<![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel? - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel? - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> There's the Aztec/Japanese Empire laid out in Thomas Harlan's "In The Time of The Sixth Sun" series.

[www.throneworld.com]

Nebris

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Cuban missile crisis is taken care of by airstrikes to Cuba. And then the missiles. No complete nuclear holocaust, though -- it would be a short novel.

Nazi elected Prez in 1940 -- wait, Philip Roth has done that...

Spanish Armada is not dispersed by storm off the coast of England in 1588. Spain invades, Shakespeare dies fighting them before writing anything. More importantly, 1., the country turns Catholic, and 2., it does not bother with the north american colonies which they were only putting there to annoy the Spanish. This blog is written in French, except on a Minitel (you know, [en.wikipedia.org]).

jules_heros

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Then of course, there is the reverse. What if Mars sent a probe like the Viking to Arizona in the 1870's?

spudzill

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Here's an idea I was playing with...howzabout when the viking rovers land on mars they are discovered by the indiginous lifeform. I wanted to give them a culture and tech level of 1870's Arizona but anything would be cool

spudzill

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> How about if Neil Armstrong found a Moon man waiting when he got there?

Ben Zvan

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I'd like to see what would have happened if the Right-Wingers had "let the market have its way" during the crash of 1987 instead of shutting it down. It makes me cackle, actually.

The west endures a financial crash worse than the Great Depression; Gorby assassinated by hardliners; the USSR cuts its losses, slams down the Curtain, and jettisons the satellites it cannot control (Poland and Czechoslovakia) while sending the Red Army in on those it believes it can (Ukraine, say, and the 'stans), and as a result stays together; hell, for story's sake, the President is assassinated and the CIA loses control of its more paranoid contacts in the East Bloc and the Third World; the crash gives them enough time to set up their own Heart of Darkness spook kingdoms.

Idle speculation aside, Tardigrade would have to write all of this down and give it characters and description which would elevate it beyond Tom Clancy gun porn. Fuck it, says Tardigrade.

Complex mindgames played out in Prague cafés and rotting Soviet Bloc apartment buildings sound fun, though.

Tardigrade

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Had Tokugawa never unified Japan, there would have been no organised government strong enough to forbid the peasantry from adopting Japanese firearms (which at the time, incidentally, were among the best in the world). I'd say that would have just about schnitzed it for samurai. There've been peasant commanders before in Japanese history; it's not outlandish to suggest that someone would take the fore with a column of peasant gunners and bring down swords and daimyos once and for all. I bet they could have taken Asia after that, with manpower, training, and vast reserves of national crazy.

Tardigrade

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What if Abigail Adams's letters to her husband inspired more than a few quotes everyone learns in high school?

[coyotewildmag.com]

I want to play in this universe. Hell, I want to live in this universe.

RocktheDebit

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> And here's one of my own - Guy Fawkes and his Catholic co-conspirators DO succeed in blowing up Parliament House, which would have killed King James, most of the Royal Family, and numerous people of power and influence in England (and Scotland).

JRSM

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @Battey137: See John M Ford's 'The Dragon Waiting', where Constantine DOES go over to Christianity, but his successor immediately reverts this. Christianity becomes just another cult, Mithraism becomes popular, etc. Very good (though does have some rationalised fantasy elements, like vampires).

JRSM

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @unimodeler: I believe this is quite close to John Courtney Grimwood's 'Arabesk' trilogy, which focuses on the ongoing Ottoman Empire.

JRSM

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What if the black plague never happened? It would totally change the course of Europe's development and therefore most of the rest of the world too.

Anomaly69

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @braak: And Apple stock goes up even further. Can't lose. One way or another, I'll get the funds to finance the time machine development...

halloweenjack

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @halloweenjack: Ironically, when John Lennon goes on a solo tour in 1982, Bill Gates finds his life transformed by the experience, abandons computers and the fledgling Microsoft. Poor product management afterwards caused its stock to tank.

braak

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @DocGratis: wasn't there a robot chicken sketch about that? 'dicks with time machines?'

tetracycloide

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @NefariousNewt:

Come on, we the vikings did win in the end. Only we did so through open economies and sensible economic policies instead of raping and pillaging.

