museum one day.
I invite you to read Rebel Spirit. For $3.99, you can buy it at Amazon. It’s a ghostly story of the sea brought to you by—
Poseidon’s Scribe
P.S. I’m planning to speak at Penguicon, a scifi conference in Southfield, Michigan, on Saturday, April 22. I’ll provide more details in the next blogpost by—
Fresh out of story ideas? Try the 1G Nostalgia Formula. (My name for it. Trademark application pending.)
Here’s how the 1G Nostalgia Formula works. Take today’s date and subtract twenty-five to thirty years (about one human generation), and set your story in that time period.
As you do this, research as much as you can about that era—clothes, catch phrases, news, culture, sports, songs, movies, etc.
Why do readers find such stories appealing? For the young, it’s a chance to satisfy their curiosity about their parents’ time, and to feel a little smug about those “simpler times.” For older readers, such stories trigger memories, not of simpler times, but of their younger and simpler selves. “Yeah, I remember that.”
The TV industry glommed onto this formula decades ago. Consider “M*A*S*H,” “Happy Days,” “That ‘70s Show,” “Mad Men,” and others, all set in earlier eras.
You needn’t be precise about the one-generation part of the formula. Pick a time period within living memory of at least some of your target audience. One generation works well, since you’re maximizing the size of that audience.
The formula hinges on how well you immerse your readers in that time period, and how many contrasts you can draw between that time and the present.
In creating the feel of your time setting, it’s okay to exaggerate a little. Say you’ve picked the mid-1990s for your story’s time period. Feel free to make your story even more mid-90s than the real mid-90s were.
This requires simplifying the complicated, clarifying the vague, and concentrating the diffuse. Complexity characterizes every era. No time period separates itself by damming off the flow from earlier, or the flow to later, times. Currents and counter-currents form eddies and whirls in the river of time.
William Gibson said, “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” That uneven distribution also applies to the past time period you choose for your story.
Depending on the needs and purposes of your tale, you may not wish to depict these complexities, at least not at first. Best to give your readers a unified, integral gestalt—an exaggerated mid-90’s, for example, free of any lingering 80’s remnants, and free of millennial foreshadowings. If the story might benefit from those slight anachronisms, introduce them later.
These can take the form of a grandparent character who can only relate to an even earlier time (2G). Or it can be a forward-looking character, perhaps a science fiction fan, who imagines a future much like our own present. These aspects can add delightful cross-currents to liven up a nostalgic story.
None of this advice takes the place of the writer’s prime directive: write a good story. Just because your tale follows the 1G Nostalgia Formula, that doesn’t guarantee sales. The subject matter might pique reader interest, but you only gain buyers and readers by writing well.
Ready to set your creative time machine to a date one generation in the past? All you have to do is hit the gas. Your destination switches have already been set by—
When writing
fiction, do you set your tales in historical times? If so, you must resolve the
inevitable conflict between The Facts and The Story. In other words, you’ll
have to twist some history.
Author Colin Falconer expresses the problem well in a post titled “How to Mix Historical Fact and Fiction.” He says real life is chaotic. It doesn’t obey the rules of fiction. It’s filled with aspects that interfere with a good story.
Here’s a table that contrasts historical fact and historical fiction:
Historical Fact
Historical Fiction
Chaotic, messy
Planned, ordered
Mostly boring
Mostly interesting or exciting
Has real people, with infinite complexities
Has a protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters
Events occur as they will, often by chance or coincidence
Events occur in a believable order, in a way that supports the plot
How people lived is as interesting to us as what people did
What characters do is more important than details of how they live
Historian’s aim is to get the facts right
Fiction writer’s aim is to entertain and engage the reader
I should also mention an important distinction between historical fiction and alternate history. Colin Falconer writes historical fiction, where he takes a set of historical events and fictionalizes them. I write alternate history, set in another universe whose history matched ours until some Point of Divergence (PoD), after which things proceeded quite differently.
Even in
alternate history, though, readers want to know the author took the trouble to
study history and get some details right. If the story takes place in the past,
readers expect the author to transport them there, and not jar them with
anachronisms like the clock striking three in the second act of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. (I know, I
know—Shakespeare might well have deliberately
used a not-yet-invented clock as a dramatic and metaphorical device.)
