Rules/Cliches of AH
- Thread starter Gamingboy
- Start date
Brilliantlight
Banned
Straha said:
Well history has shown at least the former is likely to be true. Islam is too tradition bound to compete. Basically when you have a large bunch of religous fanatics have a hard time advancing. A good POD is if the Islamic World copied the Turkish model. China was until recently like that as well. You changed from a monarchy that controlled the country including the economy to tightly to a Communist dictatorship which was even worse to a Autocratic capatilistic (IMO it is Communist in name only) government you have now. Once China discovered capitalism it boomed. A good POD is that the republic Sun founded actually last a while. You would have a good counterweight to the USSR by the 30s.
Susano
Banned
Thats no Islamic thing, though. Chrstian fundemntalism matched Mulsim one bit by bit in the Middle Ages, it wasmaybe even stronger. Yet, Europe overcame this nonsense. That is not a religious, but a cultural thing. Or maybe even a "random" thing...
and Id rather like it to have China not too strong in any TLs, as it holds a SCAY prtential. And I mean scary as in "quite possiblly potential to slowly take over Earth". And TLs with monolithic empires ar eno fun, IMO, heh...
and Id rather like it to have China not too strong in any TLs, as it holds a SCAY prtential. And I mean scary as in "quite possiblly potential to slowly take over Earth". And TLs with monolithic empires ar eno fun, IMO, heh...
Leo Caesius
Banned
I believe there were two commonwealths in the mix.DominusNovus said:Ahem. We were 13 states by 1785.
Leo Caesius
Banned
This reminds me of something that bothers me about AH.
AH writers tend to take the current state of things and project it backwards - i.e. Islam was always the way it is today, Christianity was just like (insert denomination) from the beginning of time, the Chinese/Arabs/Afghans are always a certain way, economics, politics, and society at large tend to function exactly as we know them, or quickly move up to speed even when they don't start that way, and so on - or, at worst, reify scholarly and academic constructs and project them backwards...
AH writers tend to take the current state of things and project it backwards - i.e. Islam was always the way it is today, Christianity was just like (insert denomination) from the beginning of time, the Chinese/Arabs/Afghans are always a certain way, economics, politics, and society at large tend to function exactly as we know them, or quickly move up to speed even when they don't start that way, and so on - or, at worst, reify scholarly and academic constructs and project them backwards...
I think I've mentioned this in passing before, but an interesting exercise is to make several POD's and see how they might return an OTL result. It's something I do when constructing TL's to uncover my grosser or more wishful assumptions. It doesn't work as well when you make large changes (ie Churchill was a nightclub singer) or distant changes (ie Britain remains connected by a land bridge), but otherwise it can be quite rewarding to see how your mind works.
I'm not sure if there are cliche's in AH: a popular idea that keeps coming up maybe points at a timeless lesson. Or that it's a sign of the hardened ATLer's conceit and distance from their own original questioning. And as for rules I don't think there are any. For me AH lets me examine issues, and is not just rearranging a bunch of events on a time line (though there's lots of fun there). History is about people responding to challenges, and that has relevance for all generations. The more rules placed on a POD brings the TL closer to OTL and robs the process of developments that might lead to real discovery. My favourite TL, nurtured over about 12 years, has a completly different global continent structure, megafauna and small populations of people, and has yielded some humanly wonderful, yet historically absurd, insights.
Croesus
I'm not sure if there are cliche's in AH: a popular idea that keeps coming up maybe points at a timeless lesson. Or that it's a sign of the hardened ATLer's conceit and distance from their own original questioning. And as for rules I don't think there are any. For me AH lets me examine issues, and is not just rearranging a bunch of events on a time line (though there's lots of fun there). History is about people responding to challenges, and that has relevance for all generations. The more rules placed on a POD brings the TL closer to OTL and robs the process of developments that might lead to real discovery. My favourite TL, nurtured over about 12 years, has a completly different global continent structure, megafauna and small populations of people, and has yielded some humanly wonderful, yet historically absurd, insights.
Croesus
Brilliantlight
Banned
Susano said:
True, which is why I said a good POD is if more Islamic countries would follow the Turkish model.
Croesus said:
AH is usually a commentary on OTL - hence the popularity of certain PODs, such as the South won / the Brits won / the Armada won, etc. Much the same is true of SF future histories: revolt of the space colonies, fall of the empire, and so on.
I don't think there are "rules," but there are definitions, that distinguish AH from related genres, such as parallel histories. These are worlds that have an obvious similarity to our own, but not some identifiable POD at which they diverged from OTL. Guy Gavriel Kay's novels (most of them) are parallel histories (as is Tarrantry).
