"What Madness Is This?" Volume II: Prophecies in the Dark
- Thread starter Napoleon53
- Start date
The binary code at the end of the paragraph translates to “This is how the world ends!..”
See, I actually don't think Isaac Asimov will be an Illuminist. I fully believe he's going to be a Yankee. Remember, he was Jewish, and TTL's Russia has managed to find a way to have an even worse track record with Jews than OTL.
I do wonder how much of this could be applied to the Republican Union space force...
The only sane man in the RU airforce getting stuck with building up an entirely new slace based branch of the military. Being surrounded by eggheads, sociopaths and plain old idiots that he has to wrangle into something have way functional.
Why am I picturing a Reagan with the same OTL demeanor but also a closet sadist and cannibal ala Hannibal Lector?
Actually I can see the Republican Union getting much more 80-90's cyberpunk once Oswald finally dies (he's still human after all). With his next successor stering it away from the from the cyberfunk and space focused excesses towards something more practical. Because let's face it all of Chuck's hedonistic policies would probably seriously damage the RU economy in the long run.
Why am I picturing a Reagan with the same OTL demeanor but also a closet sadist and cannibal ala Hannibal Lector?
I think the 70's theme will stay. Cyberpunk is far too computerized for the Union. Plus, it's Napo's thing, and I am here for it. Also, the hedonism he encourages in the general public could actually help the economy. As long as it's mostly being fueled by the private sector and not the result of the government going into severe debt, consumerism is very helpful for growth.
Given that one of their enemies is the Illuminists, who are actively aiming for AI and Singularity, that actually makes a lot of sense.
Speaking of dystopian books, the content of which seems perfect for the world of WMIT, I would also like to suggest "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury.
For those unfamiliar with the novel, it describes a dystopian society whose government has banned all types of books and instructed the "firefighters" to burn all the books still in circulation.
I think this timeline and Ray Bradbury's novel share the same atmosphere: the world is on the verge of nuclear war, but the population is too drugged and too dependent on TV to care. The book implies that most people are terribly unhappy, but also in self-denial, with many attempting to commit suicide without realizing it.
Likewise watching the 1966 and 2018 book adaptations, i believe that the architecture and fashion sense in Fahrenheit 451 would fit very well in Oswald's RU:
And oh yeah, this bad boy here (a creepy mix between a robot and a genetic abomination) is one of the main istruments used by the firemen to hunt down dissidents and traitors:
For those unfamiliar with the novel, it describes a dystopian society whose government has banned all types of books and instructed the "firefighters" to burn all the books still in circulation.
I think this timeline and Ray Bradbury's novel share the same atmosphere: the world is on the verge of nuclear war, but the population is too drugged and too dependent on TV to care. The book implies that most people are terribly unhappy, but also in self-denial, with many attempting to commit suicide without realizing it.
Likewise watching the 1966 and 2018 book adaptations, i believe that the architecture and fashion sense in Fahrenheit 451 would fit very well in Oswald's RU:
And oh yeah, this bad boy here (a creepy mix between a robot and a genetic abomination) is one of the main istruments used by the firemen to hunt down dissidents and traitors:
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Woke up at 3 am and can't sleep. Here's further aesthetic for fun, and I have always envisioned Copland's "Hoedown" as the song of Yankee high science adventure.
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You know, it would be funny if the Illuminists become a brutal deconstruction/subversion/parody of utopian futures science fiction cliches:
Everyone in the future is an atheist: Illuminists persecute and kill religious people, along with destroying anything religious or traditional. Ironically, Illuminists are zealous in their atheism and with the Aether mysticism and Cult of Technology and Reason, they may be not so different from religious fanatics.
Jobs will be done by the machines: apart from the massive unemployment and other social problems, the machines will be highly inefficient and prone to bugs and glitches (think Paranoia RPG) . If that wasn't enough, machines don't really understand what humans want them to do (has anyone played the horror videogame SOMA? The "villain" is a good example of an innocent AI doing the most screwed up things to people). Of course, since machines are supposed to be more efficient and better than flawed humans, Illuminists will dismiss this problems and think it isn't nothing serious. Or worse, they will completely deny it and persecute machine critics.
At the moment these two are the cliche parodies/deconstructions/whatever I've found.
Everyone in the future is an atheist: Illuminists persecute and kill religious people, along with destroying anything religious or traditional. Ironically, Illuminists are zealous in their atheism and with the Aether mysticism and Cult of Technology and Reason, they may be not so different from religious fanatics.
Jobs will be done by the machines: apart from the massive unemployment and other social problems, the machines will be highly inefficient and prone to bugs and glitches (think Paranoia RPG) . If that wasn't enough, machines don't really understand what humans want them to do (has anyone played the horror videogame SOMA? The "villain" is a good example of an innocent AI doing the most screwed up things to people). Of course, since machines are supposed to be more efficient and better than flawed humans, Illuminists will dismiss this problems and think it isn't nothing serious. Or worse, they will completely deny it and persecute machine critics.
At the moment these two are the cliche parodies/deconstructions/whatever I've found.
We've already been through this before. Reagan would most likely not exist in the Madnessverse because his OTL parents would be at the opposite ends of the social ladder.
“Boys, I think we need to radio this in to Space Force High Command”
“And tell them what?”
“That we’ve found another lost tribe of Jews....in Space!”
Extract from Zap Zephyr: The Origin Chronicles
It would be funny if that after the 70's the Illuminist block ends up gradually overtaking the RU led west in terms of both military and consumer electronics. With all the best TVs, computers and gaming consoles being made in glorious mother Russia, even if the place is a nightmarish deconstruction of Utopian ideologies.
I'm not surprised, especially because Illuminism seems to idolize technology so much...
We are forgetting idolizing technology is not the same as favoring advance. In WH40K the Adeptus Mechanicus, for example, forbids innovation because they think God Machine gave mankind already all knowledge and technology and it just needs to be rediscovered.
Here, some Iluminists could reject "ecopunk" technology because they believe it's a "desviation from correct progress". But if we really want Iluminist factions to be whacky and pseudoscientific while pretending the opposite, the anti-eco could say environmental protection and appreciation for nature and eco-biotechnologies are the product of a dormant reactionary psichology because they appeal to an unconscious desire to return to a more savage and supposedly bucolic primitive age (you know, nature is cool and all that) and progress must be achieved through obsessive industrialization and "artificial" technology. Of course, the eco factions will create their own whacky explanations about how a focus on industrial and not natural tech is reactionary.
Just look at the levels of environmental degradation in the former Soviet bloc, on account of (among various other interrelated reasons) an ideology that conflated 'progress' with heavy-industry output, associated environmentalism with bourgeois romanticism against the resource needs of The People, and led to a set of governments which directed scientific R&D from the top-down towards ideological ends. This isn't to say that the Soviet bloc was all smoking factories and flammable rivers (or that the US alliance web was all that much better), or that people living under communism were any less appreciative of natural beauty than those elsewhere, but simply to say that technological and economic advancement is not a one-dimensional progression to produce the same outcomes at the same times in the same places, and that associations we make with 'advanced' technologies and economic systems are only that way because of the particular historical and sociological contexts in which they arose OTL. TTL, those contexts will be totally different, and so things like environmentalism, computing, or spaceflight might carry totally different ideological associations than we are familiar with.
Well at least we'll get an equivalent to the juckica comics from the Illumist block.
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