Alternate History General Discussion

[Charles EP M.]

Which is also why the war stuff exists- the original plan for AANW was just to describe Europe under the Nazis and never go into the specifics of their eventual defeat.

?!?!?! Bloody hell.

The audience did him a solid there, there's more material in that than the "Nazi occupation in these years sucked, this extra few million died in same way as OTL but longer"

 

[varyar]

?!?!?! Bloody hell.

The audience did him a solid there, there's more material in that than the "Nazi occupation in these years sucked, this extra few million died in same way as OTL but longer"

I like AANW for what it is, but there's a dearth of good stories about what life in the victorious Reich would be like instead of stories about how the Nazis win the war, so I do wonder what might have been (no pun intended).

 

[0.42@632]

The absence of good fiction on the sheer horror of a Fascist British Empire lasting well into the 1970s, and one that uses engineered famines on a regular basis to "discipline" unruly regions as well as chemical and nuclear weapons while remaining uninvadable is ... disturbing compared to the amount of Nazi- scenarios.

 

[Gary Oswald]

His general willingness to make 'Lite' versions of whatever problems OTL countries faced, such as having the *Argentinas become mostly repressive landowner dictatorships-in-reaction-to-leftism in the 1980s that don't receive US funding and are toppled through Consistory diktat minimizes the realworld 'Heavy' versions of those problems

I've agreed with most of what you've said but this is a step too far for me. I think if you argue that any attempt to portray an otl problem as being existent but less serious in an atl is minimising real problems then you're ruling out optimism.

 

[Skinny87]

I like AANW for what it is, but there's a dearth of good stories about what life in the victorious Reich would be like instead of stories about how the Nazis win the war, so I do wonder what might have been (no pun intended).

Good morning it is I, Completely Random Stranger Who Does Not Know You Pau- @varyar

Could you possibly recommend any titles about characters observing life in an Eternal Reich? Possibly while travelling via train?

 

[Elektronaut]

The absence of good fiction on the sheer horror of a Fascist British Empire lasting well into the 1970s, and one that uses engineered famines on a regular basis to "discipline" unruly regions as well as chemical and nuclear weapons while remaining uninvadable is ... disturbing compared to the amount of Nazi- scenarios.

Probably because Nazi Germany is something straight out of OTL and a Fascist British Empire isn't? If the implication here is that there's some kind of bias then I don't agree. It's both easy and easily marketable to diverge WW2 or Nazi Germany, that's all.

 

[Elektronaut]

I think there also must be something like at least an 8:1 ratio between stuff on how the war in the Pacific could have gone different versus what would have actually happened long-term in a Japan wins/somehow finangles no war with the US scenario. And I don't think there's much doubt that the regime would have gone down the Portuguese route or worse there, long-term. I don't think this is because of weeb bias amongst writers, though. It's likely a combination of lack of interest, what sells (In English, stuff involving the US, Britain, or Australia, which would be the war) and lack of expertise on talking about what Japanese Manilla would be like in 1965.

 

[Coiler]

I tend to be more positive than you are on that sort of thing, because as I keep saying, I think there's value in things that aren't publishable just as thought exercises and I think in my head I view that sort of thing as like practicing football vollies by playing a game of one touch, it's not a sport but judging it by a sport's standards is unfair because that's not what it's meant to be. It's just a bit of fun that helps you hone some skills.

This is exactly the biggest reason why I've been so hesitant to review online AH, and why I have stricter standards when doing so. It just feels like it's wrong and punching down to criticize what amounts to a few people kicking/throwing a ball around for fun.

But well, that requires that you also play the sport. It's a weird culture where it's all 'one touch' training games and no actual football which is what ah forums often are.

I could weirdly argue that in some cases it's even less. It sometimes (emphasis on sometimes-not always) feels like just writing scores down-and without using any kind of Football Manager/Strat O Matic -type simulator to aid the scores.

 

[0.42@632]

A theory of modernization from the context of LTTW:
Look to the West Volume VIII: The Bear and the Basilisk | Page 46 | alternatehistory.com

IOTL we see discussion of cultural utility in regards to economic growth or political stability

 

[0.42@632]

The theory that cultures must "work" - be adaptable to the modern world or destroyed ties into the OTL Chinese experience.
Besides the cultural revolution, Mao wanted everyone to use Hanyu Pinyin eventually, wear Mao suits and live in work teams.

