LJ Alternate History Community

Forgotten Futures

2008-07-09T04:26:13Z

I'm guessing I'm the only here not know of this link:

http://forgottenfutures.com/

I don't think I'd be very intersted in the game (the word spreadsheet is enought to put me off), but they seem to ahve a large number of e-books reprinting science fiction novels written before WWI which explore possible congifugrations of such a conflict, usually with much more advance technology. For instance, I just skimmed a chapter from one in which France and Germany are attempting to conquer Great Britain and further their effort by sending a raid of two airships against Portsmouth, whose comamnder (an Irish exile) is content to bomb the city into oblivion while sparing the channel fleet he was meant to be chasing down--that sort of thing.

althistory @ 2008-06-30T18:04:00

2008-07-01T00:12:43Z

I saw an article linked to Fark.com today about the Tunguska meteor impact that happened June 30, 1908. Scientists at three leading European universities hypothesize that if the meteor strike happened four hours and 47 minutes later, the meteor would have destroyed St Petersburg instead of a largish patch of Siberian forest.

As you might imagine, I started wondering how things might have been different if the meteor was a bit tardy. Would European powers have tried to colonize parts of Russia in response to the disaster? Would the assassination of Franz Ferdinand have been a relatively minor event in the wake of a city's destruction? If World War I would have still happened, how would things have been different, with one of the Entente powers effectively out of the game? What other questions am I not thinking of?

But after about five minutes of idle wondering, it occurred to me that if the meteor was four hours and 47 minutes late, it would have missed the Earth altogether. But hey, my ready knowledge of planetary physics is about as rudimentary as my knowledge of history, so what do I know? I'm interested to see what you clever folks thought.

In honor of Marilyn Monroe's birthday

2008-06-02T01:01:25Z

And all the stars / That never were / Are parking cars or pumping gas…

I've been trying to track down the quote, where a studio's reaction to the young hopeful starlet Norma Jeane was, basically, “You're terrible - you cannot sing, you couldn't act your way out of a paper bag - get lost.” (Unless it was said to Jayne Mansfield - I'm not sure. I know it was said to Claudia Schiffer - more accurately, the director screamed at her that a goat walking down the road could act this scene better than you! Her film career has been 'on hiatus' ever since… but I digress.)

“The reason I got ahead is that I was lucky and met the right men.”

When she first started, she was a candyfloss cheesecake cutie, just a pretty face. Hollywood is full of those. What if the hopeful young starlet Norma Jeane Dougherty - had failed?

History ripples forward - all the books about the iconic Marilyn™ disappear from the shelves - they don't exist, never did. Instead, only diligent research - and luck - will find the grainy, 8mm stag films and creased, faded promo stills for “Sugar Kane,” a low-rent burlesque stripper, blue movie star and cheesecake model, similar to and contemporary with the real-life Candy Barr. *

By 1960, she has disappeared. Nothing more is heard of her until 1978, when Norma Krafft, a middle-aged housewife in Santa Monica, suddenly publishes her tell-all 'autobiography,' ghost-written by an LA Times reporter, There's A Tear For Every Smile In Hollywood: The Sugar Kane Story. It doesn't have much new to say; the occasional yellowing copy can still be found in the book bins at Goodwill.

Sic transit, gloria mundi…

* When H Hefner published “Golden Dreams,” the Marilyn nude photo, people looking at the film footage of Candy Barr said, ¡Ay chihuahua! but no, that wasn't Marilyn up there on the screen. Yet it could easily have been: Juanita Dale Slusher - Norma Jeane Baker - Comme ci, comme ça…

Татьяна!

2008-05-23T14:53:52Z

Contrary to popular conjecture, Marilyn Monroe was not rubbed out by a Mafia hit bought by Joseph Kennedy - she was sanctioned by the KGB.

