A PIECE OF RESISTANCE - Book review

I suspect the title of Clive Egleton’s 1970 speculative novel A Piece of Resistance is a play on words – pièce de la résistance. It concerns the Russian invasion of Britain, published ten years after Fitz Gibbon’s alternate history novel When the Kissing had to Stop. It’s a third person narrative almost entirely from the point of view of Daniel Garnett who is an escaped prisoner working under an assumed name for the Resistance. ‘Four years ago I had a wife, a small son and a house in Keynsham until a SCRAGG Missile with a ten Megaton warhead hit Bristol, and then there was no wife, no son, and no house. Maybe there are people around who can accept the Armistice, but I’m not among their number’ (p23).

The police hunt resistance members. Yet some police are informers for the Resistance. A few resistance cells resort to bank robbery to finance arms purchases. One raid goes wrong and those who get away are being hunted. The Russian authorities have taken 200 hostages as two of their soldiers were slain.

Garnett reluctantly attempts to find the culprits. He’s torn – and very probably deceived too.

There are insights into how Britain has changed.

‘We had an arsenal of terrifying weapons which we couldn’t and didn’t dare to use. But they did. Just the one, to show us that it was all over, and that’s the way our world ended, not with a whimper but with a bang’ (p81).

‘A car for every Russian made in Birmingham. They’ll have all of us walking before long. My car’s been off the road for three weeks waiting for two new tyres, and I’m supposed to have priority’ (p33).

Egleton was a leading thriller writer for forty years with inside knowledge of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence. His style is very readable and quite thrilling.

‘For a few paces his stride remained unchecked even though the blood was spurting from the hole in his throat, and then, quite suddenly, he collapsed like a rag doll’ (p47).

This is the first Garnett book in a trilogy; the others are Last Post for a Partisan and The Judas Mandate.

Clive Egleton died in 2006, aged 79. His novel Seven Days to a Killing was filmed as The Black Windmill starring Michael Caine. 

ALL OUR TOMORROWS - Book review

Ted Allbeury’s 1982 novel All Our Tomorrows is another addition to the long list of alternate future histories. This one is about a take-over of Britain by the USSR in the latter part of the 1980s. It’s a time when the EU was the more benign EEC and Woolworths were still on the high streets. And of course the all-pervasive Internet and social media had not yet taken hold.

It’s not his usual spy story, but rather an angry assessment of the state of the nation at that time, beginning with a quotation from Lenin: ‘British Communism should... learn to support the Labour Party leaders by their votes “as the rope supports the hanged man”.’ (p6)

Britain is talking about pulling out of the EEC (the debilitating tentacles of the EU had not been foreseen then). The situation in the country was dire: ‘We let things drift. We let criminals get away with it... Rioting, looting, hooliganism, were excused as being caused by racialism... We are scared of being labelled Fascists or reactionaries. It’s nice to be soft. And liked. And in the end it could get you votes’ (p18).

‘It was obvious, even to the public, that the law of the land could no longer be enforced’ (p96). The country was becoming ungovernable. A State of Emergency was declared, ostensibly due to mounting inflation and high unemployment. Strikes were illegal. Freedoms were constrained – and this was accepted...

French President Becque sees the situation and approaches Soviet President Orlov, suggesting that without Britain as an ally and a base, the US could never supply NATO in a war. If the British government asked the Soviet Union for help and in return became neutral territory... The Russian advisers could bring Britain full employment and law and order would be restored... Cooper, the British PM is faced with a dilemma, posed by the Soviets: ‘A choice to avoid a war you can’t win. You haven’t got the arms, the men or the planes. And you haven’t got the will to fight’ (p93).

So, aware that his country’s problems seem insurmountable; the PM signs a treaty of neutrality, inviting the Soviet Union to assist in bringing law and order to Britain – ‘bring back stability’ (p97).

Stability meant the country would be subject to Soviet law.

Change. ‘Let me tell you of some of those changes... Politicians have not served this country well. They have been divisive not constructive, seeking privileges for themselves and their sponsors. Therefore there will be no political parties in this country for the next five years’ (p109).

Before the take-over, the royal family was spirited away to Canada. The Queen made a broadcast which could only offer hope despite ‘men of evil intent exploited our traditional tolerance and freedom for their own ends... Old friends deserted us, some went so far as to hasten our downfall...’ (p139) [She didn’t mention the French!] The text of her speech reads as if it actually had been her speaking.

