Alternate History General Discussion

[Talwar]

I think I went with "civilization tries to adapt and kind of muddles through".

 

[RyanF]

Main reason I haven't written a “slow collapse of civilization due to climate change and climate-induced mass migrations" timeline is there's a good possibility that I'm going to live through that so it doesn't really work as escapism.

Yes it's why you're making sure you'll be welcome in Scotland early.

 

[Neal]

America is unlikely to handle climate-change induced breakdown well

 

[JesterBL]

America is unlikely to handle climate-change induced breakdown well

America is going to be better equipped than most places just because of how much climactic diversity we have (the resilience of our institutions and our social cohesion are different matters). Places that are going to suffer the most are places that don't have that, and countries which are concentrated at or below sea level.

 

[Coiler]

There's also that dealing with a contemporary issue, however intelligently and tastefully, doesn't count as "alternate history" in all but the most absolutely broad definition of the term.

 

[Gary Oswald]

I think I went with "civilization tries to adapt and kind of muddles through".

Which I think is probably more likely that a full collapse, though both are on the table.

But honestly if I was going to write future history, whether that's straight forward sci-fi or AH future (as in like the 'Surly Bonds' where the pod is pre 2021 but the setting is post 2021) I'd probably handwave the climate issues (Surly bonds does it through a nuclear war which we are told caused just enough nuclear winter to offset the climate change and leave average temperatures basically where they were which I still think is great).

Just not something I want to write about, when it comes down to it and the main reason my Liberian timeline stopped at 2020 rather than continued to the end point of full west african unification.

 

[Charles EP M.]

where Southern Europe (the nondesertified bits) a few centuries from *now speaks Romance-derived languages but is genetically 30% Arabic without looking racist

"Demographics change in future" or even "have changed in alternate history" shouldn't be racist*, it's an obvious thing to do to show it's a different future or past. To quote Ben Aaronovitch on his own Doctor Who stuff, "ah it must be the future because the Brigadier's a black woman". There was an alt-hist crime story Skinny reviewed for the site, In The Cage Where Your Soldiers Hide, where the AH Scottish city has numerous non-white Hispanic characters in it because of the alternate Scotland pulled off its attempts at empire. 'Ah, it must have had an empire, because here's the diaspora.'

* unless, like Kratman's Caliphate, the reason you're writing it is to be racist

 

[Talwar]

I'm picturing a TL in which we're struggling to deal with climate change, then Yellowstone starts erupting and suddenly the patriotic thing to do is burn more hydrocarbons.

 

[kratostatic]

(Surly bonds does it through a nuclear war which we are told caused just enough nuclear winter to offset the climate change and leave average temperatures basically where they were which I still think is great).

Hang on, I missed that bit! Isn't this literally Futurama's explanation?

 

[Stateless]

There's also that dealing with a contemporary issue, however intelligently and tastefully, doesn't count as "alternate history" in all but the most absolutely broad definition of the term.

An interesting take might be one of those "aeolipile leads to a Roman industrial revolution" scenarios where you're looking at an 11th century climate catastrophe.

 

[Yokai Man]

"Demographics change in future" or even "have changed in alternate history" shouldn't be racist*, it's an obvious thing to do to show it's a different future or past. To quote Ben Aaronovitch on his own Doctor Who stuff, "ah it must be the future because the Brigadier's a black woman". There was an alt-hist crime story Skinny reviewed for the site, In The Cage Where Your Soldiers Hide, where the AH Scottish city has numerous non-white Hispanic characters in it because of the alternate Scotland pulled off its attempts at empire. 'Ah, it must have had an empire, because here's the diaspora.'

* unless, like Kratman's Caliphate, the reason you're writing it is to be racist

Technically also done in Revolutionary Calendar by Viktor Horvárth in the alt 1956 Hungarian Revolution anthology I talked about in the Book Thread,but it’s more about black slaves being brought in the Austro Hungarian Empire and remaining a thing in Czechoslovakia and Hungary,including during Communism-the only change is that most slaves are owned by the state and forced to work in collective farms instead of private farms.

It doesn’t really work though since this added aspect doesn’t change in how the Hungarian Revolution happens beyond “the Soviets trick the slaves that they’re gonna give them their own schools if they help the Soviet Army violently put down the revolutionaries”. Slavery is just something that happens in the background that the characters just accept since that’s how it’s been since forever and don’t think the slaves will ever revolt since they treat them like family and therefore will always be loyal to them. It’s not an important part of the story,it’s just something that exists in the story for no real reason,since Horvárth doesn’t talk that much about slavery per se.

Also all the slaves speak in a stereotypical German accent and I don’t know why beyond “cuz the Habsburgs were German” or “cuz satire?”.

Like,Martin Luther Ling Junior makes a cameo as the assistant to the US Consul and he talks like a German character from Allo Allo and there isn’t any reason for why. It’s just something that happens.

 

[Gary Oswald]

Hang on, I missed that bit! Isn't this literally Futurama's explanation?

It's pretty off hand in Surly Bonds but yeah @Thande and Matt Groening: brothers in arms.

