"What-iffery?"

[Ray Von]

Evening all, I'm currently enjoying binge watching "For All Mankind" it's a US drama series, based around the premise that the space race was initially won by the Russians (they get to the moon first and this spurs the USA on to do better, the space program receives a huge amount of funding, and events unfold...)

 

I have realised that I quite enjoy this kind of "what-iffery" - Fatherland by Robert Harris was a fascinating read and I was lucky enough a few years ago to get the BBC Radio 4 audio-play on CD.  The alternate reality episodes that appear throughout the history of "Star Trek" are very entertaining too (and must be enjoyable for the actors, to break out of their roles!)

"A Christmas Carol" and "It's a Wonderful Life" have their "what might be" moments, as does "Back to the Future 2."

My own layout has even developed into a "what if" location...

I also recall a few years ago seeing model steam trains in modern day livery (if they had survived and remained in service - wow!)

I wonder and hope if anyone has any recommendations in the genre?  Books, radio, TV or film - anything really - I find the subject fascinating and it really fires the imagination.

 

[62613]

Without trying hard, SS - GB by Len Deighton. The jumping - off point is of course that the Germans staged a successful invasion of Britain.

[bmthtrains - David]

Voyage by Stephen Baxter - a beast of a book, Kennedy survives the assassination attempt and as Neil Armstrong lands on the moon, he calls for missions to Mars. Follows the fictional history thereafter. Phenomenally detailed and I suspect inspired For all mankind...

 

David 

[60021 Pen-y-Ghent]

Harry Turtledove wrote a whole set of books based on the premise that the American civil war ended in 1863 (I think) with vistory for the CSA. The first book is "How few remain" and it is followed by the trilogies "The Great War", "American Empire" and "Settling Accounts".  (See https://www.fantasticfiction.com/t/harry-turtledove/) They became a bit predictable in the end but I quite enjoyed them none-the-less. Be careful which set of his novels you pick though if you don't like alien invasions!

[pH]

“Making History” by Stephen Fry. A different Hitler “what if”. (Actually a “what if not”.)

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, Ray Von said:

I have realised that I quite enjoy this kind of "what-iffery" - Fatherland by Robert Harris was a fascinating read

Long preceded by Philip K. Dick's Hugo award-winning novel* from 1962, "The Man in the High Castle" where the former United States is divided between the Empire of Japan and the Third Reich.

 

* I'd call it a novella - it's not very long.

 

There's a television show for that as well, but I haven't seen it so can't recommend or not-recommend it.

 

The genre seems to have acquired the nickname of counterfactual.

 

Edited March 12, 2021 by Ozexpatriate

[Ray Von]

Just now, Ozexpatriate said:

Long preceded by Phillip K. Dick's Hugo award-winning novel* from 1962, "The Man in the High Castle" where North America is divided between the Empire of Japan and the Third Reich.

 

* I'd call it a novella - it's not very long.

 

The genre seems to have acquired the nickname of counterfactual.

I tried watching the TV series of this, but gave up on it - a shame because the premise was fascinating. Maybe I'll give the novella a go instead, thank you.

[lapford34102]

Pavane by Keith Roberts.  Quite an old book now but it starts with the assassination of Elizabeth 1 and ends with hovercraft.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pavane-S-F-MASTERWORKS-Keith-Roberts/dp/1857989376

 

Stu

[Ozexpatriate]

1 minute ago, Ray Von said:

Maybe I'll give the novella a go instead

Ground-breaking in its day. I don't know how it stands up to later works like "Fatherland" which I haven't read. There were some great touches in it - like intercontinental passenger rockets.

 

Philip K. Dick also wrote "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", which is the basis for "Blade Runner". I found that very grim.

[coastalview]

1 minute ago, lapford34102 said:

Pavane by Keith Roberts.  Quite an old book now but it starts with the assassination of Elizabeth 1 and ends with hovercraft.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pavane-S-F-MASTERWORKS-Keith-Roberts/dp/1857989376

 

Stu

This has reminded me to dig out my old copy of this and have a read again.

 

Thanks for the memory jog

 

Chris

[J. S. Bach]

2 hours ago, 62613 said:

Without trying hard, SS - GB by Len Deighton. The jumping - off point is of course that the Germans staged a successful invasion of Britain.

I have read that, it was a decent read.

[J. S. Bach]

5 hours ago, 60021 Pen-y-Ghent said:

Harry Turtledove wrote a whole set of books based on the premise that the American civil war ended in 1863 (I think) with vistory for the CSA. The first book is "How few remain" and it is followed by the trilogies "The Great War", "American Empire" and "Settling Accounts".  (See https://www.fantasticfiction.com/t/harry-turtledove/) They became a bit predictable in the end but I quite enjoyed them none-the-less. Be careful which set of his novels you pick though if you don't like alien invasions!