It seems that as the Soviet yolk pressed down upon the people, they became accepting of the new conditions: ‘We daren’t say what we think; nobody can criticise the system and survive’ (p198).

However, there was resistance. SAS Colonel Harry Andrews and his men Joe Langley and Jamie Boyle have built up a veritable army of spies, activists, saboteurs and fighters throughout the country. Harry’s plea to the populace, subject to harsh and brutal reprisals from the occupying troops, was clear: ‘Be strong. Not just for today but tomorrow and all our tomorrows’ (p267).

And, as it happens, the US hasn’t given up on occupied Britain. President Wheeler has the ear of Colonel Andrews also.  The struggle can bear fruit... though perhaps nothing would ever be the same again.

A thought-provoking book with surprising relevance to the situation today. 

RESURRECTION DAY - Book review

Brendan DuBois’s alternate history novel Resurrection Day was published in 1999. The ‘what if?’ scenario is tantalising indeed: What if the Cuban Missile Crisis had become a full-blown war?

It’s 1972, ten years after the nuclear bombs were dropped. Russia was crushed: ‘... no more large cities, no more government. Just tribes of people, trying to survive in muddy villages that could have existed in the Middle Ages, a decade after an entity called SAC had obliterated their nation from the earth’ (p65). California is virtually destroyed, New York has been depopulated, Washington DC lies beneath a giant crater lake. Europe is unscathed – Nato collapsed. Presidential elections are due at the end of the year. What was left of the United States relied on aid from Great Britain; the USA was shamed and ostracised by the international community because it let the nuclear genie out of the bottle.

Carl Landry, ex-US Army, is now a civilian, a journalist on the Boston Globe newspaper. The paper is heavily edited by an army Captain in accordance with the Martial Law Declaration of 1962 and the National Emergency Declaration of 1963. The Land of the Free no longer has free speech. ‘Why torture yourself, remembering  full supermarket shelves, clean clothes, steady power, and a government that didn’t hunt down draft dodgers and didn’t censor the news and didn’t run labour camps for the dissidents, the protesters, the ones that didn’t belong. That time was gone, was never coming back, not ever’ (p99).

Landry is approached by an aging veteran who has some important papers; they arrange to meet next day, but the vet is murdered, his apartment trashed.

Making enquiries, Landry learns of the deaths of the vet’s neighbours and friends. ‘... when the current national death rates and the results of the 1970 census were both kept secret because of national security, well, if life wasn’t cheap, it certainly wasn’t worth much’ (p51).

He begins to dig – and is warned off more than once: ‘Carl knew he had entered the murky land of late-night arrests, ‘disappearances’, and closed-door trials’ (p162). He was also attacked by an orfie gang – comprising feral orphans of the war.

He befriends Sandy Price, a journalist for the Times of London. She’s beautiful and clever. When they are both co-opted on a fact-finding mission to New York for their papers, they jump at the chance. And then things get weird and hairy, not least because there’s a faction that believes President Kennedy didn’t die in Washington, but still lives; his resurrection could screw the forthcoming elections, indeed.

DuBois has managed to create believable and often sympathetic characters, as well as a post-war situation that seems credible. It was an immersive experience. I zipped through the 580 pages in no time.

An impressive addition to the vast library of ‘what if?’ novels.

Editorial comment:

‘Think, he thought. Just take a deep breath and think’ (p471). Probably would have read better like this: Think, dammit. Just take a deep breath and think. No need for ‘he thought’.

Character names: Jim Rowley and Captain Rowland are quite close; never cause confusion but could easily have been more different.

Widowland - Book review

C.J. Carey’s debut novel Widowland joins the lengthy ranks of alternate history books, in this case re-imagining where Britain signed an alliance with Nazi Germany in 1940. The story takes place in 1953, in the weeks running up to the coronation of Edward VIII and his queen Wallis. Since the Alliance, in effect all power actually resides in Alfred Rosenberg, Britain’s Protector.

