Why I Killed Ben Franklin

Ben Franklin had to die in Strand: Redemption. If he had lived, then the series would have to go in a different direction.

The Strand series turns on an ancient temple with exotic technology discovered in the Pennsylvania wilderness. He who controls the technology controls the future. Ben Franklin was the greatest scientific mind in the colonies. He might have been in the Empire. So if Ben Franklin still breathed after Redemption, then he would have dominated its exploration. The Strand brothers are intelligent blacksmiths who like Hansel and Gretel were able to find their way back to the Temple. Franklin would have suffocated them and the series collapses into “Ben Franklin Does Science With Alien Artifacts.” Maybe that’s a fun book to write. But it’s not mine.

So I killed him. And English politics gave me the opening.

A Convenient Storm

In 1764, Franklin was in London lobbying for Pennsylvania’s interests. He was the colonies’ most visible representative in England, attending parties, meeting with members of Parliament, pressing the case against heavy colonial taxation. He was also the man most likely to claim control of the Temple research if he returned to Philadelphia.

The people who understood what the Temple contained understood what Franklin would do with it. He wasn’t just a scientist. He was a political operator with printing presses, international connections and the intelligence to reverse-engineer technology that baffled everyone else who touched it. Franklin in Philadelphia with knowledge of the Temple meant England losing its grip on the most important discovery in history. I can’t have that.

Franklin boarded the Ameliorate for his return voyage. The ship hit a violent storm. When the weather cleared, Franklin was missing. Happens all the time, right? Case closed. Sure, people wanted him dead. But did they kill him? If only there was an eyewitness.

The Man Who Would Have Owned It All

He was already running electrical experiments that put him on par with the best natural philosophers in Europe. The man flew a kite into a thunderstorm because he wanted to understand lightning. Hand him technology from an unknown civilization and he doesn’t just secure it or write about it. He takes it apart. Figures out how it works. Then builds on it. And then he uses it, because Franklin always used what he knew.

Worse, from my story’s perspective: he’d have used it for his faction. The Pennsylvania land speculation interests and the political network he’d spent decades building. The discovery would have become another tool in Franklin’s portfolio, managed by Franklin’s people and for Franklin’s benefit. The Strand family gets squeezed out. The ordinary colonists who should be grappling with what this technology means for their world never get the chance because a genius imposed himself.

I needed the discovery in less capable hands. People who’d struggle with it, fight over it, make mistakes with it. That’s where the story lives.

The Constitutional Trap

Franklin’s death does something else I needed. It closes a door that can’t be reopened. In 1754, he proposed the Albany Plan. Effectively a parliament in America. The problem is it would challenge Parliament’s sovereignty. There were some suggesting King George be King of America as he was Elector of Hanover. Also a challenge to Parliament’s sovereignty.

George would have refused. He was raised to deeply respect the English Constitution, which gave Parliament sovereignty. Parliament was sovereign over the colonies, so any other arrangement would have violated that principle. He refused, but was later accused of attempting it.

Franklin was the one colonial figure who might have found a third option. Some arrangement nobody else could see. With Franklin dead, nobody has the creativity or the connections to bridge the gap. The constitutional impasse locks in. The break between Britain and the colonies becomes a matter of when, not if.

That’s why King George came up with the solution he did in Redemption. Because the technology changes who has power, what they can do with it, and what they’re willing to risk to keep it. That collision between an unstoppable political rupture and an uncontrollable technological discovery is what Upheaval is about.

Two Kinds of Decisions

Alternate history writers make two kinds of decisions. What to change and what can’t change. Franklin’s death is the first kind: a plausible removal at a moment of genuine historical vulnerability, done because the story needs it. George III’s constitutional constraints are the second kind: a wall built by a hundred years of English political history that no single character can tear down.

The Strand series lives in the collision between them.