Alternate history sub genre

Tarquin

In my reading of alternate histories, I don't think I have seen any based on minor or major differences in geography. One example of a major difference would be the British Isles remaining a penninsula of Europe with the Rhein and Thames flowing together before flowing into the North Sea, as they did in our Ice Age. Has anyone read or done alternate histories like this?
 

Diamond

Banned
The closest I think I've seen to anything like that (Britain as a peninsula) is Julian May's Many-Colored Land series of books. It's not AH, though - it deals with people sent through a one-way time portal to Pleistocene Europe.

Kurt Giambastiani's 19th century AH series (which I haven't read yet) has a huge inland sea in North America (the result of a meteor impact??), and surviving dinosaurs, used by American Indians as mounts in their battles against US President Custer.
 

Psychomeltdown

Man, one of these days you're gonna have to give me the list of the books you buy.

so I can be just like you. :rolleyes: er...


I mean, you seem to know and buy every book that comes off the printing presses...

maybe we should start a thread:

Diamond's Book Review.

:D
 
Oddball

Oddball

Tarquin said:
In my reading of alternate histories, I don't think I have seen any based on minor or major differences in geography. One example of a major difference would be the British Isles remaining a penninsula of Europe with the Rhein and Thames flowing together before flowing into the North Sea, as they did in our Ice Age. Has anyone read or done alternate histories like this?
Click to expand...

For what its worth; :) I'm interested in ATL's like that too. But as you say, there are presious few of them around here.

As far as I have noticed during my time in this forum, one of the reason is that ATL's of that carracter is tended to be looked upon as ASB, and thus frowned upon. They tend to be directed to the ASB threads, but IMHO the TL's there are of a entierly different ballgame.

Thus "geological" based TL's is in a category that atleast in this forum gets lost in the middle.

Here is a old thread conserning this subject: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=5815
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
Tarquin said:
In my reading of alternate histories, I don't think I have seen any based on minor or major differences in geography. One example of a major difference would be the British Isles remaining a penninsula of Europe with the Rhein and Thames flowing together before flowing into the North Sea, as they did in our Ice Age. Has anyone read or done alternate histories like this?
Click to expand...

The idea does remind one a little of May's Pleistocene Exile series, and that may be also why you don't see it done much. The world is so different it becomes just another fantasy really. May is a good enough writer that the Pleistocene details, like the fact that forests everywhere are giant redwoods and the megafauna, give versimilitude, but they add little to the real story in the end.

It might be interesting to see stories on what is must have been like if there were people around when Meteor Crater was made or Lake Agassiz drained overnight.
 

Flocculencio

Donor
Welcome to the board, Tarquin.

I agree that there isn't too much published AH stuff dealing with geographical PODs but we do get a small but decent amount on the boards.

One very good published one (which I'm surprised no-one's mentioned yet) was Turtledove's Down in the Bottomlands dealing with a POD of the straits of Gibraltar never opening and the Mediterranean becoming a howling desert. Also with Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens co-existing. Of course this was back when Turtledove was still writing good stuff...
 
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