In this new world, women are allocated specific castes. ‘When all the boxes were ticked, the women were assigned the classification… This label would determine every aspect of their life, from where they should live, to what clothes they would wear, what entertainment they could enjoy and how many calories they could consume.’ (p20)

The elite women were popularly called Gelis; Klaras were fertile women who had produced four or more children; Lenis were professional women, such as office workers. Paulas were carers, teachers and nurses; Magdas were lowly shop and factory employees, while Gretls did domestic work. Tight at the bottom came Friedas – essentially cemetery women – ‘widows and spinsters over fifty who had no children,  no reproductive purpose and who did not serve a man.’ (p20)

Rose Ransom is among the elite, a Geli, working at the Ministry of Culture, rewriting classics of English literature to correct the views expressed in these old novels. ‘They had an office for everything and there was no reason why literature should no be processed and cultivated and bureaucratized as much as steel or cardboard or coal.’ (p141)

Inevitably, reading the forbidden texts in order to prune them has its effect: ‘she found she could not get the writers’ voices out of her head.’ (p206) – which is why despots always desire to control writing in their world.

As she’s an expert in these old tomes, she is called upon to investigate outbreaks of insurgency: graffiti has been daubed on public buildings in the form of extracts from forbidden works, notably words by female novelists. Suspicion has fallen on Widowland, the run-down slum in Oxford where childless women over fifty have been banished. Rose is tasked with rooting out the source of this rebellion before the Leader, Hitler, arrives in England for the Coronation.

Some quotations are from Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, others from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and even Jane Austen.

Carey has captured the flavour of the early 1950s as well as the machinations of the Third Reich with many telling details. She also imbues the story with wit and humour as well as menace and suspense. She has an easy but often haunting style, too: ‘A hawthorn in full bloom had scattered its blossom like blown snow across her path and its musty odour evoked a sudden evanescent transport of memory…’ (p158)

‘Short of being German, Helena had been gifted with all the blessings the gods could bestow, chief among them a sense of the ridiculous – a vital attribute in Government service.’ (p16)

‘Alfred Rosenberg was sixty, but looked a decade more. With his sickly complexion, perpetual scowl and deep-set dark eyes, the Protector was more mortician than politician.’ (p34)

Hymns were still sung in community centres, though the words had been changed: ‘The Magda in her kitchen/ The Gretl at the grate/The Leader made them lowly/And ordered their estate.’ (p154)

A German policeman Bruno Schumacher is wonderfully described: ‘… he had a five o’clock shadow that looked like it had no regard for punctuality.’ (p171)

To compound Rose’s situation, she is conducting an illicit affair with Martin, a powerful Nazi commander, which adds suspense to the brew.

In many ways this novel offers a few chilling insights into the ongoing culture wars and the cancellation mentality, among them digs at the purveyors of the Woke religion: ‘Don’t presume to speculate on other cultures. “Cultural Misappropriation” it was called…’ (p195)  In addition it seems likely that the repercussions of Covid-19 and subsequent Lockdowns and Government rulings inspired aspects of the novel: ‘Self-censorship was always more effective than any other kind. Why police people when you can scare them into policing themselves?’ (p315)

The subjugation of women depicted here has faint echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale (Attwood, 1985), but without the religious overtones. Some other alternate history books are Bring the Jubilee (Moore, 1955), The Man in the High Castle (Dick, 1962), Pavane (Roberts, 1968), Dominion (Sansom, 2012), A Piece of Resistance (Egleton, 1970), Collaborator (Davies, 2003), Fatherland (Harris, 1992), When the Kissing had to Stop (Fitzgibbon, 1960), SSGB (Deighton, 1978), The Leader (Walters, 2003) and Romanitas (McDougall, 2005). Widowland is a welcome addition to an impressive list.

C.J. Carey is the pen-name of novelist Jane Thynne; she is the widow of author Philip Kerr. This is her first novel using this pseudonym.

***

Editorial comment:

I thought the cover was garish; however, the author liked it immensely, so who am I to judge?

‘If that’s not nerve-wracking enough’. (p17) Wrack is seaweed. It should be ‘nerve-racking’. Nerves on the rack, in effect.

Writing – research – 1933

I’ve been researching the year 1933 for a short story project and found the following news items of interest; whether I’ll be using any of them is debatable at present, as I’m still in the planning stage.

May 10. Nazis burn books considered to be ‘un-German’ in the square of Berlin University. Another bonfire in Munich, while children watched: ‘As you watch the fire burn these un-German books,’ the children were told, ‘let it also burn into your hearts love of the Fatherland.’ Books came from a blacklist of tomes removed from public libraries – works by Heinrich Mann, Upton Sinclair, Erich Maria Remarque. Any books that depict war in an unpleasant light were destined for the flames. Their places on the shelves were filled with Mein Kampf by Hitler and books by other leading Nazis, mostly novels written by home-grown authors that glorified war.

