by Sean McMullen
Analog regular Sean McMullen discusses the DNA science that helped inspire his novelette Prince of Spirals, now available in our [January/February issue, on sale now!]
Analog’s full title is Analog Science Fiction Science Fact, and for as long as I have been reading science fiction this has meant one thing for me: when I open an issue I hope to find hard science stories about what really could happen . . . and I try to write that sort of fiction as well. My latest story, Prince of Spirals, features kings, queens and princes rather heavily, yet it contains no trace of fantasy. The engineering involved with the tunnelling robot is leading edge but well within the existing laws of physics—see the news item, “Tentacle robot can bend through pipes and unscrew bolts” (New Scientist, 1 July 2023, p. 14). DNA testing has a much bigger role in Prince of Spirals, but this is 1980s technology, and bordering on ancient. Thus Prince of Spirals is definitely not fantasy, but is it even science fiction, or just a work of fiction containing a lot of science? My PhD was not in semantics, so perhaps I should leave this issue to someone else and talk about the story.
Prince of Spirals is based upon the disappearance of England’s King Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York. They were aged 12 and 9 respectively, and both were allegedly murdered by their uncle, who made himself King Richard III. The boys were being held in the Tower of London when they disappeared in 1483, and in 1674 two little skeletons were discovered during restoration work in the Tower. They were assumed to be those of the missing princes, and King Charles II had them sealed into a crypt in Westminster Abbey. There they remain, and that is the known history (And here I must thank my partner Zoya Krawczenko for policing my use of the historical facts with her astoundingly detailed knowledge of the Plantagenet monarchy in general and the disappearance of the two little princes in particular).
Let us move on to the science fiction . . . assuming that Prince of Spirals really is science fiction. Remember, the technology has been around for decades except for the robot—although it did exist in prototype form at the time of writing. So why did I not speculate, just a little, and invent some cool tech? For me the attraction of near-edge technology fiction is showing the reader how exciting things could be done with what we already have. Could a bunch of contemporary amateurs conduct a very advanced forensic archaeological DNA analysis project?
As the author I had the same problems dealing with the forensic archaeological issues as my characters. My background is in meteorology and computer science, apart from a year working as a technician in a medical research lab. Thus genetics is very definitely not my area, but fortunately the brilliant geneticist Dr Jie Zhou is a member of the university karate club. I was one of her examiners when she got her black belt, and then she became one of my examiners when I asked her for help with the DNA aspects of Prince of Spirals.
For me the attraction of near-edge technology fiction is showing the reader how exciting things could be done with what we already have. Could a bunch of contemporary amateurs conduct a very advanced forensic archaeological DNA analysis project?
Following on from that, my characters solve their own lack of background skills in archaeology and DNA science by abducting a forensic archaeologist. This turned out to be quite a helpful plot device, because much of the story involves the long-suffering Dr Angelo Maslini explaining some highly complex aspects of DNA analysis and genetics to his captors—avoiding the need for me to continually pause the story and do info-dumps for the readers.
The pivotal theme of the story is whether or not both princes were murdered in 1483. Their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, was a very intelligent and politically astute person, so many authorities think that she arranged for the younger prince to be replaced by a page boy lookalike when King Richard’s soldiers arrived to take him to the Tower to join his brother. If the prince survived, grew up and had children, could there be a Plantagenet king or queen somewhere out there today? What do I think? Read Prince of Spirals and find out.
In a sense we have already had a real-life preview of Prince of Spirals. In 2012 the remains of King Richard III were discovered in a Leicester car park, and all at once some facts about him were verified while others crashed and burned. For example, there had been a theory that the Tudors invented the story that King Richard had a spinal deformity, in order to make him seem grotesque and demonic. The idea was that someone with spinal curvature could not have ridden a horse and fought with a sword, as Richard is known to have done. In fact his skeleton turned out to display quite pronounced spinal curvature, but it was not extreme enough to prevent him riding a horse or wielding a sword. Score: Real World 1, Conspiracy Theorists 0.
Returning to the princes, Queen Elizabeth II was opposed to opening their burial vault in Westminster Abbey and subjecting the bones interred there to DNA analysis. Apparently she wished to show respect to the dead children, and thus the bones are still off limits. In the early drafts of the story, I had the conspirators set off a small IED near the crypt of the princes, so that the skeletons had to be relocated during restoration work. This would have created an opportunity for someone to sneak in and take DNA samples. On the other hand, a high-tech robotic burglar seemed a better fit with Analog’s readership, so when I saw the article about the Chinese soft-bodied, tubular robot I knew that it had a place in the story.
Will real life catch up with the princes, just as it did with remains of King Richard? King Charles III is now on the British throne, and he is said to be more sympathetic than his mother to the idea of forensic archaeologists doing a DNA check on the remains of the princes. If (or more likely when) that happens, one of the skeletons may turn out not to be that of young Richard, Duke of York. That would mean the younger prince may have survived to grow up. If he left descendants, the genealogy community is sure to begin a world-wide hunt for surviving royal Plantagenets. This will be quite an undertaking because although Britain is not very big, it did have a word wide empire.
Now wait a moment! Surely there would be family legends within a secret Plantagenet dynasty, you say? Not so fast. Children are notorious boasters, and the Tudors were very much into executing and assassinating anyone with even a remote claim to the British throne. Any Plantagenet kids would not have been told about their true heritage until they were old enough to keep a secret. Some time in the Sixteenth or Seventeenth Centuries, some Plantagenet pretender might have died suddenly, before he could tell his children that they were all little princes and princesses. Britain was getting into merchantile expansion by then, so … some little Indian girl from Mumbai with dreams of secretly being a princess might be dreaming about reality. Some Chinese girl from Hong Kong with fantasies of secretly being an empress might have to change those fantasies to secretly being a queen. Might the Plantagenets have gone to America? I recall hearing an old Disney song in the 1960s with a chorus that went:
Davey, Davey Crocket,
King of the wild frontier.
Who knows, maybe Crocket was king of a lot more than the wild frontier.
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