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Honorary Alternate History

Just a pitch to revive this cool thread: Could the comic series DMZ be considered honorary alternate history?

It would be by now - it's only a few years into The Future circa 2005 and the reason for the civil war, "midwestern militia groups revolt against their local governments in protest of rampant U.S. adventurism overseas and, in the absence of the National Guard, are able to gain far more ground than they thought possible", require no major withdrawal from Iraq.
 
What, no mention of Robocop, with its nuclear-armed Apartheid South Africa and other 1980s future history conceits? (Not to mention USB ports so huge they double as melee weapons).

I seem to remember (maybe from a Wiki entry that doesn't exist anymore) that the background elements for this series included a ridiculously gas-guzzling car (7mpg or less; don't know for sure, other than REALLY low), and something about an SDI satellite crashing in southern California and destroying/irradiating(?) much of the region.
 
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Would the Grand Theft Auto series count with the different cities and tweaks here and there to the setting of a somewhat different America? Generally one more corrupt and several different pop culture figures as well.

Also more of a fan theory, but I see the Fillmore cartoon as what happened when the Great Society was able to kick into high gear and education getting a huge boost in funding, leading to the sheer scale of the school shown in the show and its many different clubs. The fact it's called X Middle School might indicate that a different sort of Civil Rights struggle took place and Malcom X is held in high enough esteem to name a school after him without controversy.
 
Would the Grand Theft Auto series count with the different cities and tweaks here and there to the setting of a somewhat different America? Generally one more corrupt and several different pop culture figures as well.
I've previously observed that Rockstar would probably be good at coming up with 'recognisable but different' AH names for things, based on the worldbuilding around copyrights they do for GTA.
 
I've previously observed that Rockstar would probably be good at coming up with 'recognisable but different' AH names for things, based on the worldbuilding around copyrights they do for GTA.
Unfortunately most of those names are just rude words and innuendo in recent games so eh

I mean I don’t mind it that much,it’s just a little annoying after a while
 
Now that the presidential primary season is all wrapped up and we're starting to do some postmortems in the Pub, Nathan J. Robinson's bizarre wish-fulfillment future memoir from last year is officially Honorary AH.

(I'm not sure what his intended audience for this was, since it seems tailor-made to be reviewed in the SLP Book Thread in like 2050; if it wasn't actually funny in a Lemony Snicket kind of way it would be absolutely unreadable.)
 
Now that the presidential primary season is all wrapped up and we're starting to do some postmortems in the Pub, Nathan J. Robinson's bizarre wish-fulfillment future memoir from last year is officially Honorary AH.

(I'm not sure what his intended audience for this was, since it seems tailor-made to be reviewed in the SLP Book Thread in like 2050; if it wasn't actually funny in a Lemony Snicket kind of way it would be absolutely unreadable.)
God I hate the people on this forum who introduced me to Robinson. He sucks so haaard.
 
God I hate the people on this forum who introduced me to Robinson. He sucks so haaard.

I actually enjoy some of his writing (the book has fun parts even though the concept is kind of weird, and this piece shitting on contemporary architecture at length is a favorite of mine) but I don't follow him on Twitter because, yeah, he's kind of insufferable as a personality.
 
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I actually enjoy some of his writing (the book has fun parts even though the concept is kind of cringey and weird, and this piece shitting on contemporary architecture at length is a favorite of mine) but I don't follow him on Twitter because, yeah, he's kind of insufferable as a personality.
I actually think you were the one who put me on because of that article, think you linked it here way back when (I agree with it btw).

Still can’t get over how he dresses like a Louisiana gentleman but never talks about it.
 
I actually think you were the one who put me on because of that article, think you linked it here way back when (I agree with it btw).

Still can’t get over how he dresses like a Louisiana gentleman but never talks about it.

Hah, my apologies if that's true!

I have no proof of this but I bet he's modeling himself after Tom Wolfe and I bet someone once called him out on it and embarrassed him and that's why he doesn't acknowledge it.
 
Spotted this in HPB a while ago; haven't decided whether to get it yet, but was curious as to opinions about whether it could be honorary AH by now, like with DMZ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_War

I think that would be, as in the real 2011 the occupation ended and had been winding down for a bit - it's not just McCain winning, the entire Iraq policy by the US has changed and you have an eternal mid-2000s.
 
Stand on Zanzibar correctly predicted that human population would be approaching 7 billion by the year 2010, written in 1968. Author John Brunner was correct in this, but every other aspect of this world is wholly alien to our own - and I'd say without any elements that in alternate history we would call ASB
I'm very fond of Stand on Zanzibar, the literary style is unusual, and there's a Graham Greene level of tragedy to some of the lead characters. But it's quite alien as you say, partly because of the focus on population explosion as the world's main crisis.

Still on Brunner, Shockwave Rider, OTOH, is more recognisable, large elements of US society are either sort of similar, or dystopic extrapolation of what we see, the role and power of gangs, the monetization of religion and wellness, corporatization and corruption of government. Plus the internet, except noone invented the mouse
 
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