Smale, Alan
Entry updated 29 October 2021. Tagged: Author.
(? - ) UK-born astronomer and author, in US from 1988, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Breath of Princes" in A Wizard's Dozen: Stories of the Fantastic (anth 1993) edited by Michael Sterns; like much of his early short fiction, it is Fantasy. He is of sf interest primarily for his Panverse Two Alternate History sequence, initially a Shared World enterprise, his first tale being "A Clash of Eagles" in Panverse Two: Five Original Novellas of Science Fiction and Fantasy (anth 2010) edited by Dario Ciriello; it won a 2010 Sidewise Award. The first full novel in the sequence, Clash of Eagles (2015), begins the Hesperian Trilogy, of which Smale has been the sole author. The sequence is set in a world in which the Roman Empire never fell – the Jonbar Point being the Emperor Caracalla's failure in the early third century CE to assassinate his brother Geta, who succeeds him and creates a wisely run imperium. Clash of Eagles is set in the thirteenth century CE as an expansionist Rome attempts an Invasion of newly-discovered America, but run afoul of the highly organized Cahokian Nation, a real culture which Smale describes with complex exactitude. Eagle in Exile (2016) and Eagle and Empire (2017) intensify the on the clash and intermixing of these two civilizations, while bringing an aggressive Mongol empire under Chinggis Khan increasingly into the picture.
Smale is currently Director of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. [JC]
Alan Peter Smale
born Cheadle, Yorkshire, England
works
series
Panverse Two/Hesperian Trilogy
- Clash of Eagles (New York: Del Rey, 2015) [Panverse Two/Hesperian Trilogy: hb/Larry Rostant]
- Eagle in Exile (New York: Del Rey, 2016) [Panverse Two/Hesperian Trilogy: hb/Larry Rostant]
- Eagle and Empire (New York: Del Rey, 2017) [Panverse Two/Hesperian Trilogy: hb/Larry Rostant]
links
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