Number 69 - February/March 2012
For Point of Divergence #69
For some reason I found it disconcerting this December to see people driving down the street with a Christmas trees strapped to the top of their cars...as they went by hundred-foot pines lying on their sides.
For most of January my hours – along with everyone else at work who works evenings – were shifted from their regular 11-9:30 to a painfully early 6:30-5. The theory is that if we close everything on campus at 5pm, we'll save money (somehow) during this month of being between semesters. Myself, I'm not sure it will work and I am sure it isn't worth it. I've spent, well, my entire working life (starting with Carls Jr in the 70s) in the afternoon/evening time slots. Heck, even arriving at work before noon is a relatively new thing for me. So trying to shift thirty-plus years of habit to a new morning schedule for a month isn't working too well and I basically spend the first half of each day at work desperately trying not to fall asleep, face-first into my keyboard. This can not be a good use of my time! Fortunately, with the end of January I'm back on my real schedule...and maybe then I can get some more work done...
Over the Christmas break, I ready the very interesting The First Fossil Hunters : Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman times by Adrienne Mayor. Basically, she points out that fossils of extinct animals weren't just something that were discovered in the 18th Century, but were known, commented on, and wondered about far, far back1 in man's history.
First she brings out the example of the griffin. Here's a creature that's described as a lion-sized quadrupeds with large claws and a raptor-bird-like beak that laid their eggs in nests on the ground. More, they were described as living in the Scythian lands of Central Asia in areas rich with gold.
And if you head out today to that part of the planet, one of the things you'll find near those gold-bearing strata are lots of really good fossils of protoceratops – a large quadruped with claws and a bird-like beak – and their equally fossilized nests of eggs...
Fossils often got used as “hero's bones” in Classical times, as there was a belief that people (and animals) were much bigger back in the Good Old Days (though one has to wonder what came first, the belief or the bones...). A wooly rhino bone made for a nice arm from some Golden Age hero – look how thick and strong it was! Elephant and mammoth skulls made very good cyclops skulls – at least, until the Greeks met real elephants. Remains of aurochs and other ice-age hoofed giants fit well as the bones for Geryon's herd of giant cattle.
Etc.
Other philosophers, however, did make the connection that these bones – heroic or not – showed that animals that no longer lived in the area – or at all – had once walked the land. That these were the remains of something that had gone extinct. That many of these animals showed up on several islands showed that the land between them must once have been above water and have sunken since. Then, their finding the fossils of sea creatures, large and small, on the tops of mountains allowed them to deduce that these mountains must once have been under the sea and have risen to these heights.2
All in all, it showed that their world – and the life in that world – changed through time.
In the end, it's almost a pre-adaption for developing a theory of evolution (and some decent geology) back in Greek or Roman times and maybe – say, in a timeline without an Aristotle – perhaps a full-fledged theory could have been developed even before Caesar took that little trip of his to Gaul. Your guess is as good as mine as to how much that would effect the next thousand years of medical and biological thought.
Anywho, good book. Originally put out in 2000, it's been reissued with some updated notes and a new introduction. Well worth the read.
I keep an eye on the Paleofuture blog and recently they had an article on the first “wireless” portable carphone...from 1920. It was in Hugo Gernsback's (yes, that Hugo Gernsback) magazine The Electrical Experimenter.
Okay, maybe it's “portable” only in the military sense ( “if it has a handle, it's portable” ), but radios, cars, heck even phones are only a few decades old here and already someone's decided that not only should they be able to make phone calls from their car, but with a portable device that you can carry around to make calls anywhere else you like, and not just in the car!
And he's solved the “distracted driving” problem by having his chauffeur do the driving while he makes his calls. Perhaps not the most universally applicable solution, but...
Most interesting is that, when asked about a possible future for his invention, he instead responded with a historical what-if:
“If this could have been ready for us in the war, think of the value it would have had. A whole regiment equipped with the telephone receivers, with only their rifles as aerials, could advance a mile and each would be instantly in touch with the commanding officer. No runners would be needed. There could be no such thing as a ‘lost battalion.’”
I wonder if anyone has done a story with this as their POD?
On with the show!
