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Least favorite alt-history story?

Now, one can argue that this is merely getting Justinian off his back and pointing him in another direction, egging the story in terms that Justinian would recognise.

That is how I viewed it. He also said, in the same letter,

We earnestly urge your Serenity to consider this course favorably. As you know, the Kingdom of Persia is ruled by King Khusrau, a young man of great force and ability. We have reason to believe that Khusrau will soon attempt another invasion of Syria. You will then need the ablest generals you can find.

Telling Justinian, quite explicitly, "send your best generals to the east", made me believe that the whole purpose of the letter was to make Justinian look away from the Gothic-Roman Empire and to the east. Pointing Justinian to invade the Arabian peninsula just seemed like part of that.
 
. The full thing is on youtube and I'll link to it before going into spoiler territory.

Nicely linked - the use of stock footage with new stuff is really impressive, half the time I can't tell where the joins are or where the footage is from. (I assume mixes of training, the Yugoslav wars, the Gulf, and Falklands, maybe Grenada?)

I'm not so bothered by the NATO victory once they have air superiority & have knocked out Soviet command-control, but the sudden tank issues (unless that was based on something OTL and if it is, it's still odd it only shows up then) is a bit weak and so's the last gasp bombing run because it's not set up why that happened then & not earlier. Maybe that should've been something done during the Soviet push to the Rhine, with the planes for that not being available in defending West Germany and it's down to whether they can crater the command-and-control before the Pact gets too far in.
 
FWIW, the issue of power whiplash in conventional WWIII stories goes all the way back to Hackett himself (where it's also really blatant), and both Team Yankee and Red Army succeed in their own ways by managing to mostly avoid it. Red Army just has the Soviets win, and while the criticism that the Americans are too good and the Soviets too bad in Team Yankee is a valid one, at least it has a consistent tone.
 
This is a genuine question here: is a conventional WW3 (in any form) after 1949 impossible?
 
This is a genuine question here: is a conventional WW3 (in any form) after 1949 impossible?
It would be impossible even before then. There's no situation where if one side is losing conventionally that they'd just shrug it off. And any attempt to keep it conventional puts you on the back foot for when it would stop being so.
 
This is a genuine question here: is a conventional WW3 (in any form) after 1949 impossible?

Nothing's impossible, but tough to sell I'd say

You need to keep the stakes low enough that nukes won't be used while still having all the men and material used in an actual war needed, which is a difficult needle to thread.

In OTL you had stuff like Korea and Angola where huge amounts of men fought but because it was peripheral it never became a matter of life or death where nukes had to be used so Truman could say no to MacArthur. Once you reach a point where it's comparable in number to ww1 or ww2 though, that no is a lot harder.

Once you have tanks marching through Ukraine and Germany, the stakes are so high the losing side is driven to the wall to the point they have to use nukes.
 
It would be impossible even before then. There's no situation where if one side is losing conventionally that they'd just shrug it off. And any attempt to keep it conventional puts you on the back foot for when it would stop being so.

Nothing's impossible, but tough to sell I'd say

You need to keep the stakes low enough that nukes won't be used while still having all the men and material used in an actual war needed, which is a difficult needle to thread.

In OTL you had stuff like Korea and Angola where huge amounts of men fought but because it was peripheral it never became a matter of life or death where nukes had to be used so Truman could say no to MacArthur. Once you reach a point where it's comparable in number to ww1 or ww2 though, that no is a lot harder.

Once you have tanks marching through Ukraine and Germany, the stakes are so high the losing side is driven to the wall to the point they have to use nukes.

But say if the Allies are in Ukraine, surely the Soviets know that any use of nukes on a major target will inevitably result in their complete and utter destruction, whereas if the war is conventional there's still a chance that the majority of the Soviet population will survive.
 
But say if the Allies are in Ukraine, surely the Soviets know that any use of nukes on a major target will inevitably result in their complete and utter destruction, whereas if the war is conventional there's still a chance that the majority of the Soviet population will survive.

