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Grouchio posted:I most certainly do not mention this to most people. I've read a few things there on occasion, and there's nothing quite like that on Something Awful, as mentioned, the closest you'll get will be paradox LPs.
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# ? Nov 5, 2014 00:55 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 07:13 |
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:What, you don't enjoy learning about Wicca every other page in S.M. Stirling books? I've heard that S. M. Stirling was actually a member of alternatehistory.com for a while, and the highest-profile professional AH writer who's been associated with the site, but then he was banned for racism.
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# ? Nov 5, 2014 11:23 |
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Metal Loaf posted:I've heard that S. M. Stirling was actually a member of alternatehistory.com for a while, and the highest-profile professional AH writer who's been associated with the site, but then he was banned for racism. I used to post on AH.com many moons ago, and all that is true. He also got himself banned from another site I frequent for pretty much the same reason. I think he also had a reputation for starting fights on soc.history.what-if. Dude's a big ol' goon. Oh, and I believe Tom Kratman also posted on AH.com briefly before getting banned for general asshattery.
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# ? Nov 5, 2014 13:48 |
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My favorite alternate history novel was written by Harry Turtledove and, bizarrely, actor Richard Dreyfus. The Two Georges takes place (IIRC) in the 1970s and assumes that the American Revolution never happened. The US/Canada are one big steam powered zeppelin-flying colony. The best part about this book is its actually more of a mystery novel, with the main characters being Royal American Mounted Police detectives trying to hunt down a stolen painting depicting George III & George Washington.
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# ? Dec 26, 2014 05:15 |
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I think The Two Georges was set in an alternate 1989, but it's been quite a few years since I read it. It has Richard Nixon as one of the richest men in the British Empire, having made his fortune as a used car salesman.
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# ? Dec 26, 2014 13:31 |
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Marshal Radisic posted:I used to post on AH.com many moons ago, and all that is true. He also got himself banned from another site I frequent for pretty much the same reason. I think he also had a reputation for starting fights on soc.history.what-if. Dude's a big ol' goon. Kratman also showed up on another forum I frequent and got in an argument with one of the mods over one of his (non-AH, well your typical rightwing DERE TAKIN' ARE RIGHTS fantasy). Well technically it was Kratman throwing a tantrum when the mod pointed out one of his scenes involving his 'heroes' attack Abrams with bottles of bleach/Ammonia made no sense.
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# ? Dec 27, 2014 01:19 |
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Any recommendations on alt-history JFK books? I really enjoyed American Tabloid, which wasn't exactly alt-history but a thrilling fictional account of the assassination and events leading up to it. I'm aware there are sequels to it which are certainly on my list. Also I just finished Surrounded by Enemies by Bryce Zabel which considers a botched assassination and the Kennedy administration thereafter which I loved. I'd be interested to read more along those lines.Basticle posted:My favorite alternate history novel was written by Harry Turtledove and, bizarrely, actor Richard Dreyfus. The Two Georges takes place (IIRC) in the 1970s and assumes that the American Revolution never happened. The US/Canada are one big steam powered zeppelin-flying colony. The best part about this book is its actually more of a mystery novel, with the main characters being Royal American Mounted Police detectives trying to hunt down a stolen painting depicting George III & George Washington. This is a great book. I first heard about it in a thread here complaining about steampunk (which is 99% crap) as an example of a good steampunk novel. I'm a big Turtledove fan, but a good number of his books are pretty lazy, and if you read a lot of them in a row (which I have done on several occasions) you start to find the grid in a way. You can see the pattern he follows and it kind of damps the enjoyment a bit.
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# ? Dec 27, 2014 03:57 |
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When I was 13 or 14 I read the whole Darkness series, then as much of the TL-191 series as was out. I followed along the last few of that series, but haven't been able to bring myself to read any Turtledove ever since.
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# ? Dec 27, 2014 07:07 |
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TopherCStone posted:Any recommendations on alt-history JFK books? I really enjoyed American Tabloid, which wasn't exactly alt-history but a thrilling fictional account of the assassination and events leading up to it. I'm aware there are sequels to it which are certainly on my list. Also I just finished Surrounded by Enemies by Bryce Zabel which considers a botched assassination and the Kennedy administration thereafter which I loved. I'd be interested to read more along those lines. The Winterberry is a gloomy short story dealing with that very subject. Nckdictator fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Dec 29, 2014 |
# ? Dec 29, 2014 05:04 |
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Nckdictator posted:The Winterberry is a gloomy short story dealing with that very subject. That looks good, I'll give it a try, thanks!
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# ? Dec 31, 2014 17:10 |
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TopherCStone posted:That looks good, I'll give it a try, thanks! It's on Google books! http://books.google.com/books?id=zg...epage&q&f=false
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# ? Jan 1, 2015 02:21 |
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I've seen a lot of alt-history that deals with America never revolting/losing the revolution, but I haven't seen anything about the revolution spreading to England. Does anyone know of anyone has written any decent stories about a monarchy-less England?
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# ? Mar 15, 2015 09:42 |
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8one6 posted:I've seen a lot of alt-history that deals with America never revolting/losing the revolution, but I haven't seen anything about the revolution spreading to England. Does anyone know of anyone has written any decent stories about a monarchy-less England? Sorry, this is the alternate history thread. Try here instead: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3458502
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# ? Mar 15, 2015 15:36 |
Hey, an America that isn't revolting is definitely SF.
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# ? Mar 15, 2015 15:44 |
Ugly In The Morning posted:Is there any Vietnam-era alternate history out there? Stuff like "What if Kennedy wasn't assassinated", "What if America never went in", "What if it wasn't run by a bunch of idiots". All that. It's one of my favorite eras to read actual history books about. Super tangential, but Voyage by Stephen Baxter is an alternate history where Jackie dies instead of JFK. It focuses mostly on an alternate-history NASA (and the associated engineers, contractors, scientists, astronauts, etc) that does more moon landings and eventually a Mars mission in 1985. Though one of the astronaut characters gets his start as a pilot in Vietnam.
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# ? Mar 18, 2015 02:45 |
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Harry Turtledove's new alt-histroy book came out a few days ago. Reviews have been saying it's better then most of his latest work.quote:President Herbert Hoover has failed America. The Great Depression that rose from the ashes of the 1929 stock market crash still casts its dark shadow over the country. Despairing and desperate, the American people hope one of the potential Democratic candidates—New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt and California congressman Joe Steele—can get the nation on the road to recovery.
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# ? Apr 14, 2015 16:27 |
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Sighs and unzips his wallet. Damnit Harry, always dragging me back in.
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# ? Apr 14, 2015 16:57 |
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Is this expanding on the Joe Steele short story he wrote a number of years ago? I don't know if I'll bother. I feel like I'm over Turtledove, to be honest. It's always an interesting setting, though; the Depression (pre-Roosevelt) is probably the closest the USA came to revolution in the 20th century.
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# ? Apr 14, 2015 17:18 |
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How are the books 1945 and 1945:Red Inferno by Robert Conroy are they any good? I've never read any of his stuff, but seeing what people had to say about 1862 and 1901 I'm getting kind of worried
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# ? Apr 14, 2015 21:34 |
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KomradeX posted:How are the books 1945 and 1945:Red Inferno by Robert Conroy are they any good? I've never read any of his stuff, but seeing what people had to say about 1862 and 1901 I'm getting kind of worried I haven't read them but my brother has. 1862 is the only novel of Conroy's that I've read (I bought it in a gift shop when I visited Gettysburg on holiday a few years ago) and I didn't think it was very good. I thought the characters were pretty shallow; for instance, I seem to recall it portrays Ulysses S. Grant as a kind of demigod who guarantees victory by being present on the battlefield.
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# ? Apr 14, 2015 21:55 |
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KomradeX posted:How are the books 1945 and 1945:Red Inferno by Robert Conroy are they any good? I've never read any of his stuff, but seeing what people had to say about 1862 and 1901 I'm getting kind of worried I have both. Red Inferno doesn't really have anything to do with the plot of 1945. 1945 is great because it's a book about the invasion of Japan.
