For Want of a Nail
Encyclopedia
For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga, is an alternate history
novel
published in 1973 by the American business historian Robert Sobel
. The novel depicts an alternate world where the American Revolution
was unsuccessful. Although it is fiction, the novel takes the form of a work of nonfiction, specifically an undergraduate-level history
of North America
from 1763 to 1971. The fictional history includes a full scholarly apparatus, including a bibliography
of 475 works and 860 footnotes citing imaginary books and articles
; three appendices listing the leaders of the Confederation of North America, the United States of Mexico and Kramer Associates; an index; a contemporary map of the alternate North America; and a preface thanking imaginary people for their assistance with the book. The book also includes a critique of itself by Professor Frank Dana, an imaginary Mexican historian with two books listed in the bibliography.
In the alternate world it describes, For Want of a Nail is a history of North America written by Robert Sobel, a business historian. North America is divided between two nations: the Confederation of North America (CNA), a union of British colonies that remains nominally associated with the United British Empire; and the United States of Mexico (USM), a bilingual nation resulting from an influx of expatriate American rebels to colonial Mexico
. Other major powers include the United British Empire itself; the German
Empire, which dominates Europe
and the Middle East
; the Japan
ese Empire, which dominates eastern Asia
; and Kramer Associates (KA), a vast global corporation
that arose in the USM but is now based in Taiwan. All of these powers are engaged in a nuclear
arms race
that was initiated by Kramer Associates' detonation of an atomic bomb in 1962.
For Want of a Nail opens in 1763, following the end of the Seven Years' War
. Attempts by the British government to impose direct taxation on the American colonies provokes resistance by the colonists, which flares into open rebellion in 1775. After driving British troops from Boston and declaring independence, the American rebels suffer a series of reversals, losing control of New York City
, Albany
and Philadelphia by the end of 1777. (As indicated by the book's subtitle, the point of divergence
from actual history occurs in October 1777, when British General John Burgoyne
defeats American Generals Horatio Gates
and Benedict Arnold
at the Battle of Saratoga
.) Conciliationists gain control of the Continental Congress
in 1778, and negotiate a truce with the British, returning the colonies to British control.
Parliament
passes a bill in 1780 reorganizing the North American colonies into the Confederation of North America (CNA), granting greater autonomy to the colonists. Nevertheless, many former rebels refuse to submit to British rule, and an exodus of pro-independence colonists to the Texas
region of colonial Mexico
takes place. The expatriate ex-Patriots in Texas organize themselves as the State of Jefferson, after the author of the Declaration of Independence
(who was hanged in London after the rebellion failed). Mexico gains its independence from Spain in 1805 and immediately descends into chaos and civil war. The Jeffersonians eventually become involved, and a Jeffersonian army under Andrew Jackson
captures Mexico City
in 1817. By 1819 Jackson manages to engineer the merger of Jefferson and Mexico as the United States of Mexico (USM), and in 1821 he wins election as the new country's first President.
Despite the exodus of dissatisfied rebels, the population of the CNA continues to grow. Industrialization takes root in the Northern Confederation (a union of the New England
and mid-Atlantic colonies), while the invention of the cotton gin
brings prosperity and widespread slavery
to the Southern Confederation (a union of the southern colonies). After a series of calamities (and the abolition of slavery in the Southern Confederation) in the 1830s, the CNA wins approval from the British government to reform itself as a unified nation.
After clashing with each other in the Rocky Mountain War (1845–55), the CNA and USM go their separate ways. The CNA becomes increasingly isolationist, and though a prosperous industrialized nation, suffers recurring bouts of internal civil strife. The USM gives rise to a monopolistic corporation called Kramer Associates and enters into a period of imperialistic expansion and dictatorship in the late 19th century that sees it conquer Central America, part of South America, Alaska, Hawaii and Siberia. A clash between the Mexican government and Kramer Associates in the 1920s and 1930s results in the latter relocating to the Philippines
in 1936.
Global War breaks out in 1939 pitting the British, French and Japanese against the Germans and Mexicans, with the CNA remaining neutral. The war dies down (though it doesn't officially end) in the late 1940s, with the Germans in control of Europe and the Middle East, the Japanese in control of China, Siberia and the western Pacific, Kramer Associates relocated to Taiwan, and the USM suffering a social breakdown and renewed dictatorship. The detonation of an atomic bomb by Kramer Associates in June 1962 plunges the world into a nuclear arms race
. The British detonate their own bomb in 1964, the Germans in 1965, and the CNA in 1966. Attempts by the USM to acquire an atomic bomb remain unsuccessful as of 1971.
