 Dust cover of first edition | |
| Author | L. Sprague de Camp |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | S. M. Adler and H. Lubalin |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Alternate history |
| Publisher | Henry Holt and Company |
Publication date | 1941 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 379 |
Lest Darkness Fall is a 1939alternate historyscience fiction novel by the American authorL. Sprague de Camp.Lest Darkness Fall is similar in concept toMark Twain'sA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but the treatment is very different.
The later alternate history authorHarry Turtledove has said it sparked his interest in the genre as well as his desire to studyByzantine history.[1]
Americanclassical archaeologist Martin Padway is visiting thePantheon in Rome in 1938. A thunderstorm arrives, lightning cracks, and he finds himself transported to Rome in 535 AD. TheItalian Peninsula is under the rule of theKingdom of the Ostrogoths. The novel depicts their rule as a relativelybenevolent despotism, allowing freedom of religion and maintaining the urban Roman society they had conquered, though slavery is common andtorture the normal method of interrogation.
Padway initially wonders whether he is dreaming or delusional, but he quickly accepts his fate. As an archaeologist, he has enough understanding of various devices used before his time, but after the 6th century, to be able to reproduce them by the means available. He can speak both modern Italian andClassical Latin, and quickly learns enoughVulgar Latin to communicate effectively. Most crucially, Padway has read with great attention the book of the historianProcopius, who described theGothic War (535–554) at whose outset Padway finds himself. He recalls the book in great detail, down to details of the time and route of the various armies' moves and their tactical and strategic considerations, as well as the convoluted and violent power struggles of the various contenders for the Gothic Kingship. Thus Padway, in effect, knows the direct, immediate future of the country where he lives and of some individual people whom he meets (at least, until he acts in a way that changes that future). In addition to this specialized and uniquely useful knowledge of the current war, Padway has taken a general interest in military history, which he is eventually able to put to very practical purposes.
Padway's first idea is to make a copperstill and sellbrandy for a living. He persuades a banker, Thomasus theSyrian, to lend himseed money to start his endeavor. He teaches his and Thomasus's clerksArabic numerals anddouble entry bookkeeping. He eventually develops aprinting press, issues a newspaper, and builds a crudesemaphoretelegraph system utilizing small telescopes. However, he fails to produce a mechanicalclock, and temporarily halts his experiments attempting to reinventgunpowder andcannons. He becomes increasingly involved in the politics of the state as Italy is invaded by theByzantines and also threatened from the north.
Padway rescues the recently deposed kingThiudahad and becomes hisquaestor. He uses the king's support to gather forces to defeat the formidable Byzantine generalBelisarius. He manages to surprise Belisarius with tactics never used in the ancient world. Then, deceiving theDalmatian army, Padway reinstates the senile Thiudahad and imprisons KingWittigis as a hostage. In 537, when Wittigis is killed and Thiudahad descends into madness, Padway has a protégé of his,Urias, married toMathaswentha and crowned king of the Ostrogoths. He tricksJustinian I into releasing Belisarius from his oath of allegiance and quickly enlists the military genius to command an army against theFranks.
The landing of a Byzantine army atVibo, led byBloody John, and a rebellion, led by Thiudahad's son, threaten the Ostrogothic kingdom and its army is destroyed atCrathis Valley. Padway assembles a new force, spreads an "emancipation proclamation" to the Italianserfs and recalls Belisarius after his defeat of the Franks. The armies clash nearCalatia and thenBenevento. Despite the lack of discipline of his Gothic forces, some simple tactical tricks and the nick-of-time arrival of Belisarius secure Padway's victory.
At the end of the novel, Padway has stabilized the Italo-Gothic kingdom, introduced a constitution, arranged the end ofserfdom, liberated theBurgundians, and is having boats built for anAtlantic expedition to acquiretobacco. The king of theVisigoths has appointed Urias as his heir, reunifying the Goths. Ultimately, due to Padway's actions, Europe will not experience whatEnlightenment thinkers retrospectively named theDark Ages: "darkness will not fall".
A novella version was first published inUnknown #10, December 1939. The complete novel was published byHenry Holt and Company on 24 February 1941[2] and reprinted by bothGalaxy Publishing andPrime Press in 1949. The first British edition was published in hardcover byHeinemann in 1955. The first paperback edition was published byPyramid Books in February 1963 and reprinted in August 1969. A later paperback edition was issued byBallantine Books in August 1974 and reprinted in 1975, 1979 and 1983; the Ballantine edition was also issued in hardcover by theScience Fiction Book Club in April 1979 and reprinted in 1996. The importance of the work was recognized by its inclusion inThe Easton Press's seriesThe Masterpieces of Science Fiction in 1989.[3] The book has also been collected withDavid Drake's novella "To Bring the Light" inLest Darkness Fall and To Bring the Light (Baen Books, 1996), with other works by de Camp inYears in the Making: the Time-Travel Stories of L. Sprague de Camp (NESFA Press, 2005),[3] and with works by other authors inLest Darkness Fall and Related Stories (Phoenix Pick, 2011). AnE-book edition was published byGollancz'sSF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011, as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form.[4][5]Galaxy's Edge magazine reprintedLest Darkness Fall over four issues starting in August 2014, repeating a typographical error that appears inLest Darkness Fall and Related Stories ("have" for "lave" in Padway's seduction scene).
Several short story sequels toLest Darkness Fall, written by other authors, have appeared over the years. "The Apotheosis of Martin Padway", written byS. M. Stirling, appeared inHarry Turtledove's 2005 tribute anthology honoring L. Sprague de Camp,The Enchanter Completed, and the 2011Arc Manor anthologyLest Darkness Fall and Related Stories. It offers glimpses of what might have become of the reality Padway altered, both during his old age and a few hundred years later.
"Temporal Discontinuity" byDavid Weber, appeared in the second edition of theArc Manor anthology, retitledLest Darkness Fall and Timeless Tales Written in Tribute (2021); it was newly commissioned for the edition. It is another direct sequel, though incompatible with Stirling's "The Apotheosis of Martin Padway." Like "Apotheosis," it also involves a future time-traveler investigating Padway's temporal disruptions, only she thinks he's a criminal from her own time who set out to change the timeline on purpose - a crime punishable by death. When agent Yawen Clasen-Hamatti confronts Padway in person, she discovers her mistake and has a moral dilemma on her hands.
The other story, "The Fake Pandemic," by Harry Turtledove, was also commissioned for the second edition of theArc Manor anthology. It is also a direct sequel to de Camp's novel, compatible with Stirling's but not Weber's. In it, Padway recruits the Byzantine juristTribonian in an effort to prevent thePlague of Justinian. The story follows Tribonian as he proceeds to secure the emperor Justinian I's permission and support to do just that, and follows him on his successful if thankless mission (Justinian may be supportive, but he is far from grateful).
Subsequent toLest Darkness Fall, de Camp wrote two subsequent works with similar themes: "The Wheels of If" (1940) and "Aristotle and the Gun" (1958).
Direct responses toLest Darkness Fall include the stories "The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass" (1962) byFrederik Pohl,[6] and "The Man Who Came Early" (1956) byPoul Anderson.[7] In the Pohl tale, a man travels back to 1 BC and teaches modern medicine, causing a population explosion. It ends with the fantastically overpopulated alternate timeline sending someone back to assassinate the title character, allowing darkness to fall for thankful billions. It was reprinted in the anthologiesThe Enchanter Completed (2005) andLest Darkness Fall and Related Stories (2011). The Anderson piece is a tale of an American airman sent by a storm (like Padway) toSaga AgeIceland; in this instance, the outcome proves tragic due to cultural misunderstandings and a poor fit between the protagonist's attempted innovations and local needs.
Another story inspired byLest Darkness Fall is "To Bring The Light", byDavid Drake, published together with the original in the 1996Baen doubleLest Darkness Fall and To Bring The Light and the 2011 anthologyLest Darkness Fall and Related Stories. This story features Flavia Herosilla, a well-educated woman living in ancient Rome at its height. Like Padway, she is sent back in time by a lightning strike, in her case to the era of Rome's beginnings around 751 BC. Unlike Padway, who tries to change history, Flavia tries to recreate the founding of Rome based on the legends that she knows. But there is one detail she does want to change. The legends tell that on the day of Rome's founding,Romulus killed his brotherRemus - and while in the process of making sure that Rome will be founded, Flavia Herosilla had fallen in love with Remus.
Several editions ofLest Darkness Fall, including the one printed with "To Bring the Light", repeat an error in the sequence where Padway and Julia from Apulia are setting up their one night stand: in the original text a somewhat inebriated Padway says Julia's dirty feet form a barrier and "I must lave the pedal extremities...". Apparently some editor failed to recognize "lave" as a synonym for "wash" and turned the word into "have".
Jo Walton wrote, "In 1939, L. Sprague de Camp came up with one of the wonderful ideas of science fiction, the man taken out of his time to a time of lower technology... As soon as Padway's there, he puts his head down and starts to concentrate on what makes these books such fun—improvising technology from what he knows and can find around him. Padway starts withdistilling anddouble-entry bookkeeping and makes his way up to newspapers andheliographs... The more you know history, the more you can see how clever the book is... De Camp was a historian of technology. HisThe Ancient Engineers (1963) is a... fascinating non-fiction book."[8] Stating that it "is an excellent introduction to Rome at the time of the Gothic invasion",Carl Sagan in 1978 listedLest Darkness Fall as an example of how science fiction "can convey bits and pieces, hints and phrases, of knowledge unknown or inaccessible to the reader".[9]
Boucher andMcComas praised the novel as "a witty version of the Connecticut Yankee theme, distinguished by its lore of Gothic Rome."[10]Algis Budrys termed it "marvelous," rating it as "Maybe the best [book] DeCamp ever wrote."[11]P. Schuyler Miller wrote that "Next toWells's"Time Machine", this could be the best time-travel novel ever written."[12]
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