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Bestist Non-SLP AH

My personal pick would be The Vulture's The Revolution Will Be Live which unfortunately with Between Two Waves Gone and his request that Ian take it down at The Other Place is no longer available to read.

The basic premise was that the First Red Scare never ended and the United States developed into a one party dominant political state with massive and disturbing levels of social authoritarianism heaped on. America spends the period between 1918 and the early 1960s when the story starts intervening in other nations wars and building a world system by force where the world's most powerful Communist state is Ethiopia and the British Empire has turned inward with something akin to an isolationist Imperial Federation.

The story is set in the 1960s with the US refusing to permit dissent and thus dooming itself to radical violence. The three tracks of the story are passages from a History Book of the era and the Anarchist and Communist insurgencies of the time, transcripts of an Alt-FBI agent who is trying to stop the attacks while at the same time losing faith in the country and the 'found' journal of one of the heroes of the underground covering what it was like to be at the center of an American Red Army Faction type group, and the moral compromises, optimism and doubts that fill his life.
 
I don't know if I could get untangled from nostalgia. Nomad of the time Streams, especially Wardlord of the Air at about age 10 (I had 3 books in one collection) not for realism but because it introduced me both to AH and the vague concept of steampunk (not that I'd have a name for it for years)
 
It's a guilty pleasure and is probably inaccurate, but as I was in my "WWI at Sea" phase when I read it, I couldn't help but fall in love with Elizabeth Moon's Tradition where Craddock fights the Goeben.

Another good AH short story is RM Meluch's Vati, which is basically what The Big One should have been like in terms of telling a "all the wunderwaffe can't save Germany" story. Werner Molders survives and revs up the Luftwaffe, the German wunder-planes make an Allied channel invasion impossible-and then at the end, it gets nuked. Very good prose, very good pacing, and brisk compared to TBO or even AANW.
 
For published AH, Years of Rice and Salt.

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade for anime. (Haven't read the Mamorou Oshii manga, though, probably should)

For short online stuff, John Reilly's The Irish Empire or Charles Stross' A Colder War.

For longer online stuff, Lands of Red and Gold should probably top any list that measures some nebulous notion of objective quality, but since it isn't finished yet, maybe Ed Thomas' Fight and be Right.
 
It's a guilty pleasure and is probably inaccurate, but as I was in my "WWI at Sea" phase when I read it, I couldn't help but fall in love with Elizabeth Moon's Tradition where Craddock fights the Goeben.

Another good AH short story is RM Meluch's Vati, which is basically what The Big One should have been like in terms of telling a "all the wunderwaffe can't save Germany" story. Werner Molders survives and revs up the Luftwaffe, the German wunder-planes make an Allied channel invasion impossible-and then at the end, it gets nuked. Very good prose, very good pacing, and brisk compared to TBO or even AANW.
I too enjoyed Alternate Generals. And both of those for sure.

AGII was also great, I always loved Southern Strategy and Empire in those. About a Wilsonian Wank ending with the Kaiser occupying Dixie in a peacekeeping operation and Napoleon joining the Burr plot and being lord of all Louisiana.
 
For something with a stereotypical pre-1900 POD, I think that Now Blooms the Tudor Rose shows how the genre of Royal babby survives can be done well. It has great moments, like some of the alternate television programmes.

Protect and Survive I enjoyed immensely too.
 
A Day in July by Zulfurium
With the Cresent Above Us and Nassirisimo's Afsharid TL
Secret Police and Funky Bass Lines by GoulashComrade, because Somali TL's are really rare and I like the tunes with the updates.
 
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For published AH, you can't get much better than SS-GB. Worldbuilding at its finest with characters who don't know what side they're on in a world that's been turned upside down. Does a great job handling the "normalcy" of collaboration and those who have a chip on their shoulder about the fact that they would have never done such a thing if the Nazis were to have marched in will likely get a surprise when they have to reminded who is and isn't a traitor. Not a full-on dystopia but there is a pervading sense that something has gone terribly wrong throughout, with several memorable scenes that stick with me to this day. Regrettably they were all axed from the BBC adaptation in favour of more sex scenes and shoot-outs.


As for online stuff, No Spanish Civil War - I always liked the implication running throughout that the lasting legacy of the civil war being averted is a more politically diverse world in general. With Anarchism and Left-Communism blossoming whilst at the same time overt Fascism lingers on and something resembling Oligarchical Collectivism gains traction with the Trotskyite left. Very well researched and the format of mixing scrapbook-style AH with narrative AH was a bit of a of a personal inspiration. Too bad it was never finished.


Secret Police and Funky Bass Lines by GoulashComrade

Protect and Survive I enjoyed immensely too.

I'd like to second these two as well.
 
My personal pick would be The Vulture's The Revolution Will Be Live which unfortunately with Between Two Waves Gone and his request that Ian take it down at The Other Place is no longer available to read.

The basic premise was that the First Red Scare never ended and the United States developed into a one party dominant political state with massive and disturbing levels of social authoritarianism heaped on. America spends the period between 1918 and the early 1960s when the story starts intervening in other nations wars and building a world system by force where the world's most powerful Communist state is Ethiopia and the British Empire has turned inward with something akin to an isolationist Imperial Federation.

The story is set in the 1960s with the US refusing to permit dissent and thus dooming itself to radical violence. The three tracks of the story are passages from a History Book of the era and the Anarchist and Communist insurgencies of the time, transcripts of an Alt-FBI agent who is trying to stop the attacks while at the same time losing faith in the country and the 'found' journal of one of the heroes of the underground covering what it was like to be at the center of an American Red Army Faction type group, and the moral compromises, optimism and doubts that fill his life.

Probably one of the top five I've ever read. I'm crap at picking favorites.
 
I quite enjoyed A Kill in the Morning, although the understated alternative history of Never Let me Go is far more appealing than anything I've read that has been overt.

But then again I also enjoyed the weird future history/retroactive alternate history of Soumission and I feel like a cunt for doing so.
 
You missed the Non-SLP part I guess.

It slipped my mind - I still predominately think of it as an AH.Com TL.

Otherwise, I did enjoy Ruled Britannia by Turtledove, though it’s overly long and has Turtledove’s staple awkward sex scenes.
 
My personal pick would be The Vulture's The Revolution Will Be Live which unfortunately with Between Two Waves Gone and his request that Ian take it down at The Other Place is no longer available to read.

Probably one of the top five I've ever read. I'm crap at picking favorites.

Personally, I think the best AH piece done in IDU was Flocc's one which mixed an alternate history of South East Asia with Cosmic Horror. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name, or if it was ever finished or published. (He said he couldn't post the ending because it was going to be published soon, all the way back in 201?)


As for The Revolution Will Be Live, I remember it was truly good, although I still think that the detour to Venezuela needed some changes, or maybe being scrapped altogether. Didn't quite live to its full potential, and could have been used to present other perspectives, and a contrast between South and North America Guerrilla ideologies and methodology, amongst other things.
 
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