The Time is Out of Joint: AH Chronology

[zaffre]

A fun but (very) broad question that I always like to chat about - what times lend themself to good AH? What decades feel the most counterfactual? The least?

A good POD really can be anywhere and anywhen, but I hope I’m not going too far out on a limb when I say that things feel especially in the balance when you put pen to paper in, say, the 1940s or the 1960s. Anyone else feel like certain times spring to mind (or stay out of sight) when you’re thinking about turning points in history - and how much of that is rooted in what actually went down?

 

[I Saw A Red Sky]

Everything happened in the 19th century.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Any decade where things felt really unstable is good for this: the 1970s in many places, the last decade in the UK and US, the 1920s is evergreen. Ten people could come up with fifteen alternate 2019s for the UK!

And then there's the utter flipside if you're doing a narrative, "ah so you think THIS period is really stable but WHAT IF--", and a POD upends it all.

 

[Steve Brinson]

I always feel like this is sort of a chicken-and-egg question - I can see a lot of interesting PoDs in the '70s, but that's because I've read about that period a lot more than I have, say, the 1880s, but on the other hand the reason I've read about that period is in part because I think the period had/has a lot of interesting possibilities.

Any decade where things felt really unstable is good for this: the 1970s in many places, the last decade in the UK and US, the 1920s is evergreen. Ten people could come up with fifteen alternate 2019s for the UK!

And then there's the utter flipside if you're doing a narrative, "ah so you think THIS period is really stable but WHAT IF--", and a POD upends it all.

In a weird way, I feel like periods right before periods of instability are good too - there are a lot of ways you can subtly set up the '60s to be different by slightly changing institutions or careers or material conditions in the '50s.

 

[SpanishSpy]

I always feel like this is sort of a chicken-and-egg question - I can see a lot of interesting PoDs in the '70s, but that's because I've read about that period a lot more than I have, say, the 1880s, but on the other hand the reason I've read about that period is in part because I think the period had/has a lot of interesting possibilities.



In a weird way, I feel like periods right before periods of instability are good too - there are a lot of ways you can subtly set up the '60s to be different by slightly changing institutions or careers or material conditions in the '50s.

This feels right to me - I have had many PoD ideas about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because I have read so much about it, and I'm coming to a similar point with the Spanish Civil War.

 

[IanBertram]

For the UK, I think there is a lot of scope in the period of the 'Great Unrest', say 1890 to 1914, although 1919 was a critical year too. Suffrage, Ireland, labour disputes, the beginnings of nationalism in Scotland and Wales, almost any one of them could be a trigger for a major POD.