I'd like to but outside of a journalism background, I don't think I offer much expertise (I was born and raised in the Norfolk area, but I don't have as much Navy know-how as you'd think). I fear that anything I'd bring to the table would be more fan fiction bordering on fan wankery than legitimate alternative history.
Protect & Survive Miami: End of Watch
- Thread starter wolverinethad
- Start date
I'd like to but outside of a journalism background, I don't think I offer much expertise (I was born and raised in the Norfolk area, but I don't have as much Navy know-how as you'd think). I fear that anything I'd bring to the table would be more fan fiction bordering on fan wankery than legitimate alternative history.
I have a journalism background, too. That will go further than you might expect it to in regards to learning how to write fiction.
There are two types of fanfiction: fanfic that tells a story, and fanfic about someone's favorite 'ships'. I write the former, with the aim of eventually writing fiction professionally. Besides just going for it and beginning to write, I'd recommend two things: reading fiction from authors you like and seeing for yourself how they write, and picking up a good book on writing. Stephen King's On Writing is highly recommended.
Yes. I incorporated the target list from The Lucky Country in the NZ spinoff (can't write about one without looking at the other, at least a little), but little else. Far too optimistic about the logistics of the post-WWIII period for the P&Sverse.
I've read On Fiction and you're right to recommend it.
My fear isn't so much that I can't write fiction — I can, I think; at least in spurts and dribbles. It's more that alternative history seems to be a genre that puts a priority on accuracy over personality development. In other words, I think I could gin up a nice little story about a bunch of people facing the end of the world, but could I mix in the technical knowledge that would separate it from a Friends fanfic? There's the rub.
That is where research comes in. There's a lot you can discover online through a careful Google search, and your local library should be able to fill in the gaps.
For example, if you want your story to include military settings, start with researching military bases or naval ships, or anything you want to touch on. Tom Clancy has written several non-fiction books on different branches of the military, along with books on generals who fought in Desert Storm. Again, the library is a great resource. Amazon and used bookstores can be great resources as well.
What I'm saying is, every serious writer does his or her share of research, myself included, and I feel confident in saying the other P&S writers have, too. But don't let that scare you off from writing. Start slow, make sure you get it right, find a beta editor (maybe someone here will offer to help), and give it a go.
Cheers. The cities / towns hit in the first sound wrong, but guess that could go back to the original timeline.
In terms of Melbourne being missed, or Townsville getting hit?
One thing that bugged me about the original was how Perth apparently made it to Portsmouth without refuelling. Or just why and how India got in on sending aid to Britain. Still, if you're going to write an annexe to someone else's TL, you work around that sort of thing.
Melbourne being missed I can understand. There might have been masses of warheads, but not such an abundance of delivery systems to allow every such city to get hit. But Cairns, Alice Springs, Townsville and even Perth don’t make so much sense. Cairns is the worst of those.
And yeah the big aid convoy is a bit “oh we must save mother Britain”. It’s crap. Every ounce of aid that could be scrapped together would go to Sydney, anywhere else hit in Australia and of course New Zealand. India too would have very little to spare.
Pangur
Donor
Very much the case I would think. The 50s at a pinch would have the last time that would have happened
Perth, as Fleet Base West, kinda makes sense if you squint at it (if the writer was using a 2015 perspective without fully accounting for the difference thirty years makes, we can give a lot more leeway). Alice Springgs, as a kind of "well, Pine Gap is next door" makes more tenuous but not impossibly distant sense. Cairns and Townsville, though, are far too small. The attacks there were from an SSBN in the Arafura Sea, IIRC, so it could be hand waved as a case of "well, that's what was in range". But in that case, why skip Brisbane? Seems artificially engineered to get tension between Hawke and Joh.
The aid convoy made a little sense in the original as a "desperate Brits take half of Perth's crew hostage because the Colonies must have food squirrelled away somewhere, right?" - I took an angle that the Antipodean countries sent one convoy and never trusted Britain again after that (privately, at least; the public would probably miss the details). Certainly NZ and Australia have far more to gain from trade with one another than sending scarce tonnage on a pleasure cruise to Britain).
Mind you, republicanism probably gets quite the shot in the arm, ITTL; even after the recovery period Britain will be much further away than it was before.
For what it's worth in all this, despite the lack of communications involved, I don't think it would be a stretch for the Commonwealth to remember that the Motherland, such as it is, has nuclear weapons on bloody nuclear submarines. Would you want to be hostage to that? Desperate people would do incredibly desperate things.
That was about the logic I used. Neither Christchurch nor Melbourne were keen to test the theory of precisely what Corsham was willing to do to ensure Britain's survival.
Entirely by coincidence, the CO aboard Perth was told that a nuclear reprisal had been made for the (presumed) Argentine seizure of the Falklands just before he set sail for Australia. The message was received loud and clear.
Back across the pond, I do wonder just how strongly central authority (state-level; federal-level is a bit of a moot point until, what, six months post-Exchange?) will be able to assert itself in the wake of the oncoming mess. The American population are more individually well-armed and spread out than in the UK, which should throw a few big spanners into the works.
Speaking of the devil, I wonder what Manny's doing right now...
Can’t see that. They’re desperate not mass murderers who just forget their close bonds with another nation. I think the act of holding half the HMAS Perth’s crew hostage was particularly ASB. I’m not entirely dismissing the idea of Australia and New Zealand providing aid but it would be limited and take some time to begin.
Good point. I'll take notes for the rewrite of the NZ version.
Pangur
Donor
Letting loose with a nuke on Argentina after they made a grab for the Falklands is rather different from using nukes to demand food
Long runway at Cairns and RAAF base at Townsville potentially put them into the target plot perhaps.
Makes sense, eliminate possible runways for American planes (ANZUS ally and whatnot). I assumed the submarine captain was pursuing whatever targets of opportunity presented (maybe they're within MIRVing distance of one another? It would explain the lack of a hit on Brisbane waay to the south if there were a limited number of missile tubes available).
All the same, a megaton for Darwin is a bit of overkill (cue Men at Work joke).
Wasn't manned until '88 ('bare base' until the decision was made in 1984, and even then it took four years of prep work).