PC: Steven Barnes' Lion Blood

Just finished reading the book - you can find a description of the plot on wikipedia - and was wondering how plausible many of the actual alt-history plot twists are. One in point was the steamships on the Nile in the first millennium AD.

PS: I don't know if this is the right forum to post this in, but it seemed as good a place as any since it involves the alt-history of the book rather than the actual book itself.
 
I owe a debt to Steven Barnes because he put through idea in my 14 year old mind of Africa developing differently but I think several aspects of his time line were implausible in order to have a more complete role reversal of black and white people in America/Bilalistan.

1. All of Africa would not convert to Islam I really disliked that he had the African civilizations all give up their native languages to all speak Arabic.

2. Sub-Saharan Africa simply wouldn't be as interested in Europe as Europe was in Africa. Africa was a huge landmass full of gold that was between Europe and Asia. Much more of Africa has direct access to Asia.

3. Using 10 million Europeans to grow sugar cane in the Caribbean and cotton in the South is a great way to get 10 million dead Europeans in a few short years. They wouldn't have the skills needed to grow crops in a tropical climate and they wouldn't be as resistant as either blacks or natives to tropical diseases. What would be much more plausible would be blacks using indentured blacks to grow crops after their attempts to use native labor inevitably failed. Or they could try to grow sugarcane in Africa.

4. I found it strange that the only place Africans would colonize would be the United States. The area around Brazil is much closer to Africa and I would think the climate would be much more familiar to their lifestyles.
 
I didn't like how he had Bilalistan and the Aztecs occupy the same exact borders of the U.S. and Mexico, it was very unimaginative and part of the fun of alt history is crazy maps.

One plausible thing is that I can definitely see more developed parts of western or central Africa deciding to colonize the New World, though I feel like due to proximity, the Brazilian coast would be the first point of contact. There should be more breeds of African horses than just Kenyan Greys. I would've liked to read more about the effects that the New World crops would have on African populations and I kept hoping for an alt-history map of Africa! Oh well, maybe we'll get it in the almost certainly never to be released sequel The Bronze Nile.

Have you read Zulu Heart?
 
I didn't like how he had Bilalistan and the Aztecs occupy the same exact borders of the U.S. and Mexico, it was very unimaginative and part of the fun of alt history is crazy maps.

One plausible thing is that I can definitely see more developed parts of western or central Africa deciding to colonize the New World, though I feel like due to proximity, the Brazilian coast would be the first point of contact. There should be more breeds of African horses than just Kenyan Greys. I would've liked to read more about the effects that the New World crops would have on African populations and I kept hoping for an alt-history map of Africa! Oh well, maybe we'll get it in the almost certainly never to be released sequel The Bronze Nile.

Have you read Zulu Heart?

Not yet. But I found some things, like Alexander marrying another wife after living longer (which I took to be the original PoD) following an amputated leg and having kids as a pharaoh of Egypt, to render things like the birth of well-known historical figures, like Shaka (nearly twenty centuries later) a bit ASB
 
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