Semaphore Line - Semaphore in Fiction

Semaphore in Fiction

• Pavane, an alternate history novel by Keith Roberts, features a society where long distance communication is by a network of semaphores operated by the powerful Guild of Signallers.

• Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels describe a system of 8-shutter semaphore towers, known as Clacks. In the alternate universe of the Discworld, the semaphore system occupies a similar role to that of the Internet on Roundworld. Using advanced clacks coding it is possible not only to send very fast telegrams, but also to encode pictures and send them long-distance. Shopping and banking via the clacks is also mentioned, in a similar fashion to online shopping.

• In Chapter 60 ("The Telegraph") of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, the title character describes with fascination the semaphore line's moving arms. "I had often seen one placed at the end of a road on a hillock, and in the light of the sun its black arms, bending in every direction, always reminded me of the claws of an immense beetle..." He later bribes a semaphore operator to relay a false message in order to manipulate the French financial market.

• In chapter 10 of C. S. Forester's Hornblower and the Hotspur, the destruction of a French semaphore tower and a shore battery is a key plot point. A similar event is also the focus of the seventh episode of the A&E Horatio Hornblower series,

• In David Weber's Safehold series, a world-wide Semaphore system is used by the Church to help them maintain their dominion over the world.

• In Alastair Reynolds' Terminal World, the distant-future terrain is criss-crossed with semaphore lines relaying information between the one remaining city, Spearpoint, outlying communities and the airborne community Swarm.

• In the young adult fiction book Death Cloud by Andy Lane, Mycroft Holmes tells 14-year-old Sherlock Holmes about semaphore stations, commenting about his school beforehand, saying "All the Latin a boy can cram into his skull, but nothing of practical use."

• In the alternative history novel, Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp, the protagonist, a 20th Century man who falls into Dark Age Rome, develops a semaphore system to warn of invasion. To make it practical he also invents the telescope.