For most of January my hours – along with everyone else at work who works evenings – were shifted from their regular 11-9:30 to a painfully early 6:30-5. The theory is that if we close everything on campus at 5pm, we'll save money (somehow) during this month of being between semesters. Myself, I'm not sure it will work and I am sure it isn't worth it. I've spent, well, my entire working life (starting with Carls Jr in the 70s) in the afternoon/evening time slots. Heck, even arriving at work before noon is a relatively new thing for me. So trying to shift thirty-plus years of habit to a new morning schedule for a month isn't working too well and I basically spend the first half of each day at work desperately trying not to fall asleep, face-first into my keyboard. This can not be a good use of my time! Fortunately, with the end of January I'm back on my real schedule...and maybe then I can get some more work done...
Over the Christmas break, I ready the very interesting The First Fossil Hunters : Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman times by Adrienne Mayor. Basically, she points out that fossils of extinct animals weren't just something that were discovered in the 18th Century, but were known, commented on, and wondered about far, far back1 in man's history.
And if you head out today to that part of the planet, one of the things you'll find near those gold-bearing strata are lots of really good fossils of protoceratops – a large quadruped with claws and a bird-like beak – and their equally fossilized nests of eggs...
Fossils often got used as “hero's bones” in Classical times, as there was a belief that people (and animals) were much bigger back in the Good Old Days (though one has to wonder what came first, the belief or the bones...). A wooly rhino bone made for a nice arm from some Golden Age hero – look how thick and strong it was! Elephant and mammoth skulls made very good cyclops skulls – at least, until the Greeks met real elephants. Remains of aurochs and other ice-age hoofed giants fit well as the bones for Geryon's herd of giant cattle.
Etc.
Other philosophers, however, did make the connection that these bones – heroic or not – showed that animals that no longer lived in the area – or at all – had once walked the land. That these were the remains of something that had gone extinct. That many of these animals showed up on several islands showed that the land between them must once have been above water and have sunken since. Then, their finding the fossils of sea creatures, large and small, on the tops of mountains allowed them to deduce that these mountains must once have been under the sea and have risen to these heights.2
All in all, it showed that their world – and the life in that world – changed through time.
In the end, it's almost a pre-adaption for developing a theory of evolution (and some decent geology) back in Greek or Roman times and maybe – say, in a timeline without an Aristotle – perhaps a full-fledged theory could have been developed even before Caesar took that little trip of his to Gaul. Your guess is as good as mine as to how much that would effect the next thousand years of medical and biological thought.
Anywho, good book. Originally put out in 2000, it's been reissued with some updated notes and a new introduction. Well worth the read.
Okay, maybe it's “portable” only in the military sense ( “if it has a handle, it's portable” ), but radios, cars, heck even phones are only a few decades old here and already someone's decided that not only should they be able to make phone calls from their car, but with a portable device that you can carry around to make calls anywhere else you like, and not just in the car!
And he's solved the “distracted driving” problem by having his chauffeur do the driving while he makes his calls. Perhaps not the most universally applicable solution, but...
Most interesting is that, when asked about a possible future for his invention, he instead responded with a historical what-if:
“If this could have been ready for us in the war, think of the value it would have had. A whole regiment equipped with the telephone receivers, with only their rifles as aerials, could advance a mile and each would be instantly in touch with the commanding officer. No runners would be needed. There could be no such thing as a ‘lost battalion.’”
I wonder if anyone has done a story with this as their POD?
On with the show!
Divergent Opinions - Comments on P.O.D. 68
Cover
Okay, I give. I can find pictures of a M29 tank, but I can't find any information (not helped by the fact that “M29” in Google mostly brings back results about the M29 Weasel...which is definitely not a tank).