Here’s how I
twisted history in my most recently published alternate history tales:
In “Ripper’s Ring,” set in 1888, the PoD occurs the moment a troubled mortuary worker comes across the legendary Ring of Gyges, the invisibility ring mentioned by Plato. Other than that, I tried to remain true to the facts about Jack the Ripper. I did invent a fictional Scotland Yard detective, but the rest of history didn’t get much twisting.
Regarding my story, “Ancient Spin, (in the Hides the Dark Tower anthology) I hesitate to categorize it as alternate history, since it’s about the Biblical Tower of Babel. Still, I gave my characters Babylonian names and tried to depict the mood and scene after the collapse of a large ziggurat in that time period.
“After the Martians” takes place during our World War I, but the PoD happened sixteen years earlier, in 1901, when the Martians of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds invaded. Since the combatants in my story use Martian technology, that changes the very nature of the war, so my story doesn’t bear much resemblance to the actual conflict. Even so, my photographer character uses an actual camera from that period, and the old woman treats the soldier’s injuries using techniques of that time.
My story “Instability” (in the Dark Luminous Wings anthology) derives from a legend about a medieval monk in a British monastery around 1000 A.D. I tried hard to get details right about life in a Benedictine monastery including daily schedules and the layout of the abbey. I used one of the actual abbots of Malmesbury Abbey as a character. Aside from the improbable legend itself, I didn’t do much twisting of history in this one.
“The Steam Elephant” (in The Gallery of Curiosities, Issue #3) takes place during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. The PoD is my assumption that the events and characters of Jules Verne’s novel The Steam House were true. Again, I strove to keep details of the Battle of Isandlwana accurate, including the names of British commanders and the Zulu king. However, since my story occurs twenty-two years after the setting of Verne’s novel, I stretched things by assuming his characters remained nearly unchanged despite the passage of years.
As you write
your historical fiction, try to strike a good balance between getting facts
right and telling an interesting story. If you have to twist some history to do
that, well, you’re in good company along with—
How is Velcro like a burr plant? How is the Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe like a termite mound? How is a tire tread like a tree frog?
These are all examples of engineers solving problems by looking to nature, a process known as biomimetics. After all, animals and plants have evolved over millions of years, and have developed solutions to many problems. Why shouldn’t we learn from them?
Burdock Plant, the inspiration for Velcro
After a hunting
trip, Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral observed burrs from the burdock plant
sticking to his pant legs. He wondered how the plants did that, and from his
investigation came ‘hook and loop fasteners’ or Velcro.
Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe with cross-section of chimney
Architect Mick Pearce sought a way to cost-effectively cool and heat a building in Zimbabwe, with its widely varying daily temperature cycles. He examined the flues and vents within termite mounds, and used the termites’ passive technique to save 90% of the cooling costs in his design for the Eastgate Centre.
Tree Frog Toe Pad inspiring tire tread
Automotive designers wanted tires that adhered to wet roads. They noted how tree frogs stick to smooth wet leaves, and even to wet glass because their toe pads squeeze water away through fine grooves. Tire treads have a similar design, channeling rainwater away for better adhesion to the road surface.
Characters in
several of my stories use biomimicry, too.
In “The Steam Elephant,” (The Gallery of Curiosities, Issue #3) my sequel to Jules Verne’s two-part novel, The Steam House, the engineer known as Banks constructed a mechanical elephant around a traction steam engine. Verne likely chose an elephant to allow room for the boiler, and as a form that did not require railroad tracks.
My story, “A Clouded Affair,” in the anthology Avast, Ye Airships! includes a working, steam-powered ornithopter. These aircraft imitate birds by flapping their wings. Although useful in bird-sized machines, they never proved as practical as fixed or rotating wings in full scale. Even so, prior to the invention of the airplane, some designers tried to mimic birds in this way.
Along similar lines, my story “Instability” in the anthology Dark Luminous Wings is about a monk trying to fly by imitating flying creatures. Based on legend, my tale has Brother Eilmer of Malmesbury Abbey constructing a pair of wings similar to those of jackdaws. He soon finds this impossible to build in practice, so chooses to model his wings on those of bats instead.
Are you trying
to solve a problem? If so, perhaps nature has already solved it for you. Look
to plants and animals for inspiration. After all, biomimetics worked for—
Amid all the
holiday rush, you meant to buy three
of my books as gifts (or for yourself), but somehow forgot. Good news! That
same $12 you were going to spend now buys four
(4) books, or even more.
Smashwords is holding an End of Year Sale, but they’re letting it run over one day into 2019. All the books in my What Man Hath Wrought series are 25% off.
