Quincunx of Empire - the story

"One rather inconsiderable step for an individual gentleman, being at the same time one rather gigantic bound for the collectivity that is mankind."

Charles Dickens on the Moon Expedition, Edinburgh Review 21 July 1839

Book I – With Cogs Tyrannic 1830-1849

Part 1 – The Chaoskampf 1830-1840

A traumatic ordeal in the the turbulent years of Les Miserables and Oliver Twist,
a time of poverty, political strife and industrial revolution, sparks young Belgian mathematics prodigy Balduin Van Oxenhardt to discover the completely new science of Fluction.

As other great figures of the day such as Brunel, Faraday, Babbage, Dickens, and Darwin come to join with him, he develops an unimaginable yet simple technology that merely required his unique cosmological genius to uncover.

Once developed through a risky top-secret project bringing together the greatest minds in Europe, even the steam-powered early Victorians can manage his new Fluction Transportation Apparatus, and soon it is taking them – instantly – to wherever is in direct line of sight.

Young Van Oxenhardt faces opposition from deadly and mysterious enemies in France and America, even as he comes to find a special love with Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. After a series of adventures with exotic Russian spies, gaucho renegades, revolutionaries, sadistic serial killers and feral children, Van Oxenhardt comes to realise his dream – and becomes the first man to step on another planet.

Victorian man has reached Mars – a strangely habitable yet lonely Mars of breathable air and rough scraggy vegetation – but he will not be long alone on this new world.

Part 2 – That Great Ferment 1840-1844

Other Empires long to join Victoria’s Empire in its grab for other worlds. Soon a fierce technological and colonial race sees Britain, France, Russia, Russia, Austria and the United States developing their Fluction Devices and scrambling for territory on Mars. 

But the British Imperial Extraplanetary Corps has a head start. Under Brunel and Faraday’s direction, the colony of Victoria and the military base Fort Ares grow and prosper. Valuable mineral ore and coal deposits are found. Soon the first steam mills are throwing black smoke over the dry plains of Mars. 

Despite rumours of a Martian people, the Earth settlers only encounter each other. Soon there are skirmishes and conflicts, as well as land grabs. The armed presence of rival colonial troops and discontented mobs of unhealthy industrial working-class colonists peaks just as rebels – Irish Fenians, Spanish Carlists, Jihadists, Anarcho-Socialists – begin to make their presence felt. The new world soon looks all too much like the old.

On a trek deep into the Martian interior, the disillusioned Van Oxenhardt makes a second shattering ephocal find: mankind’s future and past are linked across planets. 

Part 3 – Treeroot New Decembrist 1844-1849

The first Royal Society Venus Expedition is missing. Balduin Van Oxenhardt makes another perilous journey, this time to find the survivors of David Livingstone’s party, including young naturalist and author Charles Darwin.

The quest takes Van Oxenhardt and his intrepid companions, firebrand revolutionary Friedrich Engels, drug-addled American adventurer Edgar Allen and teenage Russian medium Helena Blavatsky, into the heart of terror on a tropical nightmare planet of venomous whirlwinds, toxic tides, retro-evolving species and unheard-of monsters.

When Van Oxenhardt finds the remains of the party, it leads him to take the most extreme ordeal yet. What he and the others find on Venus is to change both the course of history and our knowledge of human prehistory, and will revolutionise human kind.

Once the party return to Earth, they find a world in the throes of massive social upheaval. As they attempt to go back to Mars, a full-blown revolution breaks out on Earth and on colonial Mars. The full wrath of Empires is unleashed on both revolts.

As homo sapiens tears himself apart on two worlds, and new states break away on the Red Planet, only Van Oxenhardt knows the truth – that there are three races of human in the Solar System. And Homo Solaris Victoriansis will have to struggle to survive.

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The Quincunx of Empire series continues this 
radically alternative saga of the Victorian era with …

Book II

Great Game of Worlds

1850-1865

Sects and mystic societies break out across the Worlds of Empire. On Venus, a cosmic secret unfolds to Charles Darwin and his lover, the prophetess Helena Blavatsky.

Meanwhile, on Earth and Mars, Great Britain and France combat Russia while the United States goes to war with itself.

Will a Confederate Republic take root on Mars? Will Afro-American slaves and Russian serfs toil in the lichen fields under a Martian sky while masters sip vodka and juleps on the portico? 

Jihadists declare a Martian Caliphate, sepoys mutiny, and Fenians experiment with eco-terrorism.

Balduin Van Oxenhardt is caught up and forced to take sides in the brutal conflict developing on all three planets, as he takes a step further onto the new world of Titan.

Book III

Titanomachia
1866-1898

World War is coming… to a world plagued by alien microbes, political strife, serial killers, religious crusades and mystic conspiracy cults.

A Victorian Earth with airbattleships, steamtanks, mechanordinators, and telemail. Where potentially immortal world leaders with evil intent are aided by chemically-and-genetically enhanced scientists and vicious gunmen. Where Darwin and Engels are worshipped as prophets and gods.

And World War is coming to another world, a Mars in which new ways of life are just starting. The history of the Solar Races of Man could come to an end unless a new and terrible weapon is neutralised. Van Oxenhardt must act once again to save all the races of Empire, as the Great War of Three Worlds threatens unparalleled havoc.