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Alternate History General Discussion

Here's a question that's been bugging me as i lay the plans for my next AH novel ...

Just how committed to the Nazis was Werner Von Braun?

Chris
 
Man from right wing German family tells the Nazis what they want to hear so he can work on rockets, then tells the US government what they want to hear so he can work on rockets.

He clearly wasn't burdened by morals, his priority was rocketry, whether there's a government he wouldn't have worked on a rocket program for I don't think we can tell from this distance.
 
Speaking of my fictional historical figures, this is the real person bearing the most resemblance to them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_al-Hamdi
I'm saying this because he carried out major schemes of economic development, while strenghtening South Yemen's military and seeking both national unity and reunification. When I get on a different device, I will fix spelling mistakes on his Wikipedia page.
 
General idea (undecided whether to plan writing it) but was thinking of doing a timeline about the development of the internet in the 90s if the Soviet Union doesn't collapse (or at least jury-rigs itself into continuining beyond the end of history) - given the Soviets longstanding involvement with computing and cybernetics, would their version of the internet/world wide web be similar to developments in the 90s?

Also wondering if above is plausible - feel free to critique! (I would post on other places, but given the obscene levels of historical determinism I encounter I can't be bothered)

Cheers, Morbs xx
 
Charles EP M. said:
The USSR would probably get involved in the internet as it becomes a big global thing, as other communist and authoritarian states did.
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Yeah I was wondering if it'd be similar to that the PRC has or whether you'd have a two internet's scenario, or something inbetween

I'm not an IT expert, but I think it's an interesting enough premise to maybe do as a short scenario (particularly given the early internet's mulitple standards and systems)

Imagine a world where Sandra Bullock's The Net is made with the Soviets still kicking - glorious
 
morbidteaparty said:
General idea (undecided whether to plan writing it) but was thinking of doing a timeline about the development of the internet in the 90s if the Soviet Union doesn't collapse (or at least jury-rigs itself into continuining beyond the end of history) - given the Soviets longstanding involvement with computing and cybernetics, would their version of the internet/world wide web be similar to developments in the 90s?

Also wondering if above is plausible - feel free to critique! (I would post on other places, but given the obscene levels of historical determinism I encounter I can't be bothered)
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My go-to recommendation if you want to learn more about computer networks in the USSR is How Not to Network a Nation by Benjamin Peters.
 
Hendryk said:
My go-to recommendation if you want to learn more about computer networks in the USSR is How Not to Network a Nation by Benjamin Peters.
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I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising that Soviet attempts to create an Internet were a complete uncoordinated shitshow, considering this was the country that had to use satellites to look at Uzbek cotton fields because the entire political leadership there was defrauding the central bank with falsified cotton harvest numbers.
 
Thande said:
I always thought a surviving USSR might end up paradoxically dependent on the West as more and more of society becomes computer-centric.
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In my All Union series, this is basically how it goes, with them wolfing down computers/chips from Taiwan (counter to the PRC) and India (traditionally friendly and tied) in particular. It's a soft AH, but I still think it makes a lot more intuitive sense then them suddenly jumping twenty years in semiconductors for no plausible reason.
 
Did I read somewhere that they tried to develop some sort of analog computers rather than the binary at the hear of modern systems? Or was that a myth?
 
IanBertram said:
Did I read somewhere that they tried to develop some sort of analog computers rather than the binary at the hear of modern systems? Or was that a myth?
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There were some Soviet experiments with ternary computers, not binary - that is, base 3 instead of base 2 - I think that might be what you’re thinking of. That said, their experiments with them came to an end in the 1970s, and they had very little to do with Soviet experiments with networking.
 
IanBertram said:
Did I read somewhere that they tried to develop some sort of analog computers rather than the binary at the hear of modern systems? Or was that a myth?
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Wasn't there some advanced soviet aircraft which, when a captured example was examined by the US, was using vacuum tubes (possibly to better resist EMP)? Again, no source, so probably me misremembering or a myth.
 
Do any of you believe that alternate timelines actually exist?
There is the multiverse hypothesis.
It has more support among physicists than you may think.
 
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