. Another aim of the book was to spoof the growing trend in academic history for heavily footnote-laden, unreadably dense prose (the more outrageous the assertion made in the text, the denser the footnotes). Each chapter was written in the style of a different academic historian, and the final critique by Frank Dana was based on the savage reviews commonplace in historical journals. Sobel took the names of historical characters and academic historians from friends and from current and former students.
A hardcover edition of For Want of a Nail was published in March 1973 by the Macmillan Company. The book was reviewed in several newspapers and in Time
and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
. For Want of a Nail was eventually republished in hardcover in 1997 by Greenhill Books of Great Britain, a publisher of military histories, after Greenhill's publisher heard about the book from the editor of the Military Book Club at a lunch in New York. Also in 1997, Sobel was awarded a Special Achievement Sidewise Award for Alternate History
for the book. A softcover edition was published by Greenhill Books in 2002.
Despite being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
, the book gained little notice from Sobel's fellow historians. Alternate history was considered a subgenre of science fiction
, so it was from fans of science fiction that the book gained its initial audience, and For Want of a Nail gained the status of a classic work of alternate history. It was not until the formation of the soc.history.what-if Usenet
newsgroup
in the 1990s that a body of alternate history enthusiasts came into existence that was diverse and knowledgeable enough to provide For Want of a Nail with a proper critical evaluation.
The first critique of For Want of a Nail was that provided in the book's final section by imaginary USM historian Frank Dana. Among the other complaints in his scathing review, Dana decries the book's anti-Mexican bias. He traces this bias back to Sobel's central thesis that the North American Rebellion represented a conflict between moderation and extremism, with the extremists represented by the American rebels who declared independence and later left to found Jefferson and the USM, while the moderates remained to build the CNA. This conflict, Dana believes, creates a false dichotomy that runs through the book, coloring Sobel's view of the histories of the two nations to the advantage of the CNA and the disadvantage of the USM.
Ian Montgomerie, a regular contributor to soc.history.what-if, reviewed For Want of a Nail in 1998. He praises the book's attention to detail, noting that Sobel has created by far the most detailed alternate history in existence, but finds fault in two areas. First, he finds the rise of Kramer Associates unbelievable, insisting that a company used to enjoying an economic monopoly in one country would find it impossible to compete with other companies in a global market. Second, he feels that Sobel's picture of technological development is faulty, since the scientific knowledge needed to allow the invention of television in 1903 would necessarily require that nuclear power be discovered decades before Sobel permits it in 1962. Montgomerie's review seems to be the source of the legend that the book's bibliography includes a small number of "real" works that predate the point of divergence.
John J. Reilly, an occasional contributor to soc.history.what-if, reviewed For Want of a Nail in 2003. He believes that Sobel's intent was to separate out two strands of American nationalism and create separate countries for them. The CNA got the utopian impulse, resulting in a penchant for social reform and "quixotic
experiments in economic equality," while the USM got the "Jacksonian tradition" (along with Jackson himself) that is "very keen on liberty and indifferent to equality". Reilly also observes that For Want of a Nail is limited by Sobel's own imagination, which he believes makes "a floor to villainy and a ceiling to genius that are lacking in the real world".
's 1948 short story, He Walked Around the Horses
, has the same divergence point from our history, but views events from a 19th century European perspective, told around the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst
.
Alternate history (fiction)
Alternate history or alternative history is a genre of fiction consisting of stories that are set in worlds in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. It can be variously seen as a sub-genre of literary fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction; different alternate...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
published in 1973 by the American business historian Robert Sobel
Robert Sobel
Robert Sobel was an American professor of history at Hofstra University, and a well-known and prolific writer of business histories.- Biography :...
. The novel depicts an alternate world where the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
was unsuccessful. Although it is fiction, the novel takes the form of a work of nonfiction, specifically an undergraduate-level history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
from 1763 to 1971. The fictional history includes a full scholarly apparatus, including a bibliography
Bibliography
Bibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology...
of 475 works and 860 footnotes citing imaginary books and articles
False document
A false document is a literary technique employed to create verisimilitude in a work of fiction. By inventing and inserting documents that appear to be factual, an author tries to create a sense of authenticity beyond the normal and expected suspension of disbelief for a work of art...
; three appendices listing the leaders of the Confederation of North America, the United States of Mexico and Kramer Associates; an index; a contemporary map of the alternate North America; and a preface thanking imaginary people for their assistance with the book. The book also includes a critique of itself by Professor Frank Dana, an imaginary Mexican historian with two books listed in the bibliography.
The world of For Want of a Nail
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. Other major powers include the United British Empire itself; the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Empire, which dominates Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
; the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese Empire, which dominates eastern Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
; and Kramer Associates (KA), a vast global corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
that arose in the USM but is now based in Taiwan. All of these powers are engaged in a nuclear
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
arms race
Arms race
The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...
that was initiated by Kramer Associates' detonation of an atomic bomb in 1962.