He also Taylor Anderson* wrote a series called "The Destroyermen"; it too, dissolves into stupidity around the third or fourth volume.

 

* Corrected thanks to Peach James.

Edited March 13, 2021 by J. S. Bach
To correct the author's name.

[lapford34102]

11 minutes ago, coastalview said:

This has reminded me to dig out my old copy of this and have a read again.

 

Thanks for the memory jog

 

Chris

Brilliant, good to know someone else found this book :-)  See though it's now in the  S.F. Masterworks where it belongs IMHO

Stu

[simontaylor484]

SSGB was a brilliant book shame about the TV series 

[coastalview]

51 minutes ago, lapford34102 said:

Brilliant, good to know someone else found this book :-)  See though it's now in the  S.F. Masterworks where it belongs IMHO

Stu

I think my copy is at least 50 years old and I've read it countless times as it's had one careful owner from new 

 

Chris

[John M Upton]

1 hour ago, simontaylor484 said:

SSGB was a brilliant book shame about the TV series 

 

I enjoyed the TV series although it did seem to dribble away towards the end which makes me suspect the book is actually far superior.  I did wonder if there would ever be a second series but apparently not, I read that many of the audience didn't really 'get it' with people complaining on social media about historical inaccuracies like the Germans winning the Battle of Britain which of course was the point of the story!!!!

[lapford34102]

10 minutes ago, coastalview said:

I think my copy is at least 50 years old and I've read it countless times as it's had one careful owner from new 

I wish I still had my original  60's copy, loaned it to someone and never got it back so it's the 2003 one.

 

Back on topic somewhat, not quite what-iffery inthe usual sense though it is based in an independent Scotland  Charles Stross's  Halting State.

 

Stu

[peach james]

2 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

He also wrote a series called "The Destroyermen"; it too, dissolves into stupidity around the third or fourth volume.

Nope.  Not Turtledove's books   They are by Taylor Anderson, not Turtledove.  Turtledove started with a book called "The Guns of the South".

You can add SM Stirling to the list- I'd go with Draka first, but it gets rather dark in places.

 

[J. S. Bach]

1 hour ago, peach james said:

Nope.  Not Turtledove's books   They are by Taylor Anderson, not Turtledove. ...snip...

Correction duly made, thank you. I had gotten a few "The Destroyermen" volumes in a large box of Turtledove books and did not think that much about the authors. Their books are so similar anyway.

One thing that I have noticed is that after an author that has a great first novel; the sequels get gradually worse. One exception is Jean Auel with her "Earth's Children" series starting with "Clan of the Cave Bear". When I first read "Clan" while lying on the sofa one night with only a small light shining over my shoulder that I got so involved it felt that I was sitting around the fire with Aila, Creb, the Mog Ur, and some others. Then the phone rang and really scared me, made me jump up; the sound was so "foreign" to my perceived situation 25,000 years ago. 

[TheQ]

In our hobby I seriously considered a layout based on Brunel winning the gauge wars. So track would have been 7ft but the loading gauges would have been Stephenson for those lines already built.. The rest of history would have been the same.. So I was thinking of for instance a 7ft gauge Mallard.. it would have required inside cylinders which would have made modelling easier...

 

The classic "what if" of course is Dr Who..

[62613]

11 hours ago, John M Upton said:

 

I enjoyed the TV series although it did seem to dribble away towards the end which makes me suspect the book is actually far superior.  I did wonder if there would ever be a second series but apparently not, I read that many of the audience didn't really 'get it' with people complaining on social media about historical inaccuracies like the Germans winning the Battle of Britain which of course was the point of the story!!!!

Not so much The Battle of Britain, but the completely off the wall assumption that a German invasion was successful. The book is indeed far, far superior, much of that because of the meticulous research Deighton has done into that period. On that, if you can find a copy, read Sealion,by Richard Cox, which is basically a book describing the outcome when the Operation was wargamed at Sandhurst.

 

Edited March 13, 2021 by 62613

[caradoc]

Alternate reality with the Nazis triumphant is certainly a popular theme for fiction ! Another in the genre is Dominion, by CJ Sansom, which I recently enjoyed re-reading; Set in the 1950s with the UK a satellite state of Greater Germany. 

 

[Bill Radford]

Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair - set in 1985 with the Crimean War still going on...

 

More science fantasy than what if. Similar in genre to Robert Rankin's Brentford books but set in Reading.

Edited March 13, 2021 by Bill Radford
Typo!

[62613]

O.K., another one; The Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock, in which the protagonist is transported into an alternative world after being shot down; in that world, there are no heavier-than-air flying machines, and empires are controlled using airships; it's set in South-Central Asia, and there's a renegade anti-imperialist - type character.

One of the British officers was Lieutenant Michael Jagger. Why not, in a book which would be around 50 years old, now.

[laurenceb]

The Alteration, Kingsley Aimis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alteration