… After they took extensive tissue samples. Desperate to steal the West's allure in any way they could, secret labs got busy on the in vitro result, which debuted in Moscow in 1983:

The true story of the brief, bizarre, heavily State-subsidized 'career' of Tatiana Normanovna Bichevskaya has never been told. Nor are her present whereabouts known.

Courtesy souldier_blue and 1962

On the Literary Front

2008-04-11T10:39:17Z

AUs, and You!

When is an alternate universe not an alternate universe?

by Tara LJC O'Shea

Once upon a time, there was a multiverse. What should have been one was split apart into Infinite Earths. Then the skies turned red, and the shadows came in force and the anti-matter universe began swallowing the positive matter universes whole...

Whoops. That would be the plot of DC Comics' epic Crisis on Infinite Earths. But these days, it can feel like you're living in a multiverse, when every fan fiction story you open starts off with a disclaimer that lists all the myriad ways this story diverts from series canon. When every fan author defines "Alternate Universe" so differently, it can be difficult for the common fanfic reader to sort through what is an actual AU story, and what is mislabelled AU.

What's the difference between Alternate History, Alternate Universe, and Parallel Universe stories?

Alternate Histories change the presuppositions of the series canon. Example: Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Wishverse in which Buffy Summers never came to Sunnydale in 1997.

Alternate Universes split from canon at some point during canon. Example: Francis Doyle did not die destroying the Scourge's beacon. All "denial fiction" is by definition AU.

Parallel Universes are different simultaneous dimensions. For example, rather than diverging at a single point before or during series canon, a parallel universe timeline is separate from the source universe, rather than diverging from the source universe's timeline. Think Sliders or the Star Trek mirror universe. Parallel universes co-exist and are equally valid, whereas alternate universes are self-annuling and "overwrite" the source universe. Also, alternate universes will tend to focuses on the differences brought about by an individual, whereas parallel universes involve more "global" changes such as a world in which World War I was won by the Germans, or vampires have overrun the planet.

So what does this actually mean?

An argument has been made of late that all fan fiction is Alternate Universe simply because as fan fiction, it is not canon. However, it should be noted that the classification of "Alternate Universe" refers to the fiction's relationship to series canon. Yes, we know that only what airs is canon. That is has never been in question. However, what makes fan fiction alternate universe is whether or not it adheres to series canon.

For one thing, if a story is set in a canonical universe—such as the Wishverse or the Mirror universe—then in fact these stories are not AU because they do not actually deviate from series canon. The fan author did not define or create the universe. They are merely setting their story in that canonical universe. The Wishverse was created by Buffy writer Marti Noxon in the third season episode, "The Wish." The Mirror Universe was created by Star Trek writer Jerome Bixby in the third season episode "Mirror, Mirror" and was revisited by the Deep Space Nine staff in "Crossover," "Through the Looking Glass," "Shattered Mirror," "Resurrection," and "The Emperor's New Cloak."

Alternate Universe fiction falls into two main categories: stories that are rendered AU when the series canon contradicts the story after the story has been written, and stories where the author deliberately and intentionally diverges from series canon. Of the second category, an author usually creates an alternate universe for one of two reasons:

1. The author is creating a What if? scenario, and following it through to its logical conclusion which results in a radically different universe. (example: What if Spike had been cursed with a soul in 1898, rather than Angel?)

2. The author is creating a universe in which a specific event or series of event did not take place, but the rest of the universe remains unchanged. (example: Doyle did not die, Riley never happened, Angel never left, etc.)

In the case of a What if? story, the purpose of the story is to explore that universe, particularly the differences between the canonical universe and the alternate universe. This sub-genre is not unique to fan fiction. For decades, speculative fiction has been enamoured of such What if? stories, particularly regarding historical events such as the fall of Rome, the American Civil War, and the outcome of WWII. The fact that such stories have been told with such frequency, and by so many, assumes that it is a very popular "gag" or plot to write and read. The motivation is simple: take the characters we know and love, and see where they would go, what they would do, and how different they would be if one thing about their world was different. It could be a seemingly small thing, or it could be a vast sweeping epic change. But at the heart of these stories is the appeal and lure of the idea of "what if...?" It is as much plot driven as it is character driven, and rather than being an emotional response to the source universe is an intellectual one.