Hence, what if the U.S. had turned protectionist? Say, just after WW2.

njetski

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Out of the five original ideas, the Nixon in 1960 one is the only one that I see as being at all likely; Britain couldn't have held onto the empire after being decimated by two world wars, Spain would have returned to the New World with more troops, etc.

As for what I'd like to see as an alternate history, I think that I'd like to imagine what the world would have been like if I could travel back in time and warn John Lennon about that crazy fan with a gun. I'd reward myself with early purchases of Apple and Microsoft stock.

halloweenjack

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I always like the idea of What if steam power caught on around it's first accounts of 150 BC?

STHayden

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What would have happened if General Douglas MacArthur was not fired by President Truman and crossed UN forces into China and used Nukes during the Korean Conflict? Or if The General ran againt Truman for president instead of Dewey in 1948. Would we have been at war with the USSR or China in the fifties instead of a proxy war in Korea?

Battey137

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I'll see your "Louisiana Purchase Never Happened" and raise you a "..and Mexico is a stable vassal state of France." Think of what that does to the Civil War and the film career of Clint Eastwood.

finite_elephant

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> i am gonna fly off the handle this once. here goes...

ITS GANDHI GANDHI GODDAMNED GANDHI!!!
not ghandi. stop raping that poor dead guy. spell his name correctly please. whats the use of being proud nerds if we can't even do that?

Lord Necros

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @tetracycloide: He was pretty toolish... but reminds me of a sci-fi book I read about time travel, people started altering the past and the world was constantly in flux, until someone changed the past it such a way that time travel would never be developed (hence a stable time line)...

Which makes sense in a depressing way... (add to the fact that in the book the unique features of that timeline was that the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945... oh wait thats our world..)

DocGratis

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Tim Berners-Lee never invents the internet. This comment is never made. Oh, the paradox!

royen

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @JohnW: what if internet killjoys weren't such monumental tools?

tetracycloide

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What if no one every came up with the idea of alternate histories?

JohnW

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> what if eli whitney hadn't invented the cotton gin?

manguero

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> The Chinese Tang Dynasty defeat the Abbasids at the Battle of Talas River (751 AD), expand into Central Asia. The Caliphate never recovers - and the history of mathematics is probably changed forever. *g*

The Grynne

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> well this one is smaller-scale and will seem obscure and is very local to me but here goes:
what if the old river control structure failed (as it almost did) in 1973?
the atchafalaya river would have captured the mississippi's main flow; the former channel of the mississippi that runs by baton rouge and new orleans would largely fill in with silt, leaving a stream.
the scary thing is, this will probably happen sometime fairly soon.

manguero

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @Yig_on_a_blimp:

ok that made me giggle.

_case_

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @Vornshar: I'd want to see what would have happened if Chinggis Khan had never lived to unite the Mongol clans. All of history from the 1100s on would be unrecognizable.

--Mongol attacks on Japan responsible for pushing the development of the warrior class.

--300 year Mongol control of Russia isolated Russia from the rest of Europe

--Mongol invasions toppled Islamic empires in the Middle East responsible for some of the greatest achievements in science and math of the day. After the mongol withdrawal, they were replaced by anti-scientific theocracies on the one hand, and the Ottomans on the other.

--Fall of Byzantium: The Mongols left the Byzantine Empire a weak shadow of itself. Enter: Ottomans.

--Georgia was a powerful kingdom in the Caucasus until the Mongols demolished it. There has never been a strong sovereign power in the Caucasus since, and instead its been the battle ground between larger empires.

--Mongols cooperated with Europeans on some crusades, leading to the capture and imprisonment of the King of France when the Mongols decided not to meet him in Cairo as promised. In any case, Mongol expansion and the weakening of the Islamic Empires helped spur the Age of Exploration in Europe, which eventually allowed Europe to replace the Middle East as the center of science and mathematics.

--Italian City-States and the Renaissance, Marco Polo: Venice & Genoa grew massively wealthy trading with the Mongol empire and attempting to use it against each other

--China. duh.

adduby

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @slatz_grobnik: That'd be "Lion's Blood" by Steve Barnes.

Egn, yours reminds me of a series of wacky novels by Somtow Sucharitkul. Roman Empire meets Native Americans; prominent character Equus Insanus. Gets weirder from there.

