I have a novel novel idea. That is, I have an idea for a novel...that's rather novel.

I'm going to say that this is here as much to remind me about this as it is to inform you- I have a tendency to get obsessive over one thing and then drop it as soon as I find a new one and ignore the old one. I dunno.

Anyway!

As a genre, I've always found alternative history to be the most gripping of the speculative fiction genres. I mean, with some science fiction there's the possibility that it might happen, but there isn't with most, and as for fantasy, well... But alternative history there's generally the deep feeling that it COULD have happened like that and there's the deep intellectual interest in whether it would have if a single event happened differently. And, for me, there's one question that I really enjoy speculating about, and that is...

...what if Carthage won the Punic Wars? What if the Roman Empire fell before it really hit it's peak?

As a question, this one is pretty monumental. The world was more or less built on the Romans. To be fair, the Romans were more or less taking in the culture of the Greeks and the Etruscans, but the possibility of a world where Rome wasn't the arbiter of culture as we know it really interests me. How different would the world be?

As a basis for a novel, this is going to take a lot of research on my part and, to be honest, that's just the way I like it. I'd probably look at it in terms of a series of novels- the first being set soon after the victory of Carthage with the rest progressing through history showing the after effects of Rome's fall. So that's going to take a lot of research into the history of Carthage (which, sadly, is rather tainted by the fact that we have very few primary sources, relying mostly on highly negative Roman secondary sources) and their culture. It'll also let me exercise my anthropological knowledge- speculating on the effects of the Carthagenian culture assimilating the culture of the defeated Romans and the Greeks. Oh, and finally, I'll be able to get my linguistics nerd-on: I'll be able to make a good conlang where Punic, not Latin, was the dominant language, and seeing how languages would have evolved from there.

If I actually manage to write it, it's going to be one hell of an interesting ride; luckily I'll have four months off between the end of semester two and the start of semester one next year to work on it, even though I think it'll take a lot more time than that.