Does anyone else play the 'what if' game for themselves based on the story they are reading? For example, in Stirling's emberverse, there's a good chance I would have survived the Change and found myself in the military-controlled United States of Idaho. In Without Warning, I would have perished instantly when the wave fell over North America. In the Axis of Time trilogy, I'd live in a world that saw the disappearance of the 2020 multinational battlegroup. If my timeline was the one where they appeared, again the divergence from 'natural' history would probably assure I would never exist, although there would be a slight chance, I suppose. In Turtledove's alternative history, I would never have been born due to too large a divergence in people and events from the original timeline. Which brings up an interesting point: Turtledove's 'The South Won' future history results in an alternative verse which takes us up through the present day, but continues to use real historical figures such as Custer and Teddy Roosevelt. Part of the fun is reading about historical figures in these alternate historical contexts, but the truth is that many of them would never have been born at all due to changes in who lived, who died, who met who when, married, and had families. The world would be populated by entirely different people. Anyhow, DISCUSS!
Well, of those, I've only read the Stirling (on your recommendation), and I'm pretty sure I'd be fucked. I don't think either the agrarian commune or the roving band of Bearkillers would have a huge need for a graphic artsist. The only thing I'd bring to the table is being a decent shot. And if my glasses get broke, with a 6" focus distance, that's all she wrote. On the other hand, I'm a draftsman. Anybody will probably need somebody who knows how to draw up plans for things. Not right away during the "kill everybody and consolidate your feifdom" phase, but later.
I've often wondered how I'd survive during a zombie outbreak like in World War Z. Would I be able to make it to any of my family in time to rescue them? Where would we go to survive? How long would we be able to hold out until rescue came, if they ever did?
I enjoy alternative history. Up to a point. I enjoy trying to see what would happen if something VERY SMALL historically speaking was changed. For example, how would the world have changed (if it did at all) if a substantial number of the largest dump truck in the world in the late 1970s, the Terex Titan 33-19 had been built instead of only one? Also, as a Cold War history buff, I've been interested in how the world would've changed if NATO and the Warsaw Pact had fought a massive, NON NUCLEAR war in Europe in the late 1980s, early 1990s. Something like Clancy's Red Storm Rising or Hackett's Third World War books. In particular I've been interested in how such a conflict would've changed 1) American politics- a second term for President George H.W. Bush? Al Gore elected president in 1996. Wesley Clark becoming the first president from Arkansas. 2) the Star Trek franchise--no DS9,instead a spinoff series with Riker commanding a giant Federation starship into the Delta Quadrant to deal with the Borg threat with Tony Todd and Michelle Forbes as part of the cast.
I find that most such stories postulate a population being in considerable distress and thus, being what I am, I'd probably be pretty well fucked no matter the details. I tend to speculate in more general terms...if the South had won the war would they have ended Slavery within a few decades? Would they have made a serious effort to expatriate the former slaves? would there have been a continual shift in state alegencies (for instance, would kentucky or maryland have switched sides)? Would the precedent for breakup have led to a later division between New England and the MidWest or led California to go independent or Texas to split from the Confederacy? And in light of whichever of those things you assume, who would have been the president at any given time? For instance, Sure Wilson was a Virginian (originally) BUT would the southern States have ever elected a guy like Wilson?
The American capitol would be moved back to Philadelphia. The operation of the underground railroad out of Union territory with impunity (and even quiet encouragement) would become a major point of contention. The Confederacy would accuse the North of stirring up insurrection among the slaves and Indians and they would be right. Eventually a series of border disputes in the western territories would cause a second war to break out.
I think that would have been almost inevitable, especially seeing as they would have been allied with Britain, and Britain had outlawed it.
Not an unreasonable suggestion. An equivalent "second attempt" to the War of 1812, as it were. Your reference to the Indians brings up another point. i would speculate that with the energies of the white man devoted to conflicts amongst themselves, would it be possible for the native Americans to seize control of a large section of the "American" West and hold out long enough to gain some soverignty? and would they be able to work together for the common good on that? there's a part of me that thinks that one bit of often undiscussed justice that might come from a divided union would be for, for instance, that an independent "Indian Nation" would today exist in the areas we think of as the Northwest - Say Eastern Washington and Oregon across to the Dakotas and south as far as Northern Colorado....
I agree. I think that a lot of it would have had to do with Southern "state's rights" pride..doing it on their own terms rather than being dictated to by the North. I think that some combination of modernization, external pressure from needed allies, and the "moral authority" of a beloved figure would have been enough to establish a "phase out" plan. Ideally, Lee would have been the sort of man who could have brought it off but if you were to assume that then you have to imagine a scenario in which lee lives considerably longer than he actually did. Laying that difficulty aside for the sake of rank speculation: If Lee, or a man of his standing, had made a convincing case that slavery was unworthy of so religious a people, and that had been combined with the political impossibility of maintaining the institution (which, apart from their knee jerk rationalizations leading up to the war, most thoughtful Southerners recognized as basically immoral) they might have conceived of a phase out plan in which the slaves under 21 - and those born to slaves thereafter - were freed upon there 21st birthday, and those older than the age at which they could be productive field hands (since cotton was the excuse for not being able to free them all at once) were given the option to choose freedom, their current status, or some middle ground where they were still obliged to their current position (as, for instance, a cook or a footman) but not property. What resulted from that would be that the blacks still enslaved would gradually "age out" of slavery with no new slaves coming in ...so that slaveholders would have a period of perhaps 20 years to adjust their operation to the new financial reality. Perhaps the think would have even had an "end date" upon which all remaining slaves would be freed. Say you pass this plan in 1880 and the end date is January 1, 1900. Mind you, I'm not defending the ethics of phased out slavery as opposed to the all at once sort, just guessing that a society with an economy so heavily dependent on slavery would only agree to end it on terms that wouldn't collapse their economy. My guess would be that as this was happening there would be, as Ryan suggests, a full force effort by Norther abolitionists to smuggle those still enslaved out of the south and also a "repatriation" effort by racist southerners (NB Forrest types) to finance the removal of any black who wanted to go either to the north or the western territories or even back to Africa. the upshot being that the concentration of American Blacks in the south we see in our world might not exist in that world.