History in For Want of a Nail
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global military war between 1756 and 1763, involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines...
. Attempts by the British government to impose direct taxation on the American colonies provokes resistance by the colonists, which flares into open rebellion in 1775. After driving British troops from Boston and declaring independence, the American rebels suffer a series of reversals, losing control of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Albany
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
and Philadelphia by the end of 1777. (As indicated by the book's subtitle, the point of divergence
Point of divergence
In discussion of counterfactual history, a divergence point , also referred to as a departure point or point of divergence , is a historical event with two possible postulated outcomes...
from actual history occurs in October 1777, when British General John Burgoyne
John Burgoyne
General John Burgoyne was a British army officer, politician and dramatist. He first saw action during the Seven Years' War when he participated in several battles, mostly notably during the Portugal Campaign of 1762....
defeats American Generals Horatio Gates
Horatio Gates
Horatio Lloyd Gates was a retired British soldier who served as an American general during the Revolutionary War. He took credit for the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga – Benedict Arnold, who led the attack, was finally forced from the field when he was shot in the leg – and...
and Benedict Arnold
Benedict Arnold
Benedict Arnold V was a general during the American Revolutionary War. He began the war in the Continental Army but later defected to the British Army. While a general on the American side, he obtained command of the fort at West Point, New York, and plotted to surrender it to the British forces...
at the Battle of Saratoga
Battle of Saratoga
The Battles of Saratoga conclusively decided the fate of British General John Burgoyne's army in the American War of Independence and are generally regarded as a turning point in the war. The battles were fought eighteen days apart on the same ground, south of Saratoga, New York...
.) Conciliationists gain control of the Continental Congress
Continental Congress
The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies that became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution....
in 1778, and negotiate a truce with the British, returning the colonies to British control.
Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
passes a bill in 1780 reorganizing the North American colonies into the Confederation of North America (CNA), granting greater autonomy to the colonists. Nevertheless, many former rebels refuse to submit to British rule, and an exodus of pro-independence colonists to the Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
region of colonial Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
takes place. The expatriate ex-Patriots in Texas organize themselves as the State of Jefferson, after the author of the Declaration of Independence
Declaration of independence
A declaration of independence is an assertion of the independence of an aspiring state or states. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another nation or failed nation, or are breakaway territories from within the larger state...
(who was hanged in London after the rebellion failed). Mexico gains its independence from Spain in 1805 and immediately descends into chaos and civil war. The Jeffersonians eventually become involved, and a Jeffersonian army under Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
captures Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
in 1817. By 1819 Jackson manages to engineer the merger of Jefferson and Mexico as the United States of Mexico (USM), and in 1821 he wins election as the new country's first President.
Despite the exodus of dissatisfied rebels, the population of the CNA continues to grow. Industrialization takes root in the Northern Confederation (a union of the New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
and mid-Atlantic colonies), while the invention of the cotton gin
Cotton gin
A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, a job formerly performed painstakingly by hand...
brings prosperity and widespread slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
to the Southern Confederation (a union of the southern colonies). After a series of calamities (and the abolition of slavery in the Southern Confederation) in the 1830s, the CNA wins approval from the British government to reform itself as a unified nation.
After clashing with each other in the Rocky Mountain War (1845–55), the CNA and USM go their separate ways. The CNA becomes increasingly isolationist, and though a prosperous industrialized nation, suffers recurring bouts of internal civil strife. The USM gives rise to a monopolistic corporation called Kramer Associates and enters into a period of imperialistic expansion and dictatorship in the late 19th century that sees it conquer Central America, part of South America, Alaska, Hawaii and Siberia. A clash between the Mexican government and Kramer Associates in the 1920s and 1930s results in the latter relocating to the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
in 1936.
Global War breaks out in 1939 pitting the British, French and Japanese against the Germans and Mexicans, with the CNA remaining neutral. The war dies down (though it doesn't officially end) in the late 1940s, with the Germans in control of Europe and the Middle East, the Japanese in control of China, Siberia and the western Pacific, Kramer Associates relocated to Taiwan, and the USM suffering a social breakdown and renewed dictatorship. The detonation of an atomic bomb by Kramer Associates in June 1962 plunges the world into a nuclear arms race
Nuclear arms race
The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War...
. The British detonate their own bomb in 1964, the Germans in 1965, and the CNA in 1966. Attempts by the USM to acquire an atomic bomb remain unsuccessful as of 1971.
Writing and publication
Sobel wrote the book in the summer of 1971, to keep himself occupied in between book contracts. Sobel's original title for the book was Scorpions in a Bottle, but his agent persuaded him to change it. The inspiration to write a counterfactual history came from Jeff Weinper, a former student of Sobel's who later died in VietnamVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. Another aim of the book was to spoof the growing trend in academic history for heavily footnote-laden, unreadably dense prose (the more outrageous the assertion made in the text, the denser the footnotes). Each chapter was written in the style of a different academic historian, and the final critique by Frank Dana was based on the savage reviews commonplace in historical journals. Sobel took the names of historical characters and academic historians from friends and from current and former students.