By contrast, in the denial scenario, generally the author has created an alternate universe in order to rectify what she or he sees as a "mistake" on the part of the series and preserve the characters at a specific place in their evolution out of personal preference. The appeal of this type of story is to excise the universe of a character, fact, or character development that changed the source universe in such a way as to motivate a writer to want to erase that change. It is generally an emotional response, rather than a plot-driven one. The driving force behind it is to maintain the writer's inner status quo, in "denial" of the canonical universe. Denial fan fiction became very popular in Highlander fandom after the death of fan favourite character Richie Ryan, and is now a common subset in any fandom where a character death or major change has taken place that the authors feel was detrimental to the series. Such stories are often written as a kind of stage in the grief process, and vary in quality quite widely.

However, it should be pointed out that whatever the motive, the worth of the story always comes down to the individual strengths and weaknesses of the writer and the work itself.

So the next time you see a story labelled "Alternate Universe" hopefully now you'll have a better idea of what that actually means.

Tara LJC O'Shea has been writing, illustrating, editing, publishing, and archiving fan fiction since 1989 in a variety of fandoms, first for print fanzines and then online. She is a professional webdesigner and freelance journalist.

althistory @ 2008-04-03T11:53:00

2008-04-03T17:11:06Z

A somewhat different althistory speculation than the usual: suppose the United States had adopted the pound rather than the dollar when we set up our currency. Given our conservativeness in regards to the metric system, might we still be using the traditional pound/shilling/pence divisions? (Farthings, I'm assuming, would've been lost due to inflation)

althistory @ 2008-04-01T16:21:00

2008-04-01T20:23:10Z

Larklight Fantasy Novel to Screen
Elizabeth helmer on steampunk adaptation.
by Brian Linder

April 1, 2008 - Elizabeth director Shekar Kapur is switching gears slightly, from royal epics to Victoria-era fantasy.

Kapur will develop and direct Larklight, The Hollywood Reporter says, a period fantasy film setup at Warner Bros. and Di Novi Pictures.

The project is based on the 2006 steampunk novel of the same name by Philip Reeve. It's set in an alternate universe in which humankind has been exploring the solar system since the time of Newton. The story follows a brother and sister who join forces with a group of space renegades to save the Earth from destruction.

"It's a $200 million project, probably the most expensive film I've made and will ever make," Kapur told the Indo-Asian News Service.
- Bloomsbury

Writer Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) is working with Kapur on the script.

Kapur was in the news recently for taking over late director Anthony Minghella's portion of New York, I Love You.

Something I've been wondering about

2008-03-29T03:20:24Z

Independence movement
In 1941, Hồ returned to Vietnam to lead the Việt Minh independence movement. He oversaw many successful military actions against the Vichy French and Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II, supported closely but clandestinely by the United States Office of Strategic Services, and also later against the French bid to reoccupy the country (1946-1954). He was also jailed in China for many months by Chiang Kai-shek's local authorities. After his release in 1943, he again returned to Vietnam. He was treated for malaria and dysentery by American OSS doctors.

After the August Revolution (1945) organized by the Việt Minh, Hồ became Chairman of the Provisional Government (Premier of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam). Though he convinced Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate, his government was not recognized by any country. He petitioned American President Harry Truman for support for Vietnamese independence,[5] but was rebuffed due to French pressure on the U.S.[citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh

What if he had not been rebuffed? While Ho was a revolotionary, he only allied the Veit Minh with Stalin and Mao because no one else would talk to him, at least that is what my impression is. The Veitnamese Declaration of Independance was almost a word for word copy of the US.

