Best Pre-AH.com Internet Alternate History

[theev]

The Foundation series by the same author (starting off as just a pastiche of Asimov's series actually set in the late Roman Empire, but developing in interesting if not massively plausible ways) was also very funny. I'm not sure if it can still be read however.

I imagine the Romans act as a stand in for Foundation's Empire. Is it analogical?

 

[OwenM]

I imagine the Romans act as a stand in for Foundation's Empire. Is it analogical?

Somewhat. A lot of Harry Potter (HAVE YOU NOT READ ANY OTHER BOOKS) and Blackadder crept in as well, from memory.

 

[Antonine]

Can't offer any suggestions but have to agree with the OP about the noteworthiness of If Gordon Banks Had Played.

It is definitely one of the most terrifying and compelling AHs I've ever read. It does the dystopic late 20th century Britain concept in a way that's far more scarily plausible than pretty much any other that I've read.

 

[Venocara]

The only reason, for example, why the IRA placed the Westminster bomb where it did in the tale was "because it was necessary to achieve the desired end result".

By this do you mean where they placed the bomb at the Palace of Westminister (as in, where it would do the most damage to the opposition benches) or them placing the bomb in Westminister at all?

 

[Antonine]

Plausible?

Even the author has stated that it only goes that way because: (a) every single decision point breaks the way it does to get the desired end. There is not a single instance of a decision point going in such a way as to make achieving the desired end harder. (b) Those who might be expected to interfere with movements towards the desired end result simply do not take any action to prevent things going against their wishes. The forces of inertia and opposition basically don't exist. (c) Known personalities get adapted and shifted out of all recognition. (d) A near complete absence of understanding of the Troubles and the interweaving of the complexities. The only reason, for example, why the IRA placed the Westminster bomb where it did in the tale was "because it was necessary to achieve the desired end result".

Plausible? Not even the author claims plausibility.

So I almost included a sentence in parentheses caveating what I said and apparently it was a mistake of me to decide that was unnecessary.

Yes, the timeline relies heavily on a "worst case scenario" chain of events which are highly improbable and almost impossible when viewed as a whole. But they all follow on from each other as things which plausibly *could* have followed from the previous incident even if other consequences were more likely. As such the TL as a whole doesn't require alien space bats or massive suspension of disbelief.

The timeline is implausible because it relies on the worst possible luck which is, obviously, authorial artifice. However, it's not unbelievable and doesn't require much suspension of disbelief because, to reiterate the above, the events and reactions are all ones which you could conceivably imagine happening despite their unlikelihood.

After all, real life history often features incredibly bad luck and the worst possible reactions to it to the extent that, if it were fiction, we'd call it unrealistic; for instance, the Plague of Justinian would seem ridiculous if a TL had introduced it as a deus ex machina to end the resurgence of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Most alternate histories are fun "what ifs" following a pre-decided narrative. For me If Gordon Banks Had Played is chilling not because I think the IRA were just a football game away from blowing up half of Britain's MPs but because the TL does a good job of exploring how, given a worst case series of events, a supposedly sane and stable democracy could spiral into increasingly extreme reactions and totalitarianism. And that is something which it's a common British conceit to imagine "could never happen here".

 

[Antonine]

And by way of contrast, Turtledove's Southern Victory timeline, which is often considered to be a very good and classic piece of AH, relies on the improbable butterfly of the plans for a single battle not falling into the wrong hands as being enough to allow the confederates to defeat a country twice their size.

Most butterfly TLs are highly improbable but that, in an of itself, doesn't prevent you from reading them and finding them plausible (provided unmentionable sea mammals aren't involved).

 

[napoleon IV]

And by way of contrast, Turtledove's Southern Victory timeline, which is often considered to be a very good and classic piece of AH, relies on the improbable butterfly of the plans for a single battle not falling into the wrong hands as being enough to allow the confederates to defeat a country twice their size.

Most butterfly TLs are highly improbable but that, in an of itself, doesn't prevent you from reading them and finding them plausible (provided unmentionable sea mammals aren't involved).

I've never seen someone praise TL-191 for its plausibility. Quite the opposite in fact.

 

[Elektronaut]

I think Gordon Banks as 'plausible' is sort of missing the whole point of the timeline, because it relies throughout on a literal deus ex machina of rogue elements in the security services orchestrating the timeline, and this is integral to the story and eventual resolution of the story. It's much less a rigorous Powell dystopia TL as it is a... I'm not sure I even have the term for it, but it's basically storytelling and much less a 'hard' alternate history work.