Comment. Books have been destroyed for centuries; most odd, it’s as if the philistines believe that ideas can be un-thought. The most tragic and famous is the destruction of the library of Alexandria. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953 and he stated it was his response to the scourge of McCarthyism, though later he considered it was a general abhorrence of book burning. Needless to say, books still get burned by people who believe they know best – even the Harry Potter novels! [Naturally, book burning by the Nazis was nothing compared to their heinous treatment of Jews and others, even this early in their short-lived so-called Thousand Year Reich.]

 

 

July 23. Germany. Importing banned books is punishable by death.

July 26. Hitler’s cabinet announced plans for the compulsory sterilisation of people suffering from blindness, deafness, physical deformity, hereditary imbecility, epilepsy and St Vitus’ dance. Force may be necessary.

Comment. Hitler’s belief in eugenics and the uber-Aryan is like something out of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, though that book was published in 1932. Huxley’s book has been banned over the years, notably in some US states, one of them citing ‘because it centred around negative activity’!

July 28. UK – drought warning as temperature reaches 90F (32C)…

Comment. Oh, this was before anyone had invented the catch-all excuse Global Warming, conveniently renamed Climate Change.

August 4. Forest fires rage in Dorset and Hampshire following dry weather… (12 Aug – rainfall ends the drought and puts out the forest fires)

Comment. You can rely on the English weather to sort things out…

August 23. Decree from Berlin – all doctors must be Nazis.

Comment. Of course it wasn’t only this profession that was forced into following the Nazi credo. If you wanted to work or advance in work, then it seemed the only way was to espouse the Nazi doctrine. Appalling; it would never happen in the UK...

 
Sep 1. HG Wells has his sci-fi novel published: The Shape of Things to Come – a future history, predicting the Soviet experiment will become hidebound in dogma, while the capitalist US Treasury will soon be unable to afford its armed forces. Germany and Poland would be at war by 1940, and after a hundred years or so a Utopia will be formed, with a benevolent dictatorship, which too will fall though bloodlessly…
 
Comment. This alternate history (1933-2106) features the abolition of all organised religion (including Islam and Roman Catholicism), among other things! His prediction was that Poland and Germany would fight for ten years; Britain would remain neutral.

Oct 14. Germany quits the League of Nations and walks out of the Geneva disarmament conference. ‘Equality, not arms, was my aim,’ Hitler said. A referendum will be held to get the German people’s approval of their policies – however, only the Nazi Party is on the ballot paper, all opposition is banned… Result: 95% in favour!

 
Comment. There was no way that Hitler would honour any verdict at the end of a disarmament conference, so it made sense that walked out. He had a completely different agenda, outlined in his book, of course. Of course other regimes around the world have emulated this plebiscite ruse = one party, bound to win!
 
What is done in the past, echoes through all eternity... to paraphrase a certain general who became a slave who became a Gladiator.

Writing – market – Shattered Prism

A new short story market in science fiction and fantasy will debut in November. The magazine is called Shattered Prism.

Wikipedia commons - a swarm of ancient stars

It will be a twice yearly publication, November and May.

They are currently accepting manuscripts for the November issue – the window is limited, but I don’t know when it closes; submissions won’t be passed on to the next submission window but deleted.

Payment is 6c per word for original fiction, 2c for reprints.

They’re looking for stories with a word-count of 1,500 to 5,500.

Their speculative preference is broad: hard SF, soft SF, military SF, sociological and psychological SF, fantasy, urban fantasy, folk tales, alternative history, and other sub genres too numerous to itemise.

Great chance to get in at the ground floor for this venture.

Full details for submission can be found on their site:

http://shatteredprism.com/guidelines.html

Response time is estimated to be about a month.

Good luck!

Writing - market - The Overcast

No, nothing to do with the weather forecast. Though your work could end up in the cloud...

 

The Overcast is a speculative fiction podcast featuring ‘breath-taking stories from the Pacific Northwest and Beyond’. 

This is an audio format publication.  They reckon that stories of about 20 minutes in length are the ‘sweet spot for podcasts’.  Which means that a 2,000 word story falls right in the sweet spot.  They will consider submissions of anywhere from 1,000 – 5,000 words, but if it comes down to a choice between two stories of otherwise equal merit, ‘we will generally choose the story that is closer to the sweet spot’.

