Very indirectly. In an interview, Sir Terry said that his fantasy works were a reaction to the people who were influenced by the people who were influenced by the people who were influenced by Tolkien.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking; all the direct parodies in the early Discworlds were, as you said earlier, from before the POD (or in the case of McCaffery and LeGuin, too soon afterwards to get butterflied). But Brainbin said somewhere that "the people who were influenced by the people who were influenced by the people who were influenced by Tolkien" weren't as influenced by Tolkien ITTL, so the underlying parody of "this is what a generic fantasy universe looks like" might be different.

(I think it was suggested that steampunk might be a fantasy genre; maybe we get something resembling Raising Steam near the start of the series?)

Terry Pratchett was one of those people who seemed to follow me all over the internet, wherever I went, for as far back as I can remember. From your descriptions of him, and what one of my consultants (an avid Pratchett fan - see what I mean?) has told me, that's not terribly surprising - he seems to have written in every conceivable genre. But he also hit it big well after the POD, and I've been accused of being too convergent more than once in the past. Therefore, I hereby rule that if - if - Pratchett achieves notoriety as a fiction writer ITTL, it will be after September 20, 1986.

Fair enough.
 
So TTL is currently at 1984, correct? It seems we're getting close to 1986, when we already know that Lucille Ball is going to be retiring.

Incidentally, what has Stanley Kubrick been doing since Napoleon? All I recall TTL is that he researched but decided against adapting Lord of the Rings, and also decided against OTL choices of Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.
 
Incidentally, what has Stanley Kubrick been doing since Napoleon? All I recall TTL is that he researched but decided against adapting Lord of the Rings, and also decided against OTL choices of Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.

I presume the Shining is out of the cards too.

Come to think of it, how's Stephen King doing? Is he still a writer, or does he remain a teacher?
 
I presume the Shining is out of the cards too.

Come to think of it, how's Stephen King doing? Is he still a writer, or does he remain a teacher?

Indeed, we're wondering about these two great people. Wouldn't be ironic if Kubrick directed a version of The Shining that Stephen King approved of ITTL?
 
What's happened ITTL with King is a good question. The novel Carrie could be very easily butterflied away.
Immediately after posting that question, I actually checked if King was mentioned earlier, and here's Brainbin on King:

What would book covers ITTL be without STEPHEN KING on them? Carrie will be published in the wake of The Exorcist ITTL, and more (many, many more) will follow.
 
Quagmire at the Movies

Brainbin,
I know you asked for the short version but I am addressing 6 movies spread over 35 years. Quagmire is in fact the accurate word to describe our venture in Vietnam. A little bit of scene setting is helpful. At peak deployment during 1968 we had over 500,000 people assigned to the Vietnam mission, the vast bulk of them actually on the ground in Vietnam. The big fact that really isn’t dealt with in the media or in movies much is that most of these people were not actually engaged in combat. Readers of this board know there is one whole thread devoted to logistics as a topic but even here what most people write about is combat or strategic decisions. This places a huge skew on the public understanding of what is going on and fundamentally misrepresents the experience of about 2/3rds of those deployed.

I was thinking through those I had seen and could therefore comment on when, after a couple of hours of this, I flashed on being about to miss the very first movie I had seen. “The Green Berets” released in 1968. I saw this movie while on R&R in Bangkok late in 1968. The theater was filled by troops on R&R and their “dates”. It was a John Wayne war movie, pretty indistinguishable from a dozen other John Wayne war movies with very little relationship to our experience of Vietnam. I went because my driver and my date said they wanted to go and it wasn’t more time in a raucus bar. I think the drivers and the dates got some sort of rake off from the theater for every GI ticket they sold.

It took another decade before my next movie, the orginal theatrical release of “Apacolypse Now” in 1979. None of this movie was evocative of my personal experience though some scenes early in the film represented events I could see happening. As I expect most people know this film used Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” as a structural core and it didn’t take too long for the movie to quite litterally wander off into the weeds. I didn’t see the other movie of this time frame, “The Deer Hunter” released in 1978.