Yeah but that's true for all cold war confrontations. It's more logical to back down than fight because if you fight, you kill everyone.

But we know the orders nato and wp commanders received during that time period. During the Cuban missile crisis for instance, the soviets were ordered to fire their nukes as soon as us soldiers landed on the island.

It's because backs were against the wall, there was a sense that if you gave in, you'd lose and better to die than lose.

It feels like the character who'd never use nukes would also never fight a conventional war.
 
Conventional conflict can happen, especially with a tiny fig leaf (See the Soviet MiGs over Korea) , but, as @Youngmarshall has rightly said, the classic Fuldapocalypse has stakes too high for it to stay conventional barring the most freakish circumstances. I should note that even the doctrine that talks about specifically conventional operations nonetheless constantly warns that it could easily turn nuclear at any moment, which illustrates the actual confidence they had in keeping it that way.
 
I'm not so bothered by the NATO victory once they have air superiority & have knocked out Soviet command-control, but the sudden tank issues (unless that was based on something OTL and if it is, it's still odd it only shows up then

I've always assumed that Soviet airpower was overrated, and Soviet ground forces were underrated. To the extent that NATO would have to break out the 'enhanced radiation warheads' pretty early on


Conventional conflict can happen, especially with a tiny fig leaf (See the Soviet MiGs over Korea) , but, as @Youngmarshall has rightly said, the classic Fuldapocalypse has stakes too high for it to stay conventional barring the most freakish circumstances.

Those freakish circumstances (cf. Korea/Vietnam/Cuba/Angola) are over a Soviet proxy state, not in the Fulda Gap.
 
I'll also add that for the sake of a story, to me a conventional WWIII is like faster-than-light travel in science fiction (to give one example). Yes, it's obviously inaccurate, but there's equally obvious plot reasons for letting it slide.

Plus I have to repeat that among actual authors who aren't wargamers or alternate history enthusiasts, there's really very very few of these. The "Iceland Scale" in hindsight really only applied to Red Storm Rising itself, a few copycats like Harvey Black's "____ Effect" and Brad Smith's World War III series, a bunch of wargame scenarios, and a (in context) decently small number of online alternate history works. It's just those were the ones I read first before broadening my horizons.

Almost all cheap thrillers, even (or arguably especially) the lowbrow ones, treat World War IIIs as inevitably nuclear and thus, when they're a plot point, center around avoiding/deescalating them or being in a postapocalyptic setting.
 
I've always assumed that Soviet airpower was overrated, and Soviet ground forces were underrated.

That would fit the ZDF plot then - the Soviet is winning on the ground but NATO gains air superiority - without them having to go "and forty per cent of the tanks stopped working wasn't that a lucky break".


In OTL you had stuff like Korea and Angola where huge amounts of men fought but because it was peripheral it never became a matter of life or death where nukes had to be used so Truman could say no to MacArthur. Once you reach a point where it's comparable in number to ww1 or ww2 though, that no is a lot harder.

Once you have tanks marching through Ukraine and Germany, the stakes are so high the losing side is driven to the wall to the point they have to use nukes.

Wondering if you could feasibly - at least feasibly enough to tell an AH war story - have a conventional WW3 break out and stays so as long as it stays away from the key countries. Both sides then have to try and win without ever going 'too far', while whichever countries are being fought in chafe under mass suffering and death without being able to give up/win.
 
I think in terms of amateur ah, a lot of the problems come from two different cultures running into each other and influencing each other badly.

On the one hand you have people who want to write cool stories and don't care much about plausibility to get there. This is how most published AH is. And that's fine.

On the other hand you have people who are primarily interested in talking about history and don't really see the need to make it a narrative. A lot of AH books written by historians exist and there's no story, it's just a chat about history. And that's also fine.

On AH forums like this one, you get people from both schools together. So people who view AH as a setting for fiction and people who view AH as a way of talking about historical possibilities.