Evil Tortie's Mom

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> It doesn't matter if the Aztecs still control the Americas, or the South won the Civil War, or if Nazi dinosaurs oppress all of mankind; it's got to have blimps! How else will you know it's an alternate universe if it doesn't have blimps all over the place?

EGN

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Oh, and with Montezuma winning you just haven't gone far enough. How about The night the Aztecs stormed Glasgow ?

Liz Henry

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I just read a really good Terry Bisson novel, "Fire on the Mountain", where John Brown and Harriet Tubman win the battle at Harper's Ferry and spark a revolution. I think later there was a socialist revolution in the U.S., which split into Nova Africa and Merica.

Liz Henry

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @Yig_on_a_blimp: Good idea! I'm sick of parallel Whyaduck lording his cowboy hat over me!

I think, rather than Montezuma driving Cortes away, a more interesting alternate history to ponder would be one where the indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere were immune to smallpox and all the other nasty bugs the Europeans brought with them.

Whyaduck

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Ok, how about this one: Stalin's parents emigrate to America and he becomes a populist democrat?

Oh. Darn.

rdosser

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> How about: a time-displaced historian leverages brandy distillation, hindu-arabic math and ROTC tactics to soldify an Italo-Gothic kingdom in the 5th century and prevents the onset of the dark ages?

Oh, it's been done?

rdosser

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @ TETRACYCLOIDE Check out THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN by Alan Moore for an example of Tesla + Edison.

I want to know what our lives would be like without the Louisiana Purchase.

Bellatrixie

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @collinxvii: Then there would have been no confederacy. Andy "Genocide" Jackson paid off his lieutenants with lands taken from the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and so on. They used those lands to reboot the Southern Plantation system, especially in Mississippi. Jeff Davis Grandfather or father was one of those who profited.

wishnevsky

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> For a novel? What if one of the Caliphates discovered and made to colonize or otherwise exploit the Americas?

Slatz_Grobnik

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @dshramek: Good one.. best write it quick

wishnevsky

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Aztec Empire would definitely be interesting.

Ken Keegan

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What if philosophical idea 'X' had never been thought of?

Mister Adequate

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @braak: Er. By "them" I mean: my pants.

braak

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What if I hadn't lost my belt on Tuesday, and I hadn't had to spend all of Wednesday constantly hiking them up?

braak

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> "Nixon beat Kennedy in 1960
Just think: No Watergate, no Kennedy assassination, and a much faster escalation in Vietnam"

You've got this backwards. JFK got us involved in Vietnam. Nixon got us out.

I realize everyone thinks JFK could do no wrong and Nixon was a bloodthirsty villain, and Republicans are supposed to be warmongers and Democrats are supposed to be peaceniks, but JFK and LBJ were responsible for the escalation in Vietnam.

Nixon opposed the Vietnam War as "unwinnable." Immediately after being elected to office, he started withdrawing American troops. When he resigned (in disgrace) there were only a few thousand US troops left in Vietnam.

So a more likely scenario would be "No Vietnam War." Which is a more interesting hypothetical anyway.


Comish

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> what if gawker was never invented...? how much less snarky would the internet be.. just sayin'

foofer

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Mike Resnick has several anthologies out that cover these: Alternate Presidents and Alternate Kennedys.

My choices would be:
1. What if Goldwater won in 1964 and carried out with his threat to use nukes in Vietnam?
2. What if the "Business Plot" attempt to overthrow FDR in 1933 was successful?
3. What if the Library Of Alexandria had survived?

Chris Barrus

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What if Marx of Lenin never lived?

livinglogic

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Vote the bottom one: No whiny Kucinich or Paul acting up in politics...

Eac_o_System

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub airplane?

Old school SNL FTW!

EBone

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> L. Neil Smith wrote a bunch of Heinlein homage books where the alt/hist was that the federalists were wiped out, the Whiskey Rebellion won, and everybody walked around with guns on their hip, drugs are legal, and apes are sentient, fully entitled citizens as are dolphins. "The Probability Broach"

wishnevsky

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @clarient: L. Neil Smith wrote "The Crystal Empire" where the Aztecs survive.. You dont want to live there, but an ok book.

wishnevsky

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @unimodeler: Actually I said that.. but thats ok..