 

[windin]

I am sure you all know about these examples already but you had the USENET groups Alt.History.what.if and Soc,History,what.if , there are no archives and hundreds of good timelines are now sadly lost to the internet gods.

There also used to be a website called butted cat which had one massive timeline (which looking back may have been slightly pro Nazi thinking about it) In which the UK stay out of World War II and eventually allies with Nazi Germany which following the death of Hitler slowly reforms. The US goes isolationist then evolves into the big bad. The UK fights a Naval War with Japan in the 70s which they win and a cold war between the UK and the Dominions on one side and the US and there allies on the other settles in and is about to turn hot. Its then ended and the website vanished.

There is also The Shattered World, a Worse World War.

http://theshatteredworld.blogspot.com/

This is an epic time line that's been going on forever but has not been updated in some time. Its basic premise is a delayed WW2 which turns very nasty with widespread deployment of WMD and everyone fighting to the bitter end.

 

[lordroel]

http://theshatteredworld.blogspot.com/

This is an epic time line that's been going on forever but has not been updated in some time. Its basic premise is a delayed WW2 which turns very nasty with widespread deployment of WMD and everyone fighting to the bitter end.

Know this TL very well, was a member of the forum where the author posted everything, but after he decided to go for the money and pull every chapter from the forum and some disagreements with some members it ended and he has not updated sins.

 

[lordroel]

Sounds familiar.

Well if you write a story and have members say that it is not possible, have some write stories in the universe that are better than the original author and then he decides to ban people because he does not like criticism or competition and to top of he decides to pull everything he has created and starts asking money for it, well that is a good way to end a TL.

 

[Lemon flavoured]

I think Gordon Banks as 'plausible' is sort of missing the whole point of the timeline, because it relies throughout on a literal deus ex machina of rogue elements in the security services orchestrating the timeline, and this is integral to the story and eventual resolution of the story. It's much less a rigorous Powell dystopia TL as it is a... I'm not sure I even have the term for it, but it's basically storytelling and much less a 'hard' alternate history work.

I think I can say that my own TL (which was on AH.com) took an amount of, mostly subconscious, inspiration from Gordon Banks, actually.

 

[lordroel]

I am sure you all know about these examples already but you had the USENET groups Alt.History.what.if and Soc,History,what.if , there are no archives and hundreds of good timelines are now sadly lost to the internet gods.

Have some of them become myths and legends of great TLs that people remember.

 

[Ncw8]

The Foundation series by the same author (starting off as just a pastiche of Asimov's series actually set in the late Roman Empire, but developing in interesting if not massively plausible ways) was also very funny. I'm not sure if it can still be read however.

He also did a set of stories in a world where the Reformation failed and the Catholic Church is engaged in the “War on Error”. They’re done as a pastiche of James Bond stories featuring an agent of the English Inquisition - More, Thomas More.

Other SHWI timelines I liked were Johnny Pez’ Drowned Baby Timeline (How drowning Hitler as a baby leads to Poland becoming a superpower), and the collaborative timeline Submission, where a proselytizing Norse religion develops and expands at about the same time as Islam, dominating the area around the Baltic in the same way as Islam spread around the Mediterranean.

 

[Elektronaut]

I've just remembered the first Labour left wank. I can't remember the exact POD but it was something to do with the first world war, and resulted in Labour being the LDP-style dominant party of the remainder of the century, and it ended with John Prescott as PM.

As I recall it was created by some kind of Eastern European student group, so it always had a bizarro quality to it back in the day. Obviously this was before Heat had been invented.

 

[theev]

I've just remembered the first Labour left wank. I can't remember the exact POD but it was something to do with the first world war, and resulted in Labour being the LDP-style dominant party of the remainder of the century, and it ended with John Prescott as PM.

As I recall it was created by some kind of Eastern European student group, so it always had a bizarro quality to it back in the day. Obviously this was before Heat had been invented.

Do you remember where it was hosted?

 

[Elektronaut]

Do you remember where it was hosted?

We're talking twenty years ago now, it would have been some homebrew site, or geocities. AH.com once had a list page of timelines off-site - the internet was like that those days - and I suspect that was probably where it was listed.

There were a lot of places that listed sites as if the internet was like the phone book back then. You used to get it in books too.