I know there must be other, really obvious examples that I'm missing.
Weaving historical figures into modern cultural mythology has been having something of a renaissance recently. Teddy Roosevelt and a number of other chaps turn up in Caleb Carr's books (The Alienist is phenomenal). Conan Doyle is a rather popular one, too. Mark Frost did him right in The List of Seven. And I swear I've seen Harry Houdini somewhere in the past couple of years, but I can't remember the book. I remember an opening scene where he was having a fight with his brother in a hotel room in New York City (possibly over a woman)...
And, of course, there's all that alternate-history stuff. I'm not a huge fan-- when I want martial fantasy, I know I can turn to Steve Erikson and Elizabeth Moon and be competently entertained-- but Harry Turtledove is the really big name in the subgenre, I think. I read Guns of the South seven, eight years ago. Meh.
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Weaving historical figures into modern cultural mythology has been having something of a renaissance recently. Teddy Roosevelt and a number of other chaps turn up in Caleb Carr's books (The Alienist is phenomenal). Conan Doyle is a rather popular one, too. Mark Frost did him right in The List of Seven. And I swear I've seen Harry Houdini somewhere in the past couple of years, but I can't remember the book. I remember an opening scene where he was having a fight with his brother in a hotel room in New York City (possibly over a woman)...
And, of course, there's all that alternate-history stuff. I'm not a huge fan-- when I want martial fantasy, I know I can turn to Steve Erikson and Elizabeth Moon and be competently entertained-- but Harry Turtledove is the really big name in the subgenre, I think. I read Guns of the South seven, eight years ago. Meh.