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Allohistory Travel Guides

J

Jared

Book 1 - 70%
Published by SLP
Location
Over the rainbow
This thread is part an AH-writing idea, and part question.

I have a number of AH scenario deas which I was considering turning into timelines. Given the way I write timelines (ie years and years for one idea) and my currently available free time (ie virtually none), that's not going to happen. But I'd like to bring these scenarios into life in some form.

What I have in mind is having a series of AH "travel guides" to particular nations (or cities or something within nations, as the case may be) which explores what those worlds have turned out like, but written in the format of a guide with helpful notes for interdimensional travellers. There will be a framing device in terms of the "reference timeline (a timeline close to ours, though not the same)", how to stay incognito while visiting, various travel writers with different styles who write different entries in the guides, etc.

I have a vague memory of reading something along these lines on AH.com, but the only thing I can find on search is a one-off travel guide to one fictional nation (here) that doesn't look the same. But I don't want to try to do a knock-off of something which has been done before, so if there is something like that in existence I can tweak my approach into something else, or at least make sure it's distinctive enough that it doesn't feel like a clone.

Can anyone remember reading about such a format on AH.com or other alternative history websites?
 
Jared said:
This thread is part an AH-writing idea, and part question.

I have a number of AH scenario deas which I was considering turning into timelines. Given the way I write timelines (ie years and years for one idea) and my currently available free time (ie virtually none), that's not going to happen. But I'd like to bring these scenarios into life in some form.

What I have in mind is having a series of AH "travel guides" to particular nations (or cities or something within nations, as the case may be) which explores what those worlds have turned out like, but written in the format of a guide with helpful notes for interdimensional travellers. There will be a framing device in terms of the "reference timeline (a timeline close to ours, though not the same)", how to stay incognito while visiting, various travel writers with different styles who write different entries in the guides, etc.

I have a vague memory of reading something along these lines on AH.com, but the only thing I can find on search is a one-off travel guide to one fictional nation (here) that doesn't look the same. But I don't want to try to do a knock-off of something which has been done before, so if there is something like that in existence I can tweak my approach into something else, or at least make sure it's distinctive enough that it doesn't feel like a clone.

Can anyone remember reading about such a format on AH.com or other alternative history websites?
Click to expand...

I remember seeing them linked through the old AH.com portal around the time I signed up, in 2006 or so. They were mostly from the early 2000's and I think the site has vanished by now, but I clearly remember them. I think the title was "alternate history travel guides".

EDIT:
It was a Yahoo group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ahtg/

https://web.archive.org/web/20060101023734/http://www.ahtg.net:80/
 
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Jared said:
This thread is part an AH-writing idea, and part question.

I have a number of AH scenario deas which I was considering turning into timelines. Given the way I write timelines (ie years and years for one idea) and my currently available free time (ie virtually none), that's not going to happen. But I'd like to bring these scenarios into life in some form.

What I have in mind is having a series of AH "travel guides" to particular nations (or cities or something within nations, as the case may be) which explores what those worlds have turned out like, but written in the format of a guide with helpful notes for interdimensional travellers. There will be a framing device in terms of the "reference timeline (a timeline close to ours, though not the same)", how to stay incognito while visiting, various travel writers with different styles who write different entries in the guides, etc.

I have a vague memory of reading something along these lines on AH.com, but the only thing I can find on search is a one-off travel guide to one fictional nation (here) that doesn't look the same. But I don't want to try to do a knock-off of something which has been done before, so if there is something like that in existence I can tweak my approach into something else, or at least make sure it's distinctive enough that it doesn't feel like a clone.

Can anyone remember reading about such a format on AH.com or other alternative history websites?
Click to expand...

It's not exactly that, but there are Ottokar's Scepter splash pages about Syldavia.
 
The collaborative thread about a machine that would summon random objects from Alternate Universes when you used it strikes me as a sort of related idea to this as well.
 
Burton K Wheeler said:
I remember seeing them linked through the old AH.com portal around the time I signed up, in 2006 or so. They were mostly from the early 2000's and I think the site has vanished by now, but I clearly remember them. I think the title was "alternate history travel guides".

EDIT:
It was a Yahoo group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ahtg/

https://web.archive.org/web/20060101023734/http://www.ahtg.net:80/
Click to expand...
Thank you - this is indeed what I was thinking of. While I never frequented the original yahoo group/board, I now have tracked down what I was thinking of - Bruce Munro produced some maps for these scenarios on AH.com a while ago.

These old AH travel guides have been dead for a while. From what I can see from the archives, they weren't adopting exactly the same approach as I had in mind anyway. I think what I have is distinct enough that I can get creating a few scenarios like this, as and when I have some time.

The first two I have in mind are:
- an alternate Central Asia where Buddhism remained dominant. The divergence is more complex than "the Tang beat the Abbasids at Talas", but it does involve a more lasting Tang presence in Central Asia which allows Buddhism to get established and also, indirectly, prevents the expansion of Islam into India for a very long time.
- an alternate "China" which is a fusion of Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan languages (and peoples). The divergence involves an alternate series of population migrations in Central Asia (see a theme developing here?) where the Tocharians and some other Indo-European speakers end up pushing east into parts of modern China. Some of them are invited as mercenaries/auxiliaries during the Warring States period, and due to a complicated series of events, end up becoming the ruling elite and unifying "China" under a Tocharian-speaking dynasty. History is different thereafter.
 
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Jared said:
- an alternate Central Asia where Buddhism remained dominant. The divergence is more complex than "the Tang beat the Abbasids at Talas", but it does involve a more lasting Tang presence in Central Asia which allows Buddhism to get established and also, indirectly, prevents the expansion of Islam into India for a very long time.
Click to expand...

I like this one. You could almost do it as a sort of alternate version of Journey into the West
 
Stateless said:
I want to do a travel guide through a HRE-style fragmentary Great Britain.
Click to expand...
This is the sort of idea which will probably turn into a multi-author enterprise anyway. It's easily adapted.

Give me some time to write up the first one or two to establish the framing device and general format, and then things can be opened up from there.
 
Hello! Randy McDonald here. I find myself visiting the Sealion Press forums for the first time. This thread came up when I began to search to see past discussions of projects I have been involved in.

The Alternate History Travel Guides were a two-fold project.

  • There was the website at ahtg.net, a stable site that did host a variety of travel guides to different locations on different alternate earths, all part of a shared universe (multiverse?) where steampunk technology allowed travel between Earth.
  • There was the Yahoo Groups mailing list, originally on Onelist, that was a venue for collaborative storytelling, online roleplaying in that multiverse. Many of the locations profiled at ahtg.net featured on the mailing list as venues for adventure, and sometimes the events on that mailing list ended up influencing the histories. My two major worlds of Empires Earth and Tripartite Alliance Earth played major roles in the setting, to the point that the game ended up tweaking their histories a bit.
 
I have a half written tour around a UK but its japan type thing which ended up being me trying to make the British rail system like the Japanese rail network by brute force
 
rfmcdonald said:
Hello! Randy McDonald here. I find myself visiting the Sealion Press forums for the first time. This thread came up when I began to search to see past discussions of projects I have been involved in.
Click to expand...
Welcome to the SLP forums. And thanks for the history on how the old AH travel guides works.

Roger II said:
I am intrigued by Buddhist Central Asia and wish to subscribe to this newsletter.
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I ended up shelving this project to the usual problem of too many ideas, not enough time to write them all, but I may revisit the idea or a variant at some stage.
 
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