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Crime, Killers, and Alternate History

I don't know how much I should blame For All Time for the annoying trend of making OTL depraved criminals into ATL political leaders.
 
That Pa Ingalls story is really asking for a "chains of consequence" article treatment, given the influence the Little House books have had on American culture and the role the Wilder family and their money played in establishing organized Libertarianism.
 
BClick said:
That Pa Ingalls story is really asking for a "chains of consequence" article treatment, given the influence the Little House books have had on American culture and the role the Wilder family and their money played in establishing organized Libertarianism.
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IIRC that was probably something Laura made up and the dates don't work sadly.
One certainly can do chains of consequences with the Wilders and that - of cause Charles himself was actually a Populist when he was living the Libertarian dream (or rather, repeatedly trying to and failing).
 
Great article @Fenwick, all too often we forget how these crimes can have ripple effects changing the course of history. That the Whitechapel murders brought the squalid living conditions of the East End to the forefront of news; that Timothy Evans being hanged in a miscarriage of justice for murders committed by John Christie contributed to the abolition of capital punishment; that the West Port murders and the entire trade in bodies so reviled the public that it led to the Anatomy Act 1832; that the grisly details of Ed Gein's crimes would leave such an indelible effect on popular culture through Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of The Lambs; or even that the looting of sound equipment from music stores by aspiring artists during the 1977 New York blackout would very quickly lead to the emergence of hip hop as a mainstream music genre.

There were even crimes that might have had further reaching consequences if things had gone differently. What if the books had been opened on John Bodkin Adams attending the sudden death of the 10th Duke of Devonshire just as Harold Macmillan, the Duke's brother-in-law, had become Prime Minister in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis? Or even if Adams had been sentenced to death and triggered a feared exodus of GPs from the cash strapped NHS?
 
I am writing another article touching on some of these topics.

The main thing to me is that in Alternate History and literature in general crime is a plot point and not part of the society. Every single day we are people learn of crime. We go out to lunch and "two people shot" is met with a second or two of "can you believe that" and then we talk about why someone put a fried egg on their cheese burger and oh what about seeing that new movie this weekend? Crime is a big deal in the moment but most of us just go "huh... so anyways..."
 
The key part that's going to stick in my mind if I write alternate history crimes now is "so who is the deviant". Who are the people who Good People want to be guilty? Is the victim a deviant and to be written off as not worth investigating? (The Rochdale rapists and a girl's home victim of Savile on Newsnight saying they were "bad girls" so nobody cared comes to mind)
 
There's also the impact ordinary criminal cases have on changes in social and cultural norms.

Look at Ernesto Miranda in Phoenix. If he had gotten away with the rpe of Lois Ann Jamison (say, her brother doesn't sufficiently remember the license plate on Miranda's truck, or Miranda ditches the truck in the Salt River), he would not have been arrested and compelled to make a statement by Phoenix PD. Combine that with a few changes in two other similar cases, and you've butterflied away the Miranda warning, with all the social consequences that has for the marginal in society that tend to garner police attention.

Or look at the Lawrence v. Texas case. By all accounts the DA's evidence against John Lawrence on the sodomy charge was flimsy at best (the police couldn't even get straight who penetrated who). But for a careless word of a gay file clerk, Lawrence, instead of pleading nolo contendre, would have had gotten a different lawyer, who would have likely tried to fight the case on the grounds that the government had no proof any sex had taken place that night. He probably would have been acquitted, and history would remember him not at all, just another blue-collar worker with an unusual taste in pornography. No Lawrence means it takes longercforvthe last sodomy lawscto get struck down, letcalone any prospect of same sex marriage. But for a different defense attorney...
 
In october 1934 in marseille a man shot king Alexander I of Yugoslavia, minister Louis Barthou and badly hurt General Alphonse Georges. Bar the king dead, and the balkans in chaos once again, Barthou death negatively impacted France diplomacy at a crucial juncture
As for Georges the wounds prevented him from challenging Maurice Gamelin to the leadership of the french armies immediately thereafter, when Weygand had to retire early 1935... and we all know how abysmally dumb Gamelin was... the rest is history.

what's more, Pierre Laval become PM in place of Barthou... Laval, of Vichy shame and fame.

Unbelievable: Gamelin and Laval, the twin 1940 calamities.

so was France 1940 fate sealed on October 9, 1934 ? the assasin wanted to doom Yugoslavia and achieved far more than that...
 
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Francisco Cojuanco said:
There's also the impact ordinary criminal cases have on changes in social and cultural norms.

