Plenty of people have written stories in which someone tries to stop World War II by using a time machine.
But in his time travel sci-fi adventure novel To Turn The Tide (hardcover, Kindle), author S.M. Stirling is instead trying to stop World War III, and other terrible things…and thinks sending a college professor and some students back to the time of the Roman Empire is how to do it.
In the following email interview, Stirling talks about what inspired and influenced this novel, as well as his plans for further adventures in the To Make The Darkness Light series.
To start, what is To Turn The Tide about, and what kind of a world is it set in?
It’s a time-travel story, obviously. Five Americans — a new-minted PhD from Harvard in ancient history, and four hastily-assembled grad students, also Roman specialists — are decoyed to Austria at a time of high international tension. It turns out the physicist they’re visiting has developed a time machine, and just as WWIII starts they get dropped into 165 CE, in the same spot…which is then the province of Pannonia Superior in the Roman Empire.
Where did you get the idea for this story? What inspired it?
Well, I’ve always been interested in Rome. Baen Books wanted a time-travel story, and it sort of cascaded through my head from there.
So, is there a significance to the students and their professor going back to the time of Marcus Aurelius (121-180 B.C.) as opposed to, say, the time of Socrates (470-399 B.C.) or George Washington (1732-1799 A.D.) or, conversely, forward to the reign of Emperor Pablo Semelious (2112-2204 A.D.)?
The second century is an interesting spot. In many ways it’s the ‘high point’ of the Roman Empire, with Marcus Aurelius as the last of the five good Emperors, and then everything goes splat. Plague, civil war…and the interesting question arises: Could all that be prevented?
Similarly, why did you decide to send the professor with their students as opposed to some soldiers?
Well, the professor (who’s an ex-soldier) and his students are specialists in this period. They all speak Latin and several of them Greek, though it turns out their accents are impenetrable to the locals, and have to be adjusted.
Likewise, their knowledge of the period turns out to have as many holes as a lace doily, and some of what they think they know is just plain wrong. But they’re in a better position than non-specialists would be.
As you said, To Turn The Tide is a time travel science fiction story. But it sounds like there might be more to it; like it could be hard sci-fi or, instead, an adventure story.
Well, “adventure” has been defined as “someone else in bad trouble far away,” and there’s certainly an element of that.
It’s science fiction in the sense that it’s a time machine that ends them up there; but as one of them comments, they’re historians, not physicists, and they have no prospect of ever duplicating the time machine even if they had the tools, which they don’t. They don’t know how it works, or what its limitations were, though they can make some deductions. Basically they’re stuck there — though the time-travel saved their lives, since Vienna was bombed just as they departed.
So it’s an adventure story about displacement in time, with the sci-fi part as a framing device.
To Turn The Tide is not your first novel. I gave up counting when I hit double digits. Are there any writers who had a big influence on Tide but not on anything else you’ve written?
just the usual influences. I’ve been deeply interested in history for a long time, and originally planned a career in it, when I got over my childhood fascination with paleontology. Then I decided to do something more practical…like writing fiction for a living. Alternate history and time-travel have been things I’ve done for a long time; and I have the usual influences there, starting with Wells and working my way up through de Camp, then Poul Anderson to Harry Turtledove (who’s a good friend of mine, btw.). And I read a lot of historical fiction…wincing occasionally.
What about such about non-literary influences as movies, TV shows, or games? Did any of those things have a big influence on To Turn The Tide? Because it immediately made me think of that movie Timeline, which was based on a Michael Crichton novel.
Well, obviously some influence from historically-set movies and TV. Though if you’re a student of history, a lot of those make you wince. Hollywood has always had…shall we say…a tendency to do alternate history without acknowledging it.
You’ve written some stand-alone novels, but most have been part of a different series, including the Nantucket and Emberverse books. Is To Turn The Tide the beginning of a new series, or a stand-alone novel?
It’s definitely the start of a series. I’m about half-way through the second book now. We’ll see how many; three at least.
The series is called To Make The Darkness Light, which is of course a tribute to Sprague de Camp’s classic time-travel novel, Lest Darkness Fall, which also involved an American academic sent to the past. Though his Martin Padway was struck by lightning, and got sent to Rome after the Empire fell, when it was part of the Ostrogothic kingdom. It’s excellent, btw.
So, do you know yet what the second book will be called or when it’ll be out?
The second one is The Winds Of Fate, and it’ll be out about this time next year (fingers crossed).
Earlier I asked if To Turn The Tide had been influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think To Turn The Tide could be adapted into a movie, a show, or a game?
It definitely could be. It would have to be a TV series, I think; visual media are just less dense than prose fiction.
And if someone wanted to make that show, who would you want them to cast as the professor, the students, and the other main characters?
Well, competent actors of about the right age. Apart from that, I just don’t know enough about Hollywood to suggest individuals.
Finally, if someone enjoys To Turn The Tide, and it’s the first novel of yours they’ve read, which of your other novels would you suggest they check out next?
Well, if they’re into time travel, Island In The Sea Of Time and the two sequels, Against The Tide Of Years and On The Oceans Of Eternity, would be a good start. And then the Emberverse series, starting with Dies The Fire; they’re related, though the link is obscure for most of them.