Me
ct: Robert Gill:
“More and more, Fringe's AH looks to be a collection of 'hey, that sounds cools' than anything coherently plotted out.” Mind you, the same thing could be said for Fringe's “science” as well...
ct: Tom Cron: re: Beatles at Woodstock: Notice I didn't even try to figure out what the effects having the Beatles there would be. Woodstock an even bigger happening, possibly leading it to being “Peace, Love, And a little Rioting” as the crowds get too ridiculously huge? The Beatles breaking up (early) as a result of it? Who knows?
re: Winds: Our power finally came back on seven days after it went off. There's still a lot being cleaned up/repaired/replaced, even now two months later, but at least all the streets are cleared (I think) and most of the downed trees are mulch. Our street sign still tilts, though...
ct: Tom Cron: re: Beatles at Woodstock: Notice I didn't even try to figure out what the effects having the Beatles there would be. Woodstock an even bigger happening, possibly leading it to being “Peace, Love, And a little Rioting” as the crowds get too ridiculously huge? The Beatles breaking up (early) as a result of it? Who knows?
re: Winds: Our power finally came back on seven days after it went off. There's still a lot being cleaned up/repaired/replaced, even now two months later, but at least all the streets are cleared (I think) and most of the downed trees are mulch. Our street sign still tilts, though...
Robert Gill
re: American Nations:
The only problem with using that map as a basis for AH divisions of a balkanized North America is that – as you said – it's a map that's primarily a product of settlement. And if you break up the U.S. (and Canada and Mexico) long enough ago to be reasonable, you've probably changed the pattern of settlement...and thus this map...at least for the western half of the continent.
re: J. Edgar: I'm not sure a lack of/more successful Palmer bombing would have much effect on anti-immigration legislation. This was a trend in the U.S. that had been building since at least the 1880s and probably relates more to the economy than anything else.
ct: Me: Heart of Iron sounds interesting.
I can't see and earlier discovery of Spindletop as “fueling CSA's industry” – if only because it seems unlikely that finding it in 1830s Texas would lead “to massive industrialization, expanded rail systems, and the rise of Texas as a center of innovation and technology.”
Heck, it seems unlikely anyone in 1830s Texas would be drilling for anything to depths greater than a thousand feet in the first place...but that's what you need to get below the salt dome.
Worse, as Priest describes it, this leads to Texas remaining independent and only “allied” with the CSA – but with all these changes, would you even get a Civil War? And with the CSA a state down right from the start, shouldn't the war go even faster for the North, rather than stalemating for a quarter-century?
Honestly, her AH just makes less and less sense. It's almost Fringe-like with its inclusion of things “because they sound cool...”
A more realistic3 set of events had such an early discovery happened is that a modest, if slowly growing, industry develops in supplying the oil as a replacement for whale oil. When the 1850s come along, a railroad is built from the area twenty miles south to the docks at Port Arthur to speed shipment, replacing the ox-drawn kerosene wagons.4
Honestly, the South at that time was a place that sold raw materials, not one that made the raw materials into something else and sold that. The only reason they'd be likely to bother to convert the oil to kerosene is that it would make shipping easier. So don't think “developing industrial heartland” think “Nigeria...”
Come the Civil War, and shipments are stopped by the blockade, which has a side-effect in the North of pushing more investment into the Pennsylvania oil fields. Affect on the Civil War – effectively none.
ct: Docimo: Would airbags in the 60s be, well, reliable enough to “catch on”? Heck, the sensor that triggers one wasn't even developed until 1967 and some airbag test runs in the early 70s were suspected of having caused a fatality. Their delayed use until the late 70s/early 80s may have been as much a technology issue as one of public/political will.
re: J. Edgar: I'm not sure a lack of/more successful Palmer bombing would have much effect on anti-immigration legislation. This was a trend in the U.S. that had been building since at least the 1880s and probably relates more to the economy than anything else.
ct: Me: Heart of Iron sounds interesting.
I can't see and earlier discovery of Spindletop as “fueling CSA's industry” – if only because it seems unlikely that finding it in 1830s Texas would lead “to massive industrialization, expanded rail systems, and the rise of Texas as a center of innovation and technology.”
Heck, it seems unlikely anyone in 1830s Texas would be drilling for anything to depths greater than a thousand feet in the first place...but that's what you need to get below the salt dome.
Worse, as Priest describes it, this leads to Texas remaining independent and only “allied” with the CSA – but with all these changes, would you even get a Civil War? And with the CSA a state down right from the start, shouldn't the war go even faster for the North, rather than stalemating for a quarter-century?
Honestly, her AH just makes less and less sense. It's almost Fringe-like with its inclusion of things “because they sound cool...”