Look at Ernesto Miranda in Phoenix. If he had gotten away with the rpe of Lois Ann Jamison (say, her brother doesn't sufficiently remember the license plate on Miranda's truck, or Miranda ditches the truck in the Salt River), he would not have been arrested and compelled to make a statement by Phoenix PD. Combine that with a few changes in two other similar cases, and you've butterflied away the Miranda warning, with all the social consequences that has for the marginal in society that tend to garner police attention.

Or look at the Lawrence v. Texas case. By all accounts the DA's evidence against John Lawrence on the sodomy charge was flimsy at best (the police couldn't even get straight who penetrated who). But for a careless word of a gay file clerk, Lawrence, instead of pleading nolo contendre, would have had gotten a different lawyer, who would have likely tried to fight the case on the grounds that the government had no proof any sex had taken place that night. He probably would have been acquitted, and history would remember him not at all, just another blue-collar worker with an unusual taste in pornography. No Lawrence means it takes longercforvthe last sodomy lawscto get struck down, letcalone any prospect of same sex marriage. But for a different defense attorney...
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For that I would point to the possibility of an "inevitable" event. Court cases being a fine example. 1) Is this the only defendant? 2.) Was it a major talking point of the period? Not mandated of course but for Miranda it is more of a change to the title. As Miranda was consolidated into four other separate crimes involving the same issues. So even if the change is purely cosmetic you would need to write a different name. Which can be like easter eggs for super smart nerds. "Oh was his Westover Rights. Very clever that was another case in Miranda v. Arizona."

This differs from specific crimes which are less fluid and play more to that zeitgeist of an event.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Romand

I'm not very interested in crime, murders but this one really caught my attention, and might have some alt-history potential.
Basically Romand is a mythomaniac who lied for 18 years (1975-1993) before, his back against the wall, killing his children, parents, wife and the dog "to avoid them the shame he had become". Nice, really. He could have killed himself but the guy is a coward.
Whatever, where the story goes fascinating is that the man faked being a very important physician and scientist as the WHO - World Health Organization - headquarters in Switzerland. Romand had started medecine studies and he was good at them - except he dropped out, did not told to his family, and started lying instead. amazingly, nobody ever unmasked him for 18 years ! Even he was amazed it lasted for so long.
Being a very important physician - or pretending to be one - he told his family he knew Bernard Kouchner and other important politicians in Paris. at some point he actually found himself in a plane with Jacques Barrot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Barrot
Whatever, the man was a ticking bomb and, in a different context, he could have spread havoc far beyond his (unfortunate) family. either at the WHO or in Paris. He was a coward Frenchman but, had he been an angry american with guns and explosives aplenty, the WHO or Paris or Lyon might have endured some rampage (think of the guy that stole a M-60 Patton tank in San Diego, or the other one that build an armored bulldozer).
 
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The article talks about how major crimes impact the direction of society, but writing about street crime is a huge factor in conveying just what daily life is for people in alternate worlds. Imagine the opening scene of a contempary-set AH novel with a 1970's POD (hell, we'll go with @Yes and say McGovern got elected) where the protagonist is a single professional woman in her late 20's living in a medium U.S. city like Denver or Portland. I talk about her walking home from work.

In scenario A) she's terrified she won't make it home before dark, and she steps up her pace looking straight ahead when she has to walk past a few teen boys on the sidewalk. She sees a body lying across the street, and she doesn't stop to check if it's just a homeless person sleeping or a corpse. A burst of automatic gunfire sounds in the distance, followed by scattered shots which she identifies as being rifle-caliber, but this seems to be just a passing observation. A car slows down slightly going the opposite way and she makes an immediate turn at the corner instead of walking across the crosswalk straight towards home.

In scenario B) the electric bus drops her off at the corner. She hears an Afrobeat band playing at a coffee shop and walks to her yoga class, thinking about if she should go out for vegan fondue tonight with her friends or go to bed early so she can go hiking in the mountains this weekend (three days, like every weekend if you work a 35-hour week).

I've already painted the consequence of the POD pretty clearly just by describing this everyday event. Scenario A is a description of how people in the 1970's felt about street crime, which they could see getting worse every single year. Scenario B is pretty much a diet utopia. Okay, Portland or Denver are bad choices since what I described is basically how people who don't live in those places imagine them.

Thinking about crime and how it works is great because nothing really holds a mirror up to society and its rules more than seeing them broken. Fatherland is basically a detective novel, and so are a lot of good mainstream AH works like Yiddish Policeman's Union.
 