Some people would say the main problem with this collision is the massive nit picking you get from the latter when the former try to write something.

I think the bigger problem is that the latter group have created a bunch of ways of expressing their idea about plausible diversions, lists, faux history books, timelines, wiki boxes without having to write a story.

And then people who don't care about plausibility adopt those methods because it's easier than actually writing a story with characters and a plot. But because there's no characters and no plot there's nothing to distract you from the lack of plausibility. You've used a method designed to show your historical workings and your historical workings don't make sense.

The Man in the High Castle is a story, there are characters and things happening, how we got there is vague and unimportant and it's fine cos that's not the point. If that same story is told as overview summaries of history 'day 1 the president said this and day 2 this happened' then you're forced to deal with the moving parts.

I can accept faster-than-light travel as a handwave thing, but then don't spend 300 pages talking about how the engine works if you know nothing about physics. If you want me to handwave it, the author has to handwave it too. And offer me something else to focus on.

And the nit picking then makes this worse because the audience feedback is to encourage a double down on the explanations rather than making characters and plot.

Now I happen to be from the latter group myself. I'm not that big a fan of AH fiction, I prefer straight up historical essays which use counter factuals as a thought exercise. I think there is something valuable in people who know history just chatting about history. And a lot of AH discussion doesn't need a narrative to be valuable to me.

But if you're writing non fiction essays, which is essentially what a lot of timelines are, you have to get the facts right because that's all there is. If you're writing fiction, you need to not sweat it.
 
I think the bigger problem is that the latter group have created a bunch of ways of expressing their idea about plausible diversions, lists, faux history books, timelines, wiki boxes without having to write a story.

And then people who don't care about plausibility adopt those methods because it's easier than actually writing a story with characters and a plot. But because there's no characters and no plot there's nothing to distract you from the lack of plausibility. You've used a method designed to show your historical workings and your historical workings don't make sense.

I cannot agree with this enough. I cannot like this enough. This is exactly the same feeling I have.
 
Wondering if you could feasibly - at least feasibly enough to tell an AH war story - have a conventional WW3 break out and stays so as long as it stays away from the key countries. Both sides then have to try and win without ever going 'too far', while whichever countries are being fought in chafe under mass suffering and death without being able to give up/win.

That reminds me of the (pulpy) Zone series by James Rouch, where fighting is confined to one strip in Germany.
 
This isn't an ideal place for this as there are a lot of things I like about it but given the discussion of non-nuclear WW3s has returned I might as well. It's times these like these I kinda wish we had a "*Larry David standing between a protest and counter-protest* Alternate History story" thread.

World War III, originally Der Dritte Weltkrieg, gets a lot right both in its clever mix of archival footage with filmed scenes to create a AH world that feels more lived-in than many other mockumentaries. The plot is more the issue but even there are good points to it. The full thing is on youtube and I'll link to it before going into spoiler territory.






An earlier, and successful, hardliner coup against Gorbachev is certainly an interesting PoD and the fact it's written from the standpoint of the late nineties also gives it a curious dimension. The story is largely told by a narrator with talking heads, both from NATO, Warsaw Pact, as well as ordinary German civilians* adding their two cents. Those on the west or of pro-western viewpoints talk of their dismay at the coup and the subsequent events, the civilians talk of crushed dreams and impotent rage, whilst the Soviet hardliners defend themselves and theorise what would have happened if they hadn't acted.

It's quite clever, as is the slow stumble of both sides into conventional, and ultimately nuclear, conflict. There's obviously a western-slant to it all but it's never too egregious. America (or Bundeswehr) Fuck Yeah does not make an appearance.