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# ? Apr 14, 2015 22:27 |
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KomradeX posted:How are the books 1945 and 1945:Red Inferno by Robert Conroy are they any good? I've never read any of his stuff, but seeing what people had to say about 1862 and 1901 I'm getting kind of worried Robert_Conroy.jpg Bonus: Found whatever this is quote:The story is based around the British mercenary Burton Cole who has been dispatched on a secret mission by the British government to assassinate Walter Hochburg, the Nazi Governor General of Kongo. This plot occurs against the backdrop of increasing tensions between Britain and Germany which threatens to disrupt the uneasy truce made in 1940.
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# ? Apr 14, 2015 23:39 |
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Nckdictator posted:Robert_Conroy.jpg Now that doesn't too awful, but something like a really cheesy B action movie. Is that whats to be expected from his work? Or is there something more insidious I'm missing. Though reading this quote:To win World War II, the Allies dealt with the devil. Joseph Stalin helped FDR, Churchill, and Truman crush Hitler. But what if “Uncle Joe” had given in to his desire to possess Germany and all of Europe? In this stunning novel, Robert Conroy picks up the history of the war just as American troops cross the Elbe into Germany. Then Stalin slams them with the brute force of his enormous Soviet army. does not fill me with high expectations since this would mean the Americans are entering Germany from the wrong direction and why just go out to make the Soviets cartoon evil when you can do Operation Unthinkable, but I guess he jsut had to make those vile commies the aggressor Maybe I'll get around to reading it I picked that and 1945 up a few years ago when looking for Alt History that wasn't Harry Turtledove, but I always end up buying more books than I have time to read so I'm a bit far behind.
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# ? Apr 15, 2015 03:55 |
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KomradeX posted:Now that doesn't too awful, but something like a really cheesy B action movie. Is that whats to be expected from his work? Or is there something more insidious I'm missing. Though reading this I've read red inferno. WW3 starts because a unit of shermans mistakes some t34s for panzers, firing on them. this sparks a soviet response which ends with the nuking of three soviet field armies and the overthrow of stalin.
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# ? Apr 15, 2015 20:43 |
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Mycroft Holmes posted:I've read red inferno. WW3 starts because a unit of shermans mistakes some t34s for panzers, firing on them. this sparks a soviet response which ends with the nuking of three soviet field armies and the overthrow of stalin. I think I rolled my eyes so hard at that I think I went blind for a bit. Well that can be shifted down to much later on the old reading queue. Bright side I guess is I didn't pay for it so no skin off my back. Though it's quite surprising how different what happens in the book is to what the amazon description is. In other news I just did buy a book called Over The Top a collection of what if The Great War had gone differently stories, looks to be one about what if the Germans had just attacked Russia, what if Jutland had been more decisive. I'll probably read that next when I finish the book I'm currently reading. And to go back to an earlier point of discuss that the field of Alt History stories does seem to be populated by a lot of reactionaries or at least a lot of reactionary thought. I think the philosopher Slavoj Zizke wrote an essay about that I recall reading a few years ago, when I'm not posting from my phone I'll go see if can find it or if I'm misremembering and it was just something he mentioned in one of his books.
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# ? Apr 15, 2015 21:47 |
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I think there is a quite strongly reactionary tendency in alternate history; I believe S. M. Stirling and Chris Nuttall (my brother has read his stories; I haven't, but I'm told that they all boil down to the Muslims and/or the French overrunning Britain up as far as Hadrian's Wall, which is then rebuilt to keep them out) were both actually banned from alternatehistory.com for racism at one point.
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# ? Apr 15, 2015 22:06 |
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KomradeX posted:I think I rolled my eyes so hard at that I think I went blind for a bit. Well that can be shifted down to much later on the old reading queue. Bright side I guess is I didn't pay for it so no skin off my back. Actually there was recently a discussion over that on alt-hist. http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=350524 Random observations on alt-hist writers: Harry Turtledove is pretty liberal on social issues but his work like "The Last Article" and "The Man With the Iron Heart" are both fairly hawkish works, the former being a condemnation of nonviolence and pacifism and the latter a bizarre Iraq War analogy set in 1945. Also, in his afterword to "Guns of the South" he writes how he disagrees with the revisionist view of Robert E Lee and that "Lee's own writings prove what kind of man he was" . That's not even getting into his love for gratuitous sex scenes. Never read any of S. M. Stirling's stuff but he was banned for making this post which most claim advocated genocide, make of that what you will. http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=1095103&postcount=106 quote:-- well, certainly not their children and other dependents. They're 1innocent bystanders. Mind you, a lot of bystanders got killed in Dresden and Hiroshima, and the long-term results of those wars were good to goodish. Eric Flint's a interesting case in that he's a out and proud socialist who makes it clear he believes in American exceptionalism. And lastly wouldn't feel right without mention the alt-history board themselves (seeing as their the largest alt hist site around) but their pretty left-wing for the most part.
