The Sloppiest Alternate Histories Out There...

[Van555]

There Are No Words

Europeans incapabale of curing polio...

 

[RamscoopRaider]

Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes series, good for a brief romp but make sure your brains are turned off while reading it

 

[Garrison]

Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes series, good for a brief romp but make sure your brains are turned off while reading it

Frankly unreadable if your British; rather like the 'War That Came Early'. Seriously this stuff is about as plausible as having the Japanese advancing from Pearl Harbor to Washington conquering all in their path; with the help of Godzilla.

 

[Grey Wolf]

1 was not so bad. 2 was slightly plausible until 1/2 way through. 3-What?

1 was fine, and considering what happened to Lusitania on the one hand and Britannic on the other the WW1 part was perfectly plausible

2 was stupid. "the Bolsheviks take over" covers a gigantic hand wave that goes nowhere

3 was amusing but libellous

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[jpj1421]

Frankly unreadable if your British; rather like the 'War That Came Early'. Seriously this stuff is about as plausible as having the Japanese advancing from Pearl Harbor to Washington conquering all in their path; with the help of Godzilla.

*sigh* The War the Came Early....I have The Coup just staring at me on my bookshelf. There are characters in there that I like, and want to see the end of their stories, but....eeesh.

 

[Grey Wolf]

I'd like to submit my first ever timeline from 4 years ago. The intro is a cringe inducing disaster, and of course the religious Belgian civil war is a great exercise in Alien Space Bats.
In my defense, I was 12

Yeah, I remember when I was about that age I wrote (on green paper in those days) a timeline where Libya allied with Greece (for all the ships) and the Sikh terrorists and invaded the UK

Amusingly, a lot of modern AH and future history follows the same general premise - take things that are in the news, somehow mash them all together and create a threat. Twenty years later it just looks embarassing

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[area11]

I remember there was a TL put out by I believe the Daily Mail which had the USSR successfully invade Britain in the 70s.

 

[Grey Wolf]

There are quite a few sloppy timelines on the board that I've read.

This is perhaps the worst alternate history out there. I saw there terrible reviews it received, and thought perhaps I might read it (maybe it'd turn out to be AH's Eye of Argon-something so bad it's good). Anyway, after reading, I concluded that it was the worst book I ever read. The writing was dreadful and the alternate history nonsensical. Avoid like the plague.

The "What If" books I found very useful in their study of the background to events and the positing of a PoD. What I did not find so useful was in their alternate histories, especially as so many of them have MASSIVE CHANGE and then everything turning back to happen more or less how it did in OTL - maybe the Doctor would like that, but I don't think the butterflies would

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

How about the alternate history for Muv Luv? It involves a peaceful transition from the Shogunate into the Japanese Empire, and yeah, I don't know where to continue.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Cripes how rank. No wonder Newsweek went bust.

Another self-published stinker was A Damned Fine War by Bill Yenne. Apparently Bill Yenne is a key member at the Patton Historical Society, but that didn't stop his novel about Patton fighting WW3 from stinking up the joint.

Where to begin? I'll start with how Yenne had no idea how to differentiate his characters except through their names. It's damning for the entire Patton Historical Society when a novel they backed up to the hilt was written by a guy who apparently wasn't even slightly familiar with the mannerisms and style of the most bombastic American leader of the war. Ditto for Stalin. "Wooden" doesn't describe it; try cardboard..

Which is curious given that almost any major figure from the 1930s onwards has video footage available of them on Youtube, eg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYjnWXFTQkM
for Patton

One thing that always surprises about Patton is just how old he is! When people eulogise about him from reading campaigns I don't think they are aware of this

He was like the American Von Rundstedt

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Grey Wolf]

How about the alternate history for Muv Luv? It involves a peaceful transition from the Shogunate into the Japanese Empire, and yeah, I don't know where to continue.

To be fair wasn't there a party amongst the Shogunate who wanted achieve that? I'm pretty sure from my reading of 'The fall of the Tokugawa Bakufu' that some of the leaders were looking for a way to achieve this peacefully

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[DStecks]

The "What If" books I found very useful in their study of the background to events and the positing of a PoD. What I did not find so useful was in their alternate histories, especially as so many of them have MASSIVE CHANGE and then everything turning back to happen more or less how it did in OTL - maybe the Doctor would like that, but I don't think the butterflies would

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

The What If books disregard butterflies entirely. It works for them though, because the TLs in them tend to have very narrowly defined scopes, not having enough time for major butterflies to set in, even if they were accounted for. Also, the major function of butterflies, in my experience, is authorial fiat. The What If books are written by legit historians, and attempt to be as "scientific" as possible. They focus only on quantifiable cause and effect, and accounting for butterflies means that some things happen simply because the author wills it.