Until the conventional war, which is where the whole mockumentary really falls down. It comes in the form of the really tedious see-saw type battle that seems to manifest itself a lot in AH and it does feel contrived. The reason I suspect that is that the production talks about how it made great use of plans by both sides and war games and you feel there are moments where this is the case; talk of both sides expending much of their ammunition in the first days, large parts of both airforces being taken out on the ground, social disintegration in West Germany leading to clogged roads, etc. It all seems to flow with the sober tone of the rest of the mockumentary but it feels like at some point there needs to be a clear NATO victory which is where things deviate from this tone. When things are at their darkest, NATO merely gains full air supremacy over the course of a day, Soviet equipment suffers major breakdowns and their command structure is beheaded, Warsaw Pact troops desert and the satellite regimes collapse, NATO suddenly has no issues with ammunition, the roads unclog themselves, and within two weeks NATO are at the Polish border having to reassure the Soviets that they don't intend on Barbarossa, which the Soviets disbelieve. Cue Tom Lehrer.

I think the reason why I find it so annoying is because the build-up is pretty good. If the whole thing was just campily bad it wouldn't have stuck out as much but it really did feel like all the Romero-esque talk of "We killed ourselves due to miscommunication, thankfully this didn't happen" at the end is overcome by "but if it did, we would give kicked their asses."


* This was originally a ZDF production although the English version was a collaboration with an American studio, apparently there isn't much difference between the German and English versions


Red Alert 2 - the Movie

I don't understand the format for this because I don't understand who is doing the in-universe interviewing of who by this stage would be dead people, and for what purpose. Maybe this is like some kind of QUEST or CBS Channel documentary for the Auditors of Reality.

I actually liked this as entertainment but there are some parts of it which are Future History board level stuff, like George Bush - of all presidents to do this with, a career national security foreign policy establishment president like George Friggin' Bush - demanding the Soviet abandonment of East Berlin and the whole of Eastern Europe for shits and giggles. That's a 'we did not read a primer on this phase of relations, or George Bush'-type weirdness.
 
I don't understand the format for this because I don't understand who is doing the in-universe interviewing of who by this stage would be dead people, and for what purpose. Maybe this is like some kind of QUEST or CBS Channel documentary for the Auditors of Reality.

I wouldn't say the format's all that different from Threads or The War Game, or Culloden for that matter. It certainly raises questions but if it works in presentation then it's done its job. Granted the line about "no recorded history after this point" and then winding back to OTL did feel a bit too meta.

I like @Charles EP M.'s trial theory, although that wouldn't explain the civilians, unless they're witnesses.


I actually liked this as entertainment but there are some parts of it which are Future History board level stuff, like George Bush - of all presidents to do this with, a career national security foreign policy establishment president like George Friggin' Bush - demanding the Soviet abandonment of East Berlin and the whole of Eastern Europe for shits and giggles. That's a 'we did not read a primer on this phase of relations, or George Bush'-type weirdness.

I think there might have been a page or two missing in the final script as during the war there's talk of the Warsaw Pact being hampered by insurgents but no mention of the Eastern European protest movements turning militant beforehand. If this was already happening then it might have been the impetus for the US to start demanding a general Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe, as foolhardy as that would be when they're dealing with a guy who they know believes that the west is behind the peaceful protests and suspects they're conniving to destroy the Soviet Union.
 
I think there might have been a page or two missing in the final script as during the war there's talk of the Warsaw Pact being hampered by insurgents but no mention of the Eastern European protest movements turning militant beforehand. If this was already happening then it might have been the impetus for the US to start demanding a general Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe, as foolhardy as that would be when they're dealing with a guy who they know believes that the west is behind the peaceful protests and suspects they're conniving to destroy the Soviet Union.

Bush was a Realist and long story short, basically didn't want the USSR to break up or there to be instability in Eastern Europe OTL, so I emphatically don't think he would care about any of that in an incipient WW3 situation. The emphasis would overwhelmingly be de-escalation not forward gains, even if Eastern Europe is in a state of eruption. They'd happily throw those movements under the bus in this situation to achieve a settlement.

Given it starts with Gorby being disappeared I'm not sure why they couldn't also bump off Bush, but I imagine they couldn't find enough footage of Quayle talking about enough things foreign policy wise.
 
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