Least favorite alt-history story?

[varyar]

I think I read that. Not exactly, I mean, but an AH where the US used the bomb to devastate the Draka citizen armies while they were concentrated for the invasion of Spain.

Proof Through the Night. That's a good read.

 

[Coiler]

If there's one good lesson to learn from the Draka series, it's that it's the hyperexample of a work set in Africa that has no interest whatsoever in Africa or Africans. For that matter, it doesn't even have any real interest in Afrikaaners either- even if you're just going to be using the Evil Seef Effreekans who hate Bleck Peeple, Paul Kruger and Jan Smuts both would make far more interesting antagonists in a timeline than Sterling's lot.

I'll say that the original books avoid the over-flanderized puppy kicking reputation the internet understandably but annoyingly gave the Drakan characters...

...at the expense of adding even more to their Mary Sueishness.

 

[Matt]

Let’s all be honest and admit to ourselves Stirling’s AH is terrible(hell, all of his writing for that matter) and has no redeeming value whatsoever.

 

[MAC161]

Let’s all be honest and admit to ourselves Stirling’s AH is terrible(hell, all of his writing for that matter) and has no redeeming value whatsoever.

I would respectfully disagree with regards to Peshawar Lancers and its novella tie-in Shikari in Galveston. As to Draka, I agree wholeheartedly; that series is among the best examples of how not to write AH, in my view, dystopian or otherwise. Conquistador was "Ehhh" in general, though with an interesting idea, and ISOT/Emberverse had a great starting premise and good description(s), yet cratered in story and character quality almost right off the bat in the former case, and after the third book in the latter.

 

[lordroel]

Let’s all be honest and admit to ourselves Stirling’s AH is terrible(hell, all of his writing for that matter) and has no redeeming value whatsoever.

Even his Nantucket series.

 

[The Red]

Proof Through the Night. That's a good read.

It’s funny because it does arguably fall into that trope where the Allies have basically won by the end of the first act but the dramatic tension only gets stronger until the end, it’s a testament to the quality of the writing I guess. As the writer points out it’s one of many fanfics about screwing over the Draka but it stands out as the best.

The sequel’s good as well although I found the world building around the quarantine zone to be more interesting than a lot of the action and I wish there’d been more focus on that.

 

[varyar]

It’s funny because it does arguably fall into that trope where the Allies have basically won by the end of the first act but the dramatic tension only gets stronger until the end, it’s a testament to the quality of the writing I guess. As the writer points out it’s one of many fanfics about screwing over the Draka but it stands out as the best.

It really is. There's several scenes I remember even though I've only read it a few times - FDR mercilessly needling the defeated von Shrakenburg over the telephone, the Draka officer realizing they're under atomic attack about 30 seconds too late to warn higher command, FDR's death, Admiral Yamamoto making a slightly snide reference to FDR's "A day that will live in infamy" and FDR taking it in stride, the Charles Lindbergh expy's inner monologue about how he realized he'd been duped and used by the Draka...

The sequel’s good as well although I found the world building around the quarantine zone to be more interesting than a lot of the action and I wish there’d been more focus on that.

There were two sequels, weren't there? One set a generation later and then another one set far in the future that went hard into weird sci-fi territory? Or am I confusing two different series?

 

[The Red]

It really is. There's several scenes I remember even though I've only read it a few times - FDR mercilessly needling the defeated von Shrakenburg over the telephone, the Draka officer realizing they're under atomic attack about 30 seconds too late to warn higher command, FDR's death, Admiral Yamamoto making a slightly snide reference to FDR's "A day that will live in infamy" and FDR taking it in stride, the Charles Lindbergh expy's inner monologue about how he realized he'd been duped and used by the Draka...

Roosevelt was a joy to read, you don't usually get portrayals of him where he's happy to be a bastard if it suits his plans despite the fact it was very much an aspect of his personality IOTL.

There were two sequels, weren't there? One set a generation later and then another one set far in the future that went hard into weird sci-fi territory? Or am I confusing two different series?

I'm not sure, I was thinking of Breaking Strain but wasn't aware of any further sequels?

