Agent of Byzantium - Differences

Differences

Turtledove, who has a PhD in Byzantine history, created a historically familiar setting for the series, where the world of Late Antiquity is projected seven centuries into the future. In each story, several familiar inventions and social institutions crop up far ahead of schedule, and under very different circumstances than they did in our world. Among these are:

• The telescope, discovered among the shamans of the Jurchen nomads who threaten the Empire from the north
• Vaccination for smallpox, which is discovered during a terrible plague afflicting Constantinople itself
• Trade unions and strikes, appearing first among the builders engaged in the dangerous rebuilding of a great lighthouse in Alexandria, Egypt (an Egyptian village, Deir el-Medina, is where the first recorded strike in history occurred in 1152 BC)
• Black powder, developed by the monks in the Abbey of St. Gall and used with great effect by the empire's Frankish enemies — until stolen by Argyros, with the help of agents from an Anglo-Saxon England which has known no Norman Conquest
• Printing, invented by the empire's Persian enemies and used to foment sedition and dissension inside its borders, until this secret is also apprehended by Argyros.
• Distilling invented by a wine-seller in Constantinople and purchased for the empire by Argyros. (This is anachronistic as the process was actually well known to Greek alchemists from the 1st century AD.)