Reprints are welcome, so long as they have not been previously produced in an audio format.

What they’re looking for:

Science fiction
Fantasy
Alternate history
Steampunk
Magical realism

Payment is 2c per word, on acceptance, for first worldwide exclusive audio rights for six months and archive rights.

Closing to submissions on 31 July. They will then switch to a quarterly submission window; next one being 1-31 October 2015.

See the website: http://peoples-ink.com/overcast-about/

And good luck!

 

Book Review - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Susanna Clarke’s debut novel was published in 2004 to wide acclaim (its gestation began in about 1993) but it is only now that I have taken it down from my bookshelf and read it! Admittedly, the 1006 pages of small print made it a little daunting. (I’m not averse to thick books – I read Lord of the Rings and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich over one period of time; another time, I read Gone With the Wind and War and Peace!)

What immediately struck me about this book was its style and wit. It begins in an alternative past, England in 1806. Apparently, there had been no practising magician (not someone using legerdemain, but employing real magic) for about 300 years. The conflict with Napoleon drags on and a certain Mr Norrell proposes to lend a magical hand to defeat Bonaparte, egged on by a Mr Robinson:

‘Mr Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone – which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.’

Norrell is an unusual and not particularly likeable character, full of his own importance (in some cases, rightly so) and he does not suffer fools gladly. Yet until he performs a particularly remarkable act of magic – literally raising a woman from the dead – he is not taken seriously. Thereafter, he is feted – and fated – to defend the Realm time and again. To aid him, he takes on an apprentice, Jonathan Strange, who surprisingly proves very gifted in the magical arts. Strange seems the complete opposite of Norrell, handsome and popular and even daring.

However, after Strange goes alone to the Iberian Peninsula to offer his magical aid to Wellington, their friendship becomes strained. This section is particularly good, revealing historical research; I could almost expect Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe to enter the scene at any moment!

Writing in the style of a nineteenth century novel, where author intrusion is acceptable, Clarke excels, capturing the flavour of the period together with the descriptions – and over 200 footnotes – and the occasional old spelling used by Austen! This is emphasised by the Portia Rosenberg’s atmospheric broody illustrations.

‘From what she had been told she thought of Mr Norrell as a kind of miser who boarded magic instead of gold, and as our narrative progresses, I will allow the reader to judge the justice of this portrait of Mr Norrell’s character.’

Hovering like some doom-laden cloud, John Uskglass, the last great magician, seems to darken the mood, and justly so, since he was and is the Raven King.

There is a Dickensian feel too, particularly in the characters of the ‘Gentleman with thistledown-hair’, Vinculus, Drawlight, Childermass and Lascelles, all perfectly described.

 
‘His face was the colour of three-day-old milk; his hair was the colour of a coal-smoke-and-ashes London sky; and his clothes were the colour of the Thames at dirty Wapping.’

There are many instances of ghoulish and surreal imagery. ‘Their clothes and saddle-blankets were covered with cruel and deadly images… formed out of what appeared at first to be pearl buttons but which, on closer examination, proved to be the teeth of all the Frenchmen they had killed. Saornil [the guerrilla chieftain] in particular, had so many teeth attached to his person that he rattled whenever he moved, rather as if all the dead Frenchmen were still chattering with fear.’

Clarke’s description of an old woman surrounded by cats is most striking: ‘Her arms lay in her lap, so extravagantly spotted with brown that they were like two fish. Her skin was the white, almost transparent skin of the extremely old, as fine and wrinkled as a spider’s web, with veins of knotted blue… But perhaps she did not hear them. For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another… and she forgot everything in the world, except Cat – and that, it is said, she spoke marvellously well.’

The big puzzle is why Uskglass seemed to retire from the world for 300 years, and why magic went with him. Perhaps it will be answered in a subsequent tome. Dealing with powerful magicians is always problematical. Take Harry Potter, for example: why did they play Quidditch in the rain? Haven’t they heard of ‘sunny spells’? Weathermen refer to them all the time. Likewise, if a magician can move the landscape of Spain, as Strange amusingly does, surely nothing is beyond him? Yet Strange cannot easily locate Uskglass.

