The Sloppiest Alternate Histories Out There...

Chris Oakley

Chris Oakley

Banned
Jape said:
I don't think Back in the USSA deserves to appear in here as its simply tongue-in-cheek with no effort to say "it could have happened here!". I mean the British troops in Vietnam fly into battle Kilgore-style with this blaring out of the speakers, which is both pretty clever and utterly ridiculous.

I once caught a bit of the TV Mini-Series Amerika and was not particularly impressed. It was a pro-nuclear response to The Day After, basically saying without a strong deterrant the Soviets could just walk in. While not alternate history when it was first broadcast its an interesting artifact and clearly influenced by Man in the High Castle - a great book with a ridiculous premise designed simply to set the stage for Philip K. Dick's story. In Amerika that's the whole story.

It has nice touches like Lincoln being reappropriated for Communist propaganda but is full of bizarre stuff like the US Congress -10 years into the occupation- refusing to accept Soviet demands and being gunned down in the Capitol building. I find it hard to believe Congress would not have been packed with puppets long before then, never mind the Soviet response. Its full of heavy handed dialogue about 80s America being weak and unwilling to fight and that's its biggest failing, its boring and preachy. Events -like the Congress massacre- which make no logical sense are chucked in to be symbolic and shocking.
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The irony about "Amerika" is that it portrayed a future with an all-powerful Soviet Union at a time when the real USSR was steadily lurching towards its final collapse. (My guess is that in OTL 1997 Semyonov was working the night shift at the Moscow McDonald's and Denisov chucked the military for a career in Hollywood.:D)
 

Zelc

Banned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYJl5eLw2tA

This is a headscratcher. Also, why was FDR alive?

Of course, I also saw a video where the whole world goes Communist. England gets taken over and the royal family flees to Norway, but socio-economi upheaval in the Second World.

I'd dig it up for you, but I can't find it.
 
Commissar From Kiev

Commissar From Kiev

Zelc said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYJl5eLw2tA

This is a headscratcher. Also, why was FDR alive?

Of course, I also saw a video where the whole world goes Communist. England gets taken over and the royal family flees to Norway, but socio-economi upheaval in the Second World.

I'd dig it up for you, but I can't find it.
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My literal reaction that video:D

ajp9Buw.jpg
 

Major Major

Gary Gygax's (1) Victorious German Arms. (2)

The Germans concentrate their weapons programs on a few advanced weapons and a coherent strategy. Having done so, they proceed to roll over the Soviet Union, advance through the Caucasus into the Middle East and Army Group South links up with Rommel. Then, when the Allies invade North Africa, Darlan orders a fanatic defense, while Franco mobilizes and strikes out of Spanish Morocco . . .

It ends up with a ghastly naval battle involving the Japanese fleet on the Allied side (they switched sides) around Britain, then the nuclear bombing of Berlin, but the Germans strike back and destroy Britain, and the war sort of comes to an end.

Germany becomes isolated amid the German Economic Union, its former wartime allies and puppet states, and forges an alliance with the U.S. under its soon-martyred president George Lincoln Rockwell . . .


This reads like the sort of thing that high-schoolers were doing back when I was one, counting up all the "cool" Nazi-tech and such. Given the organizational chaos of Nazi Germany I think this deserves a (dis)honorable mention.


(1) Yes, the guy who did Dungeons & Dragons ^tm.
(2) Okay, someone named Terry Stafford was involved, about whom I know nothing whatsoever.
 

Major Major

Then there's that award-winning novel The Plot Against America.

I mean:

The Nazis having the foresight to set up Lindbergh a year before they themselves get into power?

Lindbergh flying The Spirit of St. Louis across the country in his campaign? (Hint: it was an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution by 1940.)

Lindbergh winning every state except Maryland on an isolationist platform in 1940? (America First didn't have much traction outside of the Northeast and Midwest.)

Lindbergh flying to Iceland to meet with Hitler? (Occupied by the British then.)

In spite of the U.S. entering the war two years later, there is still a Battle of the Bulge?

And I won't mention the errors he makes about the city where I live.


One wonders; were people just so utterly overawed by a real important famous mainstream writer actually writing an AH book that they just ignored the lack of historical plausibility and plot sense? Not to mention that the characters are so utterly distasteful -- like so many prominent writers, Roth finds Jewish culture disgusting, which I suppose comes under the heading of self-hatred.
 

racefan31

Major Major said:
Then there's that award-winning novel The Plot Against America.

I mean:

The Nazis having the foresight to set up Lindbergh a year before they themselves get into power?

Lindbergh flying The Spirit of St. Louis across the country in his campaign? (Hint: it was an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution by 1940.)

Lindbergh winning every state except Maryland on an isolationist platform in 1940? (America First didn't have much traction outside of the Northeast and Midwest.)

Lindbergh flying to Iceland to meet with Hitler? (Occupied by the British then.)

In spite of the U.S. entering the war two years later, there is still a Battle of the Bulge?

And I won't mention the errors he makes about the city where I live.
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That's a bad novel if I see it.
 

VidaLaVida

Major Major said:
Then there's that award-winning novel The Plot Against America.

I mean:

The Nazis having the foresight to set up Lindbergh a year before they themselves get into power?

Lindbergh flying The Spirit of St. Louis across the country in his campaign? (Hint: it was an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution by 1940.)

Lindbergh winning every state except Maryland on an isolationist platform in 1940? (America First didn't have much traction outside of the Northeast and Midwest.)

