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Alternate History General Discussion

Side note, going back to possible yet handwaveable issues in Paradise Lost: Was uranium really in such short supply in Europe or other OTL areas conquered by Nazi Germany that they would've ended up marching into Central Africa to mine it (presuming these stocks were even known of in the 1940s)?

The reason the Allies extracted a large amount of uranium ore from Central Africa was because the mines there were already producing large amounts and they needed it in an exceptional hurry. Post-war, the costs of exporting from Central Africa and the availability of time to develop domestic American and Canadian mining caused the importance of the Congolese mines to drop off sharply. I don't know specifically what the quantities of uranium available to the Nazis were, but I do know that the Soviets mined it extensively in East Germany and Czechoslovakia for their nuclear weapons research and production post-war, so it must've been substantial.
 
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@MAC161 I will also put a good word in for The Afrika Reich, with the caveat that the last few pages set up an awesome scenario that the sequel then absolutely refuses to make use of, unfortunately
 
French Revolution and Napoleonic PODs pretty popular pre-WW2.
Kennedy lives seems a reasonably common idea, but I can't think of any works about it.
There was a very decent novel called "Idlewild" back in the late nineties though I can't remember the author's name. The Ross Perot analogue having just won the US election because Clinton reminded voters of Kennedy (and consequently were put off) was one of the changes that a surviving Kennedy wrought. Remembered principally for being a largely ineffective President who dragged the US into the quagmire of Vietnam and not at all a revered icon.
 
French Revolution and Napoleonic PODs pretty popular pre-WW2.
Kennedy lives seems a reasonably common idea, but I can't think of any works about it.


There was a very decent novel called "Idlewild" back in the late nineties though I can't remember the author's name. The Ross Perot analogue having just won the US election because Clinton reminded voters of Kennedy (and consequently were put off) was one of the changes that a surviving Kennedy wrought. Remembered principally for being a largely ineffective President who dragged the US into the quagmire of Vietnam and not at all a revered icon.

Off the top of my head, there's Bryce Zabel's Surrounded By Enemies and Jeff Greenfield's If Kennedy Lived, both published in 2013. Before that, there's George Bernau's 1988 novel Promises To Keep which I've had sitting on a shelf for ages, though it seems to be a mix of AH and roman a clef, and the 2000 indie film Timequest which has a time traveler altering history and has a cameo from Bruce Campbell as an Oliver Stone type.
 
That red dwarf episode, stephen baxter's 'voyage' mars colonisation books and one moth timeline is all I can think of.

Also, bizarrely, the Video Game 'Prey' about fighting aliens on a space station has the background that the space race heated up and so stations were built cos jfk lived.
 
Has anyone read or heard of this book?

Alternate Tyrants is a 1997 Toralternate history anthology, edited by Mike Resnick.[1] [2]The anthology contains 20 short stories, with each story by a different author, and presents a scenario where an individual becomes a tyrant or dictator in a way that did not occur in real life.”

Scenarios vary from “Caesar Lives”, “Cleopatra seduces Octavian” and “Mandela dies” to “ President Capone” and “Einstein, dictator” to:

I must say, this idea is one that I think would work very well as an SLP challenge or anthology...
 
Anyone else, like me, not the biggest fan of ISOTs?

I don't want to be too harsh. There are good examples and like every other genre, it can be done well or badly. It's just I've found myself not really caring that much for the overall concept.
 
Anyone else, like me, not the biggest fan of ISOTs?

I don't want to be too harsh. There are good examples and like every other genre, it can be done well or badly. It's just I've found myself not really caring that much for the overall concept.
I didn't even like the Sterling books. Time Travel stories of any sort don't really ever appeal to me.
 
Side note, going back to possible yet handwaveable issues in Paradise Lost: Was uranium really in such short supply in Europe or other OTL areas conquered by Nazi Germany that they would've ended up marching into Central Africa to mine it (presuming these stocks were even known of in the 1940s)?

My understanding is an 'undefined quantity' of refined uranium was captured in Belgium in May 1940, but the Nazis took and it turned into radium for medical use and aircraft instrument panels.

1,050 tons of Uranium ore was shipped from the Congo by the chief exec of UHMK, who went with it. The Uranium was kept in a warehouse in Staten Island until the US Army bought it in 1942.
 
Very much not a fan of ISOTs either. I did read Stirling's original trilogy, back when there wasn't much published AH around. I didn't dislike it in itself - well, aside from all the usual considerations with Stirling's writing - but it didn't interest me in reading other takes on the premise. I bounced off the Ring of Fire books after struggling through the first one, and I've not finished any ISOT since that time. Others may enjoy the concept, of course, but it's not for me.
 
In think in terms of ISOT scenarios, the only ones I really have any time for any more are the ones by @DaleCoz which aren't really ISOTs as much as they are 'alien intelligences [don't call them ASBs don't call them ASBs @David Flin will hunt me down through the internet] steal random geographical areas from different time periods and weld them together'

Which is both refreshing in its honesty (no attempts to make up a reason, just 'incomprehensible aliens' and no more) and that it allows completely random time periods to interact
 
In think in terms of ISOT scenarios, the only ones I really have any time for any more are the ones by @DaleCoz which aren't really ISOTs as much as they are 'alien intelligences [don't call them ASBs don't call them ASBs @David Flin will hunt me down through the internet] steal random geographical areas from different time periods and weld them together'

Which is both refreshing in its honesty (no attempts to make up a reason, just 'incomprehensible aliens' and no more) and that it allows completely random time periods to interact

Hmm.

That gives me an idea.
 
Which is both refreshing in its honesty (no attempts to make up a reason, just 'incomprehensible aliens' and no more) and that it allows completely random time periods to interact

This is why I grew to the like the Kirov series more when it moved from being a mediocre, flat Final Countdown/Axis of Time knockoff to this gigantic, both arbitrary and meticulous, wargame toy box. And why the spinoff "let's change Waterloo/Isandlwana" books are actually my favorite among them because they're the most shameless.

(That they're forced to be concise in one volume as opposed to spreading out over eight doesn't hurt either)
 
I find it interesting that Mark Ashton doesn’t appear in more British political Alternate History’s.

Now the reasoning is probably three fold; One LGSM and the whole movement has only really come out into the mainstream in the last five years thanks to Pride, two EuroCommunists aren’t as chaotic as Militant/Trot folks like Nellist or Hatton or similarly chaotic folks like Tatchell and three his death in 1987 due to HIV at about 27 probably puts people off.

Shame because if there’s any character who could provide a unifying force for a relatively successful Left Wing party outside of Labour in Britain, then it’s probably Mark Ashton.
 
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