 

[0.42@632]

The "best" sort of dystopia barring Axis/Confederate victory is regional nuclear war/non-civilization-ending-WW3 because
1. It wrecks a lot of countries without destroying civilization
2. It can easily turn democracies into (emergency) dictatorships and make preexisting dictatorships (or the fragments of them worse)
3. It weakens the resistance to the idea of a "Round 2" if say 30% of the population survived in Bunkers
Shortly Before the End by QuantumBranching on DeviantArt

 

[Coiler]

The "best" sort of dystopia barring Axis/Confederate victory is regional nuclear war/non-civilization-ending-WW3 because

Interestingly enough, this coincides with how the default setting in non-apocalyptic WW3 novels is usually "plotnukes" (Think Hackett's Birmingham-Minsk "trade"). I was a little surprised to see how many there were like that (and how few that were totally conventional from start to finish).

 

[0.42@632]

Interestingly enough, this coincides with how the default setting in non-apocalyptic WW3 novels is usually "plotnukes" (Think Hackett's Birmingham-Minsk "trade"). I was a little surprised to see how many there were like that (and how few that were totally conventional from start to finish).

I think it was 1984 that first featured the idea of the widespread-but-not-civilization-ending nuclear war

 

[0.42@632]

I think it was 1984 that first featured the idea of the widespread-but-not-civilization-ending nuclear war

Would a nuclear war between non-Soviet Russia and the US in a tripolar setting count as a true WW3?

 

[Coiler]

I think it was 1984 that first featured the idea of the widespread-but-not-civilization-ending nuclear war

To be fair, nuclear weapons were in their infancy when Orwell wrote it.

 

[Alex Richards]

To be fair, nuclear weapons were in their infancy when Orwell wrote it.

And still had to be dropped from planes

 

[Doctor Sulemain]

Well, yeah. Characters are an important part of fiction. Good characters give you something to follow and be invested in.

This seems quite basic.

I guess the main character of OFAHl is South Africa.

 

[Gary Oswald]

I guess the main character of OFAHl is South Africa.

I think the nature of timelines that cover more than 20 years is it makes it much harder to have a single main character you follow, which adds an extra hurdle to finding an audience outside of niche forums like this.

The classic expanded presidential list has like 30 rotating main characters, essentially. And that makes it harder, cos once you sell the reader on the struggles of one guy, he's quickly gone and you have someone else to deal with, so there's no emotional connection. Which is why that format only really works with known historical characters where the audience already knows who Thatcher or Reagan are and get what it means when they arrive on stage.

Like you say the other way you deal with that is to make the setting what the readers are attached to, which is also what mainstream authors of like soap operas or generational novels or fantasy settings do, where characters come and go but it's the street you're following.

But even most of them have anchor characters who work to transition from one generation to another. I think one of the things I'm unsatisfied about 'history of the true whigs' is I didn't have that in the modern day the way that Blyden and Garvey cast their shadows over the early bits, which meant it quickly just became 'here's a person' with no greater connection between them and it just kind of ended rather than climaxed.

But then timelines aren't often stories and I think the best way to get a story out of a timeline is simply to narrow it down on a time period and write one there with the setting as background. As the key for a good story is often a good main character you can follow and you can't really do that if you're starting 200 years after you finish.

But then there's always the argument that people who like stories aren't really looking for stories about early 20th century African politics and people who are interested in those politics aren't looking for stories.

 

[Coiler]

But then there's always the argument that people who like stories aren't really looking for stories about early 20th century African politics and people who are interested in those politics aren't looking for stories.

This mismatch of talent and desire is one of the biggest reasons why AH so bifurcated and why Larry Bond-style "big war thrillers" are so rare. And on a more positive note, it's why I appreciate so much the works that do sincerely try hard to be unique, well-researched, tell a good story, and appeal to a larger audience. Because those are rare.

 

[0.42@632]

Maybe one way for people to be interested in a story about an obscure region is to have it be occupied by "Britain-in-exile" or "France-in-exile" so there are some culturally familiar elements from the home country but there is also a substrate of "native" culture/politics and the whole question of whether to support something that is basically rhodesia-in-exile would be a key political question