My main problem with it is that the pope seemed so darn helpless in the stories I mentioned. It just said, "The pope is our hostage, he does what we want" and that's the end of it. I feel like, in real life, with the examples you referenced, it was much more complicated than that.
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Alternate History General Discussion
- Thread starter Elektronaut
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Ones that do seem all, like @Walpurgisnacht says, about the aftermath of nukes falling. Which makes sense, that's the most likely outcome for most WW3's and the thing that's different about that war versus WW2 if you're focusing on the home front.
Of course, a lot of those stories are written by Anglophones and set in the UK or US, maybe there'd be something in a WW3-that-doesn't-go-nuclear-because-mumble-mumble about Germans. Their home front experience would be massively different. You're living a mostly-normal Western life for the time if you're in the West and then bam, two armies going back and forth over your house.
Depends on what your definition of “prominent” is.
Las Fierbinti’s first episode of Season 12 sorta fits that description as it’s with the characters dealing with North Korea launching a Tsar Bomb like missile towards Europe (more specifically Fierbinti) for no reason other than “lol those wacky Norks they so kray kray,am I right?!” and with only the inhabitants of the village being scared,as everyone else,including the broadcasters,are WAY too chill about it.
Like,they keep stating that all systems to stop the missile have failed and it’s heading straight to them and it’s gonna (somehow) destroy all of Europe and the Pro TV newsreaders are all like ”oh well,you win you lose folks,now with some local news”
STOP BEING SO CASUAL ABOUT IT
And before you ask,no the missile doesn’t actually destroy all of Europe,it just lands in Fierbinti and doesn’t blow off because SIKE,
the North Koreans didn’t actually have a functioning nuclear missile,just a shitty one that barely works but which they thought had the power of a Tsar Bomb because le funny crazy Juche regime.
Von Callay
Getting Grilled by Special Agent Nixon
It certainly did happen a few times in history, but it was never done without the understanding the person responsible was playing with fire, particularly when the papacy was at the relative height of its power. It might be a fictionalization problem: writers are aware of the unique power held by powers that got control of a pope, and so make it an objective without being aware of the unique circumstances that it made it possible to attack one. This would be similar to fiction about a medieval setting including oath-breaking (which did happen and was often devastating when it did occur) without recognizing how seriously people actually took their oaths and what the long-term consequences were for people who broke personal bonds of loyalty in an era where that was the prime organizing principle of political power.
It's probably because the genre is heavily tied into the Cold War and especially the 1980s.
Some of the most prominent ones in popular culture are, including On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove, Threads, Red Dawn, When the Wind Blows, and The Sum of All Fears (where it is averted). The Sum of All Fears is interesting too in that it was one of the last nuclear war stories written before the collapse of the Soviet Union and also the only one in which there isn't at least a second nuclear bombing to equalize the destruction (a common trope in 1960s era nuclear war fiction).
There aren't really many stories that focus on the buildup to the crisis, at least not more than a week or two. There isn't really that sense of inevitable impending catastrophe even though many people wrote of feeling a sense of that prior to World War I. The World War III genre is heavily tied into the 1980s for a similar reason, as many people of the time thought that nuclear war was right around the corner.
That's an apt description of the Korean War era.
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Not sure if it's been discussed elsewhere on this forum already, but felt like posing the question, esp. given the holiday just past: Is there any AH fiction that explores a world where MLK wasn't assassinated? Only ones I'm aware of are a couple of articles and the "Return of the King" Boondocks episode.
Von Callay
Getting Grilled by Special Agent Nixon
I want to say there's at least one in those "Alternate X" anthologies edited by Mike Resnick or Harry Turtledove, but the specific isn't coming to me.
Von Callay
Getting Grilled by Special Agent Nixon
Some prodding of the strange and fantastical world of "Alternate X" anthologies has turned up that I was thinking of "The Best and the Brightest" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch out of Alternate Kennedys, which isn't quite about MLK. It is about a reporter that is given the chance of a lifetime to publish a story about President Bobby Kennedy and Chicago Mayor Daley putting a (failed) hit out on King, and how he lets it pass him by, to eternal regret.
EDIT: The anthology also includes a story about JFK as captain of the USS Enterprise by the actual author of "The Trouble With Tribbles" writing as himself in that ATL and I cannot even. What even were these books? How did they happen?
