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Alternate History General Discussion

For the more sober end of that probably EdT’s Fight and Be Right is a good example, in which butterflies aplenty occur.
I miss EdT timelines. They were like a novel you wished would become a series of them just to spend more time in the alternate Earth(s) he would create. Maybe Keir Starmer can finally bring Labour back to power so we can enjoy another wonderfully crafted story. Or two. Or three.
 
Any exceptions people know to the general trend of "the farther from the POD, the worse it gets?"
 
Any exceptions people know to the general trend of "the farther from the POD, the worse it gets?"

In terms of detailed timelines I think it's pretty cast iron. People get beyond the story they initially had.

There are however quite a few timelines which have a pod in the 1500s but jump forward to 2010 for the story without that being a sign of lesser quality.

Lands of Red and Gold is an example. The POD is in 10,000 BC or whatever but the story is in the 1600s. An Unreformed Kingdom does the same, 1820s POD, story in 2010 ish.
 
Any exceptions people know to the general trend of "the farther from the POD, the worse it gets?"


Is that a general trend? I suppose it depends a lot on the format which is rarely cast iron. As @Gary Oswald says there are plenty of TLs which start with a small PoD long before the actual story begins but then there are those which aren't particularly linear like Green Antarctica (not my cup of tea but others seem to enjoy it) which jumps around millennia back and forth. Or those which are fairly linear but then become more episodic throughout the decades like Fight and Be Right. Or there's the 'leaders' format like Meet The New Boss where each chapter covers years if not decades.

I'd wager the more prevalent trend is TLs suffering from trying to reach beyond their natural endpoint, either due to fan pressure or an apparent need to get to the present day. Naturally those which suffer from that do tend to get worse as they go on. I know some weren't fond of AANW/Festung Europa at all but it really does begin to decline when you get into the aftermath section.
 
I'd wager the more prevalent trend is TLs suffering from trying to reach beyond their natural endpoint, either due to fan pressure or an apparent need to get to the present day. Naturally those which suffer from that do tend to get worse as they go on. I know some weren't fond of AANW/Festung Europa at all but it really does begin to decline when you get into the aftermath section.

Yeah, that's what I meant more than just deliberately setting the story a long time after the POD in a preplanned way. And yes, postwar AANW is one of the biggest examples of this.
 
'Get to the present day' likely feels like the thing you just do with a non-narrative timeline, since they're fake history - history is written by someone and leads to us. A narrative can more easily go "so thanks to Ada Lovelace, there are mechas fighting in WW2 Crete" because nobody expects the entire timeline from A to Z laid out in a story
 
I don't think the rule "the further from the PoD the worse" is even true in general for any AH where the PoD itself isn't the point. I'm not really a fan of LTTW before the French Revolution which is a full 80 years later, my favourite "part" is probably part 6 which covers the turn of the 20th century and has yet to really "stumble". Malê Rising is at its best between 1880 and 1920 or so and it's obvious that beyond that point it starts to get a bit "epilogue-y". Even something like Issac's Empire (i.e. the thing that I stumbled upon that let me find AH.com) is much better in the 1500s than in the 1100s.

There is often a sweet spot, where you're far enough from the PoD that you can have really big changes while still being somewhat recognisable as history. It's notable that Thande (who's probably the most successful example I know of keeping a timeline going) is a writer of general speculative fiction rather just an AH author, as once you get far enough from the PoD you're almost writing Fantasy without magic, with all the need for worldbuilding and the pitfalls that entails.
 
I don't think the rule "the further from the PoD the worse" is even true in general for any AH where the PoD itself isn't the point. I'm not really a fan of LTTW before the French Revolution which is a full 80 years later, my favourite "part" is probably part 6 which covers the turn of the 20th century and has yet to really "stumble". Malê Rising is at its best between 1880 and 1920 or so and it's obvious that beyond that point it starts to get a bit "epilogue-y". Even something like Issac's Empire (i.e. the thing that I stumbled upon that let me find AH.com) is much better in the 1500s than in the 1100s.

I don't think Malê Rising ever gets bad (and my main issues with it is I think the choices he makes with historical characters early on are clearly the author moving pieces where he needs them rather than organic possibilities, I simply can't imagine any world in which the Mahdi is a champion of reform within the Egyptian Empire) but I certainly think it runs on too long and gets worse once he overruns his original (or in this case I think third) ending. My opinion at the time was it should have ended with decolonisation and then maybe a jump forward to the nigerian union to see what the world looks like in the present day.

