2022-03-04

Feeling unsettled

Do you ever get the feeling that the world is collapsing all around you? Hardly have the efforts of Plague slowly begun to wane when the next of the horsemen of the apocalypse, War, comes galloping out of the east, not on a horse but on a T-14 Russian Armita tank. I dread to think what Famine has in store, especially as I live in a non-agricultural mountain region that relies on regular truckloads of food reaching us from the plains.

Current projects on my (somewhat crowded at present) worklist include a study of the Roman empire in its last years. This certainly does not help my mood. The writer Jerome, for instance read of the fall of the west with horror from the safety of his home in Jerusalem - rather as today I, in a peaceful little town, watch the TV for news of disaster on the other side of the world. As a friend put it, after a decade of relative calm, Big History is happening again and that is never a good thing.

On a personal level 2022 is looking good. Pandemic restrictions are easing, I've a full work schedule and people are buying my books in reassuringly large quantities. (For which thank you very much!) When sitting at the computer gets too much, I strap on snowshoes and head out to enjoy spectacular mountain scenery and the absolute silence of the forest in midwinter.

Yet even when miles away from the nearest humans there's no way to hide from the feeling that the world is changing around me. It's not a comfortable sensation, whether one lives in 422 or 2022.

2022-02-05

All about Hestia

If you live in an extreme climate there's something reassuring about a woodstove. Outside right now it's -7c (19f) and the snow is up over the windows at the back of the house. (There's still a great view from the front – living on a mountainside has advantages.) It's not unusual for avalanches to block the road, or snow-laden trees to fall across power lines. The great outdoors is not necessarily friendly, and supplies of power are not guaranteed.

I have a friend whose response has been to go hi-tech. His house is near self-sustaining with heat pumps, and electricity from solar and wind. As an ancient historian, I go the other way and drop back a few thousand years, which is where the woodstove comes in. Any ancient Roman would grasp the basics of that stove faster than most modern folk. As a cube of iron heated near red-hot a stove heats the house very well, and as it has no moving parts it's almost indestructible. The fuel supply is a large - but now dwindling - stack of firewood which cannot be put out of operation by any technological failure. (Unlike another friend who purchased a back-up gas stove and discovered after the first power cut that it needs electricity to power the solenoid and vents.)

As the name suggests, you can cook anything on a woodstove that you can cook on a modern range, and with heat, food and light one has the basics of civilization no matter what's going on outside. All I really need is some means of using my stove to hook me up to the internet – and lately I've seen some interesting little TEG (Thermo-electric Generator) devices that provide electricity simply by being placed on a hot stove top. I may need to jump forward a few centuries after all.

2022-01-07

Annus novus

The coming year looks kind of tidy in Latin numerals - MMXXII - yet I suspect the next twelve (okay, XII) months are going to be somewhat untidy.

For a start there is this dratted pandemic, for which I've just got my third shot for the fifth wave (it's getting hard to keep track) which means I shall continue to travel widely. In the past year I have attended a Christmas party in Cambridge, meetings in London, given a lecture in New York, discussed book projects in the Netherlands and video games in Australia. All without leaving the computer chair in the snowbound mountain home where I now sit.

Since covid the world has got a lot better at virtual meetings. I'm still unsure whether this is a good or bad thing, but I've been doing it a lot, and I suspect that now people are more used to it, I'm going to have to keep scheduling meetings before breakfast. (British Columbia is behind most of the planet, chronologically speaking.)

Also next year is going to be busy. I should have two new books out, and will be working on three more. There are also various other projects about which non-disclosure agreements force me to remain silent, but I'll spill the beans as soon as I am able. On which topic, congratulations to Nick and his Roman-themed award winning Forgotten City video game, on which I was an enthusiastic collaborator through all of last year. It's a great game, though I tend to die often and gruesomely while playing it.

Finally, the snow outside is currently almost deeper then I am tall, and I want to spend a lot of time wandering around the mountains on snowshoes taking in some of the best scenery in the world (while gasping desperately for oxygen - those mountains are high and steep, but that's another matter). I also want to get a new kayak for summer and explore the local lakes, and there's backwoods trails to scout for suitable winter firewood. Meanwhile that paneer press I ordered as a Christmas present for myself should arrive any day now, and in the meantime I continue to explore Mexican cooking with home-made fajitas, tamales, quesadillas and of course tacos.

Naturally the year is going to throw some unexpected developments at me also, and I'll have to fit them in somehow. I'll eagerly await the next scientific breakthroughs on cloning, as I already have enough on the go to keep three of me busy all year long.

I do hope your 2022 is a good one!

2021-12-06

Knowing their place

Recently I've been spending quite a bit of time in Iolcus – virtual time that is – since modern technology (thanks Google!) has allowed me to stroll the streets and pay especial attention to the harbour. This is because around three thousand years ago Iolcus was the little Thessalian kingdom from which Jason set off and returned to on his travels with the Argonauts on his quest for the Golden Fleece.

I've likewise visited Jason's destination, the ancient kingdom of Colchis most of which is in modern Georgia. The result of these virtual travels has left me deeply impressed with the research of the ancient writer Apollonius Rhodius who described Jason's travels and pretty much nailed the geography. You'd think that a man who peppers his tale with mythical creatures and misbehaving gods would feel free to indulge in flights of fancy on other matters, but no, islands are where he says they are, and when the good ship Argo takes a fork in a river, that fork was – and still is - there.

It's one thing I love about Greek myths. They didn't happen 'long ago in a far away kingdom', but at specific times and places. One day I hope to visit Iolcus and enjoy a beaker of wine in a harborside tavern, perhaps on the very spot where Jason and his heroes had a last drink before setting off on their epic adventure.

2021-11-04

The Cimbri are coming!

For a tribe that made a brief appearance in Roman history in the late second century, the Cimbri are getting some attention twenty-one hundred years later. When I wrote Book One of the Panderius series, my editor was a bit worried that no-one had heard of the Cimbri, but as the story was mainly about stealing treasure (The Gold of Tolosa) we didn't worry too much. Then Ron Miller reconstructed the Cimbric nation in a medieval fantasy. (The Spirits of Cimbri) and my hero defeated them on the plain of Vercellae (The Blood-Red Sunset).

Now another writer, Jesse Hein, has joined the fun with his debut novel (The Cimbri Appear: Out of the Northern Mists), which is intended to become a series. Also I'm never one to leave research unrecycled if I can get more mileage out of it, so I collected together my research for the Panderius novels and a great deal more besides, and wrote what is - as far as I know - the only military history of Rome's Cimbric wars in print. Or it will be, once it comes out next year.

The problem with all this new research is that I'd now like to go back and change some of my assumptions in the first novel. On the other hand, when I wrote The Blood Red Sunset, I was a bit worried about taking liberties with the text of Plutarch. Now, after reading a very detailed study of the Tridentum campaign in the Journal of Roman Studies, I'm reasonably sure I was right and Plutarch was wrong.