Burton K Wheeler said:
In scenario A) she's terrified she won't make it home before dark, and she steps up her pace looking straight ahead when she has to walk past a few teen boys on the sidewalk. She sees a body lying across the street, and she doesn't stop to check if it's just a homeless person sleeping or a corpse. A burst of automatic gunfire sounds in the distance, followed by scattered shots which she identifies as being rifle-caliber, but this seems to be just a passing observation. A car slows down slightly going the opposite way and she makes an immediate turn at the corner instead of walking across the crosswalk straight towards home.
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I gotta say this is some... This is something. Living in the Detroit Metro when the recession got bad taught me how a lot of street crime tended to look, and this looks like a Batman movie scene. Just for starters, you don't want to look 'just straight ahead' when passing a bunch of chulos; that's all sorts of rude and draws attention. Dodging the body is fine; let's face it they're in the street so they're dead, and hey the police hate getting called in on that. Likewise noting the shooters in the distance; you only really get about three degrees of Volume differential and in the city judging distance is damn near impossible- too many echoes. The fact it's full auto though means someone big is involved, and there's gonna be a police cruiser moving around later. The car, meanwhile, isn't a threat unless it's got passengers- if it's a 'working' vehicle it's going to be an older van or shot out pickup truck. What they're probably doing is a cash transfer or running bricks; both of which are critical to a good '70s inner-city gang economy.
 
Tabac Iberez said:
I gotta say this is some... This is something. Living in the Detroit Metro when the recession got bad taught me how a lot of street crime tended to look, and this looks like a Batman movie scene. Just for starters, you don't want to look 'just straight ahead' when passing a bunch of chulos; that's all sorts of rude and draws attention. Dodging the body is fine; let's face it they're in the street so they're dead, and hey the police hate getting called in on that. Likewise noting the shooters in the distance; you only really get about three degrees of Volume differential and in the city judging distance is damn near impossible- too many echoes. The fact it's full auto though means someone big is involved, and there's gonna be a police cruiser moving around later. The car, meanwhile, isn't a threat unless it's got passengers- if it's a 'working' vehicle it's going to be an older van or shot out pickup truck. What they're probably doing is a cash transfer or running bricks; both of which are critical to a good '70s inner-city gang economy.
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I'm not talking about OTL Detroit in 2010, I'm talking about a fictional version of Denver where the POD is 40-50 years back. Appreciate the urban survival tips. I'm very impressed by the fact you lived in the metro area of a major city, though, much like the majority of Americans do. Reminds me of when I lived in Philadelphia and people from like Cherry Hill or the Main Line would say they lived "near Philadelphia" and were therefore extra tough.
 
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I have watched every season of the Wire multiple times and I feel a post about writing tips is the best place to share that knowledge. I lived in Baghdad 2006-2007, how many Gritty Urban points do I get for seeing bodies getting caught against the pilings of the bridge I walked across to work?
 
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Fenwick said:
For that I would point to the possibility of an "inevitable" event. Court cases being a fine example. 1) Is this the only defendant? 2.) Was it a major talking point of the period? Not mandated of course but for Miranda it is more of a change to the title. As Miranda was consolidated into four other separate crimes involving the same issues. So even if the change is purely cosmetic you would need to write a different name. Which can be like easter eggs for super smart nerds. "Oh was his Westover Rights. Very clever that was another case in Miranda v. Arizona."

This differs from specific crimes which are less fluid and play more to that zeitgeist of an event.
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True and fair.

Though the Lawrence case was by all accounts a desperation tactic, IIRC, as there were very few people at the time who wanted to be test cases to overturn sodomy laws (which in some cases were at best sporadically enforced, but doing so would require you to out yourself). Lawrence was as it was hardly an ideal case (they wanted a case that had a defendant from the middle class, not a working class man who it wasn't even clear actually had sex with another man. Remember Lawrence originally pled not guilty.)

Maybe sodomy laws would get struck down eventually (or simply legislatively repealed - I mean when even Clarence Thomas thinks they're uncommonly silly...). But the events that led to them being struck down happening in 2003, in the middle of the first Bush Administration, would probably have significant knock-on effects (like Rove's decision to focus on the specter of gay marriage in the 2004 election, or the creation of hope on the other side due to the Lawrence case). You might have the Democratic nominee be butterflied into the White House without agitation over homosexuality; maybe a bunch of otherwise apathetic social conservatives stay home on Election Day.
 
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