 
This is a dark tale with death and just a little redemption. The ending was satisfying in many respects, but left the story unfinished, the reader wanting a sequel – and yet a decade has passed since and it has not appeared yet, though it is still promised.

The imaginative alternative history, the colourful descriptions, the humour and wit, the characterisation, all make this an enjoyable and worthwhile fantasy read. If you love words, then you should find this novel a delight.

 
See also:
http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2015/05/critics-strange-dislike-of-magic-show.html

 

Critic’s Strange dislike of Magic show

I’m halfway through reading Susanna Clarke’s debut tome, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004) and I find that there are many things to enjoy in this book, so far. I’ll write a review when I’ve finished it. 

I had intended reading the book before the TV series, but have fallen behind due to other demands on my time. As it happens, due to other commitments I’d miss at least two of the seven episodes anyway, so I will settle for watching the DVD in the future.

Strange & Norrell - Bertie Carvel & Eddie Marsan

 

Briefly, the story begins in 1806 in an alternative universe, where Magic is real, though none has been reported in England for 300 years. There are plenty of theoretical magicians who study books and even write them, but no physical practitioners – that is, until Mr Norrell decides to step forward and use magic to help his country against Napoleon.

The Daily Mail’s TV reviewer Christopher Stevens has savaged the first two episodes of the series. In his first review, two column inches of ten bemoaned the fact that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell wasn’t Poldark – ‘no damsels with heaving bosoms.’ The title of the review gives it away, I suppose – ‘I was hoping for TV magic… but got a Harry Potter rip-off.’ I know, the columnists don’t always write the title that appears in the newspaper. But that’s what Mr Stevens says in his text. He calls Susanna Clarke’s book a ‘mishmash of folklore and historical fantasy… a J.K. Rowling rip-off.’ The second review referred to ‘turgid dialogue’ from the book.

I’ve encountered this attitude before. Critics bring their own expectations to a piece of work – whether book or film – and then rail against the piece because it didn’t meet those expectations. That’s just misguided reviewing, in my opinion. The only similarity between Poldark and Norrell is that they both take place during the Napoleonic wars – the former is historical fiction while the latter is fantasy fiction.

What is unforgiveable in these two reviews are the comments about a book Mr Stevens clearly hasn’t read. The only two similarities between Potter and Norrell are that they involve magic and are published by Bloomsbury. Clarke began work on Norrell in the early 1990s, and spent ten years working on it – and the depth of knowledge and research shows.

Sometimes I’ve read a review of a book or film and wondered if I’d read or watched the same work, since the reviewer seemed to come away with such a different conception. Not everyone will like everything; that stands to reason. We're all entitled to our opinion - though I'd like to think that meant 'informed opinion'. But if a critic is to employ reason, then they should be reasonable in their statements. Throwing around an accusation of ‘rip-off’ is far from reasonable.

Attempting to bring to the screen a 1,000-page book can’t be easy, especially when there are about 200 footnotes! Steve Kloves (and Michael Goldenberg) did remarkably well with the Harry Potter scripts, particularly the longer books; Norrell’s scriptwriter Peter Harness has managed to harness (sic) much of the original book, though inevitably Clarke’s pastiche treatment and wit are not so evident, but the episodes don’t suffer for that.

Ignore the critic and enjoy the TV series for what it is: a laudable translation to screen from a fantastic work of original fiction.

***

Note: Susanna Clarke is working on a new book; however, you can read a collection of her short stories set in the same alternate universe, featuring some characters from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The book has just been released: The Ladies of Grace Adieu - the title of the story that started it all, really...

Blog guest - Alison Morton - roaming through history

Today, my blog guest is Alison Morton, who writes Roman-themed alternate history thrillers with strong heroines and lives in France. No relation. Welcome, Alison!

First of all, thank you, Nik, for hosting me today. We Mortons must stick together!

Alison in Rome - copyright Alison Morton, one-time use for this blog

 

My pleasure, Alison. There seem to be a lot of us about, too. Today's date is appropriate, as, on May 11, 330 Byzantium was renamed Nova Roma, though the name didn’t stick and instead Constantinople became common usage. What inspired you to use that form of New Rome for your series of thrillers?

Choosing ‘Roma Nova’ for my series was very pragmatic. It’s the Latin for ‘New Rome’, but with the classical positioning of the adjective after the noun. When the first settlers founded their new colony it had a much longer name, as most Roman settlements did, Colonia Apulinensis Roma Nova. Apulius was their leader and it was his late wife’s father who gave them their first land. But that’s a mouthful so copying prevailing practice they shortened it to ‘Roma Nova’.

