Goliath

AFTERWORD

Goliath is a novel of alternate history, so most of its characters, creatures, and machines are my own inventions. But the historical locations and events are modeled closely on the realities of the First World War, and some of the characters are real people. Here’s a quick review of what’s true and what’s fictional in the novel.

At roughly 7:14 a.m. on June 30, 1908, a huge fireball exploded in the wilds of Siberia. Hundreds of kilometers away, people were knocked from their feet and windows were shattered by the blast. Due to its remote location, the Tunguska event wasn’t studied by scientists for many years, and only recently has it been determined that a meteorite impact caused the destruction. (Or maybe it was a comet fragment. We’re not that certain.) Many hypotheses about the cause were proposed in the intervening decades—from aliens to black holes to antimatter, and even experiments performed by the great inventor Nikola Tesla.

Tesla was world famous in 1914. A Serb immigrant living in New York City, he was working on countless inventions, including a “death ray” that he hoped might make war impossible. His major project since 1901 had been Wardenclyffe Tower, a huge electrical device on Long Island, with which he hoped to broadcast free electrical power to the entire world (and much more). By 1914, however, Tesla’s finances were unraveling, and he began to make wilder and wilder claims about what he could accomplish. The tower was never completed, and in 1915 the land it stood on was deeded to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in lieu of money owed. (That’s right, a mad scientist’s lair was handed over to pay a hotel bill.) The tower was destroyed in 1917 by the U.S. government, who feared that Germans might use it as a transmitter or navigation landmark.

William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were rival newspaper moguls for many decades. Both were known for their so-called yellow journalism, stories that valued sensationalism over fact. As in Goliath, Hearst was steadfastly against U.S. entry into the First World War. He also loved motion pictures, and created the Perils of Pauline serial, the first of which is described herein, and which featured the original “cliff-hanger.” (Let’s just say I owe the guy.)

Adela Rogers St. Johns was a “girl reporter” for Hearst newspapers and other papers from age nineteen well into her sixties. She is twenty years old in Goliath, and though she was married by then, I have somewhat capriciously changed history to keep her single. The story of her marriage license being torn in half is true, however. Her autobiography The Honeycomb (1969) is still widely available and is rather awesome.

Francisco “Pancho” Villa was a major figure in the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20. Villa really did have a Hollywood contract to film his battles, and German agents really did supply various revolutionary factions in hopes of gaining influence in Mexico. When the United States finally entered World War I in 1917, it was partly due to the discovery of the Zimmerman Telegram, an offer from the German Empire to assist Mexico if it attacked the United States. So I thought it would make sense to make the Mexican Revolution part of my story. Dr. Mariano Azuela was not really Villa’s personal physician, but he was a fine writer, and his novels and stories are among the best about the Mexican Revolution.

The two Japanese boffins mentioned by name, Sakichi Toyoda and Kokichi Mikimoto, are both real; the former founded the company we now call Toyota. Hearst’s lieutenant Philip Francis is also a historical figure, and it was discovered after his death that he had been born Philip Diefendorf. It is unlikely that he was a German agent—he isn’t a German agent in Goliath, either—but many Americans with German names were persecuted during World War I, including one of my great-great-uncles.

The most important departures from history in this series, of course, lie not in these details, nor even in my fantastical technologies. The greatest changes are in the course of the war itself. In the real world, with no airship Leviathan to visit Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central (“Clanker”) Powers and cut off Russian food supplies. The long and bloody battle of Gallipoli failed to force The Straits, and the vigor of the Russian army was blunted. And of course there was no German attack on Shoreham, New York, so the United States remained neutral for three more years. In the meantime the war ground down into a horrific stalemate, and by its end Europe lay in ruins, setting the stage for the horrors of a second world war to follow.

At the end of Goliath, however, my fictional Great War would seem to be drawing to a close. The Germans have fewer allies and stronger enemies, mostly thanks to the brave officers and crew of the Leviathan. Europe may well emerge from this war less devastated than in our world, and therefore less vulnerable to worse tragedies to come. It’s only too bad that Alek and Deryn have no way of seeing into our history and knowing how great a difference they made.

But then again, at the moment they have better things to do.