Talk: Thessalonica

I was just thinking of building up this section. Turtle Fan 04:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Out of print?

Are The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump and Thessalonica out of print? Eugene Public Library only has one ratty, poorly-printed copy of the former, and none of the latter. Case is quite charming and playful, unlike some of HT's more recent work. I wonder why he didn't think the Confederated Provinces and its neighbors made a worthy universe to revisit. I'd much rather have seen it than the monotonous worlds of Atlantis, The War That Came Early, and Supervolcano.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:57, September 13, 2016 (UTC)

Mediocre sandwich with great bread

An excellent, grabbing beginning, and a brilliant, action-filled climax, are separated by tedious, repetitive chapters describing daily life in a 6th-century Greek city. I wonder if this started out in shorter form and HT had to expand it to fill an editorial quota.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 09:52, May 3, 2020 (UTC)

I disagree, I quite enjoyed the slice of life stuff. HT's a great guide for exploring those premodern civilizations.

If you feel otherwise, steer clear of the Hellenic Traders! Turtle Fan (talk) 18:44, May 3, 2020 (UTC)

Christianity

Likewise, Thessalonica should be the more general Christian rather than Eastern Orthodox. That article has a big sub-section already. ML4E (talk) 16:53, September 14, 2020 (UTC)

The case is if anything even stronger in this book. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:04, September 16, 2020 (UTC)

Is HT working on a sequel?

Based on the remarks HT made on Twitter (see this post), I'm inclined to believe that HT is writing a sequel. Which would be an odd choice, since Thessalonica is out of print, but what do I know. TR (talk) 00:41, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Or he could just be recycling some basic ideas without intending a shared universe, as with United Europe, Second Irgun, Old Time, etc.

Then again, he did create a long-unawaited sequel to the forgettable Clever Rolf Stories after a hiatus of 30 years or so.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 02:49, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

This would be a really weird choice for a sequel but I agree the Twitter post seems to be heavily implying it. Turtle Fan (talk) 14:52, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

I began typing arguments for and against the "sequel to Thessalonica" argument, but as I did so, I wound up making a case for a better candidate. I now believe King of Nowhere is a sequel to Every Inch a King. HT routinely expresses affection for EIaK. I've not read it, but based on articles here, groups like Avars and Wends would easily replace OTL modern ethnic and national groups. King of Nowhere would certainly apply to Otto of Schlepsig's status at the end of EIaK (assuming Otto of Schlepsig's life followed the path of Otto Witte). HT's descriptions of EIaK suggest he was working on it while before finally finishing it, which could include a spreadsheet in 1992. And unlike Thessalonica, which is OTL with some magic thrown in, EIaK involves more elaborate world building, at least in creating fictional analogs of real people, places, and events, and therefore, having that old spreadsheet would be necessary. TR (talk) 15:37, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

EIaK's worldbuilding is similar to Detina's: Everyone and everywhere has an alias based on their real names. (Not humorous puns, I'm afraid; more like real world alternate names, like Albion for Britain, or else name the country after a city, etc.)

There's an afterword to the novel in which Otto recounts his life years after his adventure ends, and it's not stuff that would make for a book that recaptures EIaK's fun tone. He's wounded in the WWI analog, for instance. I don't know about you but I've had my fill of trench warfare POVs. He also recounts meeting the real Halim Eddine analog, but you can't write a whole book about that.

On the other hand, the real Witte had more stories than just the Albania thing, and though none are quite so whimsical as that (he claimed to have gotten 200,000 votes for President of the Weimar Republic in the 1925 election before deciding to endorse Hindenburg), they're more adventurous than what he was probably doing for real.

