Burton & Swinburne series

## Genre Information

Altenate History
Time Travel

Steampunk

 (Series Content Ratings Click on Explicit Ratings for details.)

## About the Series

* **Genres:** Steampunk / Time Travel / Altenate History
* **Theme:**
* **Narrative style**: Third person narrative mainly from the perspective of Sir Richard Francis Burton

## Series Description

The series are based on real world historical events but changed to fit in with the alternate world and may not occur on the exact date as the real world events.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, the king's agent, and his somewhat erratic assistant, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, inhabit a world that isn't as it should be. Technology is out of control, distorting the British Empire's cultural landscape almost beyond recognition, and other, rather more surprising forces are attempting to manipulate history. Together, Burton and Swinburne must battle to save the present... from the future! The adventures of Burton & Swinburne are presented by Mark Hodder, a British author who lives in Valencia, Spain.

A time-traveller from the distant future returns to 1840 to prevent an ancestor from attempting to commit an act of regicide. After failing in his mission, he returns to 1837 and recruits the 'Mad Marquess' to find his ancestor and correct the error. The result of his interference is an altered timeline in which technological advances have given rise to two scientific classes: 'Technologists' and 'Eugenicists'. Sir Richard Francis Burton returns to find his reputation damaged and his second-in-command lionized as the discoverer of the source of the Nile. He is recruited by the Prime Minister, in the capacity of King's Agent, to investigate the Spring-heeled Jack affair and the strange manifestations plaguing London's East End.

## Books in Series

1. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Burton & Swinburne Book 1) (2010)
2. The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man (Burton & Swinburne Book 2) (2011)
3. Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Burton & Swinburne Book 3) (2012)
4. The Secret of Abdu El-Yezdi (Burton & Swinburne Book 4) (2013)
5. The Return of the Discontinued Man (Burton & Swinburne Book 5) (2014)
6. The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (Burton & Swinburne Book 6) (2015)

* Strange Affairs and Curious Cases (2016)
* Where Red Petals Fall (2017)

### Shorts

* Burton & Swinburne new adventures - The Black Pentagram series
	1. The Mystery of the Empty Bay (2018)
	2. The Disaster at Dale Dyke (2018)
	3. The Great Plague of Paris (2018)

## World Building

### Setting

Set in 1861 in an Victorian Albertian England

### Fantasy Elements

Time travel, loup-garous, werewolves, apparitions, Rakes, clockwork-powered man of brass, magic, magic drugs, ,

### World Description

**Sir Richard Francis Burton** and **Algernon Charles Swinburne** stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy. The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End.

A debate between Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke scheduled in the real world for 1864 is scheduled for three years earlier in the alternative Hodder has created. While seemingly minor, that change is indicative of greater changes which slowly become evident. After the night Burton was supposed to debut Speke, which appears to have ended in the same way it did in the real world, Burton finds himself offered the position of an agent for the Crown, essentially given carte blanche to investigate what he sees fit. And what he finds himself investigating is a series of disappearances of chimney sweeps which appear to be tied into the presence of werewolves in London.

The werewolves of London, however, are only a small part of this different world, which is filled with factions trying to pull the world from the eighteenth into the twentieth century. The Rakes and the Libertines are trying to impose their own version of morality and art on Great Britain, while the technologists see the potential in science, from the genetic and evolutionary ideas of Mendel and Darwin to the engineering feats of Brunel, as the way to rise above the short, brutal existence of humans.

### Protagonists

Sir Richard Francis Burton
Celebrated adventurer, linguist, scholar, orientalist, swordsman, and former Captain in the Royal African Corps. While he and Speke were the first Europeans to view the African Great Lakes, they quarreled over which one was the source of the Nile. Although Burton had headed the expedition, Speke returned to London first and presented his conclusions, which were accepted. Burton was cast into a secondary role and his career as an explorer was tarnished.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin!
## Book Cover Descriptions