EDIT: The anthology also includes a story about JFK as captain of the USS Enterprise by the actual author of "The Trouble With Tribbles" writing as himself in that ATL and I cannot even. What even were these books? How did they happen?
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I've been on a site on where someone claims that; contrary to previously held beliefs; the Janissaries weren't the Praetorian Guard reborn. they were actually a guard against any royal absolutism who allied themselves with the harem bureaucracy; and that when the Janissaries were removed; much of the minorities of the empire cried out against their removal.
She also mentions that the Tanzimat, the result of their removal, was what led to the Ottoman Empire committing multiple genocides when they used to be known for their tolerance for minorities.
She also mentions that the Tanzimat, the result of their removal, was what led to the Ottoman Empire committing multiple genocides when they used to be known for their tolerance for minorities.
I’ve come across that take before. With respect to the Janissaries, I’m not really sure they were part of any sort of balance of power; it would be more accurate to say they were a state within a state - not a good thing. They killed Selim III for trying to modernize the military, for instance. And the First Serbian Revolt was kicked off by renegade Janissary troops slaughtering Serb aristocrats in an effort to stop the Sultan from allying with them to take power.
With respect to the Tanzimat, now that’s a better take. The Tanzimat was overly centralizing, and in a multi-ethnic non-contiguous empire, that’s not the best model. And the “tolerance” of the Ottoman Empire was only ever a relative thing - sure, by the standards of the seventeenth century it was, but not in any modern sense. As mentioned, the First Serbian Revolt, a pre-Tanzimat affair, was kicked off by a slaughter of Serb aristocrats. Beyond that, during the Greek War of Independence, which was also pre-Tanzimat, the Ottoman government killed the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople in a highly humiliating manner as a “retaliatory” measure for the rebellion of certain Greeks he had no influence over; this move proved massively alienating. This is not “tolerance”. There is a case to be made that without the Tanzimat the Ottoman Empire might have collapsed “better”, but there would still be plenty of horrific massacres.
Ricardolindo
Well-known member
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How was the Ottoman Empire non-contiguous? Anyways, the Ottomans became less tolerant over time in response to Christian revolts. Considering what happened in Albania, I believe that had the Ottomans ruled the Balkans for another couple of centuries, the Balkans would have become Muslim majority.
Yeah those 90s anthologies were uh, quirky.
Ricardolindo
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I hate the trope that the Rus couldn't have converted to Islam because of alcohol and pork. The claim about Vladimir rejecting Islam because of alcohol and pork is just fable. The alcohol taboo was widely disregarded in the pre-modern Islamic world. The pork taboo is more problematic but pork was the major protein source in pre-Islamic Indonesia and a study last year showed Muslims in Sicily ate pork. The early Berbers are also believed to have disregarded the pork taboo.
The actual problem is that the Rus had far more trade with the Byzantine Empire than with the Islamic world.
The actual problem is that the Rus had far more trade with the Byzantine Empire than with the Islamic world.
Von Callay
Getting Grilled by Special Agent Nixon
On a conceptual level, the David Gerrold story is an amazing thing to see. He was actually involved in making Star Trek, a story by him about himself in an alternate timeline version of events he actually participated in is a unique perspective and fascinating to examine.
I'm just furious with the things he actually wrote in the story.
Do you mean Kennedy's the captain of the actual spaceship or that he's playing Kirk on the show?
Von Callay
Getting Grilled by Special Agent Nixon
The premise of the story is that Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. moves to California and marries his Hollywood mistress, and all the Kennedy boys get involved in one kind or another of show business - Bobby Kennedy becomes a producer, and JFK is an actor. He doesn't play Captain Kirk, he plays a separate character who replaces Kirk when Bobby fires basically all the original cast after two or three seasons and replaces them with a proto-TNG ensemble: JFK as an older, more experienced captain who stays up on the ship and controls all away missions by remote observation, Donald Pleasance as an android science officer called REM, Billy Mumy as Dr. McCoy's nephew Wesley, and so on.
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There's a review of that Kennedy story lined up in the blog that will go up in a few weeks.
Some coincidence that it came up here too.
Some coincidence that it came up here too.
There's now (even) more physical evidence about how moribund the German nuclear program in WWII was.