Least favorite alt-history story?

[Elektronaut]

At what point do we invoke what was previously said (correctly) about NDCR in relation to Sean Gabb's AH career, that it's been done to death by this point?

Tbh the only reason I've heard of it is because people on here keep going on about it. The notion that because something is published on Amazon, thus it has automatic cachet is giving way too much credit to Gabb-level stuff in an age of relatively easy online publishing.

The only discount purely from its context rather than content on NDCR that I can think of is that it was produced by someone who probably wasn't an adult*. But other than that it had way more standing and readers in the AH community than anything Gabb has produced. So I think this whole notion of an absolute seperation between published and non-published is wrong.

*Though this works both ways as while it was dismissed by adult readers it clearly had a huge youth following.

 

[Gary Oswald]

At what point do we invoke what was previously said (correctly) about NDCR in relation to Sean Gabb's AH career, that it's been done to death by this point?

Tbh the only reason I've heard of it is because people on here keep going on about it. The notion that because something is published on Amazon, thus it has automatic cachet is giving way too much credit to Gabb-level stuff in an age of relatively easy online publishing.

The only discount purely from its context rather than content on NDCR that I can think of is that it was produced by someone who probably wasn't an adult*. But other than that it had way more standing and readers in the AH community than anything Gabb has produced. So I think this whole notion of an absolute seperation between published and non-published is wrong.

*Though this works both ways as while it was dismissed by adult readers it clearly had a huge youth following.

I think this is just more evidence of a need for a thread to chat about AH generally surely.

A thread about the worst is always going to come back to the same 2 or 3 examples.

 

[Coiler]

I think this is just more evidence of a need for a thread to chat about AH generally surely.

A thread about the worst is always going to come back to the same 2 or 3 examples.

Yeah, this. It's either returning to the same few examples (however deserving) or jumping on the newest object of derision (again, however deserving). A general "the good and the bad" AH thread would be a lot more open and less potentially toxic.

(Would it be better placed here in Non-SLP Published Work or in Scenarios and Points of Divergence?)

 

[Elektronaut]

Alternate History General Discussion

I observed in the least favourite thread that, I was thinking the exact opposite of surgical, a very general thread for discussion of alternate history. This thread is kind of like a negative, critical expression of a need for that sort of space. It's also a very popular and enduring thread...

forum.sealionpress.co.uk

 

[OwenM]

• Heated pavements and bullet-trams

What's wrong with these?

 

[Geordie]

Ha, just noticed The Churchill Memorandum blurb has a quote on it:



A quote taken from the second Anarcho-Capitalism article, which is not exactly pro the ideology and in context is going "so uh hey that book's a thing that exists".

Not quite as ballsy as the time the poster for the Tom Hardy Kray's film stuck a two-star review between the Krays so you'd 'read' it as a partially obscured four-star.

@Makemakean was the name of the monster, not the creator.

 

[theev]

At what point do we invoke what was previously said (correctly) about NDCR in relation to Sean Gabb's AH career, that it's been done to death by this point?

Tbh the only reason I've heard of it is because people on here keep going on about it. The notion that because something is published on Amazon, thus it has automatic cachet is giving way too much credit to Gabb-level stuff in an age of relatively easy online publishing.

The only discount purely from its context rather than content on NDCR that I can think of is that it was produced by someone who probably wasn't an adult*. But other than that it had way more standing and readers in the AH community than anything Gabb has produced. So I think this whole notion of an absolute seperation between published and non-published is wrong.

*Though this works both ways as while it was dismissed by adult readers it clearly had a huge youth following.

I'm not trying to dox or reveal anything about NDCR's primary author but I do know that he is an adult and was throughout the writing of it. As for the people "collabing" in Part 3, just knowing the demographics of AH.com I'm sure at least a few of them are teenagers and I'm sure many of NDCR's fans are as well.

 

[Sulemain]

Stuart Slade has passed away.

He was a vindictive and not as clever as he thought he was a man whose politics devolved from a libertarian sort of conservatism to full-on reactionaryism. His writing was also... not good, and whilst an expert in his field it was expertise didn't extend beyond that field.

But in interacting, and eventually arguing with him online in various places I developed and changed and grew as a person. Probably not in a way he'd like but still.

So I'll pour one out for the bitter old bastard. If there is an afterlife, he's probably already planning a nuclear strike on it. Or ranting at someone about something he thinks he knows about but doesn't.

 

[Makemakean]

Ha, just noticed The Churchill Memorandum blurb has a quote on it:

A quote taken from the second Anarcho-Capitalism article, which is not exactly pro the ideology and in context is going "so uh hey that book's a thing that exists".