1 *The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack* (2010)
London, 1861. Sir Richard Francis Burton—explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne—unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin!
They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy. The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End. Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn't exist at all!
2 *The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man* (2011)
It is 1862, though not the 1862 it should be. . . . Time has been altered, and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the king’s agent, is one of the few people who know that the world is now careening along a very different course from that which Destiny intended.
When a clockwork-powered man of brass is found abandoned in Trafalgar Square, Burton and his assistant, the wayward poet Algernon Swinburne, find themselves on the trail of the stolen Garnier Collection—black diamonds rumored to be fragments of the Lemurian Eye of Naga, a meteorite that fell to Earth in prehistoric times. His investigation leads to involvement with the media sensation of the age: the Tichborne Claimant, a man who insists that he’s the long lost heir to the cursed Tichborne estate. Monstrous, bloated, and monosyllabic, he’s not the aristocratic Sir Roger Tichborne known to everyone, yet the working classes come out in force to support him. They are soon rioting through the streets of London, as mysterious steam wraiths incite all-out class warfare.
From a haunted mansion to the Bedlam madhouse, from South America to Australia, from séances to a secret labyrinth, Burton struggles with shadowy opponents and his own inner demons, meeting along the way the philosopher Herbert Spencer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Florence Nightingale, and Charles Doyle (father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). Can the king’s agent expose a plot that threatens to rip the British Empire apart, leading to an international conflict the like of which the world has never seen? And what part does the clockwork man have to play? Burton and Swinburne’s second adventure—The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man—is filled with eccentric steam-driven technology, grotesque characters, and a deepening mystery that pushes forward the three-volume story arc begun in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack.
3 *Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon* (2012)
It is 1863, but not the one it should be. Time has veered wildly off course, and now the first moves are being made that will lead to a devastating world war and the fall of the British Empire. Caught in a tangled web of cause, effect, and inevitability, little does Burton realize that the stakes are far higher than even he suspects. A final confrontation comes in the mist-shrouded Mountains of the Moon, in war-torn Africa of 1914, and in Green Park, London, where, in the year 1840, Burton must face the man responsible for altering time: Spring Heeled Jack! Burton and Swinburne's third adventure is filled with eccentric steam-driven technology, grotesque characters, and bizarre events, completing the three-volume story arc begun in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack and The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man.
4 *The Secret of Abdu El-Yezdi* (Aug 8, 2013)
Burton & Swinburne return in a new series! The Beast is coming. History will be remade. Since the assassination of Queen Victoria in 1840, a cabal of prominent men-including King George V, HRH Prince Albert, Benjamin Disraeli, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel-has received guidance from the Afterlife. The spirit of a dead mystic, Abdu El Yezdi, has helped them to steer the empire into a period of unprecedented peace and creativity. But on the eve of a groundbreaking alliance with the newly formed Greater German Confederation, scientists, surgeons, and engineers are being abducted-including Brunel! The government, in search of answers, turns to the Afterlife, only to find that Abdu El Yezdi is now refusing to speak with the living. Enter the newly-knighted Sir Richard Francis Burton, fresh from his discovery of the source of the Nile. Appointed the king's agent, he must trace the missing luminaries and solve the mystery of Abdu El Yezdi's silence. But the Beast has been summoned. How can the famous explorer fulfill his mission when his friends and loved ones are being picked off, one by one, by what appears to be a supernatural entity-by, perhaps, Abdu El Yezdi himself?
5 *The Return of the Discontinued Man* (July, 2014)
SPRING HEELED JACK IS JUMPING BACK! It's 9 p.m. on February 15, 1860, and Charles Babbage, the British Empire's most brilliant scientist, performs an experiment. Within moments, blood red snow falls from the sky and Spring Heeled Jack pops out of thin air in London's Leicester Square. Though utterly disoriented and apparently insane, the strange creature is intent on one thing: hunting Sir Richard Francis Burton! Spring Heeled Jack isn't alone in his mental confusion. Burton can hardly function; he's experiencing one hallucination after another-visions of parallel realities and future history. Someone, or something, is trying to tell him about…what? When the revelation comes, it sends Burton and his companions on an expedition even the great explorer could never have imagined—a voyage through time itself into a twisted future where steam technology has made a resurgence and a despotic intelligence rules over the British Empire!
6 *The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats* (August 13th 2015)
Having returned from his expedition to the future, Burton reveals to the authorities what he witnessed there. In response, prime minister Disraeli initiates a programme whereby the empire's elite have their consciousnesses transferred into mechanical bodies, thereby ensuring eternal rule. As a brutal plutocracy emerges, Burton and Swinburne find themselves leading a revolution. The Sixth and final Burton and Swinburne Adventure!
## Awards

*The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack* - won the 2010 Philip K. Dick Award

## References

1. ↑ Goodreads
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack Wikipedia
3. ↑ abcreads
4. ↑ Steven Silver reviews~sfsite.com
5. ↑ Philip K. Dick Award at wikipedia