Agent of Byzantium, by Harry Turtledove
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Agent of Byzantium, by Harry Turtledove
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A dashing master spy takes on the enemies of the Byzantine Empire and discovers impossible inventions like gunpowder and telescopes in a magnificent romp from the maestro of alternate-history science fiction In another, very different timeline—one in which Mohammed embraced Christianity and Islam never came to be—the Byzantine Empire still flourishes in the fourteenth century, and wondrous technologies are emerging earlier than they did in our own. Having lost his family to the ravages of smallpox, Basil Argyros has decided to dedicate his life to Byzantium. A stalwart soldier and able secret agent, Basil serves his emperor courageously, going undercover to unearth Persia’s dastardly plots and disrupting the dark machinations of his beautiful archenemy, the Persian spy Mirrane, while defusing dire threats emerging from the Western realm of the Franco-Saxons. But the world Basil so staunchly defends is changing rapidly, and he must remain ever vigilant, for in this great game of empires, the player who controls the most advanced tools and weaponry—tools like gunpowder, printing, vaccines, and telescopes—must certainly emerge victorious. A collection of interlocking stories that showcase the courage, ingenuity, and breathtaking derring-do of superspy Basil Argyros, Agent of Byzantium presents the great Harry Turtledove at his alternate-world-building best. At once intricate, exciting, witty, and wildly inventive, this is a many-faceted gem from a master of the genre.
Agent of Byzantium, by Harry Turtledove - Amazon Sales Rank: #259246 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-06-09
- Released on: 2015-06-09
- Format: Kindle eBook
Agent of Byzantium, by Harry Turtledove From Publishers Weekly In the alternate medieval history Turtledove proposes, in this third novel in the Isaac Asimov Presents series, Muhammed's conversion to Christianityin lieu of founding Islamallows the Roman Empire to flourish and expand. This makes for a more peaceful, but also more static, age. Basil Agyros is an imperial commander of scouts in the latest barbarian skirmish when he proves his worth by retrieving the magical instrument with which the enemy divined Roman strategy at a distancea newly invented telescope. Promoted to bureaucrat in Constantinople, he acts as troubleshooter and 14th century scientific detective. The episodes betray their origin as separate stories and beg plausibility with Basil's stumbling on inventions from gunpowder to printing, but these intelligent, colorful tales honorably recall L. Sprague de Camp, the master of historical SF whom Turtledove invokes in his preface. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful. Good Alternate History Fun By A. Ross A great collection of seven stories set in an early fourteenth-century version of Earth where Islam is absent. The Byzantine Empire retained its eastern holdings and swallowed up most of western Europe as well. Their main rival is the Persian Empire which also never fell in Turtledove's well thought-out alternate world. The stories span 15 years in the life of Basil, a soldier and eventual "agent" (read spy) for the Byzantine Empire. Great fun!
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful. The Name's Argyros, Basil Argyros By Caesar Warrington Imagine a 13th century Mediterranean and Middle East...-Where the territories of western and southern Europe won back by the Romans during the 6th century reign of Justinian were not only maintained but expanded.-Muhammad never developed Islam. Instead he converted to Christianity, becoming a holy man, and is now venerated as St. Moaumet.In the absence of Islam's rise, both the Roman and Sassanid Persian (which has by now engulfed the entire Arabian Peninsula) empires remain as the two superpowers, existing in a sort of medieval cold war.Into this world comes Basil Argyros, an agent of the Magistrianoi, the imperial secret police; sometimes he acts as a soldier, but more often he's a spy. During the course of his assignments as an agent of Imperial security, Basil also makes some exciting discoveries, thus making him an agent in another sense: as one who brings change and advancement to the Empire. From the Franks he steals a new weapon, recently cooked up by their monks--gunpowder. He returns from the lands of the Asiatic Jurchen nomads north of the Black Sea with an instrument we know as the telescope. He delivers to the emperor the secrets of printing, a recent Persian invention they've been using to foment insurrection in the Empire's eastern provinces. What perhaps is the most fascinating of all is Basil's witnessing the discovery of inoculation, made during a time of catastrophic plague in Constantinople.Basil's nemesis in many of these stories is the beautiful and deviously clever Persian spy, Mirrane. As the two of them match wits, they develop a mutual respect and admiration, eventually falling deeply in love.The Baen paperback edition contains the following seven stories:"The Eyes of Argos""Strange Eruptions""Pillar of Cloud, Pillar of Fire""Unholy Trinity""Archetypes""Images""Superwine"Only this edition contains the story "Pillar of Cloud, Pillar of Fire;" however, that story can also be found in Harry Turtledove's alt-history collection DEPARTURES (which also includes "Islands in the Sea," the story about Muhammad's aforementioned conversion to the Christian Faith.)As someone with a Ph.D in Byzantine studies, Harry Turtledove knows the peoples and times upon which he bases this alternative world, making it a fun, fascinating read.