These stories
explore the theme of people dealing with new technology, a problem to which we
all relate. I put my characters and technologies in historical settings, so
these are all alternate history stories or secret histories.
Today I’m interviewing the first man to land on the moon. I’m speaking, of course, about Hans Pfaall, who appears in my story “The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall,” in the anthology Quoth the Raven. It’s my sequel to the Edgar Allan Poe story, “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall.”
Poseidon’s Scribe: Greetings, Mr. Pfaall. And welcome to my blog. Thank you for consenting to this interview.
Hans Pfaall: Thank you, Mr. Southard. However, I confess I do not know what a ‘blog’ is, nor do I understand how you are able to conduct an interview under these circumstances.
P.S.: Never mind all that. Let’s focus on you. First, am I pronouncing your name correctly? Does Pfaall rhyme with ‘pail’ or ‘ball?’
H.P.: You’re pronouncing it correctly.
P.S.: Um….okay. Let’s move on. Up until five years ago, in 1830, where did you live and work?
H.P.: I was a citizen of Rotterdam. I repaired fireplace bellows.
P.S.: But then you went on a remarkable voyage. Please tell us about that.
Illustration by Yan Dargent
H.P.: I constructed a balloon of my own design and used it to travel to the Moon.
P.S.: I can’t believe that. All on your own, with meager resources, you built a balloon?
H.P.: Not on my own. That would be ridiculous. My wife and three men assisted me.
P.S.: How were you able to travel, let alone breathe, in the vacuum of space?
H.P.: You suffer from a widely held misconception. The space between the Earth and its satellite is not a vacuum. Although the air is thin, one can use a compressor apparatus to render it breathable, which I did.
P.S.: I see. Once you reached the Moon, what did you find there?
H.P.: The most significant things were the numerous hamlets and the single sizable city, in which I landed. Also of interest were the natives, who are similar to us in many ways, except for their diminutive stature and their lack of ears. I wrote about all of this in a letter; I gave it to one of the Lunarians and sent him back to Earth in a balloon for delivery to the officials of Rotterdam. Did they not receive it?
P.S.: They did. But your letter ended with some tantalizing mysteries. Please describe those.
H.P.: I presume you’re speaking of the strange connection between every human on Earth and a particular Lunarian. Not only does such twinning exist, unbeknown to us, but the lives and destinies of the linked individuals are interwoven with each other. Moreover, I believe I mentioned in the letter something about the dark and hideous mysteries that lie on the far side of the Moon, the side forever turned away from Earth.
P.S.: Right. Don’t you think those things deserved more than one paragraph?
H.P.: That letter had rambled on too long already. I will write more letters soon.
P.S.: Did you think about the effect such a letter might have on the residents of Rotterdam? I’ve heard they may send a rescue mission.
H.P.: What? I didn’t ask to be rescued. I don’t want to be rescued.
P.S.: You’re happy, staying on the Moon?
H.P.: Quite happy, sir.
P.S.: Well, this is a bit awkward. The rescuers are…um…
H.P.: What do you mean? Are you saying they’re on their way already? Tell them to turn back!
Poseidon’s Scribe: I’m just an author. I don’t have complete control over these things. But, thank you for this fascinating interview.
Hans Pfaall: No, this isn’t over. Promise me you’ll get the rescuers to return home. I don’t want to be rescued! Tell them!
Sheesh. That interview didn’t go exactly as I’d planned. In the anthology Quoth the Raven, you can read the story, “The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall” written by—
Can Science Fiction trace its origins back further than Jules Verne? Further than Edgar Allan Poe? Further than Mary Shelley? Could you have read SciFi books if you lived in the Middle Ages?
Medieval scholars Carl Kears and James Paz think so. They wrote a fascinating article in The Conversation called “Science fiction was around in medieval times – here’s what it looked like.” They also co-wrote the book Medieval Science Fiction.
Their article cites some fascinating medieval examples of what we’ve come to know as science fiction. Moreover, some of these examples may be familiar to readers of stories by (ahem) me.
They reference “…the story of Eilmer the 11th-century monk, who constructed a pair of wings and flew from the top of Malmesbury Abbey.” My readers know all about Brother Eilmer from my fictionalized account of this legend in “Instability” which appears in the anthology Dark Luminous Wings.
