Because its inherently fascist adjacent to imagine worlds where fascism wins and works long term (Not saying that it in and of itself is a bad thing but its something we should all take into account), and because Byzantine Wanks generally can serve the purpose of "turning back the tide" that the alt-right views as one continual wave hitting "Europe" from Manzikert to contemporary paranoia about "Eurabia".
Statements like this remind me of why I think the 1964 film, It Happened Here is probably one of the best ‘Sealion Victorious’ scenarios and why I could write an essay on it.
That's the way to do it.
Fascist-adjacent is a term that also includes varied things such as "Military History", "Vegetarianism", "liking certain types of art" its not a value judgment, its saying that this stuff can when put in a blender lead people to being someone who needs to be punched in public.
Guns of the South is rated weirdly low. Your point about recency bias makes me think that it might be a generational thing; that book has not aged well and I suspect that in general younger people getting into alternate history are probably not getting into it through Turtledove. Whereas to people my age (mid 20s) or older Guns of the South was one of the defining books of AH, there's a good chance its the first AH book you read.So there was a youtube video today in which alternatehistoryhub describes an AH iceberg he'd found online. You can find the iceberg here. And I'll post the full image below a spoiler cut. Cos I think it's quite interesting what are picked as prominent media and where in the iceberg of notoriety things are put. Not sure who made it, the video says it's a collaborative effort but there's a very specific kind of ww2 focused, recency biased, ah.com focused viewpoint here.
It's an interesting image for a lot of reasons but what stood out to me is just how prominent @The Red and his work is in it. Decisive Darkness apparently three layers more notable than Guns of the South.
Fallout is pretty clear AH. It takes place in a world where the transistor was never invented, which is why everything is perpetually stuck in the 1950s. Admittedly as far as the games themselves go this is a pretty minor detail (you could be forgiven for missing it completely and just thinking everything was 50s themed because the 50s are cool), but it's a key part of the backstory.
In addition to getting a TV series it was also a #1 bestseller, and I think that any book which is on the bestsellers list should automatically be in the top two tiers. Online nerds like us may not be huge on it, but for 99% of the public that's what they think of when they think AH.
Incidentally,congrats on your old TL being mentioned.
These sorts of notability lists are inevitably subjective in any number of ways, but I refuse to take seriously anything which has The Two Georges as absolute top-tier while The Guns of the South is only on Tier 7. There's not even any notable recency effect in play, since TTG was only published three years later than GotS.
I think you need to remember the coauthor of Two Georges, he will add a few more readers than Turtledove's usual