-- Rick ---
Brilliantlight said:
Why must they follow the Turkish model? We've done a reforming Ottoman Empire before, but I could see a scientific revolution in the 9th or 10th centuries as being quite plausible too. I don't see any impedimenta to a state remaining muslim and still developing technology.
The mongols will will always come out of the steppes and cause chaos no matter what
An ASB Cliche
If the USA or any part or any military unit thereof is ISOTTED into any time in the past it will immediately be able to become the global hegemon despite losing access to all it's export markets, all it's imports of strategic metals and oil (and it will also be able to immediately occupy all oil fields outside the US despite the fact that there will be people living in those areas who may have something to say about this) and if ISSOTED into a war zone the US will able to defeat any enemy nation even though that nation will have a fully fledged war economy while the ISSOTED US will not.
If the USA or any part or any military unit thereof is ISOTTED into any time in the past it will immediately be able to become the global hegemon despite losing access to all it's export markets, all it's imports of strategic metals and oil (and it will also be able to immediately occupy all oil fields outside the US despite the fact that there will be people living in those areas who may have something to say about this) and if ISSOTED into a war zone the US will able to defeat any enemy nation even though that nation will have a fully fledged war economy while the ISSOTED US will not.
PODs only happen to certain countries, usually Great Powers or English speaking nations and never in Latin America, Iberia, India, Eastern Europe (except for the Soviet Union), Africa (except for South Africa), or South East Asia (except for Japan or China). The only vanished civilisations that can have PODs are the Aztecs, The Romans and the Egyptians. PODs that happen before 1860 are possible but they never get developed into detailed timelines.
National leaders in ATLs are generally either supremely competent, or supremely incompetent.
Wars in ATLs are always ideological.
Only Anglo-Saxons can have successful capitalist economies. If other nations want to grow their economies they have to do so by conquest.
It is impossible for history to progress more than thirty years from any POD without a Really Big War. The nation that wins the Really Big War will be the dominant superpower for the next 500 years (or alternatively, until the next Really Big War in 20-30 years time).
In the real world, narrowly ideological philosophies of government and economics always fail, but in ATLs they always succeed.
Despite having failed fifty years earlier in OTL, in ATLs the Nazis stand a much better chance of surviving to the present day than the Soviet Union does.
ATLs never develop any alternative sports, popular fiction genres, popular TV formats, popular music styles, cuisines or religions.
Space travel must be much cheaper than we realise, because it is often economical for ATL societies with 20th century levels of technology to have bases on the Moon and Mars.
ATLs can somehow progress to higher technology than in OTL without causing any damage to the environment.
If the Roman Empire lasts to the present day, it will still have Gladiators. If the Ancient Egyptians last until the present day, they will still build pyramids. If the Spanish Empire lasts until the present day, it will still have the Inquisition. If the Confederacy lasts until the present day, it will still have slavery. If the American Colonies are still British, Americans will drink tea, travel in red double decker buses and be ruled over by effeminate aristocrats.
National leaders in ATLs are generally either supremely competent, or supremely incompetent.
Wars in ATLs are always ideological.
Only Anglo-Saxons can have successful capitalist economies. If other nations want to grow their economies they have to do so by conquest.
It is impossible for history to progress more than thirty years from any POD without a Really Big War. The nation that wins the Really Big War will be the dominant superpower for the next 500 years (or alternatively, until the next Really Big War in 20-30 years time).
In the real world, narrowly ideological philosophies of government and economics always fail, but in ATLs they always succeed.
Despite having failed fifty years earlier in OTL, in ATLs the Nazis stand a much better chance of surviving to the present day than the Soviet Union does.
ATLs never develop any alternative sports, popular fiction genres, popular TV formats, popular music styles, cuisines or religions.
Space travel must be much cheaper than we realise, because it is often economical for ATL societies with 20th century levels of technology to have bases on the Moon and Mars.
ATLs can somehow progress to higher technology than in OTL without causing any damage to the environment.
If the Roman Empire lasts to the present day, it will still have Gladiators. If the Ancient Egyptians last until the present day, they will still build pyramids. If the Spanish Empire lasts until the present day, it will still have the Inquisition. If the Confederacy lasts until the present day, it will still have slavery. If the American Colonies are still British, Americans will drink tea, travel in red double decker buses and be ruled over by effeminate aristocrats.
Hendryk said:
Check out, Abyssinia Triumphant. About a stronger Ethiopia. It manages to become a sort of Argentina of Africa - well-off, but beholden to Britain economically, and still not exactly an industrial powerhouse.
I have sworn never to write an Alternate History from the Gang of Four, that foul, dictatorial gang which rules over Alternate History, providing at least three-quarters its scenarios,
1) American Civil War
2) WWII
2) American Revolution
3) What if this other guy was US President?