DocGratis

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I have an interesting historical alternative. Emperor Constantine never adopts Christianity as the official state religion. Does it disappear into history? No doubt Mohammad was influenced by Byzantine Christians so does Islam ever come to be? What happens to Europe after the fall of Rome without the unifying influence of the Church?

Battey137

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Trotsky takes control of Russia, after Stalin is killed by an unknown assassin (sent from the future). The Cold War never happens.

JoshJasper

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> COLLINXVI... Card is writing a 2nd book in the pastwatch series. I too enjoyed the Christopher Columbus one. I also enjoyed "making history"

Unimodeler

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> BY YIG_ON_A_BLIMP AT 12:48 PM

"The one that is just like ours, but everyone's wearing a cowboy hat."

You mean Texas?

How about if the Christians hadn't stopped the Muslims at Venice?

fermilab

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> How about if the Hindenburg hadn't caught fire?

KrisjohnTwin

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Sliders had an episode where the British still ruled the USA. At the end of the episode the black dude gave "the resistance" a copy of the Bill of Rights, which he just happened to carry around with him. Needless to say I stopped watching Sliders after that.

In one short story I've read called "Ubermensch", Superman falls into Nazi Germany and becomes a Nazi, with Lex Luthor being a famous Jewish hero for capturing him.

FunkyJ

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @MarlboroTestMonkey7: That last one you mention is a huge chunk of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which is slow, but not a bad book. (The premise: What if the Black Death had killed off 90 percent of Europe, instead of a third?)

moff

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> The British Empire not falling was done in William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine. Which to be honest I never finished. :-)

nmcvaugh

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What if giant anthropomorphic pickles evolved and they were all left handed?

Capn_Marrrrk

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I think Cortes not believing Cortes was Quetzalcoatl might be the most impressive of the choices given. That would have changed the entire flow of European empirialism. Certainly not prevented it, but altered it drastically. Spain not having the incredible influx of wealth from the Americas that it had (or even not gaining it until later) would have re-ordered Europe and from there all the other powers' interaction with the world. Not having to face off against the Spanish Armada, Britain's resources are funnelled in wholly different directions...the impact is profound and widespread.

Of suggestions not offered above, I would like to see an alternate US history where a different series of presidents upheld treaties with the Six Nations and Cherokee allowing them to develop as sovereign states.

papercup mixmaster

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Why don't I see the poll?

I liked the pseudo alternate history of "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" by Orson Scott Card.

The end result is a Meso-american peaceful empire (and eventually a peaceful world) that ends up with future tech by 1950.

Plus the novel involves wormhole based historical viewing system... kind of cool in itself..

Also Making history by Stephen Fry, killing Hitler(preventing his birth) clears the way for a smoother less insane leader who does everything Hitler did but earlier, with more political savvy and worse still finds the infertility agent used to keep Hitler from being born and uses THAT to kill the jewish people..

DocGratis

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> and what if aristotle was right about the nature of the world, and the world is indeed based not on atoms but rather form and matter, people did not evolve, but rather are drawn towards the perfect form which is written the nature of the universe? or if any other pre-scientific philosophy at all was right?

omik

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Japan colonizes California, finds tons of gold, goes to war with the British Empire (of which the US is still a part).

dshramek

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> - What about our egyptian-alien overlords having never abandoned us?
- Or the Ice Age never rescinded? China/Orient mingling with the Native Americans to form a huge empire?


MarlboroTestMonkey7

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @Gann: I think Gaiman's The Prez is just that.

MarlboroTestMonkey7

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Alexander the Great lives to old age.

mik3cap

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @mumblingmynah: I think the real question is, what if Ghenghis Khan had lived...as an immortal zombie vampire!

braak

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> How about 'What if the Hippie revolution had succeeded?'

Gann

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I voted for the Aztecs because we don't have enough cities with 5 X's in their names.

Recury

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Weren't some of these Sliders episodes?

Chiper

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Not a major divergence, but I've always wanted to see what would have happened if Mick Jagger had convinced The Beatles to join them on their 1969 U.S. tour (the one that ended at Altamont.)