Not quite as ballsy as the time the poster for the Tom Hardy Kray's film stuck a two-star review between the Krays so you'd 'read' it as a partially obscured four-star.

I found it amusing at first, then I got a bit worried since it might make it look like I was some sort of spokesman for SLP, and that as such the company had somehow endorsed the publication.

I wrote @Meadow about it, and his reply was basically that he also found the situation amusing, and while the snippet as presented might be construed or misinterpreted in that way, he felt that since the text in question had been published on the SLP blog, they fundamentally had to take responsibility for having said it, and they just felt a sense of "well, I suppose we're going to have to live with it, then", and besides, he didn't really think there was any risk of anything bad happening. That it was a fun little thing, and we should leave it at that.

And that's the advice that I followed.

 

[Makemakean]

A quote taken from the second Anarcho-Capitalism article, which is not exactly pro the ideology and in context is going "so uh hey that book's a thing that exists".

For the record, it is not exactly meant to be anti the ideology either.

I wasn't aiming for "dispassionate, detached, disinterested, perfect objectivity", but rather, I tried to be as sympathetic as an outsider as I could, and still provide a good and fair introduction to it. That said, I felt I also needed to say that there were things I found very much unpalatable, and some things that I just found weird and that I think the overwhelming majority of people, wherever they are on the ideological spectrum, will agree are just very weird--like Hans-Hermann Hoppe's endorsement of absolute monarchy.

My hope was that any anarcho-capitalist who read the text might disagree with my final assessment of the ideology, but that regardless they would have to concede that it was not written in bad faith.

 

[Christian]

If I can, I do find timelines where people are SI’d into Louis XVI to be rather weird. I mean, bleeding hell, the readership was outright encouraging the author to immediately put Robespierre to death even though he isn’t even a teenager yet. Hell, the SI himself was already plotting Marat’s death even though, at the time, he was no one important.

I think my problem is that they seem pretty great man-ish in theory. They think that, if we eliminate this specific person, then the movements they represented wouldn’t exist. That’s not good history, and I’d love it if an SI would acknowledge that.

 

[Matt]

If I can, I do find timelines where people are SI’d into Louis XVI to be rather weird. I mean, bleeding hell, the readership was outright encouraging the author to immediately put Robespierre to death even though he isn’t even a teenager yet. Hell, the SI himself was already plotting Marat’s death even though, at the time, he was no one important.

I think my problem is that they seem pretty great man-ish in theory. They think that, if we eliminate this specific person, then the movements they represented wouldn’t exist. That’s not good history, and I’d love it if an SI would acknowledge that.

Or we, the International Congress of Good Taste, assembled, admit all SIs are incredibly dumb.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

Or we, the International Congress of Good Taste, assembled, admit all SIs are incredibly dumb.

It depends on how well they're researched and written.

Chris

 

[Talwar]

I don't follow any specific SI pieces but expect I'd find "I'm an expert on the period and will make things much better" to be somewhat less interesting than "What the fuck is going on and man am I going to screw this up."

 

[Skaven]

There was a Stalin on the day of Barbarossa SI that was quite well done, focussing on the divide between the panicking internal monologue of the SI and later historians trying to account for Stalin's total about face in personality, probably due to a breakdown in the face of the stress.

 

[Gary Oswald]

There was a Stalin on the day of Barbarossa SI that was quite well done, focussing on the divide between the panicking internal monologue of the SI and later historians trying to account for Stalin's total about face in personality, probably due to a breakdown in the face of the stress.

Do you have a link? That does sound vaguely amusing.

 

[Skaven]

Do you have a link? That does sound vaguely amusing.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/tlia-f-w-the-red-star-ascendant.481605/

 

[Japhy]

Or we, the International Congress of Good Taste, assembled, admit all SIs are incredibly dumb.

It seems to me that of all the exercises one can do to explore History it is the most pointless. There are always different figures, different movements, different actions of millions. But to scoop someone's brain out and put someone else in there is not just pointless, and dumb its also one of the most lazy ways you can write.

 

[Polyphemus]

Yeah, it's a way of writing about history with hindsight that is almost self-congratulatory.

 

[Matt]

There was a Stalin on the day of Barbarossa SI that was quite well done, focussing on the divide between the panicking internal monologue of the SI and later historians trying to account for Stalin's total about face in personality, probably due to a breakdown in the face of the stress.

Holy shit, you’ve found one that is halfway interesting! Better still, I don’t see anyone inserting themselves into Robb Stark to murder the Frey’s or fuck a dragon or whatever happens in the endless GoT SI’s being pumped out daily at the Zoo.