I don't know a lot about this period, but would it had effected the Chinesse, i.e. helped Chiang Kai-shek's government stay in power?

Any Thoughts?

Sliders Moments_Season 1

2008-03-20T16:46:07Z

“Imagine a roulette wheel - and each slot is a different Earth…”

There were some occasional bursts of cleverness in this show, now and then. Interesting, that it got produced and aired at all…

“Thirteen Days”

2008-03-20T16:35:16Z

althistory @ 2008-03-03T10:55:00

2008-03-03T19:20:51Z

It is generally agreed among historians that it was the intransigence of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin that doomed the first rebellion in the North American Colonies. By refusing to compromise with South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina (and indeed many of the people of Jefferson's own home, Virginia) on the issue of slavery, these men caused the decisive and fatal split among the rebellious colonies. When the southern colonies withdrew from the so-called "Continental Congress", many people began to question the viability of the rebellion.
His Majesty's Government was able to bring the southern colonies quickly to the table, and by his gracious grant of amnesty, King George III returned those colonies to the empire. With the rebellion in tatters, the remaining rebellious colonies were quickly subdued.
The notorious Franklin was able to escape to the then French colony of Louisiana. Adams and Jefferson were captured and hanged together. Thomas Paine fled to France, where he was eventually imprisoned as a seditious agitator by the French Crown, dying in the Bastille in 1809. After being surrounded in his Pennsylvania camp by Hessian troops, "General" Washington surrendered with his forces on the day after Christmas, 1776.
However, the seeds of the second rebellion had been sown.
The belief that began to take hold in Britain, most forcefully and eloquently advanced by William Wilberforce, that slavery must be abolished, met with great opposition in those southern colonies that had so recently allied with the Crown. When slavery was abolished in all British possessions in 1834, these colonies declared their independence. The northern colonies, remembering what they saw as their "betrayal" by the southern colonies in the first rebellion, remained loyal to the Crown, and indeed sent their militias to help Crown forces put down the rebellion. Unable to gain any international support from the enfeebled Spanish or French kingdoms, the rebellion sputtered and died.

Buckley

2008-02-27T23:38:14Z

I see William Buckley died today. Now I will never see my Sliders fantasy come true.

I had wanted a episode in which they visited a parallel universe in which Gore Vidal was President. The episode would have been written by Buckley.

The next slide would have taken them to an earth where Buckley was president, written by Vidal.

President Johnson, 1960 - 1964

2008-02-21T15:09:45Z

11 Dec 1960 - In Palm Beach, Florida, retired postmaster Richard Pavlick chooses at the last moment not to ram John F. Kennedy's car and detonate his seven sticks of dynamite. Pavlick later explains that it was out of concern for the President-elect's family: "I did not wish to harm her or the children... I decided to get him at the church or someplace later."

8 September 1962: Soviet ICBMs begin arriving at Cuba.

Kennedy saw the photographs on October 16; he assembled the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM), fourteen key officials and his brother Robert, at 9.00 a.m. The U.S. had no plan for dealing with such a threat, because U.S. intelligence was convinced the Soviets would not install nuclear missiles in Cuba. The EXCOM quickly discussed three courses of military action: (i) a destructive air attack on the missiles, (ii) a full military invasion, and (iii) the naval blockade of Cuba.

Unanimously, the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed that a full-scale attack and invasion was the only solution. They agreed that the Soviets would not act to stop the U.S. from conquering Cuba; Kennedy was skeptical, saying:
They, no more than we, can let these things go by without doing something. They can't, after all their statements, permit us to take out their missiles, kill a lot of Russians, and then do nothing. If they don't take action in Cuba, they certainly will in Berlin.
Kennedy concluded that attacking by air would signal the Soviets to presume "a clear line" to conquer Berlin. Adding that in taking such an action, the United States' allies would think of the U.S. as "trigger-happy Americans" who lost Berlin because they could not peacefully resolve the Cuban situation…

- Wikipedia

But what would the uncouth, shifty, crooked redneck Johnson have done?