So, is it realistic? No. Is it understandable given their context? Yes.

 

[count palatine]

There's only one Alternate History that can get away with being a shameless, hand-waving wank, and that's Book IX, sections 17–19, of Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, which claims that the Romans would beat Alexander the Great if he turned his conquests west instead of eastward. It's the earliest known piece of counterfactual history, so you can't expect the art to be well developed right of the bat; heck they're still hadn't had a firm grasp on how to do accurate historical research.

 

[Lord Roem]

*sigh* The War the Came Early....I have The Coup just staring at me on my bookshelf. There are characters in there that I like, and want to see the end of their stories, but....eeesh.

I have never quite understood where Turtledove's obsession with Horace Wilson comes from, given that he was literally just some guy.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

Full Metal Panic's alternate timeline might qualify as a sloppy alternate history due to a second Soviet War in Afghanistan.

 

[eternalkhaos]

There are quite a few sloppy timelines on the board that I've read.

I looked at one of those timelines and... wow, the JFK and RFK survived one is hilarious and bad enough for me to comment on the following...

1958: Lee Harvey Oswald was Killed by The Police in Texas

So either the policeman who finds Oswald for no explanation and killed him and these three guys who appeared via time machine...

...I got nothing to comment and had to wonder how the heck that POD really happened. Oh well.

June 10 1961 Neil Armstrong Meets John F. Kennedy for the Man on the Moon

June 12 1961 Neil Armstrong Departs in the Space Ship to Moon

Jun 14 1961 Neil Armstrong Landed on the moon Put the USA Falg on the Moon and Returns to Earth

Jun 16, 1961 Neil Armstrong Returns to Earth

It doesn't help that his daughter was diagnosed with a tumor at this exact month so it's obvious he didn't checked Wikipedia. Then again, it's a timeline where Neil went to the moon that early and quickly as possible.

Feb 4 1963 JFK Vists England, France, Spain, Holland, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Albania, Turkey, Japan, Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Switzerland and All of Europe and JFK is Also a First US President to Visit Albania and Hungary

Okay. After the fact the police officers (or The Police?!?) shot Oswald for no reason and Neil went to the moon that early, I have no words about JFK went to everywhere in the world in a single day so yeah.

Nov 22 1963 JFK Visits to Dallas, Texas and No Lee Harvey Oswald and no Assasination of John F Kennedy Because Le Harvey Oslwald is Already Dead for 5 years

The most obvious piece of this timeline. Yeah, This timeline is really sloppy and would had been researched more but he's banned so never mind, I'm just giving my thoughts on this.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Oh, any TL (whatever the format) that prevents Islam as the pod, then has things like the Crusades still happen (or even in one case, 9/11) -- but don't take into account first how the Byzantine Empire would be affected, etc...

 

[Binky the Clown]

Europeans incapabale of curing polio...

Jonas Salk was of Irish descent, so Europeans are definitely capable of curing polio - regardless of whether or not they're living in the magical land of America...

 

[Kevin R.]

Now that I think of it, the universe of "CSA: the Movie" counts, too: no way could the C.S.A. have conquered the entire north, then Mexico, and THEN most of Central & South America, and have been able to survive to the present day, especially with slavery never having been phased out. Kevin Willmott's concept was an interesting one but not that plausible when it comes down to it; Turtledove's "Southern Victory" was much better by far.

You forgot Japan and Southeast Asia.

That was intended less as serious alternate history and more as satire of race relations. It was blatantly ASB, and your point still stands, but I kind of enjoyed that film anyway, as anvilicious as it was.

I remember there was a TL put out by I believe the Daily Mail which had the USSR successfully invade Britain in the 70s.

Oh, the Daily Mail. Whenever I get angry at American media, I always remind myself that at least we don't have the Mail... until I remember that we have Fox News and the New York Post.

On that note, I present to you: "Cuba without the sunshine", their exercise of imagining a world without Thatcher. I remember they also did a future TL in which all of their bogeymen (Muslims, atheists, gays, multiculturalists, the whole works) take over Britain, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just their everyday headlines.

 

[WrappedInShadows]

As a Titanic researcher, I consider this to be one of the worst AH's I've ever read:

http://blog.timesunion.com/chuckmiller/if-titanic-didnt-hit-the-iceberg/12749/

Number two was just...awful.

Yes, the Bolsheviks care THAT much about punishing the Czar that they're willing to start a whole freaking war over it.