| "Down in the Bottomlands" | |
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| Author | Harry Turtledove |
| First Appearance | Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January, 1993 |
| Collected |
The New Hugo Winners, Volume IV; We Install and Other Stories |
| Genre(s) | Alternate History |
| Publication date | January, 1993 |
"Down in the Bottomlands" is an alternate history novella written by Harry Turtledove, first published in Analog's January 1993 issue. It was reprinted in The New Hugo Winners, Volume IV: Science Fiction's Roll of Honor (1997), edited Gregory Benford; in Down in the Bottomlands and Other Places (1999), and; We Install and Other Stories (2015). It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1994.
The novella is set in a world in which the Atlantic Ocean did not re-flood the Mediterranean Sea 5.5 million years ago in the Miocene Epoch, as it did in OTL. The Mediterranean Basin thus remains dry to the present day in this timeline, as a vast sunken desert called the Bottomlands, averaging nearly two km below mean sea level, with summer temperatures reaching well above 40°C and with little or no rainfall. The fusion of Europe, Asia, and Africa is called the Great Continent.
Among the many consequences of this change is the continued survival of Neanderthal, and its coexistence with H. s. sapiens. By the time of the work's setting, roughly the 1990s, the two rival species have established substantial nation-states on a Great Continent that is made up of Eurasia and Africa, with the Neanderthals, called "Strongbrows", having two rival kingdoms in OTL Europe: the Hereditary Tyranny of Tartesh, which is centered on Western Europe, and the Kingdom of Morgaf, located on the British Isles. States populated by modern humans ("Highheads") include Principality of Lissonland, which appears to be centered on North Africa; Duvai, which seems centered in sub-Saharan Africa; the Krepalgan Unity, which is located at least in part on the Arabian Peninsula, and; the Empire of Stekia located across the Western Ocean (the Atlantic Ocean) on the Double Continent (North and South America).
Tarteshan Radnal vez Krobir, a tour guide in Trench Park in the Bottomlands, becomes embroiled in political intrigue when Dokhnor of Kellef, a citizen of the rival Morgaf, is killed during the tour. The investigation reveals that the murder is just one part of a broader scheme involving the fate of the Bottomlands.
See also[]
- "The Mrem Go West," Turtledove's contribution to a shared fantasy universe. The story is set in a geography based on the Mediterranean coastline, and takes place shortly after the barrier mountains collapsed and flooded the sea with ocean water.
- State of Jefferson Stories, an alternate history where humans share the world with a number of closely related sentient hominid species (including sasquatches), which are part of the everyday landscape.
- A Different Flesh, where humans in the Americas have regular encounters with sims (Homo erectus), a closely related quasi-sentient species.
- Elabon Series, a fantasy world where humans occasionally encounter mostly-sentient "monsters" which resemble Neanderthals.
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