alternatehistory.com

Campbell is one of the ATLs in the GURPS game system. John W. Campbell is killed in 1932 in an automobile accident. Many Campbellian writers never develop into SF writers, and science fiction stays crude space opera. When the Second World War comes, technology initially advances faster, as OTL scifi authors focus instead on black military projects. Also, the military-technical decision trees were slightly skewed towards the optimistic by Gernsbackian pablum. "Radioactive "dirty bombs" were used in Germany in 1944, which retaliated with nerve gas, and in turn the allies responded with germ warfare and finally a nuclear barrage. Science won the war at the cost of 170 million lives. The Allied soldiers had seen the World of the Future, and it was a blasted wasteland. Children did not have "good" science fiction to entice them into Science. Waves of pacifism and swept society. In the 1960s the new genration embraced charismatic religions in massive outdoor folk concerts and revival meetings. Environmentalism in the 1970s strengthened the religious technophobia. In 2004 the world has a technology ~OTL 1950s, and is famine wracked in the absense of the Agricultural Revolution. Communism and Democracy are hurtling toward a final showdown, but at least they won't be fighting "scientifically" this time.
OK, is it ASB that one auto accident could leave the world so backward?
Top