Peshawar Lancers Universe

Cafe Society
1

Are you familiar with S M Sterling’s book, The Peshawar Lancers? He also wrote one novella set in The Fall Universe. I have read both.

Now I am kicking around the idea of doing National Novel Writing Month with a story set in this universe. It is interesting and wide open as only two stories are set there.

Wikipedia (of course) has an excellent synopsis of this timeline. In 1878, a series of comets, meteors or whatever gobsmacked the Northern Hemisphere. Starting in Russia, and moving on to crater Germany and France. A huge fragment set off a tidal wave that wiped out the US east coast. The Pacific Basin was untouched. Russia devolved into a death-worshiping cannibal kingdom. China and Japan somehow united, but the main focus in on the British who evacuated leadership and industrial stuff to India. Now, in the year 2025 the Indian Empire is stuck in sort of a Victorian Age. Swordfights and zeppelins, what’s not to like?

**So help me consider what this world would be like. **

By 2025, the British Isles have been recivilized to an agricultural colony. (Why would the Indians want to do that? Old times’ sake?) The Indians also claim North America, although the Russian got Alaska and are raising trouble amongst the cannibal tribes. California has fragmented into religious city-states that play the Indians against the Chinese/Japanese. The Mormons seem to be hanging on. Galveston is the center of Indian power in the region. (Why not Bermuda? Is it still there?)

OK, so **what is the likelihood of cannibalism surviving for 150 years after the disaster? **Sterling seems obsessed with it. Further he describes the cannibals as sub humans with receding chins and foreheads. Could such a de-evolution happen?

**What sort of wildlife would we find in North America? **Remarkably Sterling mentions tigers, descendants of escaped zoo animals. That seems unrealistic. Wild pigs of course, horses, bison, what about feral cattle? Anything else? I was hoping for parrots. What about fisheries?

How would we go about reestablishing civilization in North America? I suppose the Indians would want to do such a thing, but with very low population densities and minimal excess production, they would have to do it on the cheap. I imagine an offshore island base (where?) trading improved seed and livestock with the natives for furs and (anything else?). Schools for some kids, even scholarships to study back in the home country for a lucky few. Most of the people doing the work would be from North America of course. Railroads, nope since North America has the (much changed) Mississippi and littorals.

**That brings to mind another issue, changes in geography. **The three harsh winters after the disaster would have changed the courses of rivers at least a bit. What effect would a huge tidal wave have on the East Coast?

Would any artifacts of the US survive? What would be worth a dangerous expedition to rediscover?

**What story opportunities do you see for a novel based around the idea of re-exploring North America? **

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Only to reply to the cannibal question - the Russians started a whole religion about cannibalism, didn’t they? I think Stirling bought into the whole “once you’ve committed an atrocity, you have to keep doing it, or admit it was an atrocity” idea. So the civilized people who became cannibals solely to prevent starvation had to continue cannibalism even when it was no longer necessary, or admit they had done a monstrous thing.

The only other thing I remember about the book is the wonderful phrase “roast suckling Uzbek”.

3

I missed that!

Frankly the constant references to cannibalism was distracting to me. I suspect I might let it drop.

4

I’ve always wanted Steve to revisit that universe with a couple more novels. I guess your my fix for that now!

5

If the Pacific Basin was untouched, what happened to the Western U.S? San Francisco had around 25,000 people in 1878; Virgina City had 10,000. If tidal waves wiped out the West Coast, Nevada would be prime beach-front property, and that was right in the middle of the Comstock Boom. I recommend you read *Roughing It *for the tale of Nevada and California at (slightly before) that time. I really can’t see that civilization would not spread from there to take over the North American continent.

Regarding wild life, and assuming the continent did remain unpopulated–I would expect that feral cattle would be the dominant herbivore. They would be very big and very mean. Bison would not have bounced back yet. Wolves would be the dominant predator, but if a population of tigers survived somehow they probably would do very well.

6

We are talking 150 years after the Fall, the novel took place in the far-off year of 2025. What would a feral moo-moo look like I wonder.

California was overrun with refugees as the transcontinental railroad survived. The population soared and then crashed. Now it is fragmented into religious city-states that play the Indians against everyone else.

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I’m hoping Stirling finds time to return to the Peshawar Lancers universe between the heavy volumes of his current series.

And I’d love a third Lords of Creation book–set in an alternate solar system familiar to many of us. From the Acknowledgements in the first one:

But I’ll wait for Stirling to write them.

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Make sure you have elephants in the United States. I’ve read that they would do well on this continent and I’ve always wanted to see it happen.

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Can we realistically expect escaped elephants to have bred all these years? On the other hand, the Indians might introduce them as transport animals. (Oh that’s a good idea!)

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I think escaped big cats could do very well. And after 150 years the bison could very well have come back. I don’t know how many elephants there would be, there probably weren’t too many in 1878.

It’s mentioned that there is British travel to North America. Guys go there to go big game hunting, but it’s best to have a “native” guide. So there is some civilization in North America.

Paul, I loved that book, and I hope to read yours if you do it. Do you need an editor, who would read any advance copy? Hee. Seriously, if you write, send it to me in chunks as you progress.