 

[varyar]

Roosevelt was a joy to read, you don't usually get portrayals of him where he's happy to be a bastard if it suits his plans despite the fact it was very much an aspect of his personality IOTL.



I'm not sure, I was thinking of Breaking Strain but wasn't aware of any further sequels?

Indeed. A nice touch.

I just checked and there was a third one as i remembered - https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9458507/1/A-Different-Spirit

 

[Indicus]

I would respectfully disagree with regards to Peshawar Lancers and its novella tie-in Shikari in Galveston.

I thought they were pretty bad, myself. While a Victorian apocalypse and an Indianized British Empire are certainly good ideas, the execution was not. There's the lazy worldbuilding, like Europe and North America going "savage", and Russia going Satanist. Then there's the downright offensive, like Melek Taus being treated as a devilish god, or the Thuggee stuff, or the bizarre lack of Muslims in the Angrezi Raj (one of the settings is Srinagar, come on Stirling). There's the use of stereotypes, from the evil Afrikaner to the servile Sikh. There's the stuff he gets wrong, like with Santoshi Mata.

I also don't like the characters, in particular the Flashman pastiche. And again, the use of stereotypes makes them worse.

 

[Japhy]

I defended Lancers for a long time but yeah the work is just his usual bigotry coded in a slightly different way.

 

[Charles EP M.]

I was thinking for the last few posts "wouldn't the point of Lancers be pastiching older adventure books and so stereotypes etc are part of that", but your comparison to Flashman - the pastiche going wrong - makes me go "oh right".

 

[DAv]

The whole sub-genre of 'Nazis win because logistics don't exist' is rather grating. Especially when they have the Allies act as blocks of cement with no intellect throughout rather than human beings.

 

[Coiler]

The whole sub-genre of 'Nazis win because logistics don't exist' is rather grating. Especially when they have the Allies act as blocks of cement with no intellect throughout rather than human beings.

It's why a lot of the best Axis victory AH stories don't go into detail on just how they won beyond basic handwaves.

 

[DAv]

It's why a lot of the best Axis victory AH stories don't go into detail on just how they won beyond basic handwaves.

And the ones that do tend to be written by people who show that they don't know much about the details and show little indication to learn.

 

[Coiler]

And the ones that do tend to be written by people who show that they don't know much about the details and show little indication to learn.

Part of the problem with this is the "AH as a setting" vs "AH as a genre" dichotomy.

For the latter, it's harder when A: What's being suggested is indeed less plausible, B: Because of the nature of the genre, the details have to be shown in a way that they don't when it's just a backdrop for a story somewhere else, and C: People write in that format simply because it's easier.

 

[Gary Oswald]

How that Axis could win WWII isn't interesting to me at all. What would happen if they did is.

I don't find either interesting, tbh and I'm mostly just hoping that eventually mainstream AH comes up with a second possible scenario as to how things could have gone differently over the million years of human history.

 

[The Red]

I don't find either interesting, tbh and I'm mostly just hoping that eventually mainstream AH comes up with a second possible scenario as to how things could have gone differently over the million years of human history.

Maybe something about the 1861 Slaver Rebellion?

 

[Jared]

I don't find either interesting, tbh and I'm mostly just hoping that eventually mainstream AH comes up with a second possible scenario as to how things could have gone differently over the million years of human history.

Mainstream AH relies on people's actual knowledge of history. When dealing with English-speakers, the majority of people's knowledge of history can be summed up as "WW2 pus what happened during my lifetime", with (for Americans) a side-order of the Let Us Keep Slavery War. Maybe, if you're very lucky, something of WW1 as well.

It's inevitable that most mainstream AH scenarios will end up focusing on that. Even in the Other Place, with a group who are presumably a little more knowledgeable about history than the norm, the post-1900 forum gets much more readership than the pre-1900 forum, suggesting that the last 120 years of human history are much more important than the 999,880 years before that.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Maybe something about the 1861 Slaver Rebellion?

[continues notes for Confederates VS Nazis: The Steam Wars]