 

I’ve always been attracted to alternate history books and stories and you mention some in your website about Roma Nova history. It can’t be an easy task, setting up changes in history as we didn’t know it. How did you tackle that?

Well, you start by studying the social, economic and political conditions at the time when the alternate timeline split from our real one, technically called the ‘point of divergence’.  This gives you a baseline. Rome changed quite a bit during its 1229 year existence in the West. By 395 AD, when the first Roma Novans set out, solidi had replaced sestertii and denarii, for instance. Regional government was localising with ‘barbarian’ warlords acting less like client kings of Rome and more like allied or even autonomous leaders with fully delegated powers.

Projecting your alternate historical line forward from its divergence point needs to follow historical logic. You can’t cater for every eventuality over hundreds of years or you’d never write a word! Think about the basic values of your society and work through how, as a people, they would react to events or push them forward. All peoples/nations run through different cycles during their history; even Roma Nova suffered from downturns! And you need a great deal of thinking time to build your world; you can’t make things up ‘on the hoof’ and expect to keep it plausible. As J K Rowling has said, it has to be all worked out first in your head.

Who is your favourite character from one of your books and why?

Of course, I love Carina, my protagonist; I even interviewed her. But equally intriguing are the triangle of men around her: Conrad, her husband, undoubtedly the love of her life; Lurio, the cop, also her colleague and ex-lover; and Apollodorus, criminal and ex-associate who keeps his own counsel until one day in PERFIDITAS...

What are you working on now, besides SUCCESSIO?
 Book 4 of the Roma Nova series! I will be announcing details in my next newsletter, but there are at least three more books planned and we’ll still be in Roma Nova!

How much research goes into each book?

A lot! Reaching into the past means getting inside the heads of the characters, imagining what they see in their everyday world, what they smell, eat and touch. If you set your story in a different country, you can visit the places the characters would live in, smell the sea, touch the plants, walk under the hot blue sky, or freeze in a biting wind. But if you invent that country, then you go about it differently.

You need to think about your country’s approximate location and research real countries nearby for scenery, weather, transport, farming plus industry, political trends, architecture, even the type of cuisine. Roma Novans eat a diet approximately Italian/central European, but with quite a lot of echoes back to ancient times e.g. honey cake.

Luckily, I’ve breathed in history since I was a kid, particularly the Roman type. I even ‘went back to school’ to take a history masters’ thirty years after my first degree. So I have a reasonable grounding in the aspects of Roman history I want to draw on to start the story.

 

Constantine Arch, Rome - copyright Alison Morton, one-time use for this blog

I write the basics of a complex scene, then mark the text up in bright blue square brackets which gives me a visual signal to research more. For example, my 21^st century Romans follow the traditional system of burning their dead. I knew how the pyres were built and that libations were thrown into the flames, so I could write the scene. But then I went back to the sources and refreshed my memory, I saw I’d totally forgotten that the family party has to walk three times round the pyre.  Basically, you need to check everything and if there’s even a tiny worm of doubt, check again.

Many thanks, Alison. I might add that there is a great deal more interesting detail in your blog (see below). Now, please tell us about your books.

Well, Roma Nova started with INCEPTIO (Kindle version on special officer this weekend until Monday 12 May!), then continued in PERFIDITAS. The third in series, SUCCESSIO will be out in early June.

Roma Nova – the last remnant of the Roman Empire that has survived into the 21st century – is at peace. Carina Mitela, the heir of a leading family, but choosing the life of an officer in the Praetorian Guard Special Forces, is not so sure.

She senses danger crawling towards her when she encounters a strangely self-possessed member of the unit hosting their exchange exercise in Britain. When a blackmailing letter arrives from a woman claiming to be her husband Conrad’s lost daughter and Conrad tries to shut Carina out, she knows the threat is real.

Trying to resolve a young man’s indiscretion twenty-five years before turns into a nightmare that not only threatens to destroy all the Mitelae but also attacks the core of the imperial family itself. With her enemy holding a gun to the head of the heir to the imperial throne, Carina has to make the hardest decision of her life…

About Alison

Alison Morton holds a bachelor’s degree in French, German and Economics, a masters’ in history and lives in France with her husband.