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# ? Apr 15, 2015 22:17 |
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Speaking of which, something that's crossed my mind lately - I enjoy alt-history stories which involve a modern or near-modern society going back in time somehow and changing things (Eric Flint's 1632 series, for instance), but it occurred to me that in some ways such stories seem to be a form of acceptable colonialism. It isn't on anymore to beat up on foreigners and take their poo poo by using massively superior technology, but hey, nobody denies that our ancestors were assholes, right? Nothing wrong with beating THEM up and forcing them to live according to our values, which are much superior to their literally backwards ways. And they'll be glad to do so anyways because we're much more progressive and better and democratic than their old leaders, right? So really, we shouldn't feel at ALL bad about mowing their soldiers by the dozen with Gatling guns and the like. Anyhow there's a couple of good ones amongst the lot who recognizes the superiority of our methods and are also coincidentally decent people and smart, too, we just need to put them in charge as our allies and then everything will work out great. I mean, there's a bit of nuance to it sometimes, and occasionally a degree of assimilation both ways, but a lot of the time the basic logic seems to come down to "the modern man's burden." We can impose our values on the primitives we live amongst because we have the technology to do so, and we should because our values are better and more worthy and they'll come to have better lives under our stewardship. And of course such value imposition needs to come about through military means, because how else are you going to get to jerk off to archaic technological milporn?
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# ? Apr 15, 2015 22:44 |
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Tomn posted:Speaking of which, something that's crossed my mind lately - I enjoy alt-history stories which involve a modern or near-modern society going back in time somehow and changing things (Eric Flint's 1632 series, for instance), but it occurred to me that in some ways such stories seem to be a form of acceptable colonialism. It isn't on anymore to beat up on foreigners and take their poo poo by using massively superior technology, but hey, nobody denies that our ancestors were assholes, right? Nothing wrong with beating THEM up and forcing them to live according to our values, which are much superior to their literally backwards ways. And they'll be glad to do so anyways because we're much more progressive and better and democratic than their old leaders, right? So really, we shouldn't feel at ALL bad about mowing their soldiers by the dozen with Gatling guns and the like. Anyhow there's a couple of good ones amongst the lot who recognizes the superiority of our methods and are also coincidentally decent people and smart, too, we just need to put them in charge as our allies and then everything will work out great. If you've ever read HEY GALs posts in the milhist thread, you would know no amount of diplomacy would convince these people not to kill each other over petty bullshit.
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# ? Apr 16, 2015 20:19 |
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The Man with an Iron Heart I don't think is Hawkish, I don't think he felt the US should have stayed in Iraq but is just work he does because "Hey why not" and "Could be interesting." Seriously, the most eye raising point of order in the book is what are the Soviets doing? What's going to happen there? That kept me turning pages, because without West Germany becoming a socially liberal bastion of democracy in central Europe there's NO NATO. It can't exist and any sort of defence of Western Europe from Soviet interest is compromised from the get go by hundreds of miles of what's basically No-Man's land.