For instance the chapter about Bangladesh says "No country had suffered as much from the slow, inexorable advance of climate change as Bangladesh had. The fact that a nuclear winter and geoengineering had gradually forced the Bay of Bengal into a rearguard action was small comfort. "

 

[Venocara]

Japan also has a more stable labor and business situation than the United Kingdom, especially during the decades in which the United Kingdom was having poor overall economic performance.

I think this is the critical problem. Post-war the UK simply hasn’t had the political, economic or labour relations stability to allow many potential industries to thrive, and in a sector where there is so much international competition without that stability and with the inherent disadvantages the UK never stood a chance.

 

[Von Callay]

If we tagged an SLP book "Alt1970s Reverse Harem Miniluv Dark Romance" and the cover had people implying they had little clothes, it'd outsell everything else.

Ah, yes, my great unpublished epic work, Brother Against Brother: A Novel of the Second War Between the States (Chains of Love and Empire, Book No. 1, New Adult Dystopian AH Romance).

 

[Delta Force]

Which I think is probably more likely that a full collapse, though both are on the table.

But honestly if I was going to write future history, whether that's straight forward sci-fi or AH future (as in like the 'Surly Bonds' where the pod is pre 2021 but the setting is post 2021) I'd probably handwave the climate issues (Surly bonds does it through a nuclear war which we are told caused just enough nuclear winter to offset the climate change and leave average temperatures basically where they were which I still think is great).

Just not something I want to write about, when it comes down to it and the main reason my Liberian timeline stopped at 2020 rather than continued to the end point of full west african unification.

Nuclear winter would give way to nuclear summer due to the resulting firestorms, loss of biomass, and loss of the ozone layer (source). Soot might stay aloft for a few years at most, but it takes decades or centuries for warming gasses to leave the atmosphere and for ozone to replenish itself.

I think this is the critical problem. Post-war the UK simply hasn’t had the political, economic or labour relations stability to allow many potential industries to thrive, and in a sector where there is so much international competition without that stability and with the inherent disadvantages the UK never stood a chance.

The United Kingdom had no coherent view of what it wanted to do after World War II and seems almost to have resigned itself to the status of an American satellite state. In less than twenty years the United Kingdom went from being a global superpower in control of the world's reserve currency and largest source of uranium (source) into being a second tier power reduced to begging the United States to not destroy its economy (source) and to be allowed an independent nuclear deterrent (source). The United States has had a habit of strong arming its allies going all the way back to World War I and the British were naive in thinking that they could somehow steer it the way they wanted instead of recognizing that they were the ones being steered.

France might have been an empire in decline but it knew it didn't want to become entrapped in the gravity well of the Anglo-American system. It pursued its own strategic interests and independent foreign policy. France has its own independent nuclear infrastructure so it doesn't need to depend on anyone else for nuclear deterrence or energy (its one of the world's largest electricity exporters). It doesn't also doesn't have any foreign military bases on its soil. Its coherent industrial policy has allowed it to retain major heavy industries, including shipbuilding and an aerospace industry.

 

[Neal]

Japan and Australia have no plans either

 

[Skinny87]

Nuclear winter would give way to nuclear summer due to the resulting firestorms, loss of biomass, and loss of the ozone layer (source). Soot might stay aloft for a few years at most, but it takes decades or centuries for warming gasses to leave the atmosphere and for ozone to replenish itself.



The United Kingdom had no coherent view of what it wanted to do after World War II and seems almost to have resigned itself to the status of an American satellite state. In less than twenty years the United Kingdom went from being a global superpower in control of the world's reserve currency and largest source of uranium (source) into being a second tier power reduced to begging the United States to not destroy its economy (source) and to be allowed an independent nuclear deterrent (source). The United States has had a habit of strong arming its allies going all the way back to World War I and the British were naive in thinking that they could somehow steer it the way they wanted instead of recognizing that they were the ones being steered.

France might have been an empire in decline but it knew it didn't want to become entrapped in the gravity well of the Anglo-American system. It pursued its own strategic interests and independent foreign policy. France has its own independent nuclear infrastructure so it doesn't need to depend on anyone else for nuclear deterrence or energy (its one of the world's largest electricity exporters). It doesn't also doesn't have any foreign military bases on its soil. Its coherent industrial policy has allowed it to retain major heavy industries, including shipbuilding and an aerospace industry.

May I just say, that's an incredibly American-centric view of the post-war attitudes of successive UK governments

and also very wrong

 

[Elektronaut]

May I just say, that's an incredibly American-centric view of the post-war attitudes of successive UK governments

and also very wrong

It seems kind of rude and slightly boastful but not necessarily innacurate?

The one point which is wrong is 'no coherent view...'. Admittedly this is likely a popular view from an American perspective. ('Yet to find a role') The political classes basically went from believing largely en masse that we were Number 3 and didn't really need to do any re-positioning, to increasingly investing diplomatically in Europe + Atlanticism. (And by Blair it was becoming Europe + Atlanticism + Others, which we saw a brief flowering of under Cameron and May with attempts to suck up to Beijing, which probably would have continued if not for Xi)

 

[RyanF]

Certainly not your stereotypical American-centric view; how often would you expect to see "Now France, there's a real man"?

 

[Neal]

Without WW1, would countries outside of the Great Powers acquire nukes?