The Peshawar Lancers is an alternate history, steampunk, post-apocalyptic fiction adventure novel by S. M. Stirling, with its point of divergence occurring in 1878 when the Earth is struck by a devastating meteor shower. The novel's plot takes place in 2025, when the British Empire has become the powerful Angrezi Raj and is gradually recolonizing the world, alongside other nations and empires that were able to survive. The novel was published in 2002, and was a Sidewise Award nominee for best long-form alternate history.
Stirling also wrote a novella, Shikari in Galveston, which is set in the same background as The Peshawar Lancers but occurs several years earlier. It was published in the alternate history collection Worlds That Weren't.
Background
The story details a world where a heavy meteor shower, known as "the Fall", impacted with catastrophic force across much of the Northern Hemisphere in 1878, creating a massive dust cloud that blots out the sun. This in turn causes the collapse of Industrialized civilization, which was unable to survive without the ability to raise crops in winter-like conditions that lasted for three years. In order to survive, the British Government, under the leadership of Queen Victoria and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, employed the Royal Navy and all merchant shipping to evacuate the population of the British Isles to its colonies in India, Australasia, and South Africa over the next several years. After martial law breaks down in 1881, the rioting British lower classes storm the remaining military outposts in London; unable to escape, Disraeli is killed by rioters and becomes a martyr. The British Isles are abandoned, initially becoming the home of groups of degenerate cannibalistic savages, most of which quickly consume each other to extinction, and are only cautiously recolonized in the 20th century. By the time relatively normal weather returns, nine-tenths of the former population in the UK, as well as millions of other people around the world, have died as a result of the disaster. Technology is progressing, though by time of the novel's setting, but still lags behind our level of technology. Air travel is done by hydrogen-lifted airship and motor vehicles are still rare. Plus there are occasional steampunk incursions like Babbage engines. In terms of biology, however, the Raj equals if not surpasses us in some fields.
One reviewer commented that The Peshawar Lancers had an "eerie prophetic resonance" with current events. Throughout the novel there are various terrorist tactics used to defeat the protagonists, including the mid-air explosion of an airship. Also reviewer noted the possible theme of fundamentalism vs. secularism. Whether this theme was intended by Stirling is unknown.
The New England Science Fiction Association review complimented Stirling on creating a detailed and fascinating society, though remarked that society in general had not changed since the original point of divergence 150 years ago. Regardless of that, the reviewer highly recommended the novel.
Paul Di Filippo called the novel "simply the best uchronia in years." He complimented Stirling on the depth of his world building and skillful use of historical personages. Filippo expressed favor for the various characters and especially liked the antagonism between Narayan Singh and Ibrahim Khan.
References to other works
Stirling wrote the novel as a homage to the historical-adventure field. Athelstane King and other characters are inspired by Talbot Mundy's King of the Khyber Rifles.