Light On Dark Water

I wondered the other day whether some novelist had written an alternate-history exploration of what the world would have been like if the French Revolution had not happened. Paul obligingly posted a link to this 1948 story by H. Beam Piper, which you can read or download in various electronic formats at Project Gutenberg. It's an enjoyable story, though given its length it doesn't go into much detail about the world in which it takes place. And as an introductory note asserts, it is in fact based on a real event, the disappearance of an English diplomat in Prussia in 1809.

I recognized the author's name from my teenage days when I had a science-fiction mania, but I didn't know anything about him. His Wikipedia entry is interesting. One of the things there that struck me, having just finished the story, is that he was largely self-educated. The story includes a knowledge of history that I suspect would be beyond the average college student of today, and assumes a comparable level of knowledge on the reader's part, which is also interesting because it appeared in the April 1948 edition of Astounding, which was not aimed at a highly educated audience.

Piper committed suicide at the age of 61 in 1964, about the time I was becoming consumed with interest in sci-fi. He left a note which is both clever and heartbreaking:

I don't like to leave messes when I go away, but if I could have cleaned up any of this mess, I wouldn't be going away.

What a waste.

And by the way, as I should have expected, there is no lack of speculation on my original question, and moreover there is, as I should also have expected, a whole thriving community of alternate-history enthusiasts.