A more realistic3 set of events had such an early discovery happened is that a modest, if slowly growing, industry develops in supplying the oil as a replacement for whale oil. When the 1850s come along, a railroad is built from the area twenty miles south to the docks at Port Arthur to speed shipment, replacing the ox-drawn kerosene wagons.4
Honestly, the South at that time was a place that sold raw materials, not one that made the raw materials into something else and sold that. The only reason they'd be likely to bother to convert the oil to kerosene is that it would make shipping easier. So don't think “developing industrial heartland” think “Nigeria...”
Come the Civil War, and shipments are stopped by the blockade, which has a side-effect in the North of pushing more investment into the Pennsylvania oil fields. Affect on the Civil War – effectively none.
ct: Docimo: Would airbags in the 60s be, well, reliable enough to “catch on”? Heck, the sensor that triggers one wasn't even developed until 1967 and some airbag test runs in the early 70s were suspected of having caused a fatality. Their delayed use until the late 70s/early 80s may have been as much a technology issue as one of public/political will.
Dale Cozort
I'm not scheduled to do any cons soon, but if you email me the digital version of our brochure I'll see where I can pass it out (maybe I'll get to LASFS's new building soon).
re: Snippets: I'm puzzled about some of the details of the “Norden” here. It “folds” space so your trip is shorter, got that. But you should still need enough fuel to do the route the “long” way because otherwise how would you match orbits at the end of your trip? Or am I not seeing this properly (I suspect the math covering an orbital change via a space fold would be...dense)?
How much does Jim not care about European politics? Apparently a whole heck of a lot, because the narrator narrating this uses up about a third of the first twelve paragraphs telling us this. You might be able to prune that a bit...
He'd probably refer to her pen as a “biro” or “birome” rather than “ballpoint” – at least, in 1942.
She seems a bit well off to be using nylons in 1942 – I'd expect silk (even if it is in short supply due to whatever ventures the Japanese are up to in this timeline – though obviously one of them isn't bombing Pearl).
Something's bumped up technological advancement quite a bit on this TL (a 70 mph Battleship!) and I'd like to know what it was. Therefore, since snippet two is most likely to provide at least some of that info, go for it.
re: “A Dad should have nightmares,” pt2: Any reason why the title is “should have” and Ray says “ought to have” at the end?
Ah! So the secret of the high-speed battleship is the “Norden” (okay, how does that space folding thing work on the surface of water?) – that's one mystery solved (and answers my question from last zine “Not sure how Germany would lock up the shipbuilding market” ), though the rest of tech seems somewhat advanced as well.
This is an interesting timeline you've got here and I'd like to see more of it. I also really, really want to know what the POD for it is.
re: There Will Always Be an England,” pt6: This is getting seriously cool.
Gilbert's a few bricks shy of a wall – and more keep tumbling off. I find that – in this situation – realistic. However, it seems to either be happening awfully fast, or we're not getting enough sense of time passing here. I'm seeing it as being at least a couple, three weeks since the transition for them going by everything that's happened – possibly up to or more than twice that long, depending on how much we're not seeing/ skipping over. But it just doesn't feel like that when you're reading it. It's more like it's been just a couple, three days.
Part of that may be the shifting back and forth to the “current” day events, where to Lloyd & Co, it has only been a couple, three days, tops. Then the events over in Normandy are a whole third length of time. I'm not sure cutting back and forth between the three as often as you have been doing works as well as it should – it's giving false equivalencies of times and occasionally makes it difficult to tell just where/when you're writing about.
Still, can't wait for more!
re: “Snapshot,” pt 10 (or 11): Ah ha! Now we may be getting to the heart of the “why are all these people doing all this” mystery. A nice smooth read, I only have a few nits:
"I'm going to let you prowl around a place where some of those kids live and see if you find my stuff. I'll go along to make sure it really is my stuff.”
I'd say something more like “We're going to prowl around a place where some of those kids live. You see if you can find my stuff, I make sure it really is my stuff.”
But then just a few paragraphs later, it ends up being Lyle who does the “prowl around” and finding his stuff, so you have to wonder why he said Greg was going to be doing it in the first place, no matter how it was said.
