Alternate History General Discussion

[Talwar]

Contemporary political timelines often seem to do a whole lot of telling and not so much showing. A set of dates with extra words and stock photos attached, emotionally distant and colorless.

"Here are some poll results" versus "What does a campaign volunteer see and hear as they knock on doors in suburban Atlanta?"

"President passed a law fixing the price of insulin" versus "Today a father of three injected a full dosage of insulin because he no longer had to ration it in exchange for making rent payments".

"Candidate X won the East Virginia primary" versus "I spent six hours sitting in a plastic chair at the community centre, arguing with these other dumb fucks who want to support Candidate Y or Z instead of X."

"President so-and-so authorized the bombing of Whereverstan" versus "It's my daughter's birthday but I'm here in a desert loading avgas into an F-15E."

Anyway.

 

[Gary Oswald]

I can't recommend 'Darling Buds Express' and 'Who Will Speak for England', both SLP books. enough for being that sort of political story @Talwar. It's about how different political policies have effected our protagonists. How the world you live in is different due to those different choices.

 

[Talwar]

I can't recommend 'Darling Buds Express' and 'Who Will Speak for England', both SLP books. enough for being that sort of political story @Talwar. It's about how different political policies have effected our protagonists. How the world you live in is different due to those different choices.

I'm glad to know SLP has some works of this nature and will have to look into them further.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Contemporary political timelines often seem to do a whole lot of telling and not so much showing. A set of dates with extra words and stock photos attached, emotionally distant and colorless.

"Here are some poll results" versus "What does a campaign volunteer see and hear as they knock on doors in suburban Atlanta?"

"President passed a law fixing the price of insulin" versus "Today a father of three injected a full dosage of insulin because he no longer had to ration it in exchange for making rent payments".

"Candidate X won the East Virginia primary" versus "I spent six hours sitting in a plastic chair at the community centre, arguing with these other dumb fucks who want to support Candidate Y or Z instead of X."

"President so-and-so authorized the bombing of Whereverstan" versus "It's my daughter's birthday but I'm here in a desert loading avgas into an F-15E."

Anyway.

This seems related to what @Coiler refers to as trinketization, derived from an article I wrote for the SLP blog.

 

[Talwar]

This seems related to what @Coiler refers to as trinketization, derived from an article I wrote for the SLP blog.

I could see that, yeah.

 

[Avian Overlord]

I would really love to see a good timeline about a Republican victory, ideally with a minimum of fratricide- messy, bloody, still tainted by the Terror, yes, but exploring what France would look like if all those fascinating figures had made it through the decade.

I think there's also potential for a timeline where the Directory decides to not nullify every election and slowly let the left back into power leading to democratization and an actual popular base for the government. (Personally I think this is what made the American revolution a success and such an exception among revolutions- the Federalists being willing to accept the results of elections they lost.)

Something that interests me in the question of a successful French Revolution is how much The Terror would be emphasized or de-emphasized in this other world.

Well, it depends how bad the terror gets. I don't think a terror that gets as bad as it did OTL can ever lead to a stable government, so any French government after that is going to have "establish we aren't like Those Lunatics" as a high priority. A more modest Terror I could see going two ways: Completely ignored, ala revolutionary violence in the American Revolution, or bad and something we probably should have avoided but not that big a deal... except for reactionaries for whom it serves as a justification for any level of repression or atrocity, ala the Bloody Week for socialists.

 

[Coiler]

This seems related to what @Coiler refers to as trinketization, derived from an article I wrote for the SLP blog.

I might as well give my exact definition of trinketization from the post, which is as follows.

Trinketization in practice means that it feels like just a collection of names, numbers, and events tossed out, with divergences being for their own sake and no attempt to work them into a bigger whole.

I also want to add that I feel trinketization most of the time isn't nearly as big a problem for conventional narratives, because the narrative itself (and characters-stuff there) is the "bigger whole". If there's a background reference to a "trinket" that feels jarring, often it's just that, whereas for a TL where that's far more of the actual work, it's a bigger issue.

 

[Elektronaut]

I am pig ignorant about Harry Turtledove, other than his penchant for sex scenes. While this seems to be an issue of public comment, I can't really believe it merits an interview question.

 

[Elektronaut]

There will be people who have burning questions though, so I'm going to point people towards the thread where you can table questions for a Turtledove interview.

