Fiction That Makes You Want to Read History

Did watching Indiana Jones or The Mummy for the first time give you the sudden desire to learn about archaeology or Egyptology? Has reading a book, whether Wolf Hall as an adult or the American Girl books as a kid, made you crave more details? For many of us, this is a very common experience—so much so that five of us are speaking on a panel about it at CONvergence 2023. (It’s Thursday at 2:00 p.m. in Lakeshore A, if you happen to be reading this before it happens. See you there!)

Here are some types of of historical fiction that especially provoke our desire to read history, with specific examples of books, movies, and TV series we love. Maybe they’ll spark your curiosity too!

1. Time-Travel Media

Nate Wulver, who is currently studying the history of science at the University of Minnesota, says that the Back to the Future movies are one of their favorites. “I really love that the story deals with family history instead of famous names or events, and the implication that ordinary people can be important to history, too.” He adds that Clara Clayton’s dresses are, in his words, “surprisingly accurate for a fun sci-fi film!” Nate has also delved into historical science fiction and 1940s–1980s nuclear science thanks to those movies and their tie-in media.

2. Book-to-Screen Adaptations

Fellow history geek skazka, who admits fascination with “the way different eras and cultures understood the purpose of fictionalized historical accounts,” calls out AMC’s adaptation of Dan Simmons’s 2007 novel The Terror, noting that it “got a whole lot of people in my life into the history of polar expeditions.” They also mention that books like the Horatio Hornblower series by C. S. Forester and the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian are “a great way to get backdoored into Age of Sail history.”

A&E

3. The Classics

Fantasy author and essayist C. M. Finch says that Xena: Warrior Princess inspired her to learn more about Ancient Greece, Naomi Novik’s Uprooted and Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series “resparked my love of classics like Beowulf,” and Stargate fueled a “deep dive into Egyptology.” One of their oldest fandoms is Arthuriana, starting with T. H. White’s The Once and Future King and Stephen R. Lawhead’s Pendragon cycle—but also including, of all things, the TekWar books by William Shatner. From there, she went “old school” and picked up Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory.

Also, it turned a lot of us gay. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

4. Fiction That Involves Our Real-Life Pursuits

Blogger and apothecarist Bex Stockton loves the Brother Cadfael books by Ellis Peters (Edith Mary Pargeter) and their TV adaptation. “These murder mystery stories center around Cadfael, an ex-Crusader who joined the monastic life later in life and became the monastery’s herbalist and healer, and they further encouraged my fledgling interest in medieval medicinal herbs and their usage,” Bex says. “I was fascinated by both the deep understanding of plants and their properties demonstrated by this monk with limited formal training and by Cadfael’s curious blend of worldly and sacred experiences.” She recommends Sweet Herbs and Sundry Flowers by Tania Bayard and Brother Cadfael’s Herb Garden by Rob Talbot and Robin Whiteman for others who consume the series and want to know more.

Grand Central Publishing

5. Fiction Where Just a Tiny Detail Grabs Us

I have personally gone on multiple history deep dives based on a single detail. To give one example, in the movie Amadeus, there are many scenes of Mozart and Salieri directing ensembles in something like a modern style. A recent rewatch triggered some half-buried memory from my years in music school, and before I knew it, I was knee-deep in JSTOR articles, discovering that, in fact, their conducting was ahistorical—it wasn’t until the 19th century that orchestras started having a conductor with a baton. Obviously I understand that stories written and adapted for modern audiences aren’t required to be completely accurate, but the idea of a conductorless opera blew my mind.

What fiction has made you dive into history? What other fiction or nonfiction did it lead you to check out? Let us know in the comments!