I can't remember now (a side-effect of reading this stretched out over two-years), has Greg heard the “Wind Lady” before? If not, how does he know that's what he's hearing now?
I think you need some more description of the statue. I mean, this is a game-changer in the story and all we get is “tall and vaguely humanoid.”
And what is missing from Lyle's backpack? Next time, I guess.
re: “The BEMs Really Are Alien,” pt3: Okay, I may not know where you're going with this any more than you, but it reads good and has my interest, so...
The bit about being “too short to be the star” just seems to come out of nowhere in the middle of that speech about keys. Either there has to be some more lead into that, or he has to notice that it is coming out of nowhere.
*Sigh* another story to wait two months for the next bit on...
re: Washington Naval Treaty Discourages Carriers: From a Japanese standpoint, I'm at a loss to see what kind of start to a war with the U.S. they could put together sans a carrier attack on Pearl. They wanted a big, knock-out punch on U.S. naval power in the Pacific with a minimal loss on their side – which in their eyes, sinking the fleet at Pearl would give them. But how do you do the equivalent with battleships?
I can see the attack on the Philippines modded both to take away that big fortress right across their sea routes, and to lure the U.S. fleet into a battle there as a way to get their Pearl Harbor equivalent, but I can't see even the Japanese thinking that this could be done with an acceptable level of naval losses on their side.
This kinda leaves the Japanese (assuming they go with their southern strategy in the first place) in a position where their only option is hoping the U.S. remains neutral – which honestly, it well might for quite a while if the Japanese are careful just who and when they attack. But neither side is going to think this is a stable situation and it's going to be...interesting when it finally falls apart.
re: Getting To A Stalemate on the Eastern Front: Honestly, I think the only way you can pull this off is for the Germans to not get dragged into Stalingrad. Then, of course, it'll be tricky to get them stalemated because they'll still have a lot to play with compared to the Russians, but once you do, both sides will be more equal, with basically the only question being who runs out of men first (or when does Germany get nuked, actually).
Maybe something that does some of the damage/putting on the breaks of a Stalingrad, but not all of it.
re: Could Farming Have Come Early?: It occurs to me that if you want earlier farming, you have to move it's origin farther away from the temperate zones to places where, yeah, the climate still shifted a lot...but not “warm one millennium, glacial the next” a lot.
Farming started in New Guinea anywhere up to 10k years ago, which even on OTL might be just before it started in Eurasia and Africa. I'll be the last person to say I know what climate swings were like in just-after-pleistocene New Guinea, but it shouldn't be too different at 12k, 15k, maybe even 20k years bp than at 10.
This maybe give New Guinean agriculture a chance to spread out of the mountains and onto the vast lowlands around the island that are now under water. And from there, who knows?
“That raises a question: Were there similar earlier cultures [non-agricultural complex cultures fueled by fishing] during the ices ages in areas now covered by the oceans?”
Well, Stephen Baxter's book Stone Spring is set in just such a culture on the now submerged Doggerland in about 8,000 BCE – with hints that they might have had a higher culture, since lost, before that time (the characters find a sunken “city” off their coast). Acto him (with the caveat that this is fiction), the area would have been one of the richest and most densely populated in stone-age Europe.
It's the first book in an AH trilogy – “Northland” – and is supposed to stretch from the first book's 8,000 BCE up to 1500 CE by the third. Not a bad book, really, though from a practical standpoint the first book could just as easily be “secret history” as AH.
re: Could the Germans Invade Britain: Honestly, I look at that list of all the things Germany needs to tic off in order to get an invasion...and “thousand to one shot” still seems like it's a long, long way from coming into being.
Worse, as your scenario here goes, you've got the Germans “with an extra month before autumn storms make an invasion impossible.” So given there has to be some planning time and some gathering of forces time before an invasion, by the time German boots hit the ground in England, they just might only have that month before the storms left. Which means they'd have only a month to turn a “foothold” into something strong enough to hang on through the stormy season, because resupply is going to get very, very dicey here.