SLP is interviewing Harry Turtledove - what would you ask?

In an exciting coup, @Gary Oswald has got the man himself to agree to an interview with SLP. We are sending over some questions for him to answer when he can, and the interview will be published on the SLP website when we hear back. What would you like to ask the most successful AH author in...

forum.sealionpress.co.uk

Note, this is open until Tuesday.

 

[Christian]

Does anyone find it kind of groan worthy when alternate history writers try to be clever and write historical figures in ironic situations? I mean, I really felt the need for my eyes to roll onto the back of my head when I read John Wilkes Booth playing Lincoln in a play, that’s just way too much for me.

 

[Charles EP M.]

I'd say "yes" but I'm also a mark for it.

 

[Jared]

Does anyone find it kind of groan worthy when alternate history writers try to be clever and write historical figures in ironic situations? I mean, I really felt the need for my eyes to roll onto the back of my head when I read John Wilkes Booth playing Lincoln in a play, that’s just way too much for me.

I'm the sort of person who judges a pun by how well it makes people groan, so this kind of irony is much the same. I both groan at it and do it.

 

[Persephone]

And the small number of timelines which end with a left-wing alternative to the Bolsheviks winning or the Bolsheviks without Stalinism tend towards hagiography. I'll borrow from your post and say that I'd love to see a timeline where the Revolution is successful, which is still messy, bloody, and tainted but which explores what Russia would look like if all these fascinating figures had made it.

I'm gonna wait til I have a lot more written for it (that and I need to do some revisions of two previous chapters) before I port it over here from the Other Place, but I do have a timeline where something along these lines happens, as @Time Enough can attest to as a result of discussions over DMs.

 

[Polyphemus]

Does anyone find it kind of groan worthy when alternate history writers try to be clever and write historical figures in ironic situations? I mean, I really felt the need for my eyes to roll onto the back of my head when I read John Wilkes Booth playing Lincoln in a play, that’s just way too much for me.

Usually I shake my head, but it can be fun if it's not too cloying and obvious.

 

[Coiler]

I think it's interesting how the "TL" format becoming the norm for internet AH has made it lean more on "AH as a genre" rather than "AH as a setting".

 

[Coiler]

One sports AH question I rarely see brought up is "what if the talent pool for that sport grew bigger due to that sport expanding and succeeding in places it didn't IOTL [leaving aside the plausibility of that]?"

Sports AH is also the most blatant instance of trinketization, since fundamental changes like that or changes to the game rules/structure/popularity are both hard and have the risk of not being understandable/relatable. Whereas just shuffling names around and listing scores is easy and understandable.

 

[Time Enough]

In terms of British Political lists and stuff I’m having fun seeing Col.David Stirling and the GB75 lot becoming more common as foes for a potential British Coup.

Not only because I believe I helped start it as a trend but also because David Stirling works so much better than Louis Mountbatten or Cecil King because David Stirling had a lot of support and power surprisingly. It’s good his plans were rumbled.

 

[morbidteaparty]

In terms of British Political lists and stuff I’m having fun seeing Col.David Stirling and the GB75 lot becoming more common as foes for a potential British Coup.

Not only because I believe I helped start it as a trend but also because David Stirling works so much better than Louis Mountbatten or Cecil King because David Stirling had a lot of support and power surprisingly. It’s good his plans were rumbled.

It's the basis of one of the best Adam Curtis documentaries as well, which is always a plus

 

[RyanF]

In terms of British Political lists and stuff I’m having fun seeing Col.David Stirling and the GB75 lot becoming more common as foes for a potential British Coup.

Not only because I believe I helped start it as a trend but also because David Stirling works so much better than Louis Mountbatten or Cecil King because David Stirling had a lot of support and power surprisingly. It’s good his plans were rumbled.

I had him leading White die-hards in Reid of Braid before being killed and Mad Mitch stepping in to replace him.

 

[Time Enough]

It's the basis of one of the best Adam Curtis documentaries as well, which is always a plus

That documentary is what inspired me to do the original list. Really early Adam Curtis documentaries are filled to the brim with various PODs. He’s also probably the only person to actually try and do a decent documentary on the Cecil King thing.

I had him leading White die-hards in Reid of Braid before being killed and Mad Mitch stepping in to replace him.

I will change it to, I think I popularised the trend.