And would it, perhaps, have been better?

It is part of the knee-jerk nukefreeze disinformation drilled in by NEA-approved Federal educators that the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly “killed the world” (with the clear subtext of “How dare we arm or defend ourselves? Who do we think we are?”).

Well, no. Not even remotely. If the President had said to Gen Curtis LeMay, “Go the distance,” the rickety, starveling, murderous structure of the “worker's paradise” USSR - which only survived as long as it did because the United States were propping it up! - would have collapsed overnight. From Hungary to Cambodia, how many millions of tortured, murdered lives would thus have been saved is a matter of speculation - all we know is how many died under the bootheels of the Communist Party, in the years after 1962… and even that number will never be truly known.

The world would have survived 1962 just fine. The United States would have, too. But among the disaffected, subverted coffeehouse intelligentsia - their world, and that of their mentors on Dzerzhinsky Square, would certainly have been destroyed.

"Winning" Super Bowl shirts end up in Nicaragua

2008-02-15T16:53:46Z

http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/oddlyEnoughNews/~3/235624418/idUSN1416353120080215

MANAGUA (Reuters) - Shirts and caps proclaiming the victory of the New England Patriots -- when the American football team actually lost the latest Super Bowl -- have ended up in the hands of poor Nicaraguan children…

althistory @ 2008-02-12T14:21:00

2008-02-12T22:27:00Z

It's wholly unrealistic and low-brow (think lightly post-apocalyptic A-Team/24 with 10% melodrama and you've got the right idea), but I think you fine people might get a kick out of the show Jericho, mostly for its splintering of America into new regions with new assumed Presidents and names. Season 2 starts tonight at 10 on CBS.

(The only reason it's back at all is because fans of the show performed a viral campaign of support, which also changed the landscape of television streaming forever by showing that a huge number of people now watch shows on iTunes and other legal sites.)

“A Map of the Republic of New Netherland”

2008-02-11T06:17:05Z

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/strangemaps/64994.html

“New Amsterdam never gave way to New York. The Dutch kept the whole of their North American colony out of the hands of the perfidious English, in fact. New Netherland today constitutes a thriving Republic stretching from the Atlantic coast to Québec, dividing New England from the rest of the United States.

“This Republik van Nieuw Nederland is the brainchild of Paul Burgess, who’s been fleshing out its allohistorical details since his mid-20s – he’s even devised a pretty cool flag for the Republic, not to mention an anthem (’Onze Patrie’ – ‘Our Fatherland’), names for the baseball teams in the Knickerbocker League, a list of the best places to smuggle goods across the border to the US and even call letters for New Netherland radio stations. And, of course, this map.”

Small Pox

2008-01-16T03:35:51Z

The ussual estimate is that by 1550 between 75 and 90% of the population of the Americas had been wiped out by small pox, but, syphillis aside, the European population had little to worry about from American diseases. What if the situation had been reversed? What if the Americas incubated some terrible epidemic disease to which the Old World population had no immunity and by 1525 90% of Europe's population had been wiped out? What would change?

My guess is not much--the disease would have been propagated quickly (within decades) throughout the Old World, so I doubt if China would get much advantage from it. The European colonization of the World might have been slightly delayed, but I doubt if by 1900 the world would have looked very different. The Social orgnaization in Europe favored expansion in a way it did not elsewhere.

Princeton Researcher Pens Sacrilegious Romp

2008-01-07T08:39:23Z

I have permission from author John Brinster to distribute an excerpt from his new book THE ABDUCTION: The Sacred Legend of the Great Wall. A Princeton scientist and brain researcher, Brinster takes on the religious establishment and the irrationality of religion in this speculative account of the early life of Jesus of Nazareth.

With the premise that the baby Jesus was abducted and taken to China, then replaced in the manger by one of twin imposters, THE ABDUCTION criss-crosses two millennia with a combination of history, intrigue, and philosophy.