I think the breaking down of the nation state into a genuinely new political framework is fascinating and does that classic sci-fi thing of creating 'a thing that thinks as good as a man, but doesn't think like a man' as Campbell put it in that it's a genuine alien framework that still makes sense within those terms (I can't mention that quote of campbell without mentioning the best reply to it which I think was from le guin, which was to say 'Of course a woman would also fit that definition, but Campbell would never print a story about one of those').

But the problem with the story in general in the later parts is the narrative of most of the countries ends in the 1920s and the next 80 years he's just repeating the same beats, a lot of the tension has gone.
 
There is often a sweet spot, where you're far enough from the PoD that you can have really big changes while still being somewhat recognisable as history. It's notable that Thande (who's probably the most successful example I know of keeping a timeline going) is a writer of general speculative fiction rather just an AH author, as once you get far enough from the PoD you're almost writing Fantasy without magic, with all the need for worldbuilding and the pitfalls that entails.
EdT was the one who first (IIRC) compared writing far from the POD as "fantasy without magic" and said that's why he didn't see the point of doing it; conversely, I find it interesting because you're talking about a world with "a real past but an imagined present" and that opens up all sorts of possibilities. Though it does cause headaches when you run out of place names already established by the POD to set things in!

(also thanks!)
 
That's interesting EdT said that, because the framing story of Fight And Be Right and its spinoff book about what the world looks like is decades past the POD!
 
That's interesting EdT said that, because the framing story of Fight And Be Right and its spinoff book about what the world looks like is decades past the POD!

He took the view that stuff outside the main timeline was okay as long as you kept it broad-brush and unfocused. I think he was completely right that once you're decades beyond a POD you're into the realm of imagination fantasy.
 
That's interesting EdT said that, because the framing story of Fight And Be Right and its spinoff book about what the world looks like is decades past the POD!
Sorry, I wasn't specific enough - Ed said he considers 50 years to be the limit, and the distant-finale stuff of both A Greater Britain and FaBR are exactly 50 years after its POD (more or less).
 
He took the view that stuff outside the main timeline was okay as long as you kept it broad-brush and unfocused. I think he was completely right that once you're decades beyond a POD you're into the realm of imagination fantasy.

I really think that worked well in this respect, because I enjoyed those brief glimpses immensely but would probably have not had if I had to read all the preceding and subsequent events in the same manner. Those ideas really lent themselves well to short-form reads - the TL didn't need film director Franco enjoying MDMA in the Florida Keys or Shug MacDiarmid being reassigned to Africa after trying to have Glasgow abandon the Old Firm, but I sure needed them in my life.
 
I don't think there's any real rule of thumb, it all depends on what the intent is with the work. You may not be doing it as a narrative tale but as an alternate history text or even a pure date:event format there is some intent.

To take some examples, a lot of those President ATL McATLface back in the Old Country don't last much beyond the tenure of the President in question. Why would they have to? The story is about President McATLface, and their story is ended. Similarly, @Blackadder Mk2's The Crowned Prime Minister and With Nowhere Else To Turn don't go beyond the premiership of Douglas-Home and Thatcher, respectively, but that's because those are the premierships that they concern themselves with. It doesn't mean you can't get over some glimpses of what has become after these Presidents or Prime Ministers have left office through suggestion in the text.

To give a counter example, I enjoy many of those 18/19C US TLs that mix narrative and text entries - so much so I foolishly tried to right one, that stupid boy really shot himself in the foot there! However, I find that without a clear end goal point or one too far in the future these can quickly become bogged down and lose steam as they go on, ironically often as steam power really takes off.

A very verbose way to say, it depends.
 
I don't think there's any real rule of thumb, it all depends on what the intent is with the work. You may not be doing it as a narrative tale but as an alternate history text or even a pure date:event format there is some intent.

To take some examples, a lot of those President ATL McATLface back in the Old Country don't last much beyond the tenure of the President in question. Why would they have to? The story is about President McATLface, and their story is ended. Similarly, @Blackadder Mk2's The Crowned Prime Minister and With Nowhere Else To Turn don't go beyond the premiership of Douglas-Home and Thatcher, respectively, but that's because those are the premierships that they concern themselves with. It doesn't mean you can't get over some glimpses of what has become after these Presidents or Prime Ministers have left office through suggestion in the text.