Of course, you did just say “making an invasion of Britain work” not “making a successful invasion of Britain work...”
ct: Me: “At least it isn't humid out there.” It is rare that it is both hot and humid – at least, “humid” as people on your side of the continent would call it (to say nothing of in the South), but it does happen on occasion during the summer. Usually only for a few days, though.
Our cat's reaction to other cats – not feral, but still – varies. From what I can tell, the two boys don't care if the neighbor's cats come by. Syn doesn't seem to mind that they're out and about, but will keep distance between her and them. And Kiko absolutely does not like them visibly near her yard. I suppose that's because she's more or less taken the position of alpha female (much to Syn's annoyance) in her year+ with us.
I'm not sure the Kzin's “scream and leap” necessarily carried over into actual hunting. I always assumed it was reserved for “interpersonal relationships” between the Kzin themselves – which maps well onto our cats, where the two girls can be studiously ignoring one another then, suddenly, one turns and bats the other (and then the hissing and raised up fur begins).
OTOH, I had troubles with them managing to “breed” their females subsentient without affecting male intelligence. How the heck would you make something like that “Y” linked (or however Kzin genetics confer sexes) is beyond me when your sole source of modification is to pick docile, subservient females to breed with.
Okay, your explanation of Neanderthal abilities in England makes sense. These days, though, research seems to suggest they mostly just got subsumed into the rest of humanity rather than dying out.
“To be honest, I suspect that the attraction on both sides would diminish quickly if the people involved actually saw the other Snapshot in much depth.” Yes and no. People are amazingly capable of ignoring stuff right before their eyes if it suits them – look at the people who toured the 1930s Soviet Union and came back praising it as a worker's paradise. That delusion wasn't all because their tour guides were ordered to hide the ugly bits – a lot was self inflicted.
And while it won't be as Potemkin-village-like rigid when they visit, people from US53 are probably not going to see the bad parts of Detroit, and those from US2011 aren't going to be visiting the “wrong” side of the tracks in Georgia. At least, the boosters won't (of course, the nay-sayers, OTOH, might actively hunt out places like that while missing as much good as they can. Propaganda is a many-laned highway).5
And of course, given the realities of Snapshot travel (or travel in general, especially from/to a US2011 that's currently got to be in just this much shy of a massive depression, thanks to all the disruption of the snapshoting), the vast majority of “boosters” will never see the other side, in depth or otherwise.
Shouldn't it be possible to sail all the way around the snapshoted US53 (and 2011 too, for that matter)? If so, while all the sea trade might now be coastal, it might also actually increase a great deal over the years – because boats are still the cheapest bulk transport around (especially initially, with all those trans-ocean cargo vessels now just sitting with nothing to do). Between sailing completely around the continent, deep within it thanks to the Great Lakes (however they exist there), and up the Mississippi/Missouri complex, quite frankly 90% of the US's population is within a couple of hundred miles of a dock – and at least half of them more like within fifty.
That may not affect their “inward looking” mindset, but I doubt that coastal areas are going to become all that much less important.
ct: Kurt Sidaway: Not only would Nazi scientists “freak” at some of the concepts tossed out on The Big Bang Theory, but they've actually got a scientist making sure what's on all those whiteboards shown on the show not only matches what the characters are “working” on, but is accurate as well (see thebigblogtheory.wordpress.com). Talk about a give-away (I mean, until the batteries die).
re: Snippets: I'm puzzled about some of the details of the “Norden” here. It “folds” space so your trip is shorter, got that. But you should still need enough fuel to do the route the “long” way because otherwise how would you match orbits at the end of your trip? Or am I not seeing this properly (I suspect the math covering an orbital change via a space fold would be...dense)?
How much does Jim not care about European politics? Apparently a whole heck of a lot, because the narrator narrating this uses up about a third of the first twelve paragraphs telling us this. You might be able to prune that a bit...
He'd probably refer to her pen as a “biro” or “birome” rather than “ballpoint” – at least, in 1942.
She seems a bit well off to be using nylons in 1942 – I'd expect silk (even if it is in short supply due to whatever ventures the Japanese are up to in this timeline – though obviously one of them isn't bombing Pearl).