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# ? Apr 16, 2015 20:50 |
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Honestly i've never read The Man With the Iron Heart so my views on it are based on reader reactions and reviews and should be taken with a grain of salt. On another subject I got a copy of Joe Steele from the local library and am really enjoining it. About halfway through and President Steele has just Had 4 Supreme Court Justices arrested and shot for treason and plotting with Nazi Germany. Coincidentally those were the same justices who ruled against his massive expansion of government power and radical economic reforms. He had Huey Long (his only major critic in the Senate) charged with working with the Justices and then assassinated when he fled. Father Coughlin is also shot as a accomplice of Long and the court. Most of the populace is okay with this, because “He’s putting the people back to work, and he’s putting the rich bastards in their place. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.". Now the public at large has started getting uneasy as Steele's instituted a chain-gang like system to build up the rural areas of the country and has been making ominous threats against "Wreckers" such as landlords, bankers, and businessmen . I like how the public is shown to be okay with things like this until it directly starts to effect them, I think that's sadly realistic. My only complaints are minor things like The members of the military tribunal who try the Supreme Court justices are Spruance, Ike, Marshal, and Bradley . That just seems like namedropping for the sake of namedropping. Also a major character is aressted and drafted into one of Steele's work camps where he's given the number 24601 which is a somewhat eyeroll-worthy reference.
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# ? Apr 17, 2015 20:38 |
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Tomn posted:Speaking of which, something that's crossed my mind lately - I enjoy alt-history stories which involve a modern or near-modern society going back in time somehow and changing things (Eric Flint's 1632 series, for instance), but it occurred to me that in some ways such stories seem to be a form of acceptable colonialism. It isn't on anymore to beat up on foreigners and take their poo poo by using massively superior technology, but hey, nobody denies that our ancestors were assholes, right? Nothing wrong with beating THEM up and forcing them to live according to our values, which are much superior to their literally backwards ways. And they'll be glad to do so anyways because we're much more progressive and better and democratic than their old leaders, right? So really, we shouldn't feel at ALL bad about mowing their soldiers by the dozen with Gatling guns and the like. Anyhow there's a couple of good ones amongst the lot who recognizes the superiority of our methods and are also coincidentally decent people and smart, too, we just need to put them in charge as our allies and then everything will work out great. It's mostly the idealized, circa 2003 view of nation building. Deep down, everyone wants to live in a liberal democracy, and if they don't then they have just been blinded by propaganda and superstition. It is therefore perfectly moral, indeed imperative, that those who hold the people back from achieving their freedom be dealt with with extreme prejudice. After these few reactionaries are gone, the rest of the population will greet you as liberators and allow you to build a perfect modern state that has none of the historical baggage of the old world. I think it was a review of a John Ringo book that said that a lot of readers of these kinds of stories just want to see something being built, and the idea of being given an entire people and molding them like clay to your image of a perfect society (whether it is communist or anarcho-capitalist or anything inbetween is irrelevant) is extremely appealing to them. And, of course, for the author who gets to lay out his view of an idealized society in lavish detail over 600 pages.
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# ? Apr 17, 2015 22:29 |
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Tomn posted:Speaking of which, something that's crossed my mind lately - I enjoy alt-history stories which involve a modern or near-modern society going back in time somehow and changing things (Eric Flint's 1632 series, for instance), but it occurred to me that in some ways such stories seem to be a form of acceptable colonialism. It isn't on anymore to beat up on foreigners and take their poo poo by using massively superior technology, but hey, nobody denies that our ancestors were assholes, right? Nothing wrong with beating THEM up and forcing them to live according to our values, which are much superior to their literally backwards ways. And they'll be glad to do so anyways because we're much more progressive and better and democratic than their old leaders, right? So really, we shouldn't feel at ALL bad about mowing their soldiers by the dozen with Gatling guns and the like. Anyhow there's a couple of good ones amongst the lot who recognizes the superiority of our methods and are also coincidentally decent people and smart, too, we just need to put them in charge as our allies and then everything will work out great. Thanks to the death of the author, you can read Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court as a veiled critique of colonialism and it works pretty well. I have no idea if anyone has ever tried to link that interpretation with Twain's later criticism of US occupation of the Phillipines.
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# ? Apr 18, 2015 03:10 |
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ArchangeI posted:It's mostly the idealized, circa 2003 view of nation building. Deep down, everyone wants to live in a liberal democracy, and if they don't then they have just been blinded by propaganda and superstition. It is therefore perfectly moral, indeed imperative, that those who hold the people back from achieving their freedom be dealt with with extreme prejudice. After these few reactionaries are gone, the rest of the population will greet you as liberators and allow you to build a perfect modern state that has none of the historical baggage of the old world. This. I pretty much wanna read a novel version of Civilization V and found the idea of Isaac Newton building a magitek empire in Escaflowne was my gateway drug into that sort of story. Of course I'm not blinded by some ideal of "2015 Canada is so perfect and awesome lets force some folks from the past to be like me", I'd be perfectly happy with a story that acknowledged that any person going back in time to force their will and ego on a populace is probably all kinds of hosed up and be written appropriately.