A hardcover edition of For Want of a Nail was published in March 1973 by the Macmillan Company. The book was reviewed in several newspapers and in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
. For Want of a Nail was eventually republished in hardcover in 1997 by Greenhill Books of Great Britain, a publisher of military histories, after Greenhill's publisher heard about the book from the editor of the Military Book Club at a lunch in New York. Also in 1997, Sobel was awarded a Special Achievement Sidewise Award for Alternate History
Sidewise Award for Alternate History
The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were established in 1995 to recognize the best alternate history stories and novels of the year.The awards take their name from the 1934 short story "Sidewise in Time" by Murray Leinster, in which a strange storm causes portions of Earth to swap places with...
for the book. A softcover edition was published by Greenhill Books in 2002.
Publication history
- Macmillan Company, March 1973 (hardcover). LCCN 72084742
- Greenhill Books, September 1997 (hardcover). ISBN 1-85367-281-5
- Greenhill Books, August 2002 (softcover). ISBN 1-85367-504-0
Literary significance & criticism
When it first appeared in 1973, For Want of a Nail was unique: a book-length history of an alternate world. Over two hundred years' worth of people, places, economics, finance, technology, politics and war was spelled out.Despite being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
, the book gained little notice from Sobel's fellow historians. Alternate history was considered a subgenre of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, so it was from fans of science fiction that the book gained its initial audience, and For Want of a Nail gained the status of a classic work of alternate history. It was not until the formation of the soc.history.what-if Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
in the 1990s that a body of alternate history enthusiasts came into existence that was diverse and knowledgeable enough to provide For Want of a Nail with a proper critical evaluation.
The first critique of For Want of a Nail was that provided in the book's final section by imaginary USM historian Frank Dana. Among the other complaints in his scathing review, Dana decries the book's anti-Mexican bias. He traces this bias back to Sobel's central thesis that the North American Rebellion represented a conflict between moderation and extremism, with the extremists represented by the American rebels who declared independence and later left to found Jefferson and the USM, while the moderates remained to build the CNA. This conflict, Dana believes, creates a false dichotomy that runs through the book, coloring Sobel's view of the histories of the two nations to the advantage of the CNA and the disadvantage of the USM.
Ian Montgomerie, a regular contributor to soc.history.what-if, reviewed For Want of a Nail in 1998. He praises the book's attention to detail, noting that Sobel has created by far the most detailed alternate history in existence, but finds fault in two areas. First, he finds the rise of Kramer Associates unbelievable, insisting that a company used to enjoying an economic monopoly in one country would find it impossible to compete with other companies in a global market. Second, he feels that Sobel's picture of technological development is faulty, since the scientific knowledge needed to allow the invention of television in 1903 would necessarily require that nuclear power be discovered decades before Sobel permits it in 1962. Montgomerie's review seems to be the source of the legend that the book's bibliography includes a small number of "real" works that predate the point of divergence.
John J. Reilly, an occasional contributor to soc.history.what-if, reviewed For Want of a Nail in 2003. He believes that Sobel's intent was to separate out two strands of American nationalism and create separate countries for them. The CNA got the utopian impulse, resulting in a penchant for social reform and "quixotic
Quixotism
Quixotism is impracticality in pursuit of ideals, especially those ideals manifested by rash, lofty and romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action. It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality...
experiments in economic equality," while the USM got the "Jacksonian tradition" (along with Jackson himself) that is "very keen on liberty and indifferent to equality". Reilly also observes that For Want of a Nail is limited by Sobel's own imagination, which he believes makes "a floor to villainy and a ceiling to genius that are lacking in the real world".
See also
H. Beam PiperH. Beam Piper
Henry Beam Piper was an American science fiction author. He wrote many short stories and several novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future History series of stories and a shorter series of "Paratime" alternate history tales.He wrote under the name H. Beam Piper...
's 1948 short story, He Walked Around the Horses
He Walked Around the Horses
"He Walked Around the Horses" is a science fiction short story by H. Beam Piper. It is initially based on the true story of diplomat Benjamin Bathurst, who mysteriously disappeared in 1809...
, has the same divergence point from our history, but views events from a 19th century European perspective, told around the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst
Benjamin Bathurst
Admiral of the Fleet Sir David Benjamin Bathurst GCB, ADC, DL is a Royal Navy officer who served as Chief of the Naval Staff and First Sea Lord during the early 1990s. He usually goes by his middle name and is known as Benjamin Bathurst....
.