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#HistFicThursdays - Death of a Princess by R. N. Morris - Guest Post

For this week's #HistFicThursdays blog, I'm thrilled to be welcoming  R. N. Morris  to the blog with a guest post about his latest book  Death of a Princess ,   as part of his  Coffee Pot Book Club  tour. In Roger's guest post, he explains why he loves writing historical crime novels and the influences he has drawn from. But first, let's meet the book... Blurb Summer 1880. Lipetsk, a spa town in Russia. The elderly and cantankerous Princess Belskaya suffers a violent reaction while taking a mud bath at the famous Lipetsk Sanatorium. Soon after, she dies. Dr Roldugin, the medical director of the sanatorium, is at a loss to explain the sudden and shocking death. He points the finger at Anna Zhdanova, a medical assistant who was supervising the princess’s treatment. Suspicion also falls on the princess’s nephew Belsky, who appears far from grief-stricken at his aunt’s death. Meanwhile, investigating magistrate Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky arrives in Lipetsk from ...
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#HistFicThursdays - Breaking the Mould: a (very short) argument for combining Historical and Science Fiction

The Gathering Storm
~ the galloping advancement of technology is nothing new

 I am privileged enough to be the editor for the Crowvus Hooded journal, which is now advancing into the realms of being a genre-specific anthology. This season's genre is Science Fiction.

What does this have to do with Historical Fiction..? Let me explain.

A small number of years ago, I read one publisher's definition of science fiction as being about as yet unobtained scientific knowledge set in the future. This, I decided, was rather more restrictive than Science Fiction should be. In fact, I love the premise of having Science Fiction set in the past, like Doctor Who or Chris de Burgh's classic A Spaceman Came Travelling.

If time travel became a reality, I suspect most of us would chose a point in history to visit rather than a time in the future. After all, that's why we wrap ourselves up in the historical tales anyway! Inserting a scientific advancement, something we have as yet not discovered, into a historical setting is an exciting prospect. History is full of unexplained mysteries. You do not need to look far to find tales absorbed into folklore simply because they were beyond the realm of believability.

Suppose the Green Children of Woolpit were really aliens, or the Round Table was a form of spaceship. Of course, science fiction is not only about space. Consider evolution, a new superior intelligence which is bred or manufactured, and humanity's combat against it. And what about witchcraft and alchemy? Was is really just hocus pocus, or undiscovered science?

I'd love to hear your local mysteries resolved and explained through undiscovered science. You'd be surprised just how readily science fiction can slot into history!

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