As we all know in TL-191 written by Harry Turtledove, the Confederacy wins the Civil War and becomes a bitter rival of the United States until its ultimate defeat in the Second Great War about 80 years later. However, ITTL, I wonder what would sorts of literature would be published due to SGW. In particular, I want to inquire what you all think of the sorts of dystopian novels that could be inspired. IOTL, the most prominent and famous example of a dystopian novel loosely based on real history was 1984. George Orwell was inspired to right about a scenario where the world was divided into three zones of influence based on the Tehran Conference. All three zones of influence became superstates and totalitarian dictatorships with never ending war between them, partly due to the Cold War resulting in several cities in Europe and North America getting attacked with nuclear bombs. I ponder what the TL-191 version of 1984 would look like.
TL-191 Version of 1984
- Thread starter PGSBHurricane
- Start date
Oceania which is dominated by the US and includes North and South America and Australia; Eurasia which is dominated by Germany and includes the UK; continental Europe and Russia and Eastasia which is dominated by Japan and includes China; Korea and all the Pacific island chains except the Sandwhich Islands; The neutrals that are fought over are most of Africa and all of India -which includes Pakistan and Bangladesh ?
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In my opinion, the 191 version of the United States might be somewhat slightly more authoritarian than our timeline, so I’m not certain that authorities would be very tolerant of a novel such as George Orwell’s 1984, which tends to point out the flaws in totalitarian government. Maybe a book such as 1984 would be viewed as being somewhat unpatriotic or defeatist, and maybe it exists only as a banned book circulated on the black-market? For example, in our time line 1984 wasn’t even published in the Soviet Union until 1988, so maybe it would be treated the same way in the 191 postwar US and Germany? Maybe, maybe not.
I think that dystopian stories such as the 1959 novel “Alas Babylon” might be popular in the postwar 191 universe, due to the fact that more nuclear weapons were used in the Second Great War than our own World War II, with at least two of the bombs being used on the North American continent. Maybe the threat of nuclear war might be an even bigger threat in the 191 universes than in our timeline, and people might read books such as Alas Babylon or On the Beach in an attempt to understand what might happen to their world following a nuclear exchange with another power?
Also, maybe the environmental movement isn’t as strong in the 191 universe as it is in ours, so maybe by the 1980s, pollution and over crowding have reached epic proportions unseen in our timeline, except for maybe Tokyo or Hong Kong during the 1960s, so maybe books such as Harry Harrison’s “Make Room – Make Room” (the basis for the movie “Soylent Green”) might be popular in the 191 universe.
Well, that’s my two cents. Books which criticize government authority frowned upon, but books which point out the dangers of nuclear war and environmental degradation might be tolerated.