On the Indian Nation thing, I did a quick a VERY sloppy alteration on an 1860 map to give you an idea. Read this as the pale blue being the Union - 24 states including Kansas, most of present day Nebraska, and the eastern part of the Dakotas (forming one state) The Orange is the CSA, having sought and received the Oklahoma area and the NM territory as terms of the peace treaty the Gray is the Republic of California the Green is the Indian Nation and the island of Blue is Mormon country. totally imperfect but just a spitball idea of how a breakdown might have looked IF the Indians could have pulled their shit together long enough to have made the case for independence. I expect that in reality the Indians might place a lot more importance on natural boundaries such as rivers instead of the straight line borders most Western states employ. The thing is, I imagine that both the CSA and California (and the Mormons too I guess) would have been interested in propping up the Indians since the USA would have seen the Indian country as their only remaining opportunity to exercise manifest destiny and a strong Indian nation would have served as a drain on resources for the USA and a way to keep expansionism in check.
Don't forget Stonewall Jackson. Until his death in '63, there were a fair number of Southerners who liked the idea of a post-war Jackson presidency.
Pretty much inevitably, all the alternate histories end of bloodier and more warlike than our current one. Because conflict makes interesting reading. Would anyone read an alternate history series (perhaps one where World War I ended in a couple of months as some predicted) that basically ended with "and the rest of the 20th century was a time of great peace and progress for all mankind".
Hmm. It would be interesting to write a story in which something like the 16th amendment failing to pass resulted in America remaining a more libertarian society with smaller government, resulting in greater prosperity, fewer wars, and slower technological development over the 20th century. We might even be getting to the moon for the first time right about now. Even more interesting might be an extrapolation of what would have happened had FDR never been elected to the presidency. No new deal, no social security, etc.
Have you read "The Probability Broach" by L. Neil Smith IIRC where an alternate world is discovered where President Washington was overthrown by Albert Gallatin duriing the Whiskey Rebellion? The U.S. ( actually the North American Confederacy) that evolves is literally a Libertarian paradise.
Resurrection Day where the Cuban Missile Crisis goes nuclear is an interesting one. The Soviet Union is utterly decimated. The U.S. is damaged and partially dependent on foreign aid from the British. The U.S. is basically an international pariah due to our virtual genocide of the Soviet Union and our refusal to give up our remaining nuclear weapons. France and Germany have an orbital space station and are making plans to go to the moon.
I don't see it as inevitable at all - it was the entire point of the war. States rights weren't an issue, because the South had no problem using the Federal government as long as they controlled it. For example the fugitive slave act or the gag order on even mentioning slavery in Congress for two decades. How the hell can you argue 'States rights' when you are censoring Congress about things you don't want them to talk about? It certainly wouldn't have come within 2 decades, unless forced by exigencies of war. Lincoln's election was seen as threatening the political balance in Congress, not threatening the institution of slavery itself, something he bent over backwards to tell anyone who listened that he had no intention of ending. But it could change the situation as to what new states were admitted and whether they were slave or free. The South opposed that they even have a choice at that time - one slave state for every free state is something they mandated (again, where exactly are state rights in that?). So secession occurred because slavery was threatened twenty years down the road, not right then. If the Confederacy existed in 1885, the chances that it would have removed slavery from the table are nil. Too many powerful men had too much to lose, and they had control of the government.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that. I think slavery would have been gone within a generation or two either way.
Also why would the europeans intervene military when there was so much antislavery attitude from french and british political and military leadership. The brittish had there entire atlantic fleet dedicated to stopping slavery. They also intervene in sudan over the issue of slave trade. Seems huge political blacklash for british politicans to intervene in the civil war on the site of the south.
I think it would have been gone by 1870 at the latest. In fact, I there's a very good chance it would have been gone by 1865 or shortly thereafter. Attitudes about slavery were changing even in the South, plus the economic and diplomatic pressures applied by the South's trading partners, i.e. England, France, the North, etc. But I also think that had the South freed the slaves in 1860, the war would still have happened due to the immense political and philosophical differences between the 2 regions. As for Demi's comment that slavery was the entire point of the war, I believe I've shown how ludicrously simplistic and wrongheaded that notion is many times in the RR.
You've certainly tried. You've also shown you are completely biased on the subject. Regardless, whatever other greivances the South had, they didn't secede until they realized the future of slavery in the United States was non-existent. After all, when South Carolina seceded, she invited all other slave holding states to join her. http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1485 The cornerstone of the Confederacy speech by Alexander Stephens in the Georgia senate: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=76 That would be the Vice President of the Confederacy stating they seceded specifically because of slavery. The Union didn't fight over slavery. But the Confederacy certainly formed because of it.