Lindbergh flying to Iceland to meet with Hitler? (Occupied by the British then.)

In spite of the U.S. entering the war two years later, there is still a Battle of the Bulge?

And I won't mention the errors he makes about the city where I live.


One wonders; were people just so utterly overawed by a real important famous mainstream writer actually writing an AH book that they just ignored the lack of historical plausibility and plot sense? Not to mention that the characters are so utterly distasteful -- like so many prominent writers, Roth finds Jewish culture disgusting, which I suppose comes under the heading of self-hatred.
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For the sake of the story premise, I was willing to stretch disbelief at the idea of FDR losing an election so handily in his prime.

The ending, though, which hit a total historical reset button, is really where I just threw up my hands.
 

Tocomocho

Commissar From Kiev said:
I gather that there are certain subjects Turtledove is biased about. I haven't read ‘Joe Steel’, but that sounds ridiculous; mostly, because communism would have been different in America. It's my belief that Stalin got away with a tyranny partly because Russia had never been ruled democratically.
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"Steel" doesn't make America communist. He just uses the Depression to secure his position until he turns it into a de facto dictatorship.

If a democratic country, especially, had a homegrown revolution, there would have been at least some democratic elements in the government.
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There are elections all the way to Steel's death. In the second version of the story, there are even two competing parties in the elections, rather than just one.

Also, Americans would never accept a Russian immigrant as their leader (yes, Joe Steel is just Josef Stalin if he immigrated to America).
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He is not an immigrant in the story. He was born in America to immigrant parents.

Finally, and I'll try to not to go a tangent, why does every timeline where the Americans lost the Revolutionary War have the States still being a British colony in the present. That would take a crap-ton of ASBs.
If America did not declare independence in the 1770s, then they would have either:
a) Been made a dominion, like Canada, in the mid-19th Century.
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Why? Canada was made a dominion because the US was next door IOTL.

b) Been let go by the British Empire due to lack of funds, after WW2.
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Why on earth would there be a WW2 at all, let alone one that had the exact same effects in the UK and resulted in the UK adopting the exact same decolonization policy?

Personally, I'd like to see a timeline where America is basically Canada 2.0; just, America OTL, but with healthcare and no 4th of July.
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Turtledove's "The Two Georges". Which is shitty for being exactly that (plus completely devoid of racism, for some reason).
 

VidaLaVida

Tocomocho said:
Turtledove's "The Two Georges". Which is shitty for being exactly that (plus completely devoid of racism, for some reason).
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Except against the Irish, for some weird reason.

Yes, blacks and Native Americans are A-okay in the North American Union. But those potato-eaters have to be kept in their place!
 
Marc Pasquin

Marc Pasquin

VidaLaVida said:
Except against the Irish, for some weird reason.

Yes, blacks and Native Americans are A-okay in the North American Union. But those potato-eaters have to be kept in their place!
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I got the impression it was the whole anti-british-monarchy thing that made them pariah. could be wrong.

The thing that got me about the 2 georges was the amount of pages dedicated to describing meal. Once would have been fine if it was relevant in some way to the plot but it seem to become a case of everytime they had a meal they felt the need to describe it.
 

HIM Dogson

Major Major said:
Then there's that award-winning novel The Plot Against America.

I mean:

The Nazis having the foresight to set up Lindbergh a year before they themselves get into power?

Lindbergh flying The Spirit of St. Louis across the country in his campaign? (Hint: it was an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution by 1940.)

Lindbergh winning every state except Maryland on an isolationist platform in 1940? (America First didn't have much traction outside of the Northeast and Midwest.)

Lindbergh flying to Iceland to meet with Hitler? (Occupied by the British then.)

In spite of the U.S. entering the war two years later, there is still a Battle of the Bulge?

And I won't mention the errors he makes about the city where I live.


One wonders; were people just so utterly overawed by a real important famous mainstream writer actually writing an AH book that they just ignored the lack of historical plausibility and plot sense? Not to mention that the characters are so utterly distasteful -- like so many prominent writers, Roth finds Jewish culture disgusting, which I suppose comes under the heading of self-hatred.
Click to expand...

The worst part of it is that America is Fascist, but nothing really bad happens to black people. With the ending, I feel that Roth realized he wasn't going to be able to have a happy ending, so he decided to throw in several deus ex machines and call it a day. It wasn't just bad AH, it was a bad story.
 

Deleted member 87099

This gem right here.

President Ted Cruz fixes all of America's problems, Gay terrorists strike fear into the hearts of innocent Christians, Islamic extremism no longer exists, and California is now a swing state, need I say more?
 

naraht

theev said:
This gem right here.

President Ted Cruz fixes all of America's problems, Gay terrorists strike fear into the hearts of innocent Christians, Islamic extremism no longer exists, and California is now a swing state, need I say more?
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I'm *really* annoyed at that thread. 7 pages of responses and *nobody* complained about "Road Island" being one of the states that had Gay Marriage. :rolleyes:

Also, I went to http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-swing-the-election/ on 2016 "Swing the Elections". If you set it so that recent historical Hispanic turnout (currently at 48%) is set to 0% (It is 72%D/28%R), the following states flip from Democrat to Republican: Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida. To get California to flip, keep the 48% turnout, and set the Hispanics to 79% R!

In fact to flip California *just* by suppressing Minority Turnout, you have to reduce the Black, Hispanic and Asian/Other turnout each to 4%!
 
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