To give a counter example, I enjoy many of those 18/19C US TLs that mix narrative and text entries - so much so I foolishly tried to right one, that stupid boy really shot himself in the foot there! However, I find that without a clear end goal point or one too far in the future these can quickly become bogged down and lose steam as they go on, ironically often as steam power really takes off.

A very verbose way to say, it depends.
Indeed. AH may be a broader...thing than almost any kind of literature; can't remember who said it's more a setting than a "genre".

Interesting what you say about those US TLs, what was the one you wrote incidentally, what was the concept?
 
Interesting what you say about those US TLs, what was the one you wrote incidentally, what was the concept?

The clunky name of Shooting Yourself in the Foot; POD was William Crawford dies between the 1824 election and the 1825 contingent election, leading to Henry Clay trying some shenanigans to get himself on the ballot presented to the House of Representatives.

Didn't get very far into the 1840s, set my scope far too wide.
 
Regarding this,I personally felt while reading Romanian AH that developing the world 50 years after the PoD was one of the many things Romanian AH writers aren't really good,making their stories suffer in some aspects.

Liviu Radu best exemplified this- ''Constanta 1919'' is a collection of three stories built around this and although he tries,he really doesn't make it work.The PoD for the first one (the Romanian principalities and Dobrogea being conquered by the Austrians and integrated into the new ''Austro-Romanian Empire'') for instance wouldn't have led to nearly everyone in Romania having germanized names or Field Marshal Averescu and Ion Antonescu becoming Alexander von Aweressku and Johann von Antonessku like they are presented in the story.

Actually fuck it: might as well talk about it in more detail.

So: in the first story General Sarrail and General Berthelot go to Constanta (renamed by the Austrians "Konsstanza" for some reason) to decide the faith of the Romanian speaking regions and initially want to ennact the French President's wish to regionalize every Romanian historical region and let them be independent after a while,but von Aweressku and von Antonessku (urg),in stilted German accented French,convince Sarrail and Berthelot that Romania should be turned into Greater Romania and be a tampon state against the Communists in Russia,making Sarrail and Berthelot emotional and support Romania's cause and also a Horthy style dictatorship led by von Aweressku because that's how much ATL Averescu and Antonescu impressed the two.

In the second one,where the Principates and Dobrogea become territories of the Russian Empire,the Russian Revolution still happens and the region is engulfed in anarchy and with Communists,Iron Guard militias and *checks notes* Cherkess regiments who support the Whites fighting over Dobrogea. The one who should restore order, Prince Dimitri Antiohovich Cantemirov, prefers to feast and discuss art with a young former German Corporal named Dolfi and you guess where this is going,aren't you?

Well,you're wrong because this timeline's Hitler is an undercover Abteilung III b agent who,after the defeat of the Central Powers,is now jobless and is a double agent for the Communists but gets disappointed with them,narrates about Aurel Vlaicov (Aurel Vlaicu but Russified in this timeline) saving the Cherkess dominated White Army in Dobrogea with a zeppelin attacks and Cantemirov learning nothing and decides to stay and form a splinter communist political party with Cristian Rakovski that is more national socialist,with Rakovski proposing that "Dolfi" should write a book called Our Struggle and hahahaha GET IT

This story suffers a lot due many aspects,but the main one is the fact that ''Adolf Hitler,International Man of Mystery " is just something that really doesn't work in the story since,well,Hitler isn't someone you think as being even semi good as a WW1 spy. Nor is he someone that the White Russian governor of Dobrogea would just hang out on a regular basis and talk about avangarde art and shit. Him being a triple-quadrupole agent that everyone around likes and is friends with important OTL Romanian political figures and then deciding to form a National Communist version of NSDAP in Romania seems like an interesting idea,but good God it just isn't living up to its potential in this story.
 
All this discussion about times etc. is why I have a set period for my Gould timeline which be from 1988 to 1997 (and that will be split up to ensure ease of writing etc.) so then I can actually have an idea for what would happen and have it seem relatively accurate etc. anything after that I do could be best described as Non Canon to a point (Paddy Tipping becoming Labour leader etc.) since that's not the aim of the timeline but it's fun to think about.

Now I can see the allure of those big century spanning timelines but also they ain't for me. I do like those 'Meet the New Boss' timelines which could be fun to do at somepoint but yeah, 50 years max in my opinion.
 
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