11

“Shikari in Galveston” appeared in Worlds That Weren’t; indeed, big game hunting was featured. It takes place earlier than Peshawar Lancers–during the reign of the scandalous Victoria II. (Definitely a time worth exploring.)

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Do we know what happened to SOUTH America? It wasn’t like they only had Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro running around in the jungles by then—the impressive War of the Triple Alliance had taken place only in 1870—they renamed a Paraguayan city after Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879, in thanks for arbitrating diplomatically in their favor after the war.

Are there any Confederados left, in Brazil? Do they still have slavery (it was only fully abolished in 1888, OTL)?

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I’ll have to look up again when the US Army did their camel-as-cavalry experiment in the American southwest. As usually happens some got loose so for a while there were some feral camels roaming around. They were eventually shot, if I remember correctly. But that would have been habitat they could handle.

I liked the genealogy of the monarchs that followed the Fall. Victoria, Edward VII, and George V, as in the OTL. They were all alive in 1878. George V would have been a boy of 13. But after that was when things branched off, with Victoria II, Albert I, Elizabeth II, John II, and Charles III. In the OTL Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II followed George V. The Elizabeths were, of course, two different people.)

The list of monarchs at the end of the book(in my edition at least) contains one error. George, son of Edward and grandson of Victoria I, is listed as George IV. That’s an error in sequence, he was George V. George IV was the son of George III, of American revolution fame, and he was king from 1820 t0 1830.

It looks like Albert I ruled for quite a while, from 1942 to 1989. That would have made him, in the Peshawar timeline, the monarch with the second longest reign. In the OTL Victoria(there was just one) was queen for sixty-four years, edging out her grandfather, George III, who was king for sixty years.

If the current Elizabeth makes it to the year 2015 she will have reigned longer than Victoria.

Sorry to go off on a tangent here, I love “what ifs?”

Rancloth, your question is a good one. I never noticed any mention of South America.

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My goodness there is a lot of enthusiasm for this universe!

Camels in the Southwest, check.

How about an expedition to New York to recover gold? To Washington for the same reason? Up the Mississippi to establish claims in the interior?

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I just wanted to point out, you have called them Indians in your posts. They did not ever refer to themselves that way. The Angrezi Raj, New Empire, or British Empire were the way they thought of themselves and referred to themselves, in that order of preference.

As for why would the Empire go back to Britain? They still consider themselves British and it is their home. I doubt they would ever move the seat of the Empire back there, but laying claim to it and bringing it back out of the stone age is easily understood.

And they were pretty busy claiming most of the world anyway. Until the 1970s, they did not have any real rivals on the international scene, so they were free to claim pretty much what they wanted of the wilderness. By the time of the novel, they controlled 40% of the Earth’s surface and just under half of the population, they were the most technologically advanced civilization, and they had strong allies in some of the other powers, most notably the French. And this was after their position internationally had weakened (Or at least slowed down) by the advances of the Dai-Nippon empire.

They have already started re-establishing civilization in North America, with colonies from Britain being started in the 1940s. But it will be a long time coming, between the size of the continent and the relatively low population density across the entire planet. But even so, they have about 6 million citizens there by the the time of the novel.

Stirling does say that there was a great deal of dying out in the area between Mexico and Brazil, but other than that he does not mention South or Central America. I would guess that the entire Caribbean was wiped clean of population for the most part when the strikes happened. The largest strike was in the middle of the North Atlantic and some of the tidal waves reached as far as the Appalachians. I doubt many places in the Caribbean could survive that kind of destruction, unless they were in a shadow of other places. I guess the southern parts of Cuba and Dominica might get through, after the energy was used up on the many islands to the NE of them and the northern part of their land.

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Sounds like there could have been feral camels in the Southwest in 1878.

http://www.standbesideher.com/civil-war.shtml

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Much as I would love to see a new post Fall book/story I have to say it’s rude to use an Author’s world without permission - at least if you are thinking of publication.

I suggest you join the SM Stirling discussion group on Yahoo and try out your ideas. The posters there know the various worlds backwards and forwards and can provide suggestions and comments. You will also get the definitive word on particular issues eg canibalism, wildlife, artifacts, south America, directly from Steve who is a regular contributer.

18

Legally, I am in the clear. You cannot copyright an idea.

But (more importantly) I do not write for normal publication anymore. The internet has ruined the market for little books.

Thank you for the link to the discussion group.

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The1632 Series invited “contribution” by other writers & fans. Of course, there’s lots of straight fan fiction out on the web. (And quite a bit of bent fan fiction!) But I doubt Stirling wants people publishing in any of his worlds without permission.

But just discussing the world of the Peshawar Lancers is certainly fun. “Shakiri in Galveston”–set earlier in the timeline–featured Mexican traders visiting what had been Texas…

20

Oh, agreed re the copyright - I just feel it’s a bit presumptuous…

There is also the problem that if you come up with a brilliant plot line it essentially stops Stirling from using it when he finally does get round to writing the sequal. :smiley:

The discussion group is pretty good if you are interested in any of his series and the natives are friendly.