Something's bumped up technological advancement quite a bit on this TL (a 70 mph Battleship!) and I'd like to know what it was. Therefore, since snippet two is most likely to provide at least some of that info, go for it.
re: “A Dad should have nightmares,” pt2: Any reason why the title is “should have” and Ray says “ought to have” at the end?
Ah! So the secret of the high-speed battleship is the “Norden” (okay, how does that space folding thing work on the surface of water?) – that's one mystery solved (and answers my question from last zine “Not sure how Germany would lock up the shipbuilding market” ), though the rest of tech seems somewhat advanced as well.
This is an interesting timeline you've got here and I'd like to see more of it. I also really, really want to know what the POD for it is.
re: There Will Always Be an England,” pt6: This is getting seriously cool.
Gilbert's a few bricks shy of a wall – and more keep tumbling off. I find that – in this situation – realistic. However, it seems to either be happening awfully fast, or we're not getting enough sense of time passing here. I'm seeing it as being at least a couple, three weeks since the transition for them going by everything that's happened – possibly up to or more than twice that long, depending on how much we're not seeing/ skipping over. But it just doesn't feel like that when you're reading it. It's more like it's been just a couple, three days.
Part of that may be the shifting back and forth to the “current” day events, where to Lloyd & Co, it has only been a couple, three days, tops. Then the events over in Normandy are a whole third length of time. I'm not sure cutting back and forth between the three as often as you have been doing works as well as it should – it's giving false equivalencies of times and occasionally makes it difficult to tell just where/when you're writing about.
Still, can't wait for more!
re: “Snapshot,” pt 10 (or 11): Ah ha! Now we may be getting to the heart of the “why are all these people doing all this” mystery. A nice smooth read, I only have a few nits:
"I'm going to let you prowl around a place where some of those kids live and see if you find my stuff. I'll go along to make sure it really is my stuff.”
I'd say something more like “We're going to prowl around a place where some of those kids live. You see if you can find my stuff, I make sure it really is my stuff.”
But then just a few paragraphs later, it ends up being Lyle who does the “prowl around” and finding his stuff, so you have to wonder why he said Greg was going to be doing it in the first place, no matter how it was said.
I can't remember now (a side-effect of reading this stretched out over two-years), has Greg heard the “Wind Lady” before? If not, how does he know that's what he's hearing now?
I think you need some more description of the statue. I mean, this is a game-changer in the story and all we get is “tall and vaguely humanoid.”
And what is missing from Lyle's backpack? Next time, I guess.
re: “The BEMs Really Are Alien,” pt3: Okay, I may not know where you're going with this any more than you, but it reads good and has my interest, so...
The bit about being “too short to be the star” just seems to come out of nowhere in the middle of that speech about keys. Either there has to be some more lead into that, or he has to notice that it is coming out of nowhere.
*Sigh* another story to wait two months for the next bit on...
re: Washington Naval Treaty Discourages Carriers: From a Japanese standpoint, I'm at a loss to see what kind of start to a war with the U.S. they could put together sans a carrier attack on Pearl. They wanted a big, knock-out punch on U.S. naval power in the Pacific with a minimal loss on their side – which in their eyes, sinking the fleet at Pearl would give them. But how do you do the equivalent with battleships?
I can see the attack on the Philippines modded both to take away that big fortress right across their sea routes, and to lure the U.S. fleet into a battle there as a way to get their Pearl Harbor equivalent, but I can't see even the Japanese thinking that this could be done with an acceptable level of naval losses on their side.
This kinda leaves the Japanese (assuming they go with their southern strategy in the first place) in a position where their only option is hoping the U.S. remains neutral – which honestly, it well might for quite a while if the Japanese are careful just who and when they attack. But neither side is going to think this is a stable situation and it's going to be...interesting when it finally falls apart.
re: Getting To A Stalemate on the Eastern Front: Honestly, I think the only way you can pull this off is for the Germans to not get dragged into Stalingrad. Then, of course, it'll be tricky to get them stalemated because they'll still have a lot to play with compared to the Russians, but once you do, both sides will be more equal, with basically the only question being who runs out of men first (or when does Germany get nuked, actually).