The excerpt I am distributing outlines the teachings of "Jem," Jesus' name after being abducted. Jem was raised among Buddhists in Western China at the nexus of the Great Wall of China and the famous Silk Road spanning Asia to the Mediterranean. The excerpt is available at the following URL -- or email me, and I will send it as a text file:

http://www.authorviews.com/authors/brinster/excerpt.php

“Otaku” - fascinating.

2007-12-30T14:22:05Z

Boys' school cafe offers geek girls tea and fantasy - The Age

“Otaku culture has its origins in the late 1970s, when disaffected youth began dropping out of Japan's pressure-cooker society and retreating to a world of sexually and violently explicit make-believe. It has since splintered into several strains…”

If the Axis had won the Second World War - or if, whatever else, the spirit of kokutai had prevailed, and the ultra-nationalist Japanese Empire had expanded as intended - would such a movement eventually develop there also? How would it differ?

Courtesy mosellegreen

“The Shattered Frontier”

2007-12-22T14:26:29Z

“Aces & Eights: The Shattered Frontier”" Kenzer & Company 2007

Western adventure in an alternate North America where the frontier is claimed by the USA, Mexico, the CSA, the Republic of Texas and Deseret. You might as well visit independent Sequoyah and France's Nouveau Orleans while you're there…

“The True Story of an Unknown Hero”

2007-12-21T15:50:30Z

Trailer for Valkyrie

“We must show the world, that not all of us are like him - otherwise this will always be Hitler's Germany.”

Man Conquers Space

2007-12-18T16:45:46Z

http://manconquersspace.com/MCSEnter.html

“Mrs Howard”

2007-12-12T10:21:33Z

It's impossible not to wonder, what would have happened.

In 1934 [Robert E] Howard met Novalyne Price, a local schoolteacher who was interested in becoming a writer. Through much of the next two years they dated on and off, spending much time discussing everything from writing and philosophy to religion, reincarnation and much else. In an effort to improve her memory and writing, Novalyne began recording all her daily conversations into a journal, in the process preserving an intimate record of her time with Howard.

Their relationship was a series of on-again, off-again encounters, with one falling in love while the other one stepped back. When Novalyne began dating other people behind Howard's back (notably Howard's close friend Truett Vinson), their friendship was irrevocably scarred, but they continued visiting with each other until May 1936, when Novalyne left Cross Plains for LSU to get a graduate degree.

Years later she wrote of their relationship in a book called "One Who Walked Alone", which was the basis for the 1996 film The Whole Wide World starring Vincent D'Onofrio as Howard…

Throughout all of this time, Howard continued to be dogged by fits of increasing melancholy and depression, and he maintained his belief in the validity of suicide as an escape from the nightmarish pain. All of his close friends had married and were immersed in their careers, Novalyne Price had left Cross Plains for graduate school, and his most reliable market, Weird Tales, had grown far behind on payments…

On the morning of June 11, 1936, told by a nurse that his mother would never again regain consciousness, he walked out to his car in the driveway, took a borrowed .38 automatic from the glove box, and shot himself in the head. His father and another doctor rushed out, but the wound was too grievous for anything to be done. Howard lived for another eight hours, dying at 4 p.m.; his mother died the following day. They were both buried on June 14, 1936 in a double funeral in Greenleaf Cemetery in Brownwood, Texas.

Howard's death sent shockwaves of grief through the weird fiction community, vividly documented in the pulps and fanzines of the era, and marked the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of Weird Tales…

After Howard's death, Price shifted her focus away from a writing career and strove to become the best teacher she could be, ultimately remaining a teacher until her retirement…

The trailer is interesting.

Constantine

2007-12-08T01:08:54Z

Here's one--one that I could actually write up as a novel if I had time:

Helena is a Manichaean instead of a Christian, and Constatine converts the Empire to Manicheeanism.