Major Themes
Though The Peshawar Lancers is set in 2025, far in the future from when the novel was published, Stirling does not use 21st century technology. Stirling postulates that without the resources and innovation of Europe and America, technological advancement would have been slowed due to the local conditions of the surviving nations. Technology is progressing, though by time of the novel's setting, but still lags behind our level of technology. Air travel is done by hydrogen-lifted airship and motor vehicles are still rare. Plus there are occasional steampunk incursions like Babbage engines. In terms of biology, however, the Raj equals if not surpasses us in some fields.
Unlike previous Stirling novels that preceded The Peshawar Lancers, there is less warfare and violence than one would expect considering Stirling's earlier works and instead focuses on conspiracy and diplomacy.
One reviewer commented that The Peshawar Lancers had an "eerie prophetic resonance" with current events. Throughout the novel there are various terrorist tactics used to defeat the protagonists, including the mid-air explosion of an airship. Also reviewer noted the possible theme of fundamentalism vs. secularism. Whether this theme was intended by Stirling is unknown.
Read more about this topic: The Peshawar Lancers
Famous quotes containing the words major and/or themes:
“What was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past—the whole life of a civilization—but also a major share of the Jewish future.... [ellipsis in source] It was not only the intellect of a people in its prime that was excised, but the treasure of a people in its potential.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)