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Least favorite alt-history story?

Artaxerxes said:
Roma Eterna is published, its about a surviving Roman Empire but nearly all of the history in it is basically the same with the numbers filed off, oh and then the Jewish population launches a rocket to find the chosen land.
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Out of interest, is it known whether the 'Come Fly with Me' quest in Fallout NV references this, or just coincidence?
 
I was going to say that my least-favorite AH story is The Aachen Memorandum by Andrew Roberts, which was future history at the time of its writing (1995) but is now technically a counterfactual. It was my first exposure to the delusional paranoia of the British anti-EU movement, and in that way something of an eye-opener. It's about a dystopian EU that reads exactly like the stuff Chris Nuttall writes nowadays, where honest patriots are being oppressed by evil Eurocrats and stifled by overbearing political correctness. It turns out that a key referendum that took place in 2015, and resulted in the near-destruction of British sovereignty, was in fact tampered with by agents of Brussels. Eventually truth wins out, the UK is restored as a sovereign country, and the royal family comes back from their exile in New Zealand. All's well that ends well.

But... now that I've heard about NDCR and checked it out, boy, I have to admit that one takes the cake. It's a GOPwank like I'd never seen before, and I was around back when "freedom fries" were a thing. I must admit it takes a special kind of chutzpah to make Mandela pro-white rule, and when those pro-Pinochet memes started showing up the author's reaction was "keep 'em coming". Honestly if I had any advice to give to the AH mods it would be to at least move that thing somewhere non-members can't see it, or it's going to attract yet another crop of edgelords AH.com.

Coiler said:
Well, for all that the first book isn't quite as bad, the rest of The Big One is pretty terrible.
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I lurked on their forum from time to time before they made the politics section members-only. It was a constant wankfest of far-right groupthink. I was surprised to see that some otherwise respectable people, like that guy who writes A Blunted Sickle, are signed up there.
 
Japhy said:
People are going to disagree with your politics David, there tends to have to be more then that, IMO for a work to be truely bad.
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I'd suggest that if the reader cannot suspend disbelief and become immersed in the fiction's world, it's bad.

One thing I had in common with Thatcher; we both liked a Frederick Forsyth book. That guy's a Tory but he knows how to spin a yarn.

By comparison, a Chapman Pincher book is relentless in evangelistic conservatism. Never for a moment can you forget you are reading a Rightist parable.

NDCR is like the latter, but turned up to 11 because of the location on a message board, with each chapter bracketed by good ol' boys a-whoopin' & a-hollerin'.
 
Tovarich said:
I'd suggest that if the reader cannot suspend disbelief and become immersed in the fiction's world, it's bad.

One thing I had in common with Thatcher; we both liked a Frederick Forsyth book. That guy's a Tory but he knows how to spin a yarn.

By comparison, a Chapman Pincher book is relentless in evangelistic conservatism. Never for a moment can you forget you are reading a Rightist parable.

NDCR is like the latter, but turned up to 11 because of the location on a message board, with each chapter bracketed by good ol' boys a-whoopin' & a-hollerin'.
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I would agree with all of that. I’m just saying it’s being Right Wing isn’t enough which I feel isn’t what Hendryk is arguing.
 
Japhy said:
I would agree with all of that. I’m just saying it’s being Right Wing isn’t enough which I feel isn’t what Hendryk is arguing.
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It's right wing, paranoid, poorly written, with a laundry list of political grievances clogging up the narrative. The only difference with Nuttall's dreck is the absence of rape scenes.

I don't have it at hand right now, but three details I remember from the story are pretty representative of the book as a whole: the author laments that breastfeeding in public is legal; when the protagonist tries to help an old lady cross the street, she calls the PC police for being disable-shamed; and students are taught that Hitler was really a misunderstood early advocate of a united Europe.
 
Hendryk said:
It's right wing, paranoid, poorly written, with a laundry list of political grievances clogging up the narrative. The only difference with Nuttall's dreck is the absence of rape scenes.

I don't have it at hand right now, but three details I remember from the story are pretty representative of the book as a whole: the author laments that breastfeeding in public is legal; when the protagonist tries to help an old lady cross the street, she calls the PC police for being disable-shamed; and students are taught that Hitler was really a misunderstood early advocate of a united Europe.
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Holy fucking shit, I would think the author would've been a fan of Hitler in the 30's despise using him as a strawman of the PC EU bureaucrats.
 
Creekmench said:
Holy fucking shit, I would think the author would've been a fan of Hitler in the 30's despise using him as a strawman of the PC EU bureaucrats.
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It wasn't the first nor the last time that the EU was explicitly tarred with the Nazi brush, and it's something I take very personally.

There's a brand of radical right-wingers who have a complex relationship with Nazism. It's like NDCR where the author puts former SS officers in charge (as well as assorted fascists and other far-right extremists), but strenuously denies he has any admiration for Nazism.
 
Hendryk said:
It wasn't the first nor the last time that the EU was explicitly tarred with the Nazi brush, and it's something I take very personally.

There's a brand of radical right-wingers who have a complex relationship with Nazism. It's like NDCR where the author puts former SS officers in charge (as well as assorted fascists and other far-right extremists), but strenuously denies he has any admiration for Nazism.
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I mean I think its because Nazism in essence failed I mean if the Nazis either won out or stopped after Munich you would get more open defenders.
 
Creekmench said:
I mean I think its because Nazism in essence failed I mean if the Nazis either won out or stopped after Munich you would get more open defenders.
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Even then there are TLs out there in which Hitler is slightly saner and/or the Nazis aren't antisemitic, and somehow it makes them all right.

And as far as bad TLs are concerned, I think most of us will agree that Harrison's Stars and Stripes trilogy deserves at least a honorary mention.
 
Hendryk said:
Even then there are TLs out there in which Hitler is slightly saner and/or the Nazis aren't antisemitic, and somehow it makes them all right.

And as far as bad TLs are concerned, I think most of us will agree that Harrison's Stars and Stripes trilogy deserves at least a honorary mention.
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Would For All Time count or is it a too much of a parody?
 
Japhy said:
Various Fascist or fascist like regimes come to power or gain toeholds in the Political mainstream. George Lincoln Rockwell gives up on being an American Nazi, West Germany brings back the monarchy and puts its army in the hand of literal SS War Criminals because they said they were sorry
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Out of morbid curiosity, I'm having a look at the first NDCR thread. The author dutifully name-drops every far-right figure of the second half of the 20th century, and always in a positive light. Especially if they were former SS, like Kurt Waldheim--it's like he gets a boner out of redeeming SS officers, even if he has to pull them out of geriatric care to give them active duty again.
 
Redshank Galloglass said:
The Congressman strikes me as a guy that hides Far Right Politics behind a thinly veiled wall of conservatism.

I’ve always wondered how he wasn’t banned yet.
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He didn’t explicitly say anything racist and he stayed away from Chat.

He did, at one point, defend himself by saying that he had Iranian heritage and therefore couldn’t be racist. Which is clearly some bullshit.
 
I know I'm not a mod, but can we move away from NDCR?

Yes, it's derivative, yes it's pedestrian, yes it's ideologically suspect, yes the Jane Fonda scene was typed one handed.

But it's not on this forum. Nor is it published. Sean Gabb is, and he was tugging at his todger while describing Michael Foot and Ted Heath downing rent boys in acid baths.
 
Geordie said:
Sean Gabb is, and he was tugging at his todger while describing Michael Foot and Ted Heath downing rent boys in acid baths.
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I was unaware of that guy and, now that I've looked him up, I wish I still was. Is the acid bath thing from The York Deviation?
 
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