The late 1980’s saw the biggest batch of Vietnam movies of which I missed “Full Metal Jacket” (1987). “Platoon” (1986) had many familiar elements though my observation isn’t about the combat scenes. Of all the Vietnam movies I think “Platoon” revealed the most about the disconnects between what happened in the field and in relatively secure base areas. For me I was less concerned with the depiction of drug and alcahol abuse than the very real psychological dissonence involved in returning from combat, popping open a beer from the squad fridge, and flipping on the TV tuned to “Combat ETO” or an “I Love Lucy” rerun on the Armed Forces TV network. “Platoon’s” other revelatory feature was its portrayal of incompetence by junior officers and general discontent amoung the troops. My sense is these disconnects got steadily worse the longer we were stuck in the quagmire.

“Born on the 4th of July” (1989) of course is more about what today we call PTSD than it is about the war itself. While I didn’t really experience this myself I knew vets who did. I didn’t learn my opposition to the war in Vietnam, I knew we were on a fool’s errand before I went. What worries me more is how impervious we seem to be to learning some of the relevant lessons, or even being able to agree on what the lessons are. “Good Morning Vietnam” (1987) without question reflects my own experiences most closely even though my job bore no relationship to that of the character played by Robin Williams.

The final movie on my list is “We Were Soldiers Once” (2002). I think it is telling that these movies came out in intervals of roughly 10 year blocks and that the movies of each decade are more consistant within a decade than they are between decades. It is quite possible that while “We Were Soldiers” is in my view the most historically accurate depiction of the events at a specific point in space and time it may turn out to be more connected to the events of 9-11 and have more in common with movies depicting events such as “Blackhawk Down” and “Gulf War I”.
 
I hope everyone had an enjoyable Easter weekend - or just an enjoyable weekend in general, as the case may be :)

One really interesting side-effect of having the 1984 Olympics in Tehran is that it's going to shatter the average American's view of the Middle East -- one that, IMO, still mostly holds today -- as existing somewhere in the middle Bronze Age.

I can think of a lot of ways in which shattering that false belief may have significant consequences....
An excellent observation, Andrew! Seoul 1988 IOTL was definitely an inspiration for the depiction of Tehran 1984 ITTL, right down to the sudden and dramatic democratization of the state regime between being awarded the Olympics and actually hosting them. I think it's safe to say that 1988 put Seoul on the map IOTL, and the same is certainly true of 1984 for Tehran ITTL... for better and for worse.

On a more general point, we've discussed before that parody is a measure of cultural significance and that successful genres inspire parody. ITTL, there's the example of the film Catastrophe as a parody of the Disaster Movie. IOTL, the SF boom following Star Wars inspired parodies such as the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Spaceballs and Galaxy Quest. With an earlier SF boom due to the greater success of Star Trek, what are the equivalents ITTL ? AFAIR, there has been a Planet of the Apes parody starring Shatner, but I can't recall if you've mentioned others.
You remember correctly; the Planet of the Apes parody is called Monkey World. I'm surprised you don't remember the famous "Captain Kirk interrupts" wave of parodies started on The Two Ronnies - that eventually spread to just about every sketch comedy show on the air in the UK during the mid-1970s. There are also lots of great parodies airing on SCTV, as well.

So TTL is currently at 1984, correct? It seems we're getting close to 1986, when we already know that Lucille Ball is going to be retiring.
Yes, we're in the middle of the 1983-84 cycle - the ante-penultimate cycle of the timeline. Once I get these next two updates hammered out (which should be in fairly quick succession - I've been working on both of them at once), that will conclude this cycle and bring us forward to 1984-85, the penultimate cycle - one brimming with a great many revelations.

John Fredrick Parker said:
Incidentally, what has Stanley Kubrick been doing since Napoleon? All I recall TTL is that he researched but decided against adapting Lord of the Rings, and also decided against OTL choices of Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.
Among these revelations will be another look into the career of Stanley Kubrick ;)

Immediately after posting that question, I actually checked if King was mentioned earlier, and here's Brainbin on King:
Mr. E, you have earned the No-Prize for Superlative Sleuthing! Well done :cool:

Brainbin,
I know you asked for the short version but I am addressing 6 movies spread over 35 years.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! I really appreciate them, and found them most enlightening :)
 
You remember correctly; the Planet of the Apes parody is called Monkey World. I'm surprised you don't remember the famous "Captain Kirk interrupts" wave of parodies started on The Two Ronnies - that eventually spread to just about every sketch comedy show on the air in the UK during the mid-1970s. There are also lots of great parodies airing on SCTV, as well.

