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I'm surprised that in all this discussion, nobody has mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which is definitely up there with For Want of a Nail as the best works of Alternative History I've read. I love alternative history, but so much of the published works these days are based on time travel that the works written with more serious tones really stand out for me. For anyone who hasn't read The Years of Rice and Salt, the premise is simple: the Black Death wipes out Europe. The exact way it works isn't clear (whether it is the same bubonic plague or another much different disease), but it is slow burning enough to infect everyone, and deadly enough to kill all its hosts eventually. When the Mongols show up to invade the western lands beyond the Steppes, they find a land truly and utterly deserted of human habitation. In this world without Europe, history takes a very different turn, influenced by Islam, eastern religions and Chinese Philosophy, bringing new states and new perspectives to the fore, but ultimately a world still recognisable from our own. The book spans about 700 years from the Mongol "Invasion" to the modern day, and follows two main protagonists, B and K, who are part of a cohort of souls, reincarnated and destined to cross paths time and again. With each reincarnation comes a new place and a time skip as the world without Europe gets slowly revealed to us. It's been a long time since I read it last, but unlike, say, any of Turtledove's works (which I enjoyed at the time but are now firmly "meh" in my memory), I fully intend to do so some time soon.
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Jul 21, 2014 01:55
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Metal 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 read it as a teenager too, and while I really enjoyed How Few Remain, the later books really began to drag terribly, and by the end I was very much of the view that I just wanted to get the drat thing over with, swearing to myself at the end that I'd never force myself through a book series I wasnt enjoying ever again. By contrast, though it was the trashiest, most lightweight thing ever, I really enjoyed the Worldwar books at the same age, simply for the fact that I didn't sit through the whole loving series thinking "this is just event X transposed to place Y" like so many other Turtledove novels. By the same token, I remember finding A World of Difference to be enjoyable, though I think I may have liked the premise more than the execution--the premise being that Mars is a larger icy planet called Minerva, which has a pre-gunpowder alien life on it, discovered by the first landers. The book then follows the simultaneous arrivals of the Russian and American explorers, looking to make contact with the Minervans.
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Sep 30, 2014 04:19
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Meldonox posted:I didn't quite see what I'm looking for described in this thread, but I apologize if I've missed something. I've always thought alternate history is pretty cool in general, but most of it doesn't quite appeal to me. Is there much out there that's less of an alternate history genre fiction novel and more of a data-driven speculative history textbook? I'd love to read something written with plausibility and probability in mind, even if it's a little dry. Others have suggested a few non-fiction works that speculate on possible alternative histories, I'd like to suggest a fictional alternative history written as an actual history textbook (the author, Robert Sobel was himself a professor of history and wrote a lot of non-fiction history). For Want of a Nail is a history textbook from a universe in which the British won the American Revolutionary War. The whole thing reads like an actual high-level overview of the political history of the United States of Mexico and the Confederation of North America, complete with full and detailed citations and loads of tables detailing things like election results and GDP. If not for the cover, it could as well be a real non-fiction work from another universe. It is dry as gently caress, but that hasn't stopped me reading it multiple times, something I very rarely do with even my favourite books. Reveilled fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 02:29
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Grouchio posted:Does this site have any threads beside this that specialize in alternate history? I can't think of anything other than the various LPs of historical games, particularly Paradox's grand strategy games, whcih tend to involve the LPer crafting a narrative around events in their games, usually tinkering around the edges towards certain arcs in the story. Two recent popular threads (still ongoing) are ZearothK's Hansa LP, and Rincewind's Byzantium LP, both of which are well written and certainly enjoyable, though as a heads up ZearothK's LP has some wacky elements like seafaring Aztecs (due to an optional DLC in Crusader Kings) while Rincewind's LP features an attempt at modding in a small historical event going hilariously awry and rewriting history in an implausible but amusing way. An example of something perhaps a bit more vanilla would be Wiz's LPs, the completed Hohenzollern LP [archive link] or the on hiatus Azerbijan LP. But if LPs are not your thing, I think this thread might be it.
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Nov 4, 2014 02:27
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Grouchio posted:I was once a member of Alternate History forums before I was banned for a misinterpreted quip because they thought I was some misogynist, when really I just had social difficulties around girls/ making friends until 6 months ago. In your quest to befriend people and act normally around girls, I would recommend against mentioning this event to people you just met.
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Nov 4, 2014 13:16
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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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