Talk:Lest Darkness Fall

Short story
The plot, etc., stem from the novel? It would be great if someone explained the differences between the novel and the original short story. David Bofinger (talk) 08:03, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Padway and language
Is Martin Padway a Indiana Jones type archaeologist? I thought that if he could already read Latin language would not be much of a problem. 2007-07-24 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.


 * Padway is fluent in Classical Latin and modern Italian. His minor language problem is in adapting to the transitional Vulgate of the era, already half-way to becoming the Roman dialect of Italian. If I recall correctly, he is not good at spoken Gothic. -- Orange Mike 21:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * To quote from the novel, the Vulgate spoken in 6th century Rome is "closer to the language of Dante than that of Cicero", although in writing, the language is still identical to Classical Latin. From what I can gather, Padway only really learns Gothic after his arrival in the past. --37.82.224.95 (talk) 17:59, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Padway and gunpowder
The way I understood the novel, Padway deliberately declined to make or introduce gunpowder, thinking the times were bloody enough already. 71.131.2.49 04:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)-Paul C


 * There's a story the author was asked why Padway's gunpowder project failed, and answered that he didn't grind the ingredients small enough. David Bofinger (talk) 08:00, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Padway and Mohammed
There has been a bit of controversy lately about whether Padway advocated to Justinian the killing of Mohammed at the end of the book, with User:75.181.120.74 posting on August 12 that he did. This has been reverted twice, first by me, and now (Aug. 13) Orange Mike. The original poster seems quite vehement on the issue, so I am stating the reasoning behind the reversion at greater length here.

As Mike correctly points out, the reference in the book is ambiguous, and does not support this conclusion. It could be interpreted as an invitation to assassination. It could also be interpreted as a call to either the conversion or the conquest of Arabia by the Byzantine Empire; the latter was how I viewed it on first reading the book.

The point is, no strong reading either way is warranted; the most that can be made of it is that Padway advocated preventing Mohammed's rise, due to the disruption it would cause to his project of preventing the Dark Ages. (In the real world, of course, the rise of Islam was both a negative and positive force, helping to preserve ancient knowledge even as it overran the ancient empires, but in the novel Padway had already preempted its positive contributions.) To say more is to force a conclusion that the actual text does not justify.

BPK 14:36, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I concur that no strong reading is warranted. Padway was not making a judgement about Islam's merits; instead he was continuing a policy of seeking Justinian's friendship (or at least tolerance) by encouraging his imperial ambitions in other directions. Hcunn (talk) 01:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Anderson and Pohl stories.
I flagged the paragraph about the Poul Anderson and Frederick Pohl stories as "original research" because this appears to be an inference by the person who wrote the paragraph. There are lots of stories about time travellers attempting to change the past and not getting the results they wanted. You can't assume they're all in response to LDF. If there's some evidence of a connection, please cite it. Otherwise, the paragraph should be removed.Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 03:55, 24 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Evidence now cited. BPK (talk) 17:47, 25 January 2017 (UTC)