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful. When Turtledove when he really WAS the master of alternate history... By Darren O'Connor I recently finished the fourth volume of Harry Turtledove's latest series, "The War that Came Early," about an alternate history wherein Hitler started WWII in 1938, after meeting with Chamberlain at Munich, instead of in 1939 as it was in actual history, after Chamberlain and Daladier appeased the German dictator by betraying Czechoslovakia. That series still has, apparently, two books left to run, and sadly, after reading the first four books of the series, I doubt I will buy them. The problem with this series is that Turtledove has developed certain faults as a writer in recent years, and in his latest series, they are all on display. His biggest flaw by FAR is wearisome repetition. You see it over and over again in almost all his work from the last several years. "The War that Came Early" is no exception, where EVERY character, multiple times, is given the opportunity to reflect how crummy European cigarettes have become since the war started, and how harsh they are to smoke, but the only thing worse than bad tobacco is no tobacco. After hearing the fifth character reflect on that for the umpteenth time, I know far more than I need or care to about the quality of wartime European cigarettes and people's smoking habits. Another characteristic Turtledove flaw, as Amazon reviewer Elliott Zink pointed out, is that he continually has his main characters - the ones from whose perspective we are seeing the story unfold -- go through their thought process wherein a question is asked, the characters note their uncertainty or initial doubt, and then come to accept their initial decision. Not only does this draw out every decision the character must make - making it look like unnecessary filler, put in just to make the books longer - it has the effect of making all his characters seem exactly alike.The reason I mention all this about a different Turtledove book entirely is to point out what a stark contrast his recent work is to this, much earlier work, which is actually a collection of short stories written for "Amazing Science Fiction Stories" and "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine," all of which were published between 1985 and 1989. I think the fact that these were short stories originally published in anthology magazines is probably precisely what prevented Turtledove from developing those flaws at that stage of his career. Magazines of that type have severe constraints of space, so stories published there are tightly edited for length, and writers have to develop the ability be concise and get the most out of their prose. I sometimes wonder if that isn't what made the "Golden Age of Science Fiction" golden - Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, and the other writers of that era all wrote short stories for magazine publication for many, many years, and learned to be very descriptive and paint a vivid picture for the reader, without being excessively wordy. The constraints of the short story medium enforced some very good writing habits on these authors. When Turtledove was writing short stories, he couldn't afford to be too wordy either; his editors wouldn't have let him. His earlier novels, like the superb "Videssos Cycle" were written before he'd shed this ability to be concise, and to be descriptive without being wordy and repetitive.Sadly, Turtledove has long since lost the discipline of being concise, and conveying a lot of information with a minimum of excess verbiage. But if you want to see what a great storyteller he could be, I highly recommend his earlier work, like "Agent of Byzantium" when he was a better, more disciplined writer. This series tells the story of Basil Argyros, an intelligence officer of an alternate-history Byzantine Empire, in which Islam never arose as a religion - Mohammed instead converted to Christianity and was eventually canonized as a Christian saint. The result is that by the fourteenth century, when the Argyros stories take place, the Empire is still the greatest power in the known world, and still covers the entire eastern Mediterranean basin, including almost all of Italy, rather than being an impoverished and declining state, retreating before the Arabs and the Turks whose territory had been chipped away to little more than Greece and Anatolia, as it was by then in historical reality. This is a really interesting premise for alternate history. Turtledove is actually a Byzantine scholar, so his familiarity with the Empire, its history, language, religion, culture, etc. is intimate, enabling him to flesh out even sparely written short stories with a weight of detail that greatly enhances the verisimilitude of these stories. All in all, this is first rate speculative fiction, which earned Turtledove the title "master of alternate history," and written when he looked like living up to the title, rather than simply resting on his laurels and phoning it it. Given that his habits have gotten worse over the last few years, and not better, and his publishers seem entirely willing to pay him according to the quantity, rather than the quality of his work, I see little hope of him reverting to his earlier greatness. That really is a great pity, for I can't think of a greater example of unfulfilled potential in this field. At least we have his earlier work, and I highly recommend his material from that period.
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