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Phra the Phoenician. Reprinted in 1977 by Newcastle Press. Based on a monumental myth, Phra doesn't die. He wakes again and again and lives several years in several centuries. He sees England in Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance times. Phra's millennial perspective excuses the many anachronistic lapses in his narrative.
Davidson (1923-93) was a popular fantasy writer of the fifties and sixties, unfortunately most of his work languishes in obscurity today. Several are of great use in an Ars Magica saga set in the Theban Tribunal.
The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), which Davidson worked on for most of a decade, is plainly his magnum opus. His dense and sombre tale of how the sorcerer Virgil makes a speculum majorum (a virgin mirror, in whose face the first to gaze into it may see his heart's desire) possesses the imaginative force of only the most powerful fantasies: we believe in the cosmos of the novel, that its existence continues beyond the edge of the page. Davidson intended to publish more, unfortunately he only finished Virgil in Averno (1987), a darker and more focused work set during Virgil's early manhood and involving a commission to the "very rich city" of Averno, a pre-industrial inferno of hellish manufactories.
The Island under the Earth (1969) seems to take its inspiration from the metope of the Parthenon, depicting a war between the centaurs and the lapiths, although it is not in the mountains of Thessaly but in a fantastic cosmology whose nature has not been made clear by the novel's end.
Peregrine: Primus (1971), is a picaresque set during the disintegrating Roman Empire, is broader on its effects and more casual in its structure; a sequel Peregrine: Secundus (1981), was eventually published.
Davidson's works, rich in an exotic sense of place and love of strange incident, can serve as an excellent source for developing any Ars Magica campaign.Celestial Matters (Tor 1996. ISBN 0-312-85934-1) by Richard Garfinkle. Garfinkle attempts a cosmological reinterpretation of the universe which can be read on several different levels. Garfinkle creates an alternate history of the planet Earth where Aristotle developed technology and empirical science, where Athens, Sparta, and the Han Chinese dominated the modern world. The story also works as a universal journey where crash and survival have reinvented the world.
Richard Garfinkle's novel Celestial Matters is set in a world which diverged from ours early on. It is set in the 900th year of the Delphic League (roughly AD 500). In this world, science, as envisioned by Aristotle, is the driving force behind the world. The Greeks' enemy for world empire are the Taoist inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom, whose science is based on Chinese understanding of the world. This concept is intriguing in and of itself.
There are a few flaws with the world Garfinkle built. One of his characters is a "Xeroki" and there is a reference to Tenochtitlan. Although my native American history is not particularly strong, I do not believe the Cherokee existed as early as Garfinkle represents and Tenochtitlan was built in the fourteenth century. However, these are minor flaws in the wider work.
The story is of the first ship, made of Moon Rock, to travel to the Sun to steal solar matter. The Greeks intend to use Sun Fire in their nine-hundred year long war against the Middlers. After an attack on Commander Aias, he is assigned a body guard in the person of Captain Yellow Hare, a Xeroki who is also a Spartan. In the course of preparations for the journey, Aias is disturbed to discover his good friend, the Chief Dynamicist Ramonojon, is acting strangely. Aias' concern for his friend leads to Yellow Hare's suspicion that the Indian is responsible for the attacks on Aias and attempts to subvert the mission. Her beliefs are flavored by several revolts which occured in India against their Greek overlords. When the ship is attacked by Middlers, feelings against Ramonojon reach their height.
Although Garfinkle's characterization may not be the strongest and his plot may not move particularly quickly, this book is high concept. The idea that Aristotelian science actually is the way the world works is extremely interesting and Garfinkle handles it extremely well. However, he also postulates that Chinese science works, never attempting to explain how two rival scientific ideologies can co-exist and work. On the other hand, both these forms of scientific thought co-existed in reality trying to explain natural phenomena, so there is no real reason why they can't complement each other in Garfinkle's world.
This book is invaluable to the player of Ars Magica. It outlines the same paradigm, Aristotelian, that magi operate in. Reading this text will give you enough ideas to keep your saga going for years.
Byzantium. This novel is really about an eight century Westerner's (an Irish monk no less!) tribulations in a journey to Constantinople. However, those scenes set in the great city are full of detail.
Heirs to Byzantium alternate world fantasy trilogy: Byzantium's Crown (1987), The Woman of Flowers (1987) and Queensblade (1988). Her Silk Roads and Shadows (1988) deals with a Byzantine princess' journey on the silk road. Shards of Empire (1996), set in the aftermath of the Battle of Mantzikert, provides a good insight into the workings of the Byzantine court. Cross and Crescent (1997), a sequel to Shards of Empire, is set around the time of the First Crusade. The latter two are excellent pieces of fiction, and I cannot recommend them enough
Robert Silverberg was educated to become an archaeologist and much of his science fiction reflects this. UP THE LINE depends on it. Time travel is the basis for a booming tourist industry. See the Crucification, experience the Black Plague, live through the San Francisco Earthquake. Our hero has an interest in Byzantium and so we see life in Constantinople from Justinian to the Ottoman Turks. The time travel guides are a rollicking bunch of freebooters barely policed by the Time Patrol. Some guides set themselves up where they can be wealthy and leisured. Others merely smuggle antiquities. Our hero, of course, makes a mess of things for himself and his friends.
The fantasy Videssos Cycle: The Misplaced Legion (1987), An Emperor for the Legion (1987), The Legion of Videssos (1987) and Swords of the Legion (1987); with the Krispos sequence: Krispos Rising (1991), Krispos of Videssos (1991) and Krispos the Emperor (1992); and The Time of Trouble sequence: The Stolen Throne (1995), Hammer and Anvil (1996), The Thousand Cities (1997), and Videssos Besieged (1998) serving as prequels - follows the empire of Videssos, situated in a world where magic works and Byzantine history is recapitulated. The Basil Argyros stories (1985-7), set in an alternate world in which Mahomet becomes a Christian saint - assembled as Agent of Byzantium (1987) - follows the exploits of a medieval secret agent who tends to cause scientific innovations. Though these books focus on their charismatic and canny protagonists, Turtledove's thorough understanding of his source material gracefully infilitrates the fun fantastication. His recent book Thessalonica (1996) is set in the city of that name during the Avar invasions. The book is a delightful tale that brings in paganism and the forces of Faerie.
As H.N. Turteltaub he wrote Justinian (1998). While Turtledove has based much of his previous writing on his study of Byzantine history, Justinian is his first novel which does not have a science fictional or fantastic twist to it. Rather, Justinian is a straight historical novel written as an autobiography of the Byzantine emperor Justinian II (685-695 & 705-711). On the whole, he presents an interesting period of history in detail without lapsing into polemic. The novel will continue to appeal to his readers who enjoy the details of his alternate history as well as the trappings of his fantasy novels while at the same time broadening his scope to historical fiction readers.
SOLDIER OF THE MIST and SOLDIER OF ARETE by Gene Wolfe give us Pindar as a supporting character. The hero is a soldier who has been bonked on the head. To heal his memory, his doctor orders him to write each day what he has experienced. This comes as close as I can imagine possible to putting the reader inside the skin of an ancient commoner. The map on the frontispiece and the names in the story are rendered into their ancient meanings. Athens is Thought. Sparta is Rope. Euboeia is Good Cow Place. This simple trick is powerful because it brings home a concrete view of the world. For all their mythology and philosophy, the Greeks -- at least until Plato -- trusted the validity of their senses. So, when our hero sees a god, the god is real, not conjectural.
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