We asked a number of Authors to change history with a manky towel. “Manky” is British slang for dirty and used. I’ve been in the UK long enough to go native so I didn’t realize that people on the other side of the pond don’t know what the word means.

I’ve got quite a few responses to (and am having lots of fun with) this one so it’s going to be a two parter. Keep an eye out for part two next week.

You’re transported back in time to a pivotal moment in history you want to change with nothing except a manky towel. When are you and what do you do?

MT: I try to convince Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi (the muslim who initialy conquered Spain) to forget about pressing on to France and instead consolidate control of the Iberian peninsula, paticulary the coastal towns in modern day Asturias. With the entire peninsula under Muslim control the chances of them being expelled are next to none (invasions launched across the Pyrennes end in tears). As a result the Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews and a lion share of the Catholic v Protestant wars are avoided. Spain flourishes as a religiously tolerant, highly mercantile and technologicaly advanced major power right through to the modern day. The Muslim kings run Spain much better than the Christian kings did, maintain public libraries, launch next to no foreign wars and as an added bonus throw much better parties. The idea of Muslims, Christians and Jews living together in harmony might even rub off on the neighbours.

The trick is the initial sales pitch. I’m hoping that my towel, while manky, is made of modern synthetics which I can use as proof that I come from a technologicaly advanced culture. If that doesn’t impress I bullshit for all I’m worth and hope for the best.

John Kessel:
I am in front of the Dakota apartment building in New York City on the evening of December 9, 1980. When a cab pulls up and John Lennon and Yoko Ono get out, and a young man approaches them, I whip out my filthy, stinking towel and wrap it around the young man’s face. The young man gags, doubles over, and retches on the sidewalk. I snatch the pistol from his hand and, as Lennon and Ono hurry into their apartment help him to his feet, I suggest to the young man that Lennon is completely passe, and only losers are big fans of his. But there’s this amazing 100% American rocker he should get interested in, by the name of Ted Nugent…
John Kessel is a writer and editor who most recently edited Feeling Very Strange

Claude Lalumiére

Strangle Paul with the towel before he invents Christianity. With a bit of luck, maybe the stupid thing would never really take.
Claude’s Website

Ian Watson

I want to assassinate St John on Patmos before he perpetrates The Book of Revelations which by its official inclusion in the Bible is responsible for the apocalyptic ravings of American fundamentalists which will bring about nuclear Armageddon. I shall use the towel to strangle him.

You may object that the canon of scripture was only officially approved at the Council of Carthage in 397, but too many people are present at a council, and nudity would be noticable, whereas Hieronymus Bosch’s Saint John on Patmos clearly shows John sitting alone in open countryside writing the book - alone, except from a bird, and a diminutive half-lizard-half-monk demon, who may be trying to distract John, and a nearby angel who seems to be dictating the text, or merely admiring the author at work.
The angel and demon should cancel out. John looks soppy. A soft target for a towel.

Ian Watson is a British Science Fiction Author.

David Gerrold

I step up behind Lee Harvey Oswald and loop the towel around his neck and strangle the life out of him. The selfish one is that I shove the towel up the exhaust pipe of a certain automobile so that the engine dies enroute and the murderer never gets to the scene of the crime.
Dave’s writing career began with the Star Trek episode The Trouble with Tribbles and more recently he’s written Blood and Fire

Steven Brust

It is January 13, 1919, and I’m in Berlin during the Sparticist Uprising. I find Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnicht, and convince them to go into hiding before they are captured and murdered by the authorities. Under their leadership, the revolution of 1921 is successful. Hitler never comes to power. France and England fall to an inspired international proletariat. German aid to the Soviet Union prevents the Stalinist degeneration. We all live happily ever after.
Steven Brust is an american fantasy and science fiction author. He is best known for his novels about the assassin Vlad Taltos.

Nick Mamatas

Hmm, Russia in 1922, whispering to Trotsky that he should watch out for Stalin and to better firm up the Left Opposition he was to head a year later. I’d also slip him some material published after his death, so he could see that many of his predictions about the USSR as a “degenerated workers’ state” were wrong. Or maybe in Germany in 1919 — had that revolution succeeded, an isolated Russia wouldn’t have collapsed so quickly. Or that same country, during the debates over how to SPD should respond to the saber-rattling that presaged World War I.
Nick Mamatas is the author of Under My Roof, Move Under Ground, and Northern Gothic.

David Dyer-Bennet

Hmmm; I rather like the idea from “The Return of William Proxmire” (by Larry Niven) of going back and curing Heinlein’s tuberculosis and letting him have his Navy career. I’d really *really* miss the fiction, though, at least up through 1966. But I can’t really do that with just the towel. Um, I’m not at all sure it would come out the way the story describes it, I’m not even exactly going for that outcome; I’m just interested in watching the experiment.
David’s Homepage

Michael A. Burstein

I’m not quite sure what a manky towel is, but I’d probably wrap it around the O-rings of the Challenger space shuttle, hoping that it’ll warm them up enough to keep the shuttle from exploding.
Michael’s Blog

Science Fiction author Chris Roberson posted this evil plan involving a manky towel on his blog.

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