Down in the Bottomlands

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"Down in the Bottomlands" is a novella written by Harry Turtledove.^[1]

It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1994. The story takes place in an alternative history in which the point of divergence occurs 5.5 million years ago during the Miocene Epoch when the Atlantic Ocean did not reflood the Mediterranean Sea, as it did in our history. The Mediterranean Basin thus remains dry to the present day in this time line, as a vast sunken desert called the Bottomlands, averaging nearly two kilometers below mean sea level, with summer temperatures reaching well above 40 °C (104 °F) and with little to no rainfall, and brine lakes.