I was inspired to write an alternative history of the War of 1812, Beyond 1812, after reading about the Hartford Convention of 1814-15. The northern states met here to discuss what they could do since they had not wanted this war and felt that the south dominated the union too much. President Madison sent two battalions of US Infantry to Hartford to put out any secessionist sparks this meeting might fan. I wondered what it would have taken to push the north to secede and then began to write how that might have been done.
I began my alternative history of the late Roman Empire, The Roman Sky, after reading about a Roman traveller sent to China who came back and told the Emperor of how General Kongming used paper lanterns to signal his army during a battle. I recalled how China’s use of gunpowder to make fireworks was taken by Europeans to make muskets and cannons and thought what would have happened if paper lanterns triggered a similar reaction.
In both series, it was actual history that inspired the alternative one. Because of that connection, I decided that parallel timelines would tend to be the same as our own, that major changes in them do not necessarily alter everything else. It allows the same people, events, and developments to exist in drastically different worlds, even if they are arrived at in different ways.
In any case, building these alternative worlds and researching our own history has helped me cope with 2020.
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