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Least favorite alt-history story?

I still have a grudge against the entire 'What If' series for mostly being academic essays with a page or two of AH fluff at the end of each essay

I quite enjoy those in fact, for the very reason you described. To elaborate, people mainly read AHs on things they know about, and as such a person who mainly dabbles in say, World War II alternate history is usually not going to be interested in an alternate history relating to the Roman Empire, mainly because they won't know much about the era described. These "What If" books don't really specialize in one particular topic, rather they detail many topics by many different historians. As such someone who is going to buy these books isn't going to always find something in the book which he knows a lot about, and so a bit of exposition in the beginning is needed, and in order to shorten the book and not have it becomes thousands and thousands of pages of AH any sort of alternate history written should be brief.
 
I still have a grudge against the entire 'What If' series for mostly being academic essays with a page or two of AH fluff at the end of each essay

I also think that they're an example of a strange problem AH has, which is that it sometimes-in all its forms-seems to balk at being truly audacious, for a lack of a better word. Maybe it's just the expectations are higher, and there's often understandable reasons (like anything aimed a wide audience needing to be something they can get) but I've noticed its there.
 
I've always felt that their titling and cover art and back-cover blurb fundamentally misrepresented them

I had a look at my edition of More What If there and the blurb is technically accurate but the emphasis is wrong and the cover art of a Nazi victory parade in London isn't featured in the book. The original What If however is more honest in that it blandly promises 'essays that enhance our current understanding of decisive events' and nothing promising any AH, it does however have some featured reviews which describe it as 'pure, almost illicit pleasure' and 'a great bedside read' which makes me wonder if I read the same essay collection as those two guys. Also Hitler never leads an army of Japanese troops with Hueys flying overheard in any of the essays.
 
What Ifs? of American History was actually the best, by which I mean about a quarter of the essays printed were engaging and dealt with the actual changes and consequences that the title advertised with maybe about another two that posed good questions and setup interesting changes but did nothing with them.

For an example of the sort of disconnect between what they were and what they should have been the essay "China Without Tears" in the original collection included a good map of a China divided between a Communist Manchuria, RoC, a still independent Tibet and a Xinjiang SSR. Now, the problem is that nowhere in the text is what happened to Xinjiang ever discussed or even mentioned.
 
What Ifs? of American History was actually the best, by which I mean about a quarter of the essays printed were engaging and dealt with the actual changes and consequences that the title advertised with maybe about another two that posed good questions and setup interesting changes but did nothing with them.

For an example of the sort of disconnect between what they were and what they should have been the essay "China Without Tears" in the original collection included a good map of a China divided between a Communist Manchuria, RoC, a still independent Tibet and a Xinjiang SSR. Now, the problem is that nowhere in the text is what happened to Xinjiang ever discussed or even mentioned.

Literally about to say this - I just started reading through the partial amount of pages allowed by Google (my paperback copy long since disposed of in a charity shop) and I remember O'Connell's The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust to be a supremely powerful piece, written in the guise of the Archivist of the United States compiling a history of the crisis going hot - from the new archives in the new capital, Cheyenne. Can't remember who the archivist was but it was a good piece
 
Literally about to say this - I just started reading through the partial amount of pages allowed by Google (my paperback copy long since disposed of in a charity shop) and I remember O'Connell's The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust to be a supremely powerful piece, written in the guise of the Archivist of the United States compiling a history of the crisis going hot - from the new archives in the new capital, Cheyenne. Can't remember who the archivist was but it was a good piece

Was it maybe Gingrich?
 
A lot of pages for smaller works are done by the author and it shows.

The author or fans.

Which for something like Victoria... :eek:

Also, found the following "lovely" little tidbit on the TVTropes page.

  • All Gays Are Pedophiles: Ultimately subverted, though even then the book is certainly not friendly to LGBT people otherwise. One of the major early incidents in the story is a law requiring all elementary schools to have at least one gay counselor with "unrestricted private and public access" to kids to help them figure out their sexuality, and this is interpreted as being an obvious cover up for the "real" reason gay people would want to be alone with children. Incidents like these lead the State of Maine to rebel against their governor. However, when it is revealed that NAMBLA is behind the plot, it is specifically pointed out that "[e]ven most of the other gays don't like those perverts."

...

Yeah, that is not a subversion.
 
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