And from what I can tell, the Nazis were surprisingly tolerant of his . . . eccentricities. You'd think someone who kept pressing such an outlandish claim, especially one that was politically charged, would end up T4'd, but no. They even gave him an ID card that said "Former King of Albania." But HT's not going to write a story full of direct Nazi analogs who smile benevolently as they indulge one of his most light-hearted characters. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:19, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Damn, I thought I was on to something. TR (talk) 16:34, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Well . . . I really don't know where the Thessalonica sequel could go either, nor can I think of any other candidates. I think whatever this book is about is going to leave us scratching our heads.

Actually, I wonder if the King of Nowhere is Zeus. Maybe a book in the Thessalonica universe, but told from the Olympian perspective, as we do a sort of tour of the divine bardo of henotheist deities who have lost their relevance in the world. It might even link up with TCotTSD and show how they're eventually able to come out the other side through things like Poseidon's contract to keep the LA sewers running. Now I'm starting to think of American Gods. Turtle Fan (talk) 18:45, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

And EIaK is a lazy one-for-one analog of WWI, with even less creativity than Detina. The Avars and Wends were not relevant to the 20th century.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 18:34, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

What? It's not about WWI at all, except for some offscreen references in the epilogue. Its creativity lies in the adventure rather than the history. True, it's derivative of Elfried Witte's work, but I never would have read that myself; HT had to breathe life into the text to make it a story we'd actually want to read.

And while there were no Avars or Wends in the 20th century, it would indeed have been consistent with EIaK's naming conventions to do something with them to invoke more modern cousins. Turtle Fan (talk) 18:45, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

EIaK is about the eve of WWI, and its epilog is a lazy Wikipedia summary of WWI with fantasy mad libs.

That's only true of the backdrop. That's not what I read it for. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:20, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Well, HT has confirmed that King of Nowhere is a purely historical work, so so much for this speculation. And since I know essentially nothing about the histories of the Wends and the Avars, I can't begin to guess what the plot will be. TR (talk) 16:29, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Same, I think it's going to be a mighty obscure story. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:47, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Gaiman convo

As for Toxic Spell Dump, Thess, and American Gods (a cruelly cancelled TV series), I have often thought that Turtledove and Gaiman should do a short collaboration. Maybe NG could invite HT and others to play in a sandbox which NG built, a la "Precious Treasure," "Trantor Falls", and "Topanga and the Chatsworth Lancers". To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Gaiman's work on its own, because he is always tiresomely surreal and all over the map. I wanted to like Coraline, but it is too scary for children yet too silly for adults. I recently saw the Doctor Who/Amy Pond episode which Gaiman wrote, and found it to be style over substance. I prefer his Pratchett collaboration Good Omens, and the movie Stardust which used a Gaiman novel as its springboard but made it a vehicle for a memorable Robert De Niro character which Gaiman did not create. Even American Gods ditched Gaiman's book after the first 5 or so episodes, and from then on mostly used original plot threads.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 19:21, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Gaiman's pretty uneven. I most recently read Good Omens and found it a tedious slog. Before that, Stardust, which felt like it was opening up an endless world before us but turned out to be extremely limited. Neverwhere was incredibly weird but still a lot of fun. Anansi Boys and The Ocean at the End of the Lane were all right. That plus American Gods are all I've read, and I'll have much to say about AG shortly. But first I must point out that last winter I binged Lucifer and was unaware of Gaiman's involvement till I was about halfway through. It was a pretty good show but so many people were involved that I'm not sure who gets credit for what.

When I read AG it immediately displaced Dune as my favorite novel of all time. The character of Shadow, the travelogue component, the commitment to thematic elements and motifs that keeps us from forgetting about them without ever being obtrusive, the perfect pace at which we delve deeper and deeper into the divine other world without ever abandoning far more familiar settings, the "Coming to America" flashbacks, the plot twists and subverted expectations that are well earned, the deeply evocative atmosphere. Prose so gorgeous it fairly glistens on the page: After everything we go through to get there, "The head of the sledgehammer was cold, icy cold, and it touched his forehead as gently as a kiss" encapsulates more beauty than any other sentence I've ever read.

