Lots of fantasy and science fiction authors have used the rediscovered history theme.\u00a0 I think maybe Robert Howard used it for Conan and maybe some of his other sword and sorcery stuff.\u00a0 Tolkien sort of used it for the Lord of the Rings.\u00a0 The Red Book of Westmarch is supposed to be the source from which he wrote his books.<\/p>\n
So, the conceit is usually a scholar is searching through old manuscripts and suddenly finds stories that somehow no one has ever read before.\u00a0 I guess maybe a case could be made that an existing manuscript might have a palimpsest layer that couldn\u2019t previously be seen or read and now because of advances in sensing techniques it can.<\/p>\n
But usually, this kind of text underneath text is limited to at most a few pages of written language.\u00a0 But as anyone who has been a religious reader of this site knows, the Roman papyri from the ruins of Herculaneum are slowly and painfully being deciphered using a form of x-ray tomography.\u00a0 These charred and unopenable papyrus scrolls are being read right through the other layers of charred plant material by an artificial intelligence that can scan the three-dimensional surface of the scroll in its rolled up and damaged condition.<\/p>\n
Currently the progress is glacially slow.\u00a0 And this is even though a million-dollar prize has been announced for the tech genius who can take the scans and turn it into text.\u00a0 Currently the part of the library being examined contains the works of an obscure stoic philosopher which has extremely limited popular appeal.\u00a0 But there have been claims made that the total library was an extensive collection of Graeco-Roman literature and history.<\/p>\n
If this turns out to be true and the scanning technology becomes robust, there may be many lost masterpieces of ancient writing to be found.\u00a0 Lost plays by Sophocles and histories of ancient peoples like the Etruscans.\u00a0 Every classical scholar has a wish list of what would be wonderful to recover.<\/p>\n
But what comes to my mind is what a perfect place to find some lost history with fantasy or science fiction elements.\u00a0 Now exactly what they would be is something that will require careful thought.\u00a0 As I said there have been a lot of stories somewhat in this vein.\u00a0 The trick would be to allow this history to tie into the present day in some way.\u00a0 There could be detailed information of something that\u2019s been buried and could be retrieved.\u00a0 Or maybe it\u2019s something that\u2019s hidden in plain sight and possibly still operating in the present day.<\/p>\n
So, this is the vaguest of outlines and needs lots of thought but while I was out watering the vegetable patch and photographing half-grown preying mantids it occurred to me.\u00a0 And since I never have an undocumented thought, lo and behold; here it is.\u00a0 It occurs to me I\u2019ve never written a horror story.\u00a0 Mostly I just make fun of H.P. Lovecraft but a two-thousand-year-old Etruscan demon might be something I could get interested in.\u00a0 And since we know next to nothing about the Etruscans, I could make up anything I wanted and no one could definitively call me out on any of it.\u00a0 What could be lazier?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lots of fantasy and science fiction authors have used the rediscovered history theme.\u00a0 I think maybe Robert Howard used it for Conan and maybe some<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,1289,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[200,354,1290,38,1355,265],"class_list":["post-33830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-fantasy","tag-horror","tag-my-fiction","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n