The article’s authors also cite “…medieval romances that feature Alexander the Great…exploring the depths of the ocean in his proto-submarine.” Once again, readers will recall my story “Alexander’s Odyssey” in which the sea-god Poseidon becomes angry with Alexander for invading his realm.
Wait, some of you are thinking, Alexander the Great didn’t live in medieval times! True, but his ancient Greek contemporaries never mentioned his descent in a diving bell. Arabic writers in the Middle Ages became fascinated with Alexander and fantasized all sorts of stories about him. Among those was the submarine tale.
Here are some other examples of books one might classify as Medieval Science Fiction:
• Roman de Troie, written by Benoît de Sainte-Maure in the 12th Century. It features automata.
• Theologus Autodidactus, written by Ibn al-Nafis in the late 13th Century. In it, the main character is spontaneously generated, rather than born. He predicts the future, uses his reason and senses to deduce the religion of Islam, and explains bodily resurrection using cloning.
• One Thousand and One Nights, compiled between the 9th and 14th Centuries. It mentions immortality, interplanetary travel, underwater breathing capability, and humanoid robots.
• The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, written by Sir John Mandeville in the 14th Century. It includes automata, alternate human species, and diamonds that reproduce sexually.
• “The House of Fame” a poem written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 14th Century. In it, a house is constructed such that all sound flows into it. The occupants can hear all noises from everywhere.
You might think I’m stretching things to call a story “Science Fiction” if it dates from a time before the development of Science. If SciFi is concerned with potential future technological or scientific advances, then an author couldn’t possibly write in that genre before Galileo came up with the scientific method in the early 17th Century. Right?
Well, maybe, but the genre of science fiction is quite broad, and considering the modern stories that get pigeonholed there, it seems unfair not to include the examples I’ve given above and those cited by Kears and Paz.
Living in the 21st Century, most of us regard Science Fiction as a modern genre, no more than two centuries old. If we could converse with some well-read folks from the 5th through 15th Centuries, they might disagree. Of course, if you do have such a conversation somehow, please tell—
The folks at Smashwords are nice, but they’ve gone too far now. They’ve priced my entire What Man Hath Wrought series at half price for the entire month of July.
I’ve checked, and it’s true. You can get After the Martians, Ripper’s Ring, Time’s Deformèd Hand, The Cometeers, To Be First and Wheels of Heaven, Rallying Cry and Last Vessel of Atlantis, A Tale More True, Against All Gods, Leonardo’s Lion, and Alexander’s Odyssey for a measly $2 each.
Oh, there’s more. You can grab The Six Hundred Dollar Man, A Steampunk Carol, Within Victorian Mists, and The Wind-Sphere Ship for just $1.50 each.
Wait a minute [grabs calculator], that means you can get the entire collection (all 14 books—that’s 16 stories) for $26. I guess my financial misfortune is your summer reading opportunity.
This time, there’s no need for coupon numbers or passwords or promo codes. None of that. Just go to Smashwords and you’ll see the slashed-in-half prices are already marked. Simply click on my books and load ‘em in your shopping cart.
The What Man Hath Wrought series features relatable characters grappling with new technology in a historical setting. These alternate history stories explore what might have been. They’ll make you think about how you struggle with new gadgets today.
The Smashwords ½-price sale runs through July 31, but you know what a procrastinator you are. You’d better buy the books now before you’re caught up in summer’s many distractions.
What an inexpensive way to immerse yourself in the remarkable and adventurous world of—
What’s that trumpet fanfare I’m hearing? Oh, that’s right. My story “Instability” will appear in the anthology Dark Luminous Wings. It’s another Pole to Pole Publishing anthology, edited by the incomparable Kelly A. Harmon and Vonnie Winslow Crist.
Kelly and Vonnie wanted stories involving wings, so I did some research and brainstorming. As usual, I generated plenty of ideas and had to down-select to one that would result in a compelling story of the right length.
From Wikipedia.org
In my research I’d come across the account of Brother Eilmer of Malmesbury Abbey. A Benedictine monk who lived around 1000 AD, Eilmer is supposed to have flown from the abbey’s tower using a set of wings he made. These were Daedalus-and-Icarus style wings that he flapped with his arms. He didn’t really “fly,” but more likely glided in an uncontrolled manner. The account says he crash-landed, broke both legs, and was lame the rest of his life.
Medieval monks weren’t generally known for their technological creativity and spirit of adventure. Imagine Brother Eilmer engaged in a life of worship, hard work, singing, praying, and copying. He reads the Greek account of Daedalus and Icarus, and decides he could construct wings and fly as they did. Imagine him standing atop the tower, trying to overcome his fear so he can leap off. Think how he must have felt at first, actually flying, before losing control.