Sure, but I wasn't really thinking of sketch show parodies, but rather those works where the film, book or tv/radio series as a whole was a parody of another work or genre and became well known in its own right (in extreme cases becoming better known than the original work).

I have to say that I'd be a bit surprised if the Kirkus Interuptus sketch is considered the height of parody ITTL.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
I have to say that I'd be a bit surprised if the Kirkus Interuptus sketch is considered the height of parody ITTL.
Who said it was? There's already an example ITTL of a blockbuster work of parody that actually upstages the original work: Catastrophe!, based on TTL's The Greenpoint Dilemma. It's just that Pratchett might not be one of those ITTL. Lots of writers break out every year, but more don't, after all.

EDIT: On another note, it has come to my attention that this TL has just passed one million page views! Congratulations!
 
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Only in my very wildest dreams did I ever think that this day would come, but now that it has, I can only say this...

THANK YOU ALL FOR ONE MILLION VIEWS!

798px-1000000.png


The continued interest all of you - commenter and lurker alike - have shown in this thread (and timeline), even after all these years, continues to humble and astonish me :eek:
 
Yes, we're in the middle of the 1983-84 cycle - the ante-penultimate cycle of the timeline. Once I get these next two updates hammered out (which should be in fairly quick succession - I've been working on both of them at once), that will conclude this cycle and bring us forward to 1984-85, the penultimate cycle - one brimming with a great many revelations.

Bet this cycle will be a big wham episode, on the scale of Breaking Bad's "Ozymandias" and Lost's "The Candidate." BTW, Happy LOST Day everyone.
 
Only in my very wildest dreams did I ever think that this day would come, but now that it has, I can only say this...

THANK YOU ALL FOR ONE MILLION VIEWS!

798px-1000000.png


The continued interest all of you - commenter and lurker alike - have shown in this thread (and timeline), even after all these years, continues to humble and astonish me :eek:

Many congratulations!
 
Yes, we're in the middle of the 1983-84 cycle - the ante-penultimate cycle of the timeline. Once I get these next two updates hammered out (which should be in fairly quick succession - I've been working on both of them at once), that will conclude this cycle and bring us forward to 1984-85, the penultimate cycle - one brimming with a great many revelations.

Among these revelations will be another look into the career of Stanley Kubrick ;)

Well then I eagerly await them :D

(Also, congrats on your thread now being the most popular post-1900 TL that's not about a world war. ;))
 
Congratulations on 1 million views and beyond. This is amazing.

I haven'thad much chance to read this lately, but I checked in to see - obviously it's not there yet, but I hope the concept of "Back to the Future" is still there to be made. I wonder what technology is like compared to OTL's - will they still have the faxes in every room like in the OTL sequel? Or soemthing more like OTL's cell phones, etc.. Obviously tht would be after the end of the TL but still interesting to ponder.

Of course, I suppose it could have been made even earlier OTL, too. With everyone so excited by Star Trek and the sci-fi genre in general, time travel may have become more popular, too.

Of course, if it is made now (1985) there's no question about who the President is - John Glenn is at least a plausible name compared to OTL's Ronald Reagan. However, Doc Brown could ask "Where were the 1984 Summer Olympics" and give a similar sarcastic retort when told where.:) "I suppose the Winter Olympics were in Siberia? And Butte, Montana won the World Series.":D
 
Who said it was? There's already an example ITTL of a blockbuster work of parody that actually upstages the original work: Catastrophe!, based on TTL's The Greenpoint Dilemma. It's just that Pratchett might not be one of those ITTL. Lots of writers break out every year, but more don't, after all.

Well I was actually asking about TTL's equivalent of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, rather than Pratchett's work. As I understand it, Catastrophe! was a parody of Disaster Movies (similar to OTL's Airplane!) rather than a parody of SF. The Two Ronnies sketch was the example that Brainbin gave of an SF Parody. While I enjoy their sketches, I wouldn't say that they are in quite the same league as HHGG.

Congratulations on 1,000,000 views BB - here's to the next million!

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
I have just finished reading this timeline from beginning to end.

This is probably the best timeline I have ever read and I look forward to the next update.
 
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