Interview: Thomas Wm Hamilton

I now present my interview with Thomas Wm Hamilton, author of Time for Patriots:

Welcome to The Update, Thomas. Tell us about yourself.

Born in San Francisco, raised in New York, with a year in New Hampshire. Educated at Columbia University. Worked on the Apollo Project for several years, and then went to work for a planetarium manufacturer writing canned shows. From there went to run the planetarium at Wagner College and teach astronomy. Trained a number of students to work in the planetarium field.

Apollo Project? The Apollo Project? Please tell me more.

Yes, The Apollo Project. Worked on the second floor of Plant 35 of Grumman Aerospace in Bethpage, NY. In fact, I was at lunch when JFK was shot, came back and as told by a draftsman with a sick sense of humor, so I didn't believe him until I called the Associated Press's special verification number and a woman picked up, and before I could speak she said "It's true, he's dead." and hung up. Got to play with a 1620 computer, did my main work on an IBM 7094.

My job title was orbital analyst. The member directory of a political club I was in printed that as "arbitral analysis". Saw several astronauts walking through, as my desk was about twelve feet from the entrance to the resident NASA liaison office.

In 1964 Grumman circulated a memo asking for suggestion on uses of the spacecraft after the lunar landings ended. I submitted the first ever proposal for a visit to a near Earth asteroid. Grumman loved it enough to submit to NASA, but about four months later got word they turned it down. Only 8 NEAs were known then (today >1200), and launch windows were too rare.

You are the first person I interviewed who has an asteroid named after them. How does one get an object in space named after them?

When I worked on Apollo I had to determine how accurate the on board radar needed to be and expected fuel usage in lunar orbit. While running the Wagner planetarium I got a federal grant to write planetarium shows in a dozen foreign languages and distribute them to interested planetariums throughout the country. 260 took up the offer. Years later at an astronomical convention I ran into Eleanor Helin, who is famous in the field for the number of asteroids she discovered. I was doing a cable show at the time, and interviewed her. Some years later someone submitted my name to the committee of the International Astronomical Union that handles naming small objects, and I was approved. Since Eleanor knew me, one of her asteroids was picked.

I might add two of my former students have asteroids, as does my former professor, Jan Schilt, and his former professor, Jacobus Kapteyn. And Kapteyn's academic genealogy goes back to Kepler.

Speaking of space: are those star registries complete crap? I have always wondered.

Worse than crap, they are scams that enrich scam artists. I have colleagues who tell heart wrenching stories of people who come to planetarium shows or observatories expecting to be shown stars named for deceased relatives, often children, and their distress on hearing it was a fraud.

So why are star registries, like the International Star Registry, allowed to stay in business?

Law enforcement just does not care. I care for a colony of feral cats (have seven of my own, the colony is over a dozen), and the police have ignored my complaint of shelters being stolen--in fact one was taken as I was talking to two cops, and when I complained about their inaction was threatened with arrest.

As an astronomer, what got you interested in alternate history?

My interest in astronomy began before I started school. I ran through the very few astronomy books in my local public library before I was ten years old. A sympathetic librarian suggested I read Heinlein's novel Rocketship Galileo. Combined with Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court my fate was sealed!

What is Time for Patriots about?

A military academy on Long Island is zapped back to 1770 by a physics experiment gone wrong, along with some neighbors. They decide to aid the Revolution, but also to work to end slavery and get women the right to vote earlier than in our timeline. Special rules are designed to prevent most downtimers from knowing about them, but they reveal themselves to Washington in a manner that reflects my background: a planetarium show about Apollo 11! Franklin steals a history book from their library, so he also knows.

The Revolution is drastically altered and ends early. They then advise Madison on making some changes in his draft Constitution.

In violation of the rules, three uptimers decide to prolong Mozart's life (he died before his 37th birthday). They join an expedition to put down Barbary pirates, which does a job on the Bey of Algiers. In traveling from Naples to Vienna to see Mozart, they create a drastic butterfly effect that greatly alters the map of Europe. Mozart lives to write an opera about Franklin, and his librettist repeats his own life from OTL by fleeing with his wife to New York, winding up teaching at Columbia. Over a century later his papers reveal the time travel interference.

Did you originally publish Time for Patriots at Changing the Times?

Portions were, mostly chunks of the first five chapters.

What inspired you to write it?

I always wanted to write, or rewrite, the early history of the country to improve the outcome.

Who designed the cover?

That's a sore point. I wanted the cover to show Washington in his general's uniform mounted on a horse pointing to a distant line of redcoats, with two or three people standing near him wearing modern combat gear and holding modern rifles. The publisher said such art work would cost too much. We settled on an astronaut on the Moon saluting combined with the famous (and long out of copyright) Leutze painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. In my book the painting is of Washington crossing the Hudson to accept the surrender of Staten Island, and the flag on the Moon should have only 47 stars.

