Monday, August 21, 2006
Nantucket Trilogy
I recently finished the “Nantucket” trilogy by S.M. Stirling, which starts with Island In The Sea Of Time, and continues and completes in Against The Tide Of Years and On The Oceans Of Eternity. I can’t recommend it highly enough, though if you are into the alt-history or time travel genres at all heavily, no doubt you have already read them.
The first book stands on its own, and could have been taken as a one-shot novel, at the same time it leaves you curious about the world and the scenario the author spawned.
Don’t read the second one without the third handy to follow immediately, as they are effectively the two parts of one contiguous story, taking place several years after the first volume.
How famous is the original book? I lurk sometimes on the Soc.History.What-If usenet newsgroup, and it is common - or was for a while - to see posts there titled [something] ISOT, where ISOT means “in the sea of time,” shorthand for applying the same thing as happened to Stirling’s late 20th century Nantucket, and [something] is generally a specific geographical area and time, or perhap a person or people.
What did happen to Nantucket in this series?
It begins with something that comes to be called simply “The Event.” It’s as if the electrical storm to end all EMPs engulfs the island and some surrounding waters in March, before the summah people have much chance to arrive. Next thing they know, they are back around 1250 BC, cut of from everything and everybody in the modern world. Survival and conflict ensue. “They” fortuitously includes a Coast Guard training vessel, its captain and crew.
While it’s especially bad to break between the 2nd and 3rd volumes, I would also suggest reading them promptly after the first. It must have been awful, waiting for them to come out. Not that a Robert Jordan fan would know anything about that kind of anguish. Speaking of which, I had an amusing crossover idea: Island In The Wheel Of Time. Heh.
I haven’t started them yet, but there is another near-complete trilogy about what happens “up in the twentieth” as a result of The Event, starting with Dies The Fire. That set is known as the Emberverse series. Deb read and loved the first one. The setup? Basically in our time The Event is something of an EMP to end all EMPs, changing physics as we know it, rendering modern technology obsolete. Action ensues. I’m not hurrying to read it because I will want to read them as close together as possible.
Anyway, I bought Island In The Sea Of Time originally for the premise and because I saw it mentioned so often. Then it became one of those ones I would pick up and say “do I want to read this next… naw, I’ll read this one instead” over and over, like the cover made me question whether I’d like it.
As so often happens, it turned out to be near impossible to put down, starting with a bang and not letting go.
I frankly would love to see more in that world, and would be unsurprised to find fan fiction exists. The essential conflict is tied up at the end of the three - something you will have trouble believing even 50 pages from the end - but there are enough loose ends and potential consequences for endless speculation and extrapolation. Apparently there is a short story set 15 years later, in with a collection of other stories.
He seems to cover everything in these books. For instance, what happens with religion? Whither Christian churches before Christ is born? At one point I told Deb it sometimes felt like the radio on Gilligan’s Island. I’d think of an angle or a question, and within pages it would just happen to be addressed.
Anyway, highly recommended.