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  1. No Iraq War- does Iraq get affected by the wave of protests?

    I don't know whether this was kicked off by the fact that the ruling party in Syria shares a name with that of Saddam's regime, or what, but... Anyway, assuming that the coalition decides against attacking Iraq, and Saddam Hussein and his lot stay in power in Iraq, and assuming the current...

  2. Cuba embargo lifted after the Cold War?

    Just a thought I had this morning: would it be possible after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US might lift the embargo with Cuba, seeing as any real threat has probably gone (not so likely to be a potential missile base)? Would it actually require the Castro regime to somehow be...

  3. An essential 'must-read' list for beginning AH readers?

    Having only really scratched the surface in terms of actual alternate history fiction myself (I mean, I've read some stuff but not much), I'm wondering if anyone can recommend any particular books worth reading for someone needing to get a grip on the genre? (Not just me, bear in mind- don't...

  4. Star Trek in the late 70s/early 80s instead of 60s?

    Just been thinking about the 'you in charge of Star Trek' thread and looking at certain other sci-fi TV series around the time. Supposing after NBC reject Gene Rodenberry's proposals for Star Trek entirely, and the whole thing gets put on the back-burner for some time, but eventually he tries...

  5. 405 still alive? (A British TV WI)

    Partly inspired by reading this page (though it's not that brilliant). Seems like there had been demonstrations of modified NTSC colour demonstrations as far back as the 1950s, and even as late as 1965, ITV companies were lobbying for some sort of 405-line colour service. So my question is...

  6. How might technology develop such that this telecommunications technology is viable?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDk_fpJkAqQ&feature=related# A British Post Office video of what they thought in the sixties phones might be like in the 90s. (Bear in mind the phone service was under the Post Office in those days!) Previously posted in NPC. Basically they sem to suggest that...

  7. Technological developments in no-WW2 world

    I've been wondering about the impact of World War 2 on technological and scientific development, and how this might have been affected by the war not taking place. Obviously military applications or the possibility of military applications are a major driving force behind a lot of new...

  8. Famous People in Alternate Realities v.3

    Created especially because people seem to like messing about with Jesus in alternate realities, which I hold to be impossible, and some others seem to disagree with as possibly offensive. So the rules are mainly as before: everything is in one single TL, so each person can only be named once...

  9. Challenge: 819-line TV more widely accepted

    Some may know, or not, of th 819-line TV systems adopted in the likes of France and Italy, an early form of high-definition TV system almost if not quite coparible to the modern standard, at least with the System E sort which suffered from the fact that it ocupied a VHF channel bandwidth of...

  10. Thoughts on Robert A. Heinlein's "For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs"?

    I just recalled reading this book back in my university days. It was one of Heinlein's early works I think, and one that at the time (1930s) went unpublished due to the sort of taboos around at the time. Basically, for those who have never read the book, the basic back story involves a man from...

  11. Internet without porn (sort of)

    Basically this harks back to a conversation (or, more properly, argument) an aquaintance and I had some years back concerning the usage of theInternet and whether it could exist (at least to the levels it did) without the porn industry being a major component. His argument (based perhaps on...

  12. No GUIs

    What if the graphical user interface (of the WIMP- "Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers"- type at least) had either never been invented in its present form, or never been taken up by Apple for the Lisa and Macintosh machines? What if command-line interfaces, or some alternative involving the...

  13. No Antarctic Treaty

    Since someone's done the outer space treaty, I thought I'd take a bash on what might happen if there was no agreement on Antarctica. I suppose one thing I can think of is the environmental and research issues- for example prospecting for oil (wasn't it the French who tried to get involved with...

  14. Challenge: make MiniDisc a viable proposition

    Despite having been around for some time, MiniDisc has never really enjoyed a huge degree of success, with the advent of the CD-R, CD-RW, the MP3 and digital file format players. So what changes are necessary to make it suceed and become the dominant music format, or at least cassette...

  15. British Politics with write-in votes for MPs?

    How might it work, if it was introduced sometime in the last few decades? Who might introduce it?

  16. How about Mammoth Cavalry?

    Since someone has suggested Bull Cavalry just recently, I am going with a sugestion first mooted in the ASB forum (as part of a shared worlds game). Suppose mammoths did not become extinct and managed to survive the end of the Ice Age, in some frozen polar/tundra region in the far north. What...

  17. No bronze?

    Inspired by: in the "Europe rejects gunpowder" thread. What if there was no advent of serious metalworking, at least of bronze? Whatif society was still stuck in the Stone Age? Could civilisation develop and along what lines?

  18. Britain with a written constitution

    What might happen if, sometime in the last 50 years, Britain codified its currently unwritten constitution into something written? Are there any possible PODs for this? What are the benefits and drawbacks to this? What does this constitution look like?

  19. No ITV

    If the British government had not decided the BBC did not need any competition, and did not allow the setting up of ITV (Independent TeleVision, for the Ignorant Foreigners (TM)- initially a single channel comprised of a network of regional franchises) in 1955, what might the impact on...

  20. Nobama

    Since the US elections seem now to have become a one-horse race, with all the hopes being placed on Obama, what would happen if he didn't exist, or didn't get involved in politics, or was killed before his presidential campaign even got underway, or whatever? How would the runnings look then?
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