Background
The Nantucket series is a variant on a well-known theme in time travel literature, in which a modern person is hurled back into the past and is able to introduce modern technologies, inventions and institutions, and completely change the past society. The theme goes back to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and continued in many later works such as L. Sprague de Camp's classic Lest Darkness Fall. Poul Anderson disputed the plausibility of such scenarios in his "The Man Who Came Early", in which a man marooned in the past finds that – however capable and skilled in modern-day engineering – it is not possible for one person to introduce modern technologies all by himself, since he would not have "the tools to make the tools to make the tools". The Nantucket series gets around this difficulty by having not a single isolated person hurled into the past, but a whole island, with several thousand people of various backgrounds and skills, and in possession of a considerable amount of the physical and written resources of modern civilization – making their success much more plausible. Eric Flint used a similar literary device in his 1632 series.
In the three novels of the Nantucket series, a cosmic disturbance characterized by an elliptical dome of fire (called "The Event" in the series) transports the island of Nantucket and its inhabitants back in time into the Bronze Age. The world of circa 1250 BC, which corresponds to the late Heroic Age of Greek mythology, is populated by a large variety of hunting, nomadic and agricultural people, as well as well-documented Bronze Age cultures including Ancient Egypt, the Hittites, and Mycenaean Greece.
The trilogy describes the day-to-day problems of adaptation and survival and the emotional and social trauma of losing connection with the modern world. Much of the plot deals with ongoing conflicts between the different factions of the island's population. Some Nantucket residents wish to dominate the world for their own benefit, others wish to interact with local populations through trade and cultural development, while most just want to survive, work hard, and claw their way back to something approaching their pre-Event way of life.
They have the extreme good luck to have, transported in time together with the island, the US Coast Guard barque Eagle, captained by a tough, experienced Coast Guard captain, who provides leadership for Nantucket's armed forces. (She insists upon using the term "Coast Guard" rather than "Navy", though what she eventually builds up is a worldwide naval force.)
However, the ambitious and totally unscrupulous young lieutenant William Walker is also transported back with the ship. He seizes the opportunity to form a band of renegades, and flees the island with the ultimate goal to found a dynasty amongst the Bronze Age peoples of Europe and the Middle East. Walker—who, unfortunately, is as smart as he is callous—exploits the 'magic' of gunpowder and iron-forging to build up an empire of his own, one that he believes will inevitably conquer and enslave the entire world.
Therefore, as the series progresses, it becomes clear to Nantucket's scaled-down Government that sitting back and reinventing isolationism is no real option, and that the people of Nantucket have no choice but build an army, a navy, and a set of foreign alliances of their own and take the fight to Walker – and in the process, build up what amounts to an empire of their own.
By the end of the third book, Nantucket is the dominant member of a sizable and expanding network of allies, rather reminiscent of the British Empire (though Britain itself is called "Alba" in the novel, one of Nantucket's protectorates and a source of "warrior tribes" to be enrolled as mercenaries in its armies), and the Nantucketars ("Eagle-People", "Islanders", "Nan-Tukh-Tar", etc.) seem well on their way to re-enacting the United States’ Manifest Destiny three thousand years early, with Native Americans succumbing to disease and becoming virtually extinct on Long Island and the Nantuckers setting out on transcontinental expeditions and reaching California by sea, as well as starting to settle what corresponds to Argentina.
Nantucket has 'Outport' colonies spanning the globe, with bases in the Caribbean, Argentina, the Azores, South Africa, Zanzibar, Madagascar, Mauritius, Bombay, etc.; basically, anywhere there is a good harbor situated close to existing or future trading routes, the Republic is on the scene. The Alban Alliance rules the British Isles where Walker initially tried to carve out a kingdom, and are a close ally, a source of labor and military recruits, and, as its people absorb more of the New Learning, look like being at the heart of a very early Industrial Revolution. Babylon, Hittite Empire and Mitanni (a vassal of Babylon), are also allies. At the end of the third book, these allies are already laying plans for carving up the Caucasus and Persia between them.[11]
Major powers
- Greater Achaea (Greece), which was the location of Walker's second—and much more successful—attempt at empire-building, but which is now ruled by King Odikweos.
- Tartessos, an Iberian city-state which gained greatly from its new King's decade-long alliance with Walker's Meizon Achaea, and which managed to survive its unsuccessful challenge to Nantucket for control of the sea. With a highly capable - and quite ruthless - ruler, who had spent some time on Nantucket and learned much, Tartessos is determined to industrialize and build its own world-wide naval empire, and its agents have already gotten as far as California.
Minor powers
- Shang Dynasty In the book it is mentioned that ships from the Kingdom of Tartessos and the Republic of Nantucket have reached the Chinese coast and exchanged gifts with them.
- Babylon, a close ally of Nantucket, undergoing fast technological, social and cultural changes. The alliance started with Nantucket crushing Babylon's arch-enemy Assyria - which had been on the verge of conquering and subjugating Babylon. The alliance eventually ripened to the Babylonian King gaining an American Queen at his side, who doubles as Commander of the Babylonian Army, and an American Doctor married to a Babylonian healer founding the University of Babylon.
- Egypt, gained some basic New Learning from one of Walker's lieutenants, a fanatical — and naïve — Afrocentrist who was shocked to discover that the "Black Egyptians" were not truly black. After Egypt's defeat at the 'Battle of Armageddon' and the loss of its Canaan territory to Babylon, this lieutenant fled to Meroe, an iron-rich region in east-central Africa, with the intention of giving the black population a leg up before armed whites started arriving in large numbers. Egypt itself still remains out of Nantucket's system of alliances, but some of Pharaoh's officers are being suborned.
- The Sicilian Republic was formerly an Achaean colony, but, after having been invaded by Nantucket, is now an independent nation. Its government is currently divided between the Sicilian natives, freed slaves, and Achaean colonists.
- Alba, the Bronze Age Britain, is an ally of Nantucket after the Islanders defeated Walker and his Sun People allies there.
- As the third (and final) novel ends, in Central Asia, Walker's lone surviving heir - a young but highly intelligent and capable daughter - with a collection of mostly Achaean followers, have elected to emigrate to the Fergana Valley region, far, far away from the reach of Islander naval power.
