The Peshawar Lancers
S. M. Stirling
420 pages
published in 2002

S. M. Stirling is not one of my favourite science fiction writers; I can't abide his politics and he made a less than favourable impression when he was posting at rec.arts.sf.written. And in his case you can't really divorce the writer from his work, as his politics and personality does permeate his work. There's the Draka series for example, where a race of Super South Africans take over a degenerate free world only for their daughters to lez up. It's not so much that the Draka are evil and sadistic, but that you get the distinct impression Stirling is on their side.

Nevertheless there's no denying that Stirling can tell a roaring good story, if he can keep the reactionary elements in the background and you don't think too much about the politics of it all. Such is the case with The Peshawar Lancers, a standalone alternate history novel, set in an alternate British India.

The point of departure is when in 1878, a comet or series of comets hits Earth, bringing on a nuclear winter and rendering much of the northern hemisphere almost inhabitable. The United States and Europe are almost completely depopulated, with the great European colonial empires relocating themselves to their colonies. For the British this means Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, but mainly India. India itself does not escape the effects of the comet strike itself and a Second Mutiny almost ends British rule there, but in the end the Raj prevails and re-estblishes itself as something much more Indian than English. Russia on the other hand was less lucky, having had to retreat into Central Asia and becoming much less nice in the process, turning away from Christianity towards a death cult.

Interesting as a novel set right after the comet strike might've been, we only get to see glimpses of what happened as various characters retell history to each other, as The Peshawar Lancers is actually set in 2025, long after the British Commonwealth has more or less recovered from the strikes. Mind you, it's still at a late nineteenth century tech level, so there are loads of zeppelins and steam trains around, but few motorcars and no computers, while warfare has not yet undergone its WWI transformation: cavalry is still an essential part of any decent army.

The plot revolves around Athelstane King and his sister Cassandra, both of whom get embroiled in a Russian conspiracy against the British Empire, thought up by the dreaded secret agent Vladimir Obromovich Ignatieff, who has an ace up his sleeve in the form of a precognitive called Yasmini. Lots of derring-do ensue. Stirling is very good at drawing you into this story and the pages almost turned themselves. Nevertheless, in the end this is a very slight story, a spy thriller gussied up as science fiction. It's fun, but there's little substance here. Stirling could've just as well written this as as straight historical thriller, ala the Flashman novels, though that would've meant missing out on the zeppelin fights.

But since this is science fiction , we have to deal with the world Stirling has created. There are three things about it I found interesting, or even odd. First, there's is recreation of the Raj, which at first sight does look a lot like an idealised version of the historical Raj, complete with a new version of the Great Game. Second, there's Stirling's treatment of Russia, the Raj's opponent in this game, which has quite literally become an evil, faceless cannibalistic horde and the occasional supervillain like Ignatieff. That wasn't really needed to tell a good adventure story, but does give it a nice apocalyptic edge it could not have had as a straight thriller.

Finally, there's the general state of the world, whose technology level is only slightly above that of the late nineteenth century. Sure, the comet strikes would've set back technological and scientific development for quite some time (if only because the most technologically advanced nations have been obliterated), but Stirling could've set the tech level higher if he wanted to. After all, the story is set some 150 years after the comet strikes, plenty of time for the world to recover and technological progress to resume.

Together this gives The Peshawar Lancers an air of wishfulfilment. It's an escapist fantasy of course, but something more than that. Here it's more as if the author is giving in to escapism rather than the reader. What it feels like is as if Stirling was trying to prove that the historical British domination of India was a good thing by reimaging it in a world where it unquestionably is, because he has stacked the deck in its favour. Therefore, though I quite enjoyed this story on one level, on another level I felt manipulated and uneasy with the world Stirling had created.

Read more about:
S. M. Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers, science fiction, book review