Biggest Alternate History Cliches

[stevep]

Feb 1, 2021 11:05:50 GMT simon darkshade said:

There was that perception in some neutral texts of the time; I remember reading a near hagiographic account of the inevitability of German victory in a text I found whilst searching for Heligoland’s defences. However, even though the occupation of those territories in the West yielded them some benefit, it really was more of an absence for France that was the real bite. There are the extremely vehement types who insist that the lack of American loans in 1916 would mean an utter Allied collapse and then an utter German victory, but that argument doesn’t really work for me; it does seem to be derived from a position of utter American indispensability, which is more of a subjective area in the entire scope of the Great War.

It is somewhat interesting how things tend to intersect like this.

  I know.  The argument that because the US insisted on payment in gold when you run out of gold everything collapses.  Ignoring not just German excesses and diplomatic incompetence the US had vested interests in at least a compromise peace or an allied victory. 

[Zyobot]

This next one probably goes without saying, but AH scenarios in which the PoD only impacts one or two things in major ways, with everything else proceeding more or less the same in blatant disregard for the butterfly effect (i.e. assuming that a surviving Confederates States would ally with Nazi Germany, even though there's no guarantee the latter will emerge down the road). Moreover, since it's presented in video form already, here's a more electorally-minded instance of what I'm referring to.

Alternate History: Samuel Tilden Wins 1876 Election

[simon darkshade]

Zyobot,

That is quite irksome indeed. When a significant change is made, the rest of the world isn't going to carry on without reacting or changing as a result. This is amplified when it happens to a major power, but even can be seen in minor mini-TLs and PoDs. I remember one time travel piece where a Royal Navy carrier is sent back to December 1941 a la The Final Countdown and actually ends up nuking the Japanese task force en route to Malaya.

Big change, seemingly.
In the words of The Critical Drinker, "Nah, It'll be fine!".
Malaya and Singapore still fall, just a few months later.

There are many, many other examples, but that one sticks out.

It is a cliche, but it also represents a failure of imagination and a casualness/laziness of thought. Properly following through PoDs takes us to places unknown as authors and readers alike, and many people seem to prefer the stale comforts of @.



Steve,

I quite agree. The interpretation misses out on everything that had happened to date and the impact of German policies and attitudes. Everything comes down to a very narrow and carefully defined scenario where facts and evidence are used without context and without reference to the broader picture. One can speculate as to the reasoning behind it, but it does smack of distaste for the historical US involvement in the Great War and that curious position that it was a war without moral context or good and bad sides.

[stevep]

Feb 2, 2021 22:12:17 GMT Zyobot said:

This next one probably goes without saying, but AH scenarios in which the PoD only impacts one or two things in major ways, with everything else proceeding more or less the same in blatant disregard for the butterfly effect (i.e. assuming that a surviving Confederates States would ally with Nazi Germany, even though there's no guarantee the latter will emerge down the road). Moreover, since it's presented in video form already, here's a more electorally-minded instance of what I'm referring to.

Alternate History: Samuel Tilden Wins 1876 Election

  That's probably the single biggest flaw in so many AH stories.  That people with the same name and basic policies turn up long after the POD and generally have the same roles.  Even if you assume that nation X would follow the same policy as OTL then someone with similar characteristics to historical figure A might well turn up but their not going to be that exact same person!

  I think partly this occurs in commercial AH, i.e. published fiction because authors are aware that most of their possible readers will be happier with seeing people and events their familiar with rather than a totally different world with different people doing drastically different things.  As such there is a commercial argument for it but it makes for crap AH for those of us who are more aware of what AH is like.

[Zyobot]

Feb 3, 2021 12:25:56 GMT stevep said:

Feb 2, 2021 22:12:17 GMT Zyobot said:

This next one probably goes without saying, but AH scenarios in which the PoD only impacts one or two things in major ways, with everything else proceeding more or less the same in blatant disregard for the butterfly effect (i.e. assuming that a surviving Confederates States would ally with Nazi Germany, even though there's no guarantee the latter will emerge down the road). Moreover, since it's presented in video form already, here's a more electorally-minded instance of what I'm referring to.

Alternate History: Samuel Tilden Wins 1876 Election

  That's probably the single biggest flaw in so many AH stories.  That people with the same name and basic policies turn up long after the POD and generally have the same roles.  Even if you assume that nation X would follow the same policy as OTL then someone with similar characteristics to historical figure A might well turn up but their not going to be that exact same person!

  I think partly this occurs in commercial AH, i.e. published fiction because authors are aware that most of their possible readers will be happier with seeing people and events their familiar with rather than a totally different world with different people doing drastically different things.  As such there is a commercial argument for it but it makes for crap AH for those of us who are more aware of what AH is like.

Yes, this all seems reasonable. Contrariwise, it's probably easy for people who learn about the butterfly effect to go wild with the divergences, such as assuming that Abe Lincoln living means that WW1 kicks off early, "'cuz reasons". Which may or may not happen, since there are too many variables at play for us to perfectly deduce what an alternate world would look like. Though, at the same time, there are still principles of good reasoning we can look to when coming up with an educated guess, with some conclusions making a whole lot more sense than others. That, I think, is a key caveat that the Average Joe misses--especially with how what-if scenarios in mainstream pop culture make some really goofy leaps, courtesy of Hollywood logic.

Actually, that's probably another poster-boy cliche we could list here. That is, the tendency for more history-illiterate creators to use the butterfly effect as a justification for drawing the zaniest conclusions, rather than having what happens next seem plausible enough based on what we know and/or can make a reasonable argument for. There's one exceedingly dystopian TL that halfway falls into this trap, though I'm not sure if it's appropriate to link to it here.

[stevep]

Feb 3, 2021 20:03:32 GMT Zyobot said:

Feb 3, 2021 12:25:56 GMT stevep said:

  That's probably the single biggest flaw in so many AH stories.  That people with the same name and basic policies turn up long after the POD and generally have the same roles.  Even if you assume that nation X would follow the same policy as OTL then someone with similar characteristics to historical figure A might well turn up but their not going to be that exact same person!

  I think partly this occurs in commercial AH, i.e. published fiction because authors are aware that most of their possible readers will be happier with seeing people and events their familiar with rather than a totally different world with different people doing drastically different things.  As such there is a commercial argument for it but it makes for crap AH for those of us who are more aware of what AH is like.

Yes, this all seems reasonable. Contrariwise, it's probably easy for people who learn about the butterfly effect to go wild with the divergences, such as assuming that Abe Lincoln living means that WW1 kicks off early, "'cuz reasons". Which may or may not happen, since there are too many variables at play for us to perfectly deduce what an alternate world would look like. Though, at the same time, there are still principles of good reasoning we can look to when coming up with an educated guess, with some conclusions making a whole lot more sense than others. That, I think, is a key caveat that the Average Joe misses--especially with how what-if scenarios in mainstream pop culture make some really goofy leaps, courtesy of Hollywood logic.

Actually, that's probably another poster-boy cliche we could list here. That is, the tendency for more history-illiterate creators to use the butterfly effect as a justification for drawing the zaniest conclusions, rather than having what happens next seem plausible enough based on what we know and/or can make a reasonable argument for. There's one exceedingly dystopian TL that halfway falls into this trap, though I'm not sure if it's appropriate to link to it here.

  Well I must admit that I do have one TL, with a POD in 1809 that means a much worse 1812-1818 conflict for the US and hence, with the old NW lost along with a break-away New England which leaves the US overwhelmingly dominated by slavery.  One result of this was that in the 2nd of the following wars the leader of the pro-slavery US is Abe Lincoln.   Probably unlikely as his family had left the south because they couldn't get land due to the domination of the plantations and later he was appalled by the treatment of slaves but not impossible in a different circumstance.