• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

Least favorite alt-history story?

napoleon IV said:
If we're going to compare them, I would say that purely from a writing perspective The Federation Party is the worst of the lot.
Click to expand...
Worst of the lot? My good sir, this from Federation Party Part 1 is pure gold:


Timeline Number: 1640
Event Date: 11-4-2004
Event Description: In a surprising turn of events, a recount (demanded by the state Democratic Party) in New York gives the Federation Party its first Federal election: John H. Harris, an author from Jamestown, beats Charles Schumer by less than ten votes to become New York's junior senator. In what has become a tradition in the Federation party, he arrives at his victory celebration dressed in a Starfleet uniform (post ST: First Contact style) sporting the rank of one-star admiral.
"We have not only shocked the world," he states in his victory speech, "but we have sent a message to the world. We are conservative AND liberal, and we welcome people of ALL political persuasions. No longer will special interest money set the agenda. While I sit in the United States Senate, you, the voters, will be heard in Washington."
Click to expand...
Only those in the know who appreciate, uh, good AH literature, understand details like these make the Federation Party the best of the best and that the author is writing his magnum opus.
 
Last edited:
USSManhattan said:
The one thing I remember most about this, for some reason, is how the British kept only sending one ship at a time, and upon said ship being utterly annihilated the Admiralty reacted with "oh dear! Best send another ship by itself to the same spot! (guzzles lead paint)"
Click to expand...
I’d gladly read your new timeline where the Royal Navy instituted a lead paint ration for both officers and enlisted men.
 
D'oh ! The frisian thing was so silly, I thought it had been a TL. Like the raid on scapa flow.
 
Elektronaut said:
He was the guy who got kicked for throwing a massive shit fit over it being moved to ASB, and then was never seen again, wasn't he
Click to expand...
Yes, he vanished after his idea was kicked about so hard that it flew apart. As others have pointed out he then tried the same thing on other sites, only to see his idea utterly rubbished there as well. I think that he's probably lurking somewhere, refining his Magnificent Octopus and telling himself how misunderstood he was.
 
He shall return in 2019: he started on AH.com in 2011, then posted the same in 2013 and 2017. :D It's a bit like Comet Halley, in fact.
 
Certainly not my least favorite, but the most disappointing TL for me is Clinton's Korean War. It starts out with a great premise - a Second Korean War lasts for nearly a year (which leads to the Republican revolution stopped dead in its tracks), and ends in a United Korea with the ROK being forced to rebuild both South Korea and the former DPRK, and the butterflies from the Korean War leads to a restored USSR (I will talk about this later in the post) allying with China to counter American interests, sounds like a set up to a great TL. Yet as the TL approaches the 21st century you see that nothing really changes. US politics remains the same (despite the fact that preventing the Republican Revolution would cause a lot a butterflies), and so does Middle Eastern as you still see an Arab Spring along with a Syrian Civil War (the few differences don't really save it).

The TL also has its implausibilities. The restored USSR is a possibility, yet the way it happens is not possible. I could potentially see Belarus rejoining this restored USSR, and perhaps Transnistria, but Moldova and Ukraine were pushing it. If the USSR was to ever be restored and countries other than Belarus join it why not have the Central Asian countries, the ones who were the most pro-Soviet? Another one, which might be a nitpick, is Iran joining the US bloc despite the fact the US bloc also has the Gulf states and Israel in it. Iran was comfortable doing it alone after 1979 in the Cold War IOTL, I don't see why they won't do it again in an alt Cold War.

Also the way the author made Somalia a stable democracy was contrived.
 
lerk said:
Certainly not my least favorite, but the most disappointing TL for me is Clinton's Korean War. It starts out with a great premise - a Second Korean War lasts for nearly a year (which leads to the Republican revolution stopped dead in its tracks), and ends in a United Korea with the ROK being forced to rebuild both South Korea and the former DPRK, and the butterflies from the Korean War leads to a restored USSR (I will talk about this later in the post) allying with China to counter American interests, sounds like a set up to a great TL. Yet as the TL approaches the 21st century you see that nothing really changes.
Click to expand...

This can be a bit of a problem with Onkel's insistence on ensuring that every single one of his TLs ends more or less in the present day. I've never been one to say "you can stop now" as that would almost certainly send the wrong message but it does seem sometimes that the TL is continuing long past it's had any need to just so that we can compare the present day to our own. He has a lot of great ideas and I've often found myself going back to his works but as I've found in my own experience, some TLs have a natural end point long before the present day and pushing them beyond that unnaturally will just lead to them going stale.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top