A ‘Roman nut’ since age 11, she has visited sites throughout Europe including the alma mater, Rome. But it was the mosaics at Ampurias (Spain) that started her wondering what a modern Roman society would be like if run by women…

INCEPTIO, the first in the Roma Nova series, was shortlisted for the 2013 International Rubery Book Award and awarded a B.R.A.G. Medallion^® in September 2013. The next in series, PERFIDITAS, published October 2013, has also just been honoured with the B.R.A.G. Medallion^®.  Alison is working on the third book SUCCESSIO which will be out in June 2014.

Alison's links  

Connect with Alison on her blog: http://alison-morton.com/blog/

Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/alison_morton

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5783095.Alison_Morton

 

Find where you can buy Roma Nova stories (multiple retailers)

INCEPTIO:  http://alison-morton.com/inceptio/how-to-buy-inceptio/

PERFIDITAS:  http://alison-morton.com/perfiditas/how-to-buy-perfiditas/

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPhyUE0JvE

 

 

FFB - The Leader

This 2003 thriller by Guy Walters falls into the ‘what if’ alternative history’ category of fiction. This kind of story goes a long way back – to the late 1800s. More modern examples are Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1953) where the South won the Civil War and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) where the Allies lost WWII. British variants include novels where Hitler won, such as Len Deighton’s SSGB (1978), Murray Davies’ Collaborator (2003), Robert Harris’ Fatherland (1992) and the Soviet’s take over Britain, such as Constantine Fitzgibbon’s When the Kissing had to Stop (1960), and Clive Egleton’s A Piece of Resistance (1970), and S.J. Sansom’s Dominion (2012). Sophia McDougall's Romanitas, the first of a trilogy, is a contemporary novel where the Roman empire didn't fall but dominates half the world. There are plenty of others, of course.

In the case of The Leader, in 1936 Edward VIII defied all advice and opinion and refused to give up his throne or Mrs Simpson. Political turmoil resulted and into the vacuum stepped the pro-monarchy group, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists – renamed the British Union. In 1937 Mosley was in power and had the tacit support of the pro-fascist king and his wife.

Within weeks of Mosley walking into No.10, the Emergency Powers were invoked by Parliament and a nationwide curfew was installed. They ended the right of assembly and His Majesty’s Secret State Police was set up to ‘combat anti-patriotic activities’ and to take over the work of MI5. Identity papers were introduced and the press was taken over by the state and absorbed into the civil service.

Of course all these measures were ‘temporary – for the good of us all.’ Mosley’s Blackshirts caused terror wherever they went, fomenting racial unrest, notably against Jews. Mosley even consults his fascist pal Adolf Hitler on a ‘more permanent’ solution to the ‘Jewish problem’.  

The first manifestation of this dictatorship was the plethora of posters of Mosley – in his Blackshirt uniform – ‘The Leader – For the Good of Us All.’ The cult of personality rising above policy.

Like all regimes of terror, this one was run by thugs of doubtful intelligence. There were ways round the system, ways to fight back. The populace wasn’t completely cowed, it just needed a few well-placed leaders. Unfortunately, old Winston Churchill was a prisoner in the Isle of Man.

First World War hero James Armstrong, now an MP, soon realised that this was not the Britain he’d fought for in the trenches. He started meeting friends of like mind – until he was arrested, having been betrayed. Armstrong learned that you couldn’t trust anybody anymore. That was the state’s invisible power - distrust spreading like a malignant tumour – and what kept the Soviets in power for so long.

But Armstrong escaped and with cunning and bravery links up with some communists to fight back at the authoritarian government.

The story is convincing on several levels and moves along at a good pace. I was reminded of Buchan’s Thirty-nine Steps – it seems as though every hand is turned against the hero, he can’t trust anyone. And unknown to Armstrong, there are behind-the-scenes manipulations going on, engineered by Russian moles ...

 
The select bibliography cites nineteen books concerning, Mosley, Fascism in Britain, the 1930s, the Windsors and the Russians – research all used to good effect without slowing the pace or appearing didactic.
 
Of course much of the background is based on fact – Mosley was quite powerful in his day and the king held pro-fascist views. Indeed, this was a historical turning-point – the king abdicated in order to marry the American Mrs Simpson.
 
It’s possible that it could have happened like this. And just because the story takes place in 1937, it doesn’t mean Britain is now forever free of a dictatorship...