In my fictionalized account, throw in a fellow monk of the lying, scheming and snitching variety as well as an Abbott who can’t decide if Eilmer is insane or possessed, and you’ve got my story, “Instability.”
When Dark Luminous Wings comes out in print, I’ll tell you how to get your copy so you can read my story, along with all the others. I found Eilmer such a fascinating character, I may write more tales about him. Maybe he’ll get his own series. A book of stories about a medieval scribe, scribbled by—
For six years I’ve used this blog to aid beginning writers, but starting today I’ll occasionally take on other topics. Technology is fascinating to me, and today’s topic is those near misses in history when someone developed a technology before the world was ready.
What do I mean by ‘near misses?’ I’m talking about when an inventor came up with a new idea but it didn’t catch on, either because no one saw the possible applications or because there was no current need.
When you compare the date of the invention to the much later date when the idea finally took off, it’s intriguing to imagine how history might have been different, and how much further ahead we’d be today.
You’ll get a better idea of what I mean as we go through several examples.
Computers
The Antikythera Mechanism was likely the first computer, used for calculating the positions of celestial bodies. Invented in Greece in the 2nd Century BC, it contained over 30 intricate gears, and may have been a one-off. It is interesting to speculate how history might have been different if they’d envisioned other uses for this technology, such as mathematical calculations. Imagine Charles Babbage’s geared computer being invented two millennia earlier!
I was fascinated by the Antikythera Mechanism and the mystery surrounding its discovery in a shipwreck, so I wrote my story, “Wheels of Heaven,” with my version of those events.
Lasers
It’s puzzling to me that inventors came up with radios (1896) before lasers (1960). After all, radio involves invisible electromagnetic waves, but lasers are visible light. Sure, the mathematics behind lasers (stimulated emissions) wasn’t around until Einstein, but with people monkeying around with mirrors and prisms, it’s strange that no one happened upon the laser phenomenon ahead of its mathematical underpinning.
Charles Fabry and Alfred Perot came close in1899 when they developed their Fabry-Perot etalon, or interferometer. Again, imagine how history might have been different if lasers had appeared sixty years earlier, before radio.
My story “Within Victorian Mists” is a steampunk romance featuring the development of lasers and holograms in the 19th Century.
Manned Rocketry
The first manned rocket flight may have been that of German test pilot Lothar Sieber on March 1, 1945. It was unsuccessful and resulted in Sieber’s death. The first successful manned flight was that of Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union on April 12, 1961.
But did Sieber and Gagarin have a predecessor, beating them by three centuries?
There is an account of a manned rocked flight in 1633, the trip made successfully in Istanbul by Lagâri Hasan Çelebi. It’s fun to imagine if the sultan of that time had recognized the possibilities. My story “To Be First” is an alternate history tale showing where the Ottoman Empire might have gotten to by the year 1933 if they’d capitalized on Çelebi’s achievement.
Submarines
The earliest attempts at underwater travel come to us in legends and myths. Highly dubious accounts tell of Alexander the Great making a descent in a diving bell apparatus in 332 BC. There are vague references to the invention of a submarine in China around 200 BC. True submarine development really got its start in the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s.
Still, think about how much more we’d know today about the oceans if the ancient accounts were true and people of the time had make the most of them. My story “Alexander’s Odyssey” is a re-telling of the Alexander the Great episode, and “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai” is my version of the ancient Chinese submarine.
Steam Engines
In 1712, Thomas Newcomen developed the first commercially successful steam engine. Later, James Watt and Richard Trevithick improved on Newcomen’s design.
However, these inventions were preceded by Hero (or Heron) of Alexandria in the 1st Century AD. He developed a small steam engine called an aeolipile, though he considered it an amusing toy.
What if Heron had visualized the practical possibilities of this engine? Since the steam engine ushered in the Industrial Revolution, could humanity have skipped ahead 1700 years technologically? My story, “The Wind-Sphere Ship,” imagines a practical use for Heron’s engine along with a reason it didn’t catch on.
Other Near Misses?
You get the idea. I am intrigued by the number of times inventors hit on an idea, but society failed to recognize it and take advantage of it, so it had to wait until much later. Are there other examples you can think of? Leave a comment for me. Your thoughts might well be featured in a post by—
