A Mirror World

History and fiction are sort of antonyms, so how do historical fiction writers bring fact and fiction together? How closely must historical fiction mirror recorded history? Author Marshall Klimasewiski, Senior Writer-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses the precarious balance writers of historical fiction must strike even when creating alternate histories. He also talks about two stories from his collection Tyrants and a novel-in-progress following Salomon August Andrée, a 19th century Swedish aeronaut who attempted to float to the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon.