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May 2011 Main Page Snapshot Excerpt Part 8
Could Indians Have Destroyed One of the 13 Colonies? Exchange Sequel
Comments Section Point Of Divergence is an amateur press magazine and also a forum for discussing AH and AH-related ideas. Here is my comment section. |
Robert
Alley: Congratulations on the Clearcut! Your comments to
Grey: I hadn't
noticed the continuity problems with the mind-transfers in the
Dollhouse fanfic. Good catch. Your comments to me: I'm afraid you
nailed it on the timing of rodents and carnivores reaching Madagascar.
I did a little more research, and it appears that cricetid rodents and
viverrid carnivores probably reached Madagascar over 20 million years
ago. So, if I'm going to have a lemur and tenrec-only Madagascar I'll
have to move the snapshot back a lot of millions of years. Oh well. So
Madagascar-9M becomes Madagascar-24M. Good catch, but I can work around
it. I need to work out the Madagascar animals in more depth anyway and
also get a better handle on the plants there. Not one of those things
that will be prominent in the story, but hopefully a nice little touch
for people who know the country.
Lisa Brackman: I love the China trip pictures and the insider views on China. Keep them coming. Looking forward to more. The Blimp-world excerpts: Yeah, you went some dark places this time, literally. But it all fit into your world. Good character development. You really should dust these off and get them out there. Who knows? Maybe Fox would pick them up, authorize a dozen episodes, and then screw up advertising, timing, the order episodes played in, etc. so almost nobody notices it, then it can come out on DVD and become a cult favorite. Your comment to Jim: I'm afraid my knowledge of Chinese history isn't detailed enough to know which view of the Nationalists is true, but I get the impression that the contenders for power in China in the 1920 thru 1949 were a continuum, with some of the contenders the stereotypical warlords—looting the country to keep up the lifestyles of the extended family and friends, while others were a mix of that and at least some concern for the country as a whole, or at least the parts they controlled. The Young Marshal, for example, had some elements of Chinese patriotism in him, along with his playboy lifestyle and addiction. One other group of warlords was apparently pretty competent as administrators. I believe it was the Kunming group. Chiang himself was a mixed bag. In the pre-Japanese invasion period he did try to build up Chinese industrial capabilities, though it was an imbalanced heavy industry buildup modeled after the Soviet one, rather than anything that would have been competitive on the world markets. He did make efforts at reform in several areas, and he did build up a very competent core of an army in the German-trained divisions. On the other hand, he did act in some ways like a warlord, with his various wars against the warlords and the communists. If you look at a map of China you realize that even at his most powerful Chiang actually controlled an area of China smaller than some of the individual warlords did. On the other hand, in the mid-1930s the area he controlled was economically the most important part of China, with a very high percent of Chinese industrial capacity. And then there was his association with the Green Gang and his intelligence chief who would have been a good real-life model of FuManchu. Fascinating era in Chinese history. Your comments to me: Yeah, as you pointed out, getting the language of the mid-1940s right is more of a challenge than I realized. Oh well. There Will Always Be an England is still only one quick edit pass away from rough draft. And yes, you are right that Snapshot's Madagascar is not exactly a bucolic place. Tom Cron: Ah yes, I've seen video clips of Fuller's car. Nice-looking vehicle. I hate to say this, but you really really need to get a computer working. I had a horrible time reading your hand-written stuff. There was good stuff in there, especially the Locus stuff, and your review of the Stross AH book (he's becoming one of my favorite authors) but you're making us work for it. I did enjoy the reprints, especially the one on the consequences of the Germans defeating the Soviets. Anthony Docimo: On restocking extinct species: A lot of the species that have been killed off just aren't compatible with humans, and especially modern human civilization. I suspect passenger pigeons would fit in that category. I suspect that Stellar Sea Cows would have to be semi-domesticated in some way if they were going to survive. I like the idea of Europe discovering australopith fossils early. I suspect they would be considered apes until fairly late in the game. Historically they weren't considered part of the human game plan for quite a while after they were found because they weren't what theories said the missing link should be. There was also the issue of nationalism. France and Britain tended to compete for oldest humans, with Britain strongly behind Piltdown man for long after it should have been obvious that it was a fraud. Speaking of which: Here are two challenges back at you: How would theories of human evolution have developed in the absence of the Piltdown fraud? And, can you come up with a point of divergence that leads to something like Piltdown man really developing in Britain in the time-frame it was supposed to have? Lot's of obstacles there, including the fact that Britain was just a peninsula of Europe even in the interglacials until fairly late in the game, and became uninhabitable for primitive humans during the ice ages. Your reprint on monkeys in the West Indies: I think I had seen it, but it's still cool. I suspect that what we've found so far is the tip of a much larger iceberg. I suspect that there was a considerable radiation of monkeys on those islands, probably not as big as the lemur radiation on Madagascar, because the islands aren't big enough to sustain a really big bunch of species, but still considerably bigger than what we've seen so far. Robert Gill: I have still not watched Fringe. I think that's what has preserved it from the Fox curse. If I continue to ignore it, it should make it through five or ten seasons, and then I can go back and watch it on DVD. If only I had followed that strategy with Firefly, Dollhouse, Buffy, and Angel. We would have had several more seasons of the them. Same with Tru Calling. Oh well, too late for them now. On the alternate fates of the rich and famous. Dropped from a roof by a monkey? Perforated by her own family while hanging naked in a basket? Wow! You could never get away with putting stuff like that in fiction, I'm afraid. Fiction reality has to be more realistic than this real-life stuff. For some reason I read your mention of the guy saying that others can welcome 2012 as being a reference to the Mayan end-of-the-world nonsense. One of my sort-of-shirt-tail relatives is all geared up for the end of the world to come later this month—May 20-something. I may have mentioned this before, but the guy predicting the May 20-something date is doing land-office business. People are quitting their jobs to tour the country in mobile homes with huge billboards on the side proclaiming the date. The dude has enough money from the faithful that he has been able to buy outright a whole bunch of radio stations all over the world. Your comments to me: On my Britain gets ISOTed story, I seem to have managed to confuse you, and I would be interested in figuring out what caused the confusion. Only Britain gets ISOTed. It is replaced in our time by the version of Britain that should be back in the stone age where Britain from 1944 currently is. One of the POV characters went back to the stone age with the 1944 version of Britain. He then goes to the stone age continent of Europe. Another POV characters lands in the stone-age Britain that is now sitting in 1944, where it has replaced 1944 Britain. The third POV character is with the allied troops in the Normandy bridgehead in 1944. On the alternate history army match-ups: I don't remember what I was thinking when I tossed in the Iroquois/Conquistador matchup. My guess is that Conquistadors versus 1520s Iroquois would have the conquistadors mopping the floor with the Iroquois initially, and then spending whatever time elapsed between that victory and the time they all died or fled the country wishing they left the Iroquois alone. Against the Iroquois at the height of their power in the 1650s, the conquistadors would in my opinion have gotten their butts kicked. The Iroquois learned total war quickly and implemented it effectively. New England was lucky they didn't have to fight the five nations Iroquois in the mid-1600s. Global warming has become such a hot-button issue that it is almost impossible to say anything about climate issues without some really nasty, rabid, and usually rather ignorant people on both sides of the issue scrutinizing your statements and trying to figure out which side you're on (and verbally casting you out into the outer darkness if they think—rightly or wrongly that you are on the other side). So I try to get myself to avoid the whole field even though it fascinates me. Mars terraforming is an interesting issue. Warming Mars and getting it enough air pressure to be interesting for earth-type life would be extremely cool. It would also be very different than warming earth. The problem we run into on earth is that (a) If the most commonly used models are correct, on earth a relatively small amount of warming directly from carbon dioxide is amplified several times by warming from increased water vapor from warming oceans. You end up with a positive feedback loop from that, as well as several other factors. For example, if the sea ice melted completely or nearly completely from the Arctic during the summer, it would increase the earth's albedo, because water reflects less sunlight than ice. On earth there are hundreds upon hundreds of similar feedback loops, some positive and some negative. For example, getting rid of Arctic ice during the summer would increase the productivity of the Arctic ocean, which would tend to pull carbon from the atmosphere. It would also allow more evaporation from Arctic waters, which would mean more snow/ice on surrounding land in the spring and fall, which would end up increasing the earth's albedo and reflecting more sunlight into space. Start thinking these things through and it gets mind-bogglingly complex. I suspect that Mars would initially be somewhat simpler because it wouldn't initially have large amounts of water vapor to be evaporated. I had an (a) up there, so I'll put in a (b) though I've quite forgotten what my second point was going to be. So, (b) One of my physics friends pointed out that the ocean is several orders of magnitude bigger than the atmosphere in terms of its ability to hold heat. His back of the envelope calculations were that it takes a thousand times the energy to increase the average temperature of the ocean one degree that it does to increase the average temperature of the atmosphere one degree. The oceans contain enormously more heat than the atmosphere does. The ocean is a huge heat sink, and also a huge stabilizer of land temperature. What really counts in terms of where overall earth temperatures are going is ocean temperature. Looking at land temperature is sort of like looking at the hairs on a dog's tail to figure out which way the dog is going. Long-term you can get an idea. In the short term it can be deceptive. And it's far better to just look at the dog directly. Looking at ocean temperature directly is nowhere near as easy as it sounds. Oceans are thermoclines, which is a fancy way of saying that they are warmer at the top and extremely cold as you get deeper. Hot water rises, much the same way that hot air does, and the top few yards of the ocean get most of the sun's energy. One of the huge unknowns of earth climate is (or at least was until recently) how much if any of an increase in surface water temperatures gets transmitted down to deeper level of the ocean and how much accumulates in the upper level. Measuring that gets complicated because the oceans have currents that fluctuate over decades, and it may have fluctuations that last centuries that we haven't sorted out yet. I want to emphasize, this stuff is mind-blowingly complex to figure out on earth. The oceans and life do the strangest things, often counterintuitive. Life adapts to new conditions, often with a lag of a decade or two, or even a few centuries, so you can end up with something appearing to work one way, and then slowing or even reversing as life takes advantage of new conditions. I'm tired, and my short term memory is going. I suspect I may have mentioned this in a previous zine, but it's the perfect example of how complex these interactions can be: in the desert southwest, biologists discovered that you could make the desert bloom by enclosing an area and trapping out the kangaroo rats. They put just enough additional stress on quite a few species of plant to turn a stretch to desert. In another experiment, scientists in Wisconsin were able to experimentally vary the amount of carbon dioxide coming from a lake by about 5%. Put in a predator fish like bass and the lake started absorbing more carbon dioxide because the predator fish kept down populations of smaller fish that fed on plankton, which absorbed carbon dioxide. Did I mention that this can get mind-bogglingly complex and interconnected? On Mars things should be less complex and more predictable, at least until you have oceans and ecologies complicating things. Your comments to Lisa: Yep. I'm looking at the US Torchwood with a bit of trepidation. And no, please don't say US adaptation of Primeval outside of these pages. Johnny Grey: Your fanfic Dollhouse third season is coming along well. Yeah, it's not quite Joss Whedon, but it's still fun. The Clockwork Confederacy story: Okay now. The overall plot isn't bad, and I like the background in a 'okay this is annoying southern-wank but pretty well thought out' way. The problem you run into doesn't have a name that I've seen, so I'll give it one: “Alternate history name-dropping gone wild.” Kind of clunky, but it works. Jim pointed out last issue that sticking historical characters places they probably wouldn't go is a pet peeve with a lot of us. Yes, this is set close enough to the point of divergence that you would logically meet up with real historical figures. That part is fine. The problem is that you seem to take pleasure in putting them in weird and unlikely settings/professions. Granted the series is obviously somewhat tongue-in-cheek. At the same time, you already ask people to do some serious suspension of disbelief. You need to cut down on my need to suspend disbelief in the rest of your world. Your comments to Alley: Yes, a lot of the former slaves that got sent to Liberia did survive. The point is that a lot of them also died from Africa diseases. From old and possibly faulty memory, over a third of the emigrants died of disease within a few years. I remember that the mortality rate was within ten percent or thereabouts of the rate for Europeans in the area. So you end up with tens of thousands of dead ex-slaves if you do mass migration—hundred of thousands if you do what it would take to get most African Americans out of the south. Your comments to me: Yeah, I know Snapshot has a steep learning curve. I'm working on making it easier to get into, but