An Oblique Approach

One more piece fell in place. This has reached the critical mass stage, where each thing I add to my known scene list bounces off the other pieces that are already there and spits out new scenes. I've pretty much figured out where MacDonald got injured, how Penny learns he was at Los Alamos, why she got sent to the WIPP and even where she learned about the Atlas F site outside of Roswell.

And it's something I'd already heard of. I realized it as I was reading up on incidents (I wanted a criticality incident but didn't like any of the options) -- this was a story I knew from a while ago.

Turns out going organic is not the right choice when you are using the stuff in a drum of nuclear waste.

(And a pity...I came so close to using this 2011 Los Alamos near-incident, but it was only a near incident and I feel I am taking enough liberties with history as it is):

In the meanwhile, been re-reading the Belisarius series by Flint and Drake. An interesting two-mind experience this time around. I've also been archive-binging at Bret Devereux's blog (he's a historian of the ancient world), and he's reinforcing what I've managed to pick up over the last few years about not just history, but the methods of history.

It strikes me that Flint is trusting his sources a bit much (at least he doesn't trust Procopius!) And, no, I haven't read Procopius. Or Tac. Ger 2.1, if I am getting the abbreviated APA right, or any of the other books Bret is referencing. Or that Flint probably consulted.

In any case, I feel like I am understanding not just places he diverged from history, but the story-telling reasons why he diverged from history. But there's some bigger picture stuff there. Not quite Spartan Myth, but more than a little of what Bret calls "The Fremen Mirage." The Belisarius series is jam-packed with hardy noble desert warriors and effete civilized men (usually in opposition).

But it's still a fun read, and does make me wish (as it did the first time) that I knew the history but more importantly the area (much of the series takes place in India) better than I do.

Oh, and today's Six Degress? In his three-post "Fremen Mirage" essay Bret shares a link to the Lindsay Ellis video about a certain "missing Persian" in adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera. Which I found last year, watched, and it helped shape a major sequence in my Paris book.

Now I just have to figure out how to keep the focus on the New Mexico landscape and Penny's "Desert Solitaire" without dragging the story too much into getting chased by mystery gunmen and tomb-raiding the steel-lined underground tunnels of Cold War missile tech.