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Least favorite alt-history story?

May as well crosspost this here:

Thanks to a conversation with my mate, I have now remembered the TimeRiders series of YA novels, so now you have to as well.

Why am I mentioning them, you ask? You see, the main characters work for a time travel agency and have to stop history diverging, and there's some AH involved when they fail and change the past.

The books are:
  • TimeRiders: the newly recruited team of teens have to stop a physicist from the future from (brace yourselves) taking over the world by giving the Nazis super weapons. So it's Guns of the South, but waaaay shittier. Somehow, the series goes downhill in terms of AH from here.
  • TimeRiders: Day of the Predator: our plucky teens get sent back in time by accident for once, meet a bunch of intelligent dinos, give them knowledge of tool use by accident, and somehow this changes history so dinosaur times never ended and humans never evolved. Apparently stone axes can defeat a meteor.
  • TimeRiders: The Eternal War: Because the TimeRiders (poor spelling is kewl) accidentally bring teen Abraham Lincoln to the present trying to save him from a runaway cart he never becomes President, and so *deep breath* the Civil War (which started because of Lincoln) continues to the modern day, only now it's a proxy war between France and Evil!Britain because reasons, and also there are weird clone soldier things called 'eugenics', and New York is a battlefield. If the Rebs have got that far north, it's all over for the Union.
  • TimeRiders: Gates of Rome: a secret gubmint project in the future ISOTs a bunch of politicians, marines, and scientists back in time to take over the Roman Empire. This goes horribly wrong. Caligula uses modern medicine and armed Marines to survive another 17 years, and starts his own religion based on a combo of Christianity and Roman religion called 'Julianity'. Somehow, the Roman Empire is weakened despite having modern technology, because Caligula is a Bad Ruler and this series is so devoted to the Great Man Theory of history it's painful.
Luckily, at this point, the wiki runs out of plot summaries. However, I have a vague memory of another book having the PoD being that people find out that Jack the Ripper is a member of the royal family, and for some reason this causes a Communist revolution in the UK because apparently blind faith in the monarchy was all that was holding the British population back. Oh, and to justify why preventing this is bad, Commie!Britain ends up in a nuclear war.

Yeah, not exactly a stellar series.
 
As for "A blunted sickle" the author is from the Netherlands (AFAIK) so can't be suspected of any "Vichy shame" to be corrected.
 
  • TimeRiders: Day of the Predator: our plucky teens get sent back in time by accident for once, meet a bunch of intelligent dinos, give them knowledge of tool use by accident, and somehow this changes history so dinosaur times never ended and humans never evolved. Apparently stone axes can defeat a meteor.

As silly as the premise is that might actually be a cool idea, interference from the future leaves basic tools behind and then ten million years later you have Troodon Robert Duvall blowing up the asteroid from within (or they just ride it out in bunkers) allowing dinosaur civilisation to thrive for another 65 million years, maybe making contact with some jumped up iguanas along the way. It also reminds me of these dino cave art that Simon Roy painted.



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Hang on, though, he's about as English as they come, isn't he?

Yep, I think he travels about a bit with his job and other pursuits (the proceeds for the buyable e-copy goes towards an annual pilgrimage to Lourdes he helps organise) but he is English and is based in England.
 
Hang on, though, he's about as English as they come, isn't he?

Maybe, I can't be sure, I've been banned from the other place (with less and less regrets as time pass by, considering its downward spiral). I'm only sure he is not french.
 
Luckily, at this point, the wiki runs out of plot summaries. However, I have a vague memory of another book having the PoD being that people find out that Jack the Ripper is a member of the royal family, and for some reason this causes a Communist revolution in the UK because apparently blind faith in the monarchy was all that was holding the British population back. Oh, and to justify why preventing this is bad, Commie!Britain ends up in a nuclear war.

Yeah, not
I used to like the series, actually met the author once and he seemed like a decent bloke. However his writing wasn't the best, also you forgot the Jack the Ripper one had a young H.G. Wells in it (because of course) and somehow the Communist Britian got into a Nuclear war with a Soviet Union.

If you want decent young adult AH fiction then read the Levithan series, because whilst it's ridiculous the author has certainly done his historical research, it's just Westerfeld wanted Dieselpunk Imperial Germans vs Biopunk Brits.
 
If you want decent young adult AH fiction then read the Levithan series, because whilst it's ridiculous the author has certainly done his historical research, it's just Westerfeld wanted Dieselpunk Imperial Germans vs Biopunk Brits.

I credit the Leviathan series for sparking my interest in zeppelins. It is certainly very good, if implausible, and sometimes I worry about the nightmares that will be this world's Nazi Germany and Soviet Union.
 
I credit the Leviathan series for sparking my interest in zeppelins. It is certainly very good, if implausible, and sometimes I worry about the nightmares that will be this world's Nazi Germany and Soviet Union.
Actually given how the series's ends a Nazi Germany is unlikely, although given how Russia was in this timeline still a decaying mess we could still have a biopunk Soviet Union...probably lead by Trotsky. Also Japan seemed to still be heading down the same route as OTL...so you win some you lose some I guess.
 
John Schettler's Kirov series isn't just dubious, it's also disappointing. Axis of Time ripoff it might be, there's at least some decent potential in "super-battlecruiser goes back in time to World War II" and there's also some potential in wargaming (which Schettler has worked in) various alternate history events.

The issue is that it doesn't have to be 45 books long and counting, with, as @Skinny87 pointed out, a spinoff devoted to Waterloo of all things. From what I've personally read, the reason percentage is about 30% the books becoming platforms to show off contingency wargaming and 70% just really, really bad pacing.
 

Ah yes, that TL. I was even a small contributor to it, and it was a big eye opener. I'm curious as to see how many of your dislikes match mine, which are...

  • Moving past the initial installment's alternate console war and into an aimless description of fictional video games that everyone else oohs and ahs over.
  • A lot of wish fulfillment, amplified by excessive fan participation.
  • Tangents and "shock events", often non-gaming, thrown out there for no real reason except "butterflies because we feel like it"
 
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