Well seeing how the king of britiannia himself has the power to wipe peoples memories it is pretty easy to believe the history given is not entirely accurate.
What's the most implausible AH ever?
- Thread starter General Mung Beans
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Well seeing how the king of britiannia himself has the power to wipe peoples memories it is pretty easy to believe the history given is not entirely accurate.
I remember reading a short in which the election of Mondale causes economic collapse and apparently Mexico to be overrun by Communists. Not sure if it was _meant_ to be parody or not.
Then there's Harry Harrisons older AH series which has intelligent dinosaurs and human beings coexisting (the human beings seem to have evolved in America).
Then there are Magic Geography-Restricted Plagues (Years of Salt and Rice, the Crystal Empire, the Gate of Worlds...)
Then there' Chris Robeson's recent "Celestial Empire" books, which has China opposed in space by their one great enemy -the Aztecs, of all people, and their spaceships which use human blood as an ignition switch... (Sorry, Chris, but the Awesome isn't enough to overcome the Stupid. Rule of Cool (I think) fail. Now, the Brazilian Jewish empire and their ships which simply _don't_ operate on the Sabbath, now that's silly-amusing rather than silly-annoying. Napoleonic Space Empire, that could work - I mean, it worked fine for David Weber...)
Then in the recent "Other Earths" collection there's one in which Jerusalem is located in Las Vegas (and guarded by the Templars): apparently Jesus was from Hawaii, the native Americans are Muslims, and the Hawaiians are like the Jews, in exile in the southwestern deserts. But, like several stories in that ho hum collection, it's more playing with ideas or pure fantasy than anything that could rightfully call itself "alternate history." ('11 original stories about the different paths our world might tak if certain events never occured', my hairy ass).
Bruce
I'm not sure if this one fits under the catigory but "The Yiddish Policemen's Union"
I mean JFK getting married to Marilyn Monroe seems to unbelievable.
I mean JFK getting married to Marilyn Monroe seems to unbelievable.
They could have saved it by you fighting Hitler, who's piloting a laser-firing spider mech before having a katana duel with him on the top of a giant mega zeppeling preparing to fire a superlaser at New York.
Awesome...I want that game.
How about A Damned Fine War? Pattonwank at its finest! With extra cheese.
Or Journey to Fusang? An Irish Rogue escapes the Mississippi Caliphate and saves the Mexica Empire from being overrun by a mad Cossak leading a Horde of Mongols, Comanches, and Sioux? A POD of full Mongol over-run of Europe, including ethnic mixing of European stocks with Mongol blood, yet Will Shaxpur and Queen Bess get cameo mention? Classic.
And though I love Steven Barnes and really enjoyed the books, Lion's Blood certainly applies for Unintentionally ASB. Though the social commentary of it hit the mark far better than that CSA mockumentary.
Sounds like a John Birch Society leaflet.
Clank! Intelligent dinosaurs is a possibility but something would have had to have happened to cause the dinosaurs to evolve out of the ecological rut they lived in for nearly 300 million years. Otherwise the pathway would indicate more optimized dinosaur species but not necessarily greater intelligence. And that something may or may not have created a positive environment for the evolution of mammals to a point that they could compete with sentient dinosaurs.
Actually geography does restrict disease spread in a world without rapid transportation; I can't speak to the others but KSR did get it right with The Years of Rice and Salt (one of my favorites although it does go off the rails toward the end). The Vikings carried all the same diseases as the 16th century English and Spanish, but the incubation period for most of these diseases expired by the time the Viking ships reached the New World and thus the Native Americans were spared early exposure. And the north-south axis along which the Americas run acted as a temperature and geographic filter, which isolated and ultimately eliminated the Eurasian diseases carried by the proto-Americans across the Bering land bridge to begin with.
Likewise, the interior of Africa resisted European penetration until the late 19th century partly because European medicine wasn't up to treating African diseases. Sub-Saharan Africa's climate and geography caused most human diseases to evolve in a completely different environment--Ebola and the human variant of HIV were only detected recently because until now most of their victims didn't survive long enough to reach major population centers and infect others. There's been some impressive work done on this, both in epidemiology and anthropology.
I would think that the Aztecs if they'd survived long enough to reach that tech level would probably have either abandonned or modified the blood sacrifice part of their religion (and even if it were still there, there's no reason to make it a technical limitation!) And why would the Jews have ships that don't operate on the Sabbath? Any number of ways to get around that and obey Talmudic law (automation and non-Jewish operators--this is what Israel OTL does to get around the restriction) without creating a massive strategic liability.
That is lame. Moslem Native Americans I can buy (it's just an issue of someone else forcibly converting them from their original belief systems) and a new Jerusalem in Vegas might even make sense depending on the back story. But the Hawaiian religion and national idenitity is tied up in the Islands themselves to a much greater extent even than the Jews and Israel. They'd cease to exist as a coherent society after more than a couple of generations in exile.
That actually wasn't a bad story, although I question the wisdom of the US government dissolving a community that appears to be doing quite well and making money hand over fist. The original mandate for the Sitka District may have expired but there's no reason it couldn't have been renewed. And given the reasoning behind establishing the enclave in OTL (as much to ensure a strategic presence against the Japanese as to provide a refuge for Jewish refugees) I don't see the US government acting against its own interests in such a big way.
JFK getting married to Marilyn is pretty far-fetched. Even if one or the other were to convert, JFK's much greater social status would make such a pairing extremely awkward at least. Consider that in OTL Kennedy married up (Jacqueline Bouvier came from very old money whereas the Kennedys were still considered nouveaux riche). Here he'd be marrying pretty far down (Monroe's roots being classic working-class)...it sounds silly to 99% of the population in 2009, but in 1950's upper-crust America it was a pretty big consideration.
Well, to be fair while I enjoyed YoR&S it went off the rails a little earlier, like immediately following the POD when the rest of the world continued completely as OTL, with long-past-the-POD historical figures like the Yongle Emperor and Shogun Tokugawa appearing right on schedule.
Well, to be fair while I enjoyed YoR&S it went off the rails a little earlier, like immediately following the POD when the rest of the world continued completely as OTL, with long-past-the-POD historical figures like the Yongle Emperor and Shogun Tokugawa appearing right on schedule.
I could buy that mainly because until the 15th century OTL Europe was a backwater that influenced comparatively little in the world, so there's no reason why Japanese or Chinese internal politics should be affected. Neither country had a lot of contact with Europe (most of the Silk Road trade was handled by intermediaries) and in the case of China the same pressures that forced isolationism would have still existed (probably even moreso with a stronger Islamic caliphate as a neighbor; he did get it right in that the absence of Christendom allowed Islam to develop along somewhat different lines than OTL and become even stronger--the Sunni-Shi'a split appears either to have not taken place or to have been reconciled, for example).
Now, if he'd tried to insert Shakespeare, Peter the Great, etc. into the story, that would have gotten lame.
It's possible that the POD was even earlier than the Greeks, as according to Picard the Bible had been significantly altered as well. But all of this could have been the work of a repressive government retconning literature 1984-style to suit its needs; IIRC Khan Noonien Singh winning the Eugenics Wars was the official POD.
Hm? There was a lot of contacts across the Black Seas strait, and the Golden Horde was pretty cheek-by jowl with their Russian subjects in the upper Volga area. The issue is the failure of the disease to spread to Asia: interior Africa and the Americas are red herrings. (And if the life cycle of the disease were much faster than it was OTL, lots of parts of _Europe_ would have survived: Poland was almost untouched by the first wave of the plague due to crappy roads and thinness of population at the time).
Although it would be interesting to see a story set in the far future of a world in which subsaharan Africans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders were the only survivors (the years of corn, poi, and sorghum?)
My point was that the restriction was silly and suggesting an even sillier counterexample.
Bruce
Everyone assumes the Hond III was an M1 Abrams. Stirling himself says they were based on the Centurion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_tank
Also, the Eagle interceptor was based on the Westland Whirlwind...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_Whirlwind_(fighter)
and the Rhino ground attack aircraft was based on this....
http://www.military.cz/usa/air/war/bomber/a38/a38_en.htm
Point is all the Draka vehicles and aircraft were perfectly doable with 1940s tech
It's a little more complicated than that, Snarf. Unless you have some form of mystic "butterfly nets", then changes will begin to spread quickly immediately following the POD ("Butterfly Effect" ala Chaos Theory). First off trade patterns will immediately change, affecting people's travels and affecting how money shifts, how cultures form and interact, and even affecting political patterns, marriages, and births. That sudden and huge vacuum will also mean that emigration will begin at some point, and far sooner and more intense than alluded to in the book (decades at worst, not centuries). Each change will create several more which in turn create more, increasing exponentially until the world is unrecognizable in a couple of gens, despite geographical or cultural isolation.
And that doesn't even include the effects on weather/environmental patterns and animal/plant populations caused by a sudden loss of so many human lives...and of their ensuing consumption, waste, fires, etc. And then any ensuing changes to food supplies around the globe, fertility/conception rates, etc. Hardline "butterfliists" even claim that no birth, even seconds after the POD, even across the planet can be counted on since minute weather/temperature/timing changes can completely change which sperm fertilizes an ovum.
Overall political patterns may, in some cases, follow similar lines, but even this is far from sure and no specific person can be counted on showing up. So if KSR had some great Shogun rise in Japan in the *Renaissance, that's one thing, but when that Shogun is OTL's Ieyasu Tokugawa? Sorry, not happening.
Still, though, I enjoyed the book.
Bill Cameron
Banned
Drakkon,
Sure they were.
Of course the Draka timeline doesn't have the experience that produced those designs. It's not just a matter of technology or industrial technique, it's also a matter of knowing what capabilities are desirable and which work. I can design and then build a Centurian in 1936 because I know all about the tank battles that occurred between 1939 and 2009.
The Draka have no actual experience in armored warfare beyond that of armored cars and yet can design a Centurian. The Draka have no actual experience in aerial combat beyond that of zeppelins and biplanes and yet can design a Whirlwind or A-38. That's ASB.
Wargames and theoretical analysis can only take you so far, the rubber needs to hit the road sooner or later. Yet Stirling show no comprehension of this fact throughout the entire repulsive Draka series.
Bill
Not red herrings; simply examples of how geography does limit disease spread. And Russia outside the major cities (which weren't very big at that point) was a pretty empty place. Kiev had a population somewhere between 35-50,000, and that was the center of Russian culture at the time. Novgorod (probably around 25,000) wouldn't get its big population boom until about two centuries after the POD, and Moscow was just starting as a village! Climate plays a role as well: a couple of good hard Russian winters and plague isn't a problem (it is originally a tropical disease with origins in India).
A more realistic depiction would have been to have the larger European cities die off, rendering the countryside vulnerable to invaders, general chaos, etc. as smaller communities try to fend for themselves. The population crash isn't as swift but it happens just as surely. The case of Poland only reinforces my point. They could survive the plague, only to be wiped out by the Mongols (who would subsequently abandon the area once the Horde turns to infighting, leaving an empty wasteland).
Sounds like a postnuclear scenario...the populations most used to living off the land survive the best (when they survive at all).
The point was taken by me; I'm just wondering why the editor didn't take it before it was printed.
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Butterflies only float so far, though. By that logic any form of prediction of what could happen is impossible. Any outcome is as reasonable as any other.
Also keep in mind that medieval Europe was a much less resource-intensive society than any society today. It was not a major importer or exporter except for minor luxury items enjoyed by the elite. It had almost no diplomatic presence beyond the Near East. Its loss would be noticed by the Islamic traders who made their money off the European elite, but once other trade networks are established (and they are early on in the book--a stronger presence in Africa and greater trade with the Chinese and Indians) they'll make their money elsewhere. The population is low so its impact is correspondingly low, and even though the croplands go wild and the domesticated animals go feral there's still no major change in their contribution to the equation.
Based upon what empirical evidence? Homeostasis is homeostasis throughout the entire human species. Over a very long period of time, I could see this, with radically different outcome for human evolution among other things. But not over only a few hundred years.
Overall political patterns may, in some cases, follow similar lines, but even this is far from sure and no specific person can be counted on showing up. So if KSR had some great Shogun rise in Japan in the *Renaissance, that's one thing, but when that Shogun is OTL's Ieyasu Tokugawa? Sorry, not happening.
Perhaps that one is a bit of a stretch, since Portugese and Dutch attempts at exploiting Japan helped create the impetus for the Tokugawa Shogunate to begin with (although Ieyasu himself was not the one who closed Japan; that was his grandson IIRC). But substitute the Moslems for the Europeans and you could get a similar (albeit not identical) outcome. Japan is isolated from much of the world except China until the 16th century. What happens in Europe doesn't matter squat to them.
A lesser author would not have been able to pull it off at all.
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True, but they were in constant contact with the Golden Horde by river and horseback, and those Mongol-type riders travelled far and fast: excellent vectors of disease, if you ask me. It's quite likely that the temporary Mongol unification of most of Asia helped the plague spread OTL. (Actually, I'm not sure of your point. Are you arguing Russians should have survived in YSR because of their low population density? Or the low density of OTL indicate that low density doesn't stop the advance of the plague? You can't have it both ways!
)And you don't say anything about the plague's seeming inability to cross salt water...
Which would lead to something more like the Islam-conquered but still with a large native population scenario in the "Gate of Worlds" (Silverberg), or perhaps like the Europeans in Latin America, not the total obliteration of YSR. Would have been interesting in itself...
A more realistic scenario would have the plague spread, and hit _both_ Muslims and Christians. Due to low population density, Muslims in places like Iran, Central Asia, parts of NW Africa, Arabia, etc. do much better than in densely populated areas in W. Anatolia, Egypt, Iraq, etc. Similarly, the French, Germans, Italians, etc. are devastated while Balkan and Eastern European nations do better. New forms of Islam come out of the desert, as they often do, and restore order and repopulate the Nile and the Tigri-Eurphrates, while the small surviving fragments of western Europe remain chaotic, and the Poles move west into Germany while struggling in the east against the Russians...
Bruce