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Alternate History General Discussion

On the subject of time travel, I'm surprised by how comparably few "Go back and kill Hitler" stories there are for all the trope's prominence in popular imagination. One of the most prominent is Righteous Kill, reviewed on this very site. Other than that, can't think of that many.

There's also that incredibly dark one I reviewed with the Japanese-German Cold War, where a Japanese guy goes back to kill the Fuhrer and assure Imperial Japanese victory
 
On the subject of time travel, I'm surprised by how comparably few "Go back and kill Hitler" stories there are for all the trope's prominence in popular imagination. One of the most prominent is Righteous Kill, reviewed on this very site. Other than that, can't think of that many.

Red Alert is arguably the most famous example.

But yeah its a relatively slight idea, when it turns up its mostly as a short story in a larger work (either an anthology like twilight zone or a stand alone in a serial like misfits.)

My favourite use of it is the time travelers forum story 'wikihistory' by Desmond Warzel.
 
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Something about stories where a country reforms is that, it kind of makes it seem like smooth sailing after getting rid of the people obstructing the reforms needed and that the reforms are totally perfect in solving everything.

Some of my favorite stories like Renovation, an alternate history story about the late Eastern Roman Empire reforming into something like a state-capitalist, merchant nation modeled on the Italian city states clearly don’t go that route. There’s a whole lot of things left undone, many problems still need fixing, and the chance of falling into disarray once again.
 
Something about stories where a country reforms is that, it kind of makes it seem like smooth sailing after getting rid of the people obstructing the reforms needed and that the reforms are totally perfect in solving everything.

Even necessary and successful reforms can end up having negative effects down the line. My favorite example is how the Voting Rights Act turned into a partisan gerrymandering tool that in some ways hindered African American political advancement beyond individual House seats.
 
Red Alert is arguably the most famous example.

Red Alert's also AFAIK unique in that the franchise does two of them (unique until the Kirov books came along!)

Something about stories where a country reforms is that, it kind of makes it seem like smooth sailing after getting rid of the people obstructing the reforms needed and that the reforms are totally perfect in solving everything.

If the story's ending with the bad people out, that makes sense - you got to have a satisfying ending and "actually it was shit", not that great. A series or a book about the reforms gives you more scope. Though on the flipside there's SLP's own Fight And Be Right, where the main story ends with big sweeping reforms and then we find out in a few decades it had some really bad fallout in Britain LED TO THE WONDERFUL BETTER WORLD, ALL HAIL BIG BROTHER OSSIE
 
Question that is vaguely related to the above post: I'm going to end my current project at about August/September 1914. At that point, it'll be evident to the narrator that the ATL is clearly, if not (yet) spectacularly, diverging from OTL. Are readers likely to be satisfied with a "things will obviously be different but we'll have to speculate how" ending? Or should I consider some sort of later epilogue that speaks to some of the butterflies from a contemporary-ish perspective?
 
Question that is vaguely related to the above post: I'm going to end my current project at about August/September 1914. At that point, it'll be evident to the narrator that the ATL is clearly, if not (yet) spectacularly, diverging from OTL. Are readers likely to be satisfied with a "things will obviously be different but we'll have to speculate how" ending? Or should I consider some sort of later epilogue that speaks to some of the butterflies from a contemporary-ish perspective?

I think it depends how primed the audience are for alternate history. Perhaps if they're not, you could try and put in some earlier butterfly- the challenge there would be to make it be isolated enough that you feel ok with it not changing more things earlier on, while still being big enough to be noted upon.

An example might be- the characters provide information which is acted upon to avoid a disaster, then some well-known event gets averted by someone who survived that one, or otherwise they do something news worthy. An easy headline grabber would be some ATL mine disaster survivor radical assassinates a head of state. Then choose one who's newsworthy enough for your characters to discuss it and highlight this, but won't throw things off the rails too early and too much.
 
Are readers likely to be satisfied with a "things will obviously be different but we'll have to speculate how" ending? Or should I consider some sort of later epilogue that speaks to some of the butterflies from a contemporary-ish perspective?

My personal opinion would be to go for the former, if only because the latter just sounds like it could be a clunky "As you know Bob, the French grabbed the Rhineland and ousted Hitler in the mid-1930s"-style exposition.
 
Something I've observed in online AH is how authoritarian regimes (usually presented as the main villain, or at least an antagonist, in the story) are often not really treated with much nuance and are instead turned into a comic book villain childish mustache twirlers. We get nothing on the banality of evil, instead all the leaders of said regime are all scheming psychopaths who plot to find out what more comically evil thing they can do. If you look at history you will find that the more successful authoritarian regimes have more sophisticated leaders whereas the regimes which actually did have comically evil leaders like Idi Amin, Pol Pot, etc. all ended up collapsing due to their own incompetence.
 
If you look at history you will find that the more successful authoritarian regimes have more sophisticated leaders whereas the regimes which actually did have comically evil leaders like Idi Amin, Pol Pot, etc. all ended up collapsing due to their own incompetence.

There's innate drama with both types, I think.

Which is why all stories should be set in Equatorial Guinea.
 
When discussing Italy, people should know that Italy was and is a great power. It's simply the weakest great power.
There were recognised (i.e. recognised by European) great powers at one point, when there was a formal list. In the modern world, the term great power is much more subjective so it's hard to know how far down the list to go. Some countries further down the list than Italy may be recognised as a great power by some definitions, while in others Italy is off the list.
 
In the modern world, the term great power is much more subjective so it's hard to know how far down the list to go. Some countries further down the list than Italy may be recognised as a great power by some definitions, while in others Italy is off the list.
Italy is a great power because you can get pizza on every continent except Antarctica. If that's not indicative of great power status, I don't know what is.

Someday someone is going to write the AH The Death of Stalin, and it will sure be something.
Technically, The Death of Stalin (both the film and the original comic) is already AH by virtue of having apocryphal events occur and OTL events happen sooner than they did.
 
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There were recognised (i.e. recognised by European) great powers at one point, when there was a formal list. In the modern world, the term great power is much more subjective so it's hard to know how far down the list to go. Some countries further down the list than Italy may be recognised as a great power by some definitions, while in others Italy is off the list.

I did consider refering only to the past. However, Wikipedia does count Italy as a great power. That being said, I don't entirely agree with Wikipedia's list. I think it's silly not to consider the Ottoman Empire in 1815 a great power. I would argue it only stopped being a great power with the loss in the 1877-78 war. Regardless, I noted this because a lot of people in the alternate history community don't believe Italy has ever been a great power.
 
Italy is a great power because you can get pizza on every continent except Antarctica. If that's not indicative of great power status, I don't know what is.
You can get Australians on every continent including Antarctica*, but I'd argue that makes Australia a Great Nuisance, not a Great Power.

*Yes, even during the pandemic.
 
After watching Valkyrie, I like the idea of a series that at first seems to be a nuanced look at the July 20 Plot in historical fiction. Unlike the oversimplified, heroified movie, this would show both the unsavory characters among the plotters and the unrealism of their demands the Allies would never accept. It comes across as being historical fiction, and then the closing cliffhanger of one episode shows Stauffenberg managing to fuse both charges as a winking hint as to what's to come.

Then in the next one we see Hitler meet a Bionic Commando-esque fate, and the AH swerve into a confused power struggle begins.
 
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