Maybe something that does some of the damage/putting on the breaks of a Stalingrad, but not all of it.
re: Could Farming Have Come Early?: It occurs to me that if you want earlier farming, you have to move it's origin farther away from the temperate zones to places where, yeah, the climate still shifted a lot...but not “warm one millennium, glacial the next” a lot.
Farming started in New Guinea anywhere up to 10k years ago, which even on OTL might be just before it started in Eurasia and Africa. I'll be the last person to say I know what climate swings were like in just-after-pleistocene New Guinea, but it shouldn't be too different at 12k, 15k, maybe even 20k years bp than at 10.
This maybe give New Guinean agriculture a chance to spread out of the mountains and onto the vast lowlands around the island that are now under water. And from there, who knows?
“That raises a question: Were there similar earlier cultures [non-agricultural complex cultures fueled by fishing] during the ices ages in areas now covered by the oceans?”
Well, Stephen Baxter's book Stone Spring is set in just such a culture on the now submerged Doggerland in about 8,000 BCE – with hints that they might have had a higher culture, since lost, before that time (the characters find a sunken “city” off their coast). Acto him (with the caveat that this is fiction), the area would have been one of the richest and most densely populated in stone-age Europe.
It's the first book in an AH trilogy – “Northland” – and is supposed to stretch from the first book's 8,000 BCE up to 1500 CE by the third. Not a bad book, really, though from a practical standpoint the first book could just as easily be “secret history” as AH.
re: Could the Germans Invade Britain: Honestly, I look at that list of all the things Germany needs to tic off in order to get an invasion...and “thousand to one shot” still seems like it's a long, long way from coming into being.
Worse, as your scenario here goes, you've got the Germans “with an extra month before autumn storms make an invasion impossible.” So given there has to be some planning time and some gathering of forces time before an invasion, by the time German boots hit the ground in England, they just might only have that month before the storms left. Which means they'd have only a month to turn a “foothold” into something strong enough to hang on through the stormy season, because resupply is going to get very, very dicey here.
Of course, you did just say “making an invasion of Britain work” not “making a successful invasion of Britain work...”
ct: Me: “At least it isn't humid out there.” It is rare that it is both hot and humid – at least, “humid” as people on your side of the continent would call it (to say nothing of in the South), but it does happen on occasion during the summer. Usually only for a few days, though.
Our cat's reaction to other cats – not feral, but still – varies. From what I can tell, the two boys don't care if the neighbor's cats come by. Syn doesn't seem to mind that they're out and about, but will keep distance between her and them. And Kiko absolutely does not like them visibly near her yard. I suppose that's because she's more or less taken the position of alpha female (much to Syn's annoyance) in her year+ with us.
I'm not sure the Kzin's “scream and leap” necessarily carried over into actual hunting. I always assumed it was reserved for “interpersonal relationships” between the Kzin themselves – which maps well onto our cats, where the two girls can be studiously ignoring one another then, suddenly, one turns and bats the other (and then the hissing and raised up fur begins).
OTOH, I had troubles with them managing to “breed” their females subsentient without affecting male intelligence. How the heck would you make something like that “Y” linked (or however Kzin genetics confer sexes) is beyond me when your sole source of modification is to pick docile, subservient females to breed with.
Okay, your explanation of Neanderthal abilities in England makes sense. These days, though, research seems to suggest they mostly just got subsumed into the rest of humanity rather than dying out.
“To be honest, I suspect that the attraction on both sides would diminish quickly if the people involved actually saw the other Snapshot in much depth.” Yes and no. People are amazingly capable of ignoring stuff right before their eyes if it suits them – look at the people who toured the 1930s Soviet Union and came back praising it as a worker's paradise. That delusion wasn't all because their tour guides were ordered to hide the ugly bits – a lot was self inflicted.
And while it won't be as Potemkin-village-like rigid when they visit, people from US53 are probably not going to see the bad parts of Detroit, and those from US2011 aren't going to be visiting the “wrong” side of the tracks in Georgia. At least, the boosters won't (of course, the nay-sayers, OTOH, might actively hunt out places like that while missing as much good as they can. Propaganda is a many-laned highway).5
And of course, given the realities of Snapshot travel (or travel in general, especially from/to a US2011 that's currently got to be in just this much shy of a massive depression, thanks to all the disruption of the snapