No Harry Potter

Today is J K Rowling s birthday and I read in the paper that the idea for Harry Potter came to her while stuck on a delayed train. So what if that train had not been delayed and inspiration never struck her .
 
No Harry Potter means no renewed interest in fantasy literature, and no Lord of the Rings movies. Without those movies, I don't think Game of Thrones would've been made. Children's and YA novels will be much shorter and less mature, since it's Harry Potter that showed the world kids don't necessarily have the attention span of a goldfish. There would be only one good thing to come out of a world with no Harry Potter: since the urban fantasy sub-genre won't be as popular as it is now, Twilight is butterflied away, and 50 Shades of Rape with it. :p
 
Lord of the Rings actually entered production around the time Harry Potter was published. I think YA and Children's literature will be less likely, in this scenario, to see a Renaissance then the Fantasy genre in pop culture. Harry Potter did strike a goldmine in combining the Fantasy Adventure and Boarding School Mystery genres, but neither of those genres were really dead. The problem was that children were just not reading enough in general.
 
Actually, no. Neville Longbottom would have been his undoing.

Dead infants don't save many people. With no Harry Potter, Neville might become the next target and there isn't any reason to believe that his first meeting with Voldemort would be the same as Harry's was.

Torqumada
 
Dead infants don't save many people. With no Harry Potter, Neville might become the next target and there isn't any reason to believe that his first meeting with Voldemort would be the same as Harry's was.

Torqumada

I suppose it depends on how much stock you put on the value of prophecy...or in the belief of prophecy anyway. IMO things would have gone basically the same if Voldemort went after Neville instead.
 
Actually, no. Neville Longbottom would have been his undoing.

Without Snape to beg for Lily's life Voldemort isn't going to spare the life of Alice Longbottom the way he offered for Lily Potter. Therefore her death does not grant Neville the protection from Voldemort Harry had. Long story short, Neville dies.
 
Without Snape to beg for Lily's life Voldemort isn't going to spare the life of Alice Longbottom the way he offered for Lily Potter. Therefore her death does not grant Neville the protection from Voldemort Harry had. Long story short, Neville dies.

Interesting...I hadn't thought about that. I tend to think the forces that work that universe would have made some reason for that to happen, but that's speculation and I don't know how it would happen. I wonder if Voldemort would have been vain enough to ask these pure bloods to step aside so he can take their child. He seems the type to set himself up for his own failure, as he does that all the time in the actual series. Severus Snape would certainly have not switched sides in this universe.
 
I suppose it depends on how much stock you put on the value of prophecy...or in the belief of prophecy anyway. IMO things would have gone basically the same if Voldemort went after Neville instead.

I am currently trying to write a fanfic based on that concept pretty much... :p

I agree that without Harry Potter, YA doesn't take off as quickly. That probably butterflies a lot from good stuff like the Hunger Games, and City of Ember as well as annoyances like Eragon and (much more importantly) Twilight. On the other hand, it is possible that a different YA novel would take its place; Percy Jackson could, although it would not break out of the YA ghetto as effectively for the simple reason that it isn't as good as Harry Potter and not as deep. Assuming it isn't butterflied away, then the most likely YA novel to break out in the late 1990s/early 2000s is probably Mortal Engines. Damnit, I want a Mortal Engines movie! :mad:

teg
 
So?

Today is J K Rowling s birthday and I read in the paper that the idea for Harry Potter came to her while stuck on a delayed train. So what if that train had not been delayed and inspiration never struck her .
She'd have written something else instead. Even assuming one moment of inspiration is changed, she still has the time to fill, and the desire to write. Maybe due to different inspiration we see something like the Cormoran Strike series at that time instead.

Edit: Whatever she does end up writing, the interesting question is how long does she persist in trying to get it published, and is that long enough for it to be picked up? Because in some styles of story and/or story-telling, the original timeline has shown her to be a popular entertainer, able to engage an audience.
 
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