I was excited when the show was announced and was determined not to be one of those who insists that an adaptation sucks to the extent that it doesn't resemble the book. Unfortunately . . . This show sucks to the extent that it doesn't resemble the book, by and large. From one season to the next it gets farther and farther from the book, and each season is worse than the one before. Some of the additions are improvements: I like that Laura gets a comprehensive redemption arc rather than just popping up here and there in increasingly disgusting states of decomposition (though it does come at the expense of a few of her most poignant moments). Mad Sweeney and she make a pretty good double act. His expanded role was a bit uneven but when it's good it's good. Vulcan's episode was interesting, and there were some neat one-off scenes. I found the teaser where Jesus is gunned down along the bank of the Rio Grande achingly resonant.

Most were much worse though. What was the point of Bilquis's story? I can't begin to guess. Salim and the Jinn? The former was a likeable enough character and I didn't mind his journey of self-discovery but it seemed to add nothing to the show. And does anyone believe that the bits with the Viking metal band would have had a satisfying payoff even if they hadn't abruptly fired Marilyn Manson with his scenes half shot? By the time they got to S3, the part that was most distant from the source material, the only storyline I could even follow was the one in Lakeside, which is fairly close to the book. Even then, every change from the book that I noticed struck me as a change for the worse.

The damning thing may have been pacing. I remember reading when the show was first announced that they intended to go five seasons. Starz had never produced an original series that made it that long, and had only gotten a four season series once. On top of that, one of their two central characters, and the only real A lister they had, was 74 years old when shooting began. With a two year gap between seasons that's tempting fate. If I'd had to adapt AG I'd have planned on three seasons. The S1 finale would be their departure from (not arrival at) the House on the Rock and the S2 finale would be more or less where the S3 finale was.

By far the best thing about that show was Ian McShane (who also single-handedly made Deadwood watchable for me, though only just). When I'd read the book I'd never even thought of who could play these characters, but as soon as they announced McShane as Wednesday I knew in my bones he was the only one who could do it. Ricky Whittle and Emily Browning put in performances that were quite admirable, and seemed to be really pushing themselves to expand their respective ranges, in the best way possible. Pablo Schreiber didn't really impress me but he did have me believing his character's sorrowful arc in ways the book version never did (though he also had far less content in the book). Kristin Chenoweth did a fine job. Orlando Jones played it a bit too stridently for my taste but once he was fired and Anansi's scenes went to Jacquel instead you could really, really feel the loss.

The New Gods were played much worse. Gillian Anderson rose to the occasion of her demanding role, so good thing they got rid of her and replaced her with some silly girl who couldn't menace her way out of a paper bag. Bruce Langley was way too flat. Crispin Glover, whom I've never much cared for, put in what I have to think of as the worst performance of his career, trying to be a hammy overactor but feeling like some cardboard cutout instead. The only thing worse than leaving him in the role would have been having him tag out with Danny Trejo or some young black woman I've never heard of at random points without explanation--oh wait.

I'm glad the show was cancelled, I cannot conceive of a path from the end of S3 to a conclusion that was even coherent, never mind satisfying. If it had been cancelled after S2 I would have retained some goodwill toward it, though even then it was clear to me that it was past saving. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:20, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Stardust movie and Good Omens TV show improve on the books. Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, etc. in the former, and Michael Sheen, David Tennant, Adria Arjona, etc. in the latter are a delight to watch. (Tennant is PERFECT! I love his definitive Doctor Who as well.) SD makes Pfeiffer's witch more of a credible threat, and introduces De Niro as a new character played excellently. GO tightens up the story by eliminating tedious subplots.