Do you have any other stories set in the same universe?

Three short stories in my anthology, The Mountain of Long Eyes, are set in the same universe but in the year 2060.

Are there any more upcoming books?

I have a book on dwarf planets and asteroids coming out in a month or so, and am thinking of one more book in astronomy, on the nearly 300 craters known to exist on Earth. I also am working on another SF anthology, and it is possible there could be a story or two set in the Patriots universe.

What are you reading now?

Just keeping up with the promags.

Any advice for would be authors?

Write something every day. Don't let other responsibilities stop you. Stay up an extra hour, cut lunch time short, whatever, but find the time.

Mozart In Alternate History

Guest post by Thomas Wm. Hamilton.

Most alternate histories that include historical people tend to concentrate on politicians and military leaders. This of course means wars, elections and other dramatic events get the attention.  But there are plenty of interesting and important people whose alternative lives can deserve attention.

Time for Patriots offers a combination of both traditional AH and introduces an alternative life for Mozart (with hints of similar effects on Hayden and Beethoven).  A physics experiment gone awry sends North Shore Military Academy back from the 21st Century to 1770.  Their modern copier allows convincing counterfeiting, and neighbors carried back with them aid plans to interfere in the Revolution.  None of this is tremendously different than one might expect, although black students have to pretend to be the slaves of those they command as the group infiltrates.

In our history Mozart had a very poor medical history, and died shortly before his 37th birthday of a disease that may have been anything from scarlet fever to pneumonia.  (The idea he was poisoned is a 20th Century fiction with no evidence--in fact, Salieri was later the music teacher of Mozart's younger son.)  History indicates he started looking ill in late September, and died in early December of 1791.

In Time for Patriots a group from the military academy decide, in violation of the academy's rules, to prolong Mozart's life.  They join a flotilla sent by Washington to discourage Barbary pirates, do a convincing job on the Bey of Algiers, and on a "show the flag" visit to Naples, slip away and head for Vienna.

In Innsbruck an Austrian national hero, Andreas Hofer, is warned against his ultimate betrayer.  This introduces an unintended butterfly effect that has major consequences later.

The three Americans meet Mozart's wife, Constanza, and treat the abscess on her ankle successfully.  Mozart is hired to write a march for the military academy while preserving their anonymity.  Mozart invites them to join him and his theatrical producer, Schickaneder,  at a rehearsal followed by indulging at a bierundweinstube. The conversation makes Mozart curious about their backgrounds and motives.   As he falls ill they treat him with modern medicine (he is a really big pain in the rump as a patient).

Mozart survives, and completes not only the march they asked for, but also an opera about Benjamin Franklin, and many other works before his death during "Napoleon's second siege of Vienna", in 1805.  His sometimes librettist, Da Ponte, however, repeats his experiences in OTL with no noticeable changes (defrocked for fooling around with women, marrying an English woman, and more) other than doing the Franklin libretto.  Thus he flees Europe and settles in New York, where he winds up teaching at Columbia, just as in OTL.  He eventually runs into one of the three who had visited Vienna in 1791, and learns the true story.  The written records of this turn up in 1926, a month after the first lunar landing.

In 1811 the time travelers send an agent to New Orleans at the behest of President Madison, to investigate rumors of spies and agents from many nations active there.  The agent watches the Great Comet of 1811, amused by the downtimers' opinions of it, but maintains his silence.  He stays at the House of the Rising Sun, quite innocent of knowledge of its history.  He learns, while checking out the spies, one of whom tries to kill him.

While the core group of time travelers try to prevent wars, the butterfly consequences of the warning given in Innsbruck result in the creation of the Tyrolean Republic, which allies with Bavaria and France.  World War I never happens.  Back in the USA the grandson of one of the time travelers is elected President in 1848, and uses tax money to purchase slaves in the four states still having slavery, averting the Civil War.

Mozart had sent copies of all his new works to the military academy's Music Director, not just the special march he wrote for the school.  A century later a music professor from Columbia and his history professor wife visit the academy to study Mozart's works, and find evidence of time travelers' interventions.  Will this be revealed to create chaos?

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Thomas Wm. Hamilton a retired professor of astronomy, a planetarium director and author of Time for Patriots (Strategic Books, 2011). His anthology of 28 stories of science fiction, fantasy, and satire, The Mountain of Long Eyes, 2012, has three short sequels to the above novel. He has an asteroid; Asteroid 4897 named after him called TomHamilton.