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| 1610:
A Sundial In A Grave by Mary Gentle check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
Some authors, like Chaz Brenchley (Outremer series) or Guy Gavriel Kay (Sailing To Byzantium) have used episodes of history to create their own personal fantasy worlds that are both otherworld and familiar. True alternate worlds look for a hinge point and ask, 'What if this had never happened?', as Robert Silverberg did in his collection Roma Eterna. Others make more subtle changes, as does Freda Warrington in her excellent book The Court Of The Midnight King where she explores a Richard III that might have been. Mary Gentle is also no stranger to playing with history. In her White Crow books ( Rats And Gargoyles, The Architecture Of Desire, Left To His Own Devices and Scholars And Soldiers), she has created an alternate history based on the use of Hermetic science, a system postulated in the 17th century which said that the world worked on magical patterns and resonances but predictably, scientifically. Ash is another alternate history, set in the fragmented France of the 15th century in North Africa. In common with the current novel, 1610, these volumes have a female lead character who is a very skilled swordswoman and who dresses mostly in male clothing. Alternate histories all have a pivot point (a jonbar hinge) where the novel's path deviates from known history. In Roma Eterna, Silverberg has a failure of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt preventing the eventual rise of Christianity. Keith Roberts in Pavane has the assassination of Elizabeth I and the success of the Spanish Armada. Mary Gentle takes the opposite view. Her characters try to prevent the deviation from history as we know it. In 1610, Robert Fludd was a real philosopher and mathematician. In Gentle's Stuart London, Fludd has calculated the future history of the world and has come to the conclusion that in 500 years from then, the Earth will be hit by a comet and all live will be utterly destroyed. This can be prevented but only if King James I is assassinated and his son, Henry, Prince of Wales, becomes king. If that happens, the people of the future will have developed the technology to prevent the comet's strike. Despite the fact that he will be long dead, Fludd is determined to control events so that the Earth can be saved. In the Paris of 1610, the French king, Henri IV is assassinated. According to the narrative of Valentin Rochefort, duellist and spy, he was blackmailed into arranging it by the Queen, Marie de Medici. As a result, Rochefort decided that leaving France would be a good idea. Unfortunately, Dariole, young swordsman who has already bested him in public, waylays him in the stables and again humiliates him. But for some reason, Rochefort cannot fathom, Dariole decides to join him in his flight. Rochefort doesn't recognise that his new companion is actually a girl until it is pointed out by the shipwrecked samurai they rescue on the beach. If this turn of events seems like a cliché it is worth remembering that people see what they are looking for and although it wasn't unknown for women to occasionally dress as men, it was not how women in Rochefort's world normally behaved. Tanaka Saburo, coming from a different culture was not blinded by European expectations. Reaching England, these three are sucked into Fludd's plans. Fludd's calculations put Rochefort in the right position to arrange the assassination of another king and to herd him in the direction he wants him to go. He has spent ten years working out every move, but as with many best laid plans, there is a wild card. Here there are two. Is this Science Fiction? Yes, but only marginally. It is also an historical novel of the highest calibre and with the recent TV dramas about Pepys and Charles II, with the right marketing, this could open up Gentle's work to a new audience. She deserves it as this is a very fine novel with excellent characterisation, complex plotting and a suburb grasp, not only of history but also of human motivation. Pauline Morgan
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OTHER REVIEWS - February 2004
BOOKS The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold The Separation by Christopher Priest First Meetings In The Enderverse by Orson Scott Card Dragon Venom by Lawrence Watt-Evans The Dolphins Of Pern by Anne McCaffrey Reach For Tomorrow by Arthur C Clarke The Mammoth Book Of Best New SF # 16 edited by Gardner Dozois 1610: A Sundial In A Grave by Mary Gentle Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss Trading In Danger by Elizabeth Moon Richard Matheson: Collected Stories Vol. 1 edited by Stanley Wiater The Gates To Witchworld by Andre Norton Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Mission Gamma: Lesser Evil by Robert Simpson The Killing Of Worlds by Scott Westerfeld Star Trek: The Original Series: Gemini by Mike W. Barr MUSIC COMPUTER GAMES Wallace and Gromit - Project Zoo RPGs & WARGAMES MAGAZINES On Spec: The Canadian Magazine
Of The Fantastic vol 15 no. 2 & 3
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Publishers tell us that historical fiction
doesn't sell. Crime sells, therefore so does historical crime. Strange.
Fantasy sells, so if you put a fantasy twist into your historical
setting, no problem. David Gemmel was told that if he wanted to
publish his Alexander novels (Lion Of Macedon, etc) as straight
historicals, he would have to use another name and accept a greatly
reduced advance. They became fantasy. 
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