In February 2024, Vladimir Putin dropped a massive work of creative “history” during his interview with Tucker Carlson. This “history” was meant to prove that Ukraine was always part of Russia. (Ido Vock, a journalist for the BBC, talked to several historians to debunk Putin’s revisionary history.) I thought about Putin’s revisionist history a lot as I read K.J. Parker’s uncomfortable fantasy, Making History.
Our narrator is a professor of linguistics, working among some of the finest minds from across the nation of Aelia, and is damned proud of it. Being professors should keep these men safe and out of the way of fighting or politics, so they are all very surprised when they’re collectively summoned to the palace by the new “First Citizen.” Gyges seems a little insecure as a conqueror whose warriors steamrolled across Aelia. He plans to do things in a more civilized way from now on. No more sweeping across borders with all the pillaging and murdering and raping. Next time he goes to war, he will have a proper casus belli to justify the invading, pillaging, etc. Except, there isn’t one. Aelia’s neighbors aren’t going to make a move against him; there’s no need to. The scholars are even more shocked when they learn why they’ve been summoned: they’re going to create a casus belli for Gyges. It’s an offer they can’t refuse.
Most of the scholars are reluctant to take on the job, in spite of the clear threats to their safety if they refuse. Our narrator, however, dives headfirst into the task. As a linguist, his job is to create an ancestral version of Aelian. He is immediately fascinated by the processes that change languages over centuries. He disappears into his work, musing about how grammar tends to become less complex over time and how pronunciations are affected by people talking so fast they can’t be bothered to enunciate everything. He never loses sight of the fact that he’s participating in the biggest scholarly hoax of all time, which is why he’s stunned to his toenails when the words of his invented language appear to have escaped containment.
There are a lot of ideas packed into Making History, not just linguistic ones. Readers who like to think about the nature of history and language will find a lot of food for thought here. There’s so much that it’s incredible that Parker manages to sneak in a great subplot for our narrator in this novella, too.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.