Babel Clash

Did you know there’s a legend that the Titanic sank because there was a cursed mummy on board?  In reality: No mummy.  But still, you’d think someone would write that, wouldn’t you?  But mummies wait, forlorn, wrapped and forgotten, for their turn in the sun.   I take your point that mummies are not the easiest paranormal creature to situate in whatever location you choose — they tend not to show up much beyond their native lands or large museums — but even Titanic films and books have left them out.  Just sad.  (And I plead guilty too: I’ve got an as-yet-untitled Titanic-themed YA novel coming out from HarperTeen in late 2011, and there, also, mummies will be cruelly ignored.)

That was indeed the challenge: Asking how certain events would change history — and concentrating on smaller changes, like the sinking of the Titanic, which for all its fame was in the end just a very large cruise ship, and not even the sinking with the greatest number of fatalities.  There are already many books asking how bigger changes might have affected history, if, say, the Nazis won WWII (Fatherland), or if the South had won the U.S. Civil War, with help from time-traveling South African white supremacists, no less (Guns of the South).

Though of course, your books take that to a whole new level, don’t they?  How do you even begin reimagining something as vast as the Napoleonic Wars, with a change as huge — and off the beaten path — as the addition of dragons?  If I remember correctly, you began with the more general idea of the Age of Sail, but the Temeraire series ultimately deals with, and affects, that history far more intricate and political way.   When did you realize how wide-ranging the changes would be for your history — and how far back have you imagined the intersection of dragons and mankind in your universe?

Related posts:

• Mummies and disasters
  The problem with mummies is the name, I think. It’s too mmm-y for the proper horror effect. We need a new name for what mummies are, and then there can be no barrier to their domination of the publishing airwaves. I am thinking of something along the lines of “Encrypted”...
• A ninja and a unicorn walk into a bar —
  – and discover that it used to be an S&M club in lower Manhattan — wait, no, that was Naomi Novik and I last Saturday night.  Naomi has kindly invited me to visit the blog and ramble back and forth with her over the next couple of days, but first...
• tactics and slinging slang
  Before diving into some questions, I wish to report that it is perilously easy to lose track of time playing Dragon Age: Origins. Laura asks: (easy question first!) When is the audiobook of Tongues of Serpents due out? I can’t guarantee this, but if I recall correctly, my publisher has...