so far without a lot of success. Your comments to Johnson: I wonder if having stories come in dreams is catching. I don't recall more than one or two dreams with any coherence in my life until lately, but recently I had two reasonably coherent story dreams. In one, I had a picture of several people in my hand as I walked through a restaurant. As I walked, suddenly one of the women in the picture disappeared, and apparently reappeared in the flesh in the restaurant beside me. I looked at her, not quite understanding and kind of saying to myself, “Nope. That didn't happen. And all the while realizing deep down that it had. Another one was less science fiction and more male/adult. I find what appears to be an almost naked female body in a tree. There has been a serial killer on the loose, and I'm getting out the cell phone to call it in, when the woman tells me not to, that she is part of some kind of sting operation. I don't remember much after that, thought the dream went on for some time. The woman tells me she's a stripper, which doesn't make much sense in light of the sting operation part. Pretty sad compared to the kind of things you and Johnson come up with, but more coherent than most of my dreams. David Johnson: A 'live' dirigible? Very cool! I enjoyed the 60 quotes on your website. Nice set of memories. On the cover. Yeah, I found Uncle Adolph a tad disturbing too, and I inflicted it on you. By the way your pamphlet on the alternate campground had an unexpected viewer. I inadvertently left one on the table and my wife was very impressed, wanted to look into visiting. Your comments to Gill: Yeah, I don't see destroying New York City as helping the confederates much. Maybe targeting things like arms manufacturers might have worked a bit better. If the confederacy had been smart they would have bought a bunch of militarily significant industry during the Buchanan Administration when they were being allowed to buy stuff in the north. They were even picky about the shipping they purchased in the north, turning up their noses at ships the North later used to good effect against them. Your comments to Sidaway: Yeah, we finally seem to have gotten the font size problem figured out. The root of it appears to be the difference between US and European paper size standards. At first Kurt would send me stuff in Word so I could adjust it to work, but then he went to PDF and there really wasn't anything I could do. I didn't know what the issue was for a while until I did some investigation and discovered that he was sizing for tabloid. Oh well. It's fixed now. Your comments to me: Thanks for sending word about Exchange to Uchronia. Unfortunately, I don't think it will do much good. I sent him an e-mail, a copy of the book, and a follow-up e-mail, all to no response. It's weird, because I know he is still updating the site, and Exchange fits into alternate history far more than a lot of the stuff that he has listed. Oh well. Not sure what is going on there. He may be overwhelmed and just updating for large presses. On how far the French should have gone into Belgium: tough question. The French high command debated between two river lines, the Dyle and the Escaut, I believe. The Dyle line was shorter in terms of amount of front that had to be covered, but it also meant that the French had to go further into Belgium, and it especially meant that the weak French 9th army had to move into Belgium rather than defending in place, which they could have done if the French had advanced only to the Escaut river line. The biggest mistake the French made though, was pulling 7 of the best French divisions (including the best of their three light armored divisions) out of central reserve to use them in what they called the Breda variant. The Breda variant sent the best divisions of the French army all the way across Belgium, to the Dutch border, where in theory they would link up with the Dutch army, and be available to attack the Germans as they came through central Belgium. All of which might have worked if the Germans had come through central Belgium instead of through southern Belgium, and if the Dutch army hadn't decided not to defend the part of Holland where the French intended to link up with them. I like your response to the Nazi-1940/British 2010 matchup. Yeah, nukes make up for a lot of other deficiencies. Your comments to Lisa: Wow. The first POD real-life meet-up outside of Chicago, at least that I'm aware of. Good stuff. Blue Flash: Short, but some good stuff in there. Keep it coming if you can. Wesley Kawato: I'm guessing that it would be very difficult to simulate the impact of Allied airpower in the France 1944 campaign accurately. Airpower didn't just keep German forces from moving quickly in terms of bringing new divisions into threatened areas. It also weakened the tactical mobility of divisions that were already in the battle area. German trucks that were part of a division's structure were force-multipliers, allowing tactical mobility within the area the division was attempting to defend. Allied airpower reduced their effectiveness in several ways: (1) They couldn't move freely during the daytime, (2) Allied interdiction efforts meant that German divisions often had to use their trucks to bring up vital supplies, which meant they weren't available for tactical movements, and (3) The oil supply shortages meant that the Germans often didn't have enough fuel to use their trucks for tactical movement anyway. Apparently the reduction in tactical movement ability reduced the effective power of German divisions a lot, like to half or even a third of what they would normally have. That's something the guys on AlternateHistory.com who claim the Soviets could have won World War II on their own overlook. World War II was a group effort, with a lot of subtle synergies between the efforts of the combatants. It really did take the combined efforts of the three major Allies to bring Germany down. It would have been extremely difficult for any two of them to do it without the other. Jim Rittenhouse: I agree that of your ideas the 'no-Warlord China' and the Fractured Iberia ones have the most novel potential. As to when you set the novel, that's a tad tricky. The key issue in both cases would be tracing the timeline forward until you find a viable story. In the case of the China divergence, it might be possible to set the story in a China that is teetering on the brink of going either warlord or to a reasonably unified democracy, and I'm sure that there are plenty of dramatic events that could come out of that. The problem would be getting enough of the background in to let a reader understand the action without turning whole chapters into infodumps. Another possibility: follow the timeline forward to World War II. If China has been unified and well-governed for the last ten to thirty years, what is its role in the lead-up to World War II? Does Japan still try to carve off Manchuria? If so, how does that work out for them? If they get their butts kicked, how do they react? How do the Soviets react to a resurgent China? Who trains their army? Historically, Soviets first, then Germans for the army and Italians for the airforce, but a Democratic China probably wouldn't want any of those guys near its armed forces. The colonial powers wouldn't be good candidates for training. They have no desire to make China powerful. How does this version of China deal with the Great Depression (assuming it still happens). How does it deal with the attraction of fascism and communism? After World War I and especially after the Great Depression, democracy lost a great deal of legitimacy in some circles, and the isms filled in the vacuum. Would that still happen in China? Good luck on the path from idea to novel. Hope we see a lot more of this in future distros. Kurt Sidaway: Your comments to Johnson: Dang. I hadn't realized that birds could reach those kinds of heights. On the other hand, the Babble Zone should keep out all but the most determined animals. Your comments to me: Congratulations on your Nanowrite success too! On There Will Always Be An England: I'm beginning to wonder if the guys being from the same hometown is worth it. Actually I'm also wondering if I need all three of them. I'm leaning toward 'no I don't'. To be honest my memory of what I had go and stay in terms of the islands around Britain is fading. I had it all worked out at one time, and hopefully recorded it. As I recall it, Ireland doesn't go. I don't believe the Shetlands did. One of the sets of fringe islands has something rather nasty happen to it, but I can't recall which one. Thanks for the tip on the Madagascar BBC series. I probably missed it, but I'll check around. Your comments to Kawato: I also did a little research on Lawrence Dagstine and came up with some similar results. It appears that there is a whole subculture of people who write for science fiction/fantasy zines I had never heard of and who appear to be a rather back-biting crew based on what I read on some of the blogs. Your comments to Grey: Good set of nitpicks. And on to Mitteleuropa: First impressions: Not a bad start. A little slow at the start for today's zero attention span audience, but it kept my attention. I would do a find on “had” and maybe other passive words, though 'had' was the only one I noticed in much quantity. You should be able to get rid of quite a few and make the flow feel more immediate. Example: “On one occasion it had resulting”. Losing the “had” doesn't change the meaning, but it makes the story feel more immediate. Line-edit quibbles aside, I like the story. I noticed a few line-edit things scattered through, but pretty much ignored them and concentrated on the story, which is pretty good once it got going. I like the way you explain the political situation without going full-infodump on us. Having finished the section, I think I would start the story somewhat later than you do, maybe about the time your British reporter reaches his German colleagues office. The material before that can be worked in later. Your story and your choice, of course.
Posted on Jan 2, 2012.
More Stuff For POD Members Only What you see here is a truncated on-line version of a larger zine that I contribute to POD, the alternate history APA. POD members get to look forward to more fun stuff.
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