OnwardChristianLaettner

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> It's ridiculous how in every alternate history where such-and-such empire never collapsed, all the features of that empire remain in place to the modern day. Like if Rome never fell, OF COURSE there would still be gladiators and togas and orgies today. And the Aztecs would still have pyramids and human sacrifice.

@Vornshar: What are you talking about? Genghis Khan lived to be at least 60 or so. Either way he didn't have a lot of time left and couldn't have accomplished too much more.

mumblingmynah

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @aspiringexpatriate: Vive le France!

EBone

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @EBone: Um. They did win. They were just too busy fighting Napoleon to bother re-conquering a bunch of idiotic 'democratic republican' aristocrats.

aspiringexpatriate

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> How about the one where Britney Spears isn't insane and is a good mother?

Short of that, I'll like to see what would have happened if the British won the War of 1812. I'd probably be having tea instead of a coke right now. Cheers!

EBone

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> You dare speak ill of Turtledove? Blasphemy!

I vote for a world filled with modern day Aztecs. Fun!

clarient

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I've always wondered what a modern Meso-American civilization would look like. Aztec design is quite beautiful and to extrapolate that aesthetic onto skyscrapers and such is really interesting.

moncapitaine

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @braak: I have wondered for a long time about where the world would be technologically if the Library at Alexandria had never burned down.

SoCalian

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> what about if the US had joined the League of Nations after WWI?

Koopa

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> What are you talking about? Germans winning WW II gave birth to one of the greatest anime in existence:

[en.wikipedia.org]

But other than that, a North America not dominated by Caucasians definitely sounds the most interesting.

i560948

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Or better yet, The British fail to stop the German Army at the Battle of the Marne. The German empire defeats France... an armistice is reached with Britain. WWI thus never becomes the slaughter that it was. Adolf Hitler stays an obscure painter in Vienna. Lenin is executed by the German Empire. The USSR never exists. The cold war never materializes. Werner Von Braun helps the British to reach the Moon.

Unimodeler

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @TruculentandUnreliable: I'm trying to remember the specifics, but I believe that there is documentation in reference to documents at Alexandria regarding a Greek inventors primitve steam engines.

So, that's pretty crazy right there.

braak

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @tetracycloide: Oooh, I like that one. Electric cars, and television by 1920.

braak

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I'd like to see a novel about an alternate history where the printing press was never invented.

Did I just blow your minds or what?

moff

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Okay that wasn't based on a change in history but it was pretty funny in Futurama

Yig_on_a_blimp

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @braak: Harry Turtledove did a book about what would have happened if Byzantium never fell. "Agent of Byzantium". Kind of meh, but not terrible.

[www.amazon.com]

shudderstep

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> The one that is just like ours, but everyone's wearing a cowboy hat.

Yig_on_a_blimp

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> what if tesla had never been relived of his position at tesla electic light & manufacturing and had succesfully replaced edison electric?

tetracycloide

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I had an interesting email conversation with Jack McDevitt about the Civil War thing a few weeks ago (he even put me in his blog/journal). It wasn't about "what if the South won?" but rather, "what if Lincoln didn't think the Union was worth fighting a bloody, protracted war over?" Good brain-food.

Regarding Nixon beating Kennedy, there's a much more terrifying thing to consider - the Cuban Missile Crisis. How would that have gone down with sweaty, paranoid Tricky Dick in the driver's seat?

Ed Grabianowski

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Nixon beat Kennedy in 1960 = Watchmen.

goldfarb

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @TruculentandUnreliable: I'd vote for that one. Or better yet, the Greeks are not subjugated by the Romans. And as a final idea, how about the Vikings take over Europe completely.

NefariousNewt

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> I would like to see what would of happened if Ghengis Khan lived.

Vornshar

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Gotta agree with Braak. I'm sticking with Three Californias, Eye In The Sky, and Celestial Matters.

OMG! Ponies!

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> @braak: My favorite is if library at Alexandria didn't burn. Just that alone would've made a huge difference.

TruculentandUnreliable

]]> <![CDATA[Which Parallel World Deserves Its Own Novel?]]> Meh. I don't like any of these.

What about if Byzantium had held out against the Ottoman Empire?

Or Persia winning at Salamis?

braak

]]>