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Best Pre-AH.com Internet Alternate History

theev

Well-known member
Basically what it says on the tin. I find the more decentralized AH community of the pre-2010 internet to be kind of interesting. A lot of pretty notable AH works were published during that period (For All Time, Thaxted, If Gordon Banks Had Played) but many of them are hard to access/only available through internet archive. I know a lot of our membership goes back a while online, so are there any good early online AH works that you feel deserve recognition?
 
This goes way back, but I very vaguely recall a couple excellent threads on soc.history.what-if. One was about Quebec that underwent no or at least a very different Quiet Revolution, the other was titled something like Taisho Democracy Lives On.
 
Basically what it says on the tin. I find the more decentralized AH community of the pre-2010 internet to be kind of interesting. A lot of pretty notable AH works were published during that period (For All Time, Thaxted, If Gordon Banks Had Played) but many of them are hard to access/only available through internet archive. I know a lot of our membership goes back a while online, so are there any good early online AH works that you feel deserve recognition?

Does Decades of Darkness count? If I've not misread anything, I believe it was started on soc.history.what.if, even if it was continued on the other place as well. It's also brilliant, definitely one of the best of all time.

There's also EdT's A Shot Heard Around The World, available on his website via the Web Archive...
 
I remember before discovering alternative history .com i read this post about j.f.k surving his assassination.Chapman went after Elvis instead of Lennon in that t.l.

once on a.h someone posted from internet archive i would live to see it again.
 
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There were a lot of very high-quality timelines on soc.history.what-if. Two which spring to mind are Doug Hoff's Empty America and the Doug Muir-headed (but collaborative) timeline Bronze Age New World.

I only came across Empty America on the other place. Didn't realise it was that old. Assuming its the same thing

Read the whole thing in a 24 hr medicated stupor. I should probably go back and read it sober
 
...Another that took the fancy of many of the British posters of that period was something called UnFascist Britain, which were a series of vignettes by various people based on a discussion held at a secret location in London that served beverages and curry. Essentially, a plausible premise on how Britain could have gone, well, Fascism was something that Europeans did, and it wouldn't be the done thing to be European about it. As I recall, Chris Williams, the late Alan Lothian, Heinrek (and I've completely blanked on the last name), Alison, myself, and I think Charlie Stross were involved in the premise building.

Hope that helps.

That was me - Henrik Kiertzner. As I recall, we ended up putting UnFascist Britain to sleep as it was, in ways antithetical to everyone's own inclinations and personal values, far too seductive.

Long time no speak, shippers.
 
Basically what it says on the tin. I find the more decentralized AH community of the pre-2010 internet to be kind of interesting.

Did you mean "pre-2000?"

2010 is about when the other place started its gigantic expansion in numbers of users, but it had been around for a while before then.
 
For All Time was the timeline that led me to the AH online community due to being hosted on AH.com back in the day; I think it was similar for many people, so it probably ranks as one of the most influential works (if one that shows its flaws very readily).

What If Gordon Banks Had Played? seems to have become less totemic than it was when I first read it, not least because its author has very good reason for it to be forgotten. It's still one of the best works I've read at creating an atmosphere - there's moments in that which I still look to for inspiration in my own writing - but some of the spelling is terrible.

For me, though, the top slot goes to Thaxted. It is, for my money, the best 'What If Politician, But Opposite?' TL ever written, and also one of the funniest AH works written to boot.
 
For me, though, the top slot goes to Thaxted. It is, for my money, the best 'What If Politician, But Opposite?' TL ever written, and also one of the funniest AH works written to boot.
The Foundation series by the same author (starting off as just a pastiche of Asimov's series actually set in the late Roman Empire, but developing in interesting if not massively plausible ways) was also very funny. I'm not sure if it can still be read however.
 
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