A Midsummer Tempest

The setting is in a parallel world where William Shakespeare was not the Bard but the Great Historian. In this world, all the events depicted within Shakespeare's plays were accounts of historical fact, not fiction. As some of the plays depicted anachronistic technology, Anderson extrapolated that this world was more technologically advanced than "our" alternate history. The novel takes place in the era of Cromwell and Charles I, but the characters deal with the English Civil War which is coeval with an Industrial Revolution.

Although various plays are alluded to, the plot is chiefly shaped by A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest.

As part of the homage to Shakespeare, the nobler characters speak in blank verse printed as prose.