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# ? Apr 18, 2015 03:25 |
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Wheat Loaf posted:I was keen on Timeline-191 when I was in school, but by the time I'd read them through to the end I realised that a) they weren't really very well-written and b) they were increasingly coming across as though Turtledove had gone through a WWII history book and done a Ctrl+F and Replace to reset the Eastern front in North America. I think my favorite timeline there is the Male Risnig timeline because of it being a world that is just different from our own in so many ways but it still seems plausible. That and the one where Freidrich the Great dies in battle and a very different North and South America results. Crowsbeak fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Apr 18, 2015 |
# ? Apr 18, 2015 03:33 |
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ArchangeI posted:It's mostly the idealized, circa 2003 view of nation building. Deep down, everyone wants to live in a liberal democracy, and if they don't then they have just been blinded by propaganda and superstition. It is therefore perfectly moral, indeed imperative, that those who hold the people back from achieving their freedom be dealt with with extreme prejudice. After these few reactionaries are gone, the rest of the population will greet you as liberators and allow you to build a perfect modern state that has none of the historical baggage of the old world. I'm working on a (quite terrible, I'm the worst at writing dialogue) timeline where 2010's country time travels back to 1970's and I'll fully admit it's based on a desire to see the "mistakes" made in the past corrected. It's a fantasy, pure and simple; I realize the idea of a technologically advanced country righting the wrongs of history is silly at best and imperialist at worst but I can definitely see the appeal. It's a desire to see a world where things didn't go so bad. Nckdictator fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Apr 18, 2015 |
# ? Apr 18, 2015 04:23 |
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I'm actually curious to see if Turtledove has another WW2 reskinned in him. I mean he's refought WW2 in America, with aliens, with magic, in the Pacific, starting slightly earlier already. Come on Harry, just one more twist. It's WW2, but with (not just Polish) bears. Incidentally if you're wondering why I specified not Polish. Wander over to the Milhist thread in A/T and ask them about Polish WW2 bears, they'll be glad to help! Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Apr 18, 2015 |
# ? Apr 18, 2015 09:41 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:This. I pretty much wanna read a novel version of Civilization V and found the idea of Isaac Newton building a magitek empire in Escaflowne was my gateway drug into that sort of story. I really like "Lest Darkness Fall" for that reason - it's a pretty silly story in a lot of ways (good ways, mind you) and it's based on now-outdated views of history, but unlike a lot of more recent time-travel stories it acknowledges the difficulty of convincing people in that time to go along with the crazy time traveler's plans, as well as acknowledging that just because you know guns exist and are a thing doesn't mean you have anywhere near the personal ability to make guns. It's also notable that the key technological revolution that allowed the hero to win his final battle wasn't any kind of weapon at all - it was the telegraph that allowed reinforcements to arrive in time, while the rest of it was down to good old-fashioned generalship. Seems much more spot on than the more common "And now we have invented the early machine gun, let all cower before our hail of bullets!" Deptfordx posted:I'm actually curious to see if Turtledove has another WW2 reskinned in him. Someone needs to introduce Turtledove to the gay black Hitler concept.
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# ? Apr 18, 2015 10:49 |
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I have to admit, I'll always have a soft spot for Turtledove's fantasy WWII series. I read it in high school over about six months, and it was the first really sprawling marathon series of novels I'd finished outside of LOTR.
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# ? Apr 18, 2015 13:10 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 07:13 |
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Of all the various retellings. I've read some of the Fantasy, American, Aliens, started earlier versions. I thought the Fantasy was the worst. I made it through 3? of those books before I gave up in disgust. I mean it really is the most WW2 cut and paste job of all them, yes worse than 191's let's refight Stalingrad in Pittsburgh. It's the whole series, it's like he really did do a search and replace in an existing WW2 novels text with fantasy equivalents.
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# ? Apr 18, 2015 13:59 |