Behemoth

AFTERWORD

Behemoth 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 World War I. Here’s a quick review of what’s true and what’s fictional.

The Sultan Osman I was a real warship, purchased by the Ottoman Empire and awaiting completion at a British shipyard in late 1914. As the war began, however, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill decided to seize the ship, worried that the Ottomans might join the Germans and use the warship against Britain. The Ottomans did ultimately enter the war, but partly because Churchill had stolen their ship. It is still debated whether they would have become involved without this provocation.

As in Behemoth, the Ottoman Empire was unstable in 1914. In the real world, in fact, the sultan and his grand vizier were no longer in charge. They had been overthrown during the revolution of 1908, and the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) was already in power.

In the world of Behemoth, however, the 1908 revolution was unsuccessful, leaving the sultan in power and the CUP split into many factions. I created a second rebellion in 1914 because I wanted my characters to be involved in a successful revolution, one that would perhaps nudge history toward a more positive outcome.

The German influence in Istanbul was very real; they owned a popular newspaper, while the British embassy had no one on its staff who could read Turkish. (Hard to believe, but true.)

Just as in this book, the German ironclads Breslau and Goeben found themselves trapped in the Mediterranean at the beginning of the war. They escaped to Istanbul and became part of the Ottoman navy, crews and all. In return for the two ships, the Ottomans put Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, commander of the Goeben, in charge of their entire fleet. On October 29, 1914, Admiral Souchon attacked the Russian navy without official permission, dragging the Ottomans into the war.

In the real world, the war resulted in the end of the Ottoman Empire, which was partitioned into a number of countries, including Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. I wanted to create a history in which the empire remained intact and Istanbul retained its cosmopolitan nature as a model for the rest of the world.

And yes, you really should call it Istanbul, not Constantinople. Although the Ottoman aristocracy used the name Kostantiniyye for many centuries, and many westerners cling to the name in story and song, Istanbul was a more common name among its people. (Actually, most of them just called it “the City.”) In any case, the Turkish post office stopped delivering mail marked “Constantinople” in 1923.

The Orient-Express was a real train, of course, running along various routes from Paris to Istanbul since 1883. In its heyday, the Express symbolized all that was elegant and adventurous about travel. On December 14, 2009, a few weeks after I finished this book, it ran for the last time.

There is no such thing as a “Tesla cannon,” but Nikola Tesla was a real inventor, famous for discovering the basic principles of radio, radar, and the alternating current. He spent decades working on a so-called death ray, and in the 1930s he claimed it could “shoot down 10,000 planes at a rage of 250 miles.” He offered the device to several governments, but no one took him up on it.

Maybe that’s a good thing.