I'd seen ads for the GO TV show but never watched it. When I downloaded GO to my Kindle the cover illustration was a publicity still from the show. Tennant's a fine actor, no doubt of it. The only time I've struggled to believe him in a role was when he played John Knox in the Mary Queen of Scots biopic that came out a few years back, and that wasn't because of anything within his control. They had him wear a costume closely based on what you see in pictures of the real Knox, which is fine; but Knox seems to have been a bit on the husky side, at least in those pictures, and Tennant is thin as a promise. The physicality of the finished product was not convincing. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:52, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

John Constantine Hellblazer was largely developed by Gaiman from an abandoned project by Alan Moore, though I don't think either are credited in the 2005 film adaptation, which I have seen, or the TV series reboot, which I have not. Moore probably requested to be removed from the credits, and it is unclear how much of the finished project is Gaiman, but it has some thematic overlap with GO. In the 2005 Constantine, Peter Stormare's brief role is brilliant.

No. Moore introduced Constantine in Swamp Thing, then he got his own series, John Constantine: Hellblazer in 1987, a year before The Sandman began. Jamie Delano wrote Hellblazer. Gaiman had no role in the creation of the character. He shows up in an early issue of The Sandman, and Gaiman created a woman ancestor, Joanna Constantine (who I understand is the only Constantine on Netflix The Sandman. Haven't gotten to it yet.) TR (talk) 03:24, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Neverwhere was a reasonable story with likable characters, which slipped in and out of readability. I didn't much like The Ocean at the End of the Lane, or The Graveyard Book.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 02:37, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Haven't gotten around to The Graveyard Book and have no plans to do so at this time. American Gods was my first Gaiman book and every one I've read since I've been trying to recapture that feeling, with rapidly diminishing returns. It's been most of a year since I read Good Omens but I still feel like I've had my fill of him. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:52, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

This conversation was been rendered depressing. TR (talk) 16:29, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah. Yet another instance of having to interrogate the ethics of appreciating the art created by a morally problematic artist. I generally come down on the side of, continue to enjoy the art, but it certainly is tiresome to have to worry about it.

It was just this time last year that I was in the middle of reading the whole run of The Sandman in one go, more or less. Very, very high variance. I binged the Netflix series (if you can call such a short series "bingeing" on Memorial Day Weekend. It was pretty forgettable. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

The proud and skilled tailor

"One of the characters in Turtldove's Darkness series is a tailor, son of an older tailor, who takes pride in his skill as a craftsman in a similar way to George the Shoemaker in "Thessalonika".

Aside from the errors and typos, this is an incidental thing that is not worth pointing out. We have a tailors category that lists both George (Thessalonica) and Talsu. TR (talk) 16:40, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

It might be worth a "See Also" in the two characters' articles but not relevant in the story article. ML4E (talk) 16:49, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's relevant at all. If anything, it would be a Turtledove's Tropes entry, but I think it is too weak even for that. Any story set in a medievalish background will have medieval stock characters, and the "brave little tailor" trope is not unique to Turtledove.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 02:06, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I see no need to mention this at all. Turtle Fan (talk) 08:28, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Connections to other works

I trimmed the description from "The Horse of Bronze" which works much too hard to connect that story with Thessalonica. However, reading everything else in that section, I think we should remove everything but The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, as the connections are tenuous at best. I'd even suggest removing TCotTSD except Steven Silver connected them (perhaps erroneously), so there is value in discussing the connection. TR (talk) 16:29, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Having read only Gunpowder Empire I can't really comment on anything else. With GE, the See Also reference seems pretty weak given the description of Thessalonica. For any item removed, the other work should also be checked to make sure a See Also to Thessalonica is also removed. ML4E (talk) 19:41, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with TR. Everything except TCotTSD should go, and TCotTSD should only stay because of that reference on the website. Which come to think of it wasn't really that definitive anyway. Didn't Silver say that they "seem to be" in the same universe? Turtle Fan (talk) 16:41, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I thought so, but I can't prove it now. I read the review of Thessalonica, and he does say it's similar to TCotSD, but I could have sworn he explicitly categorized them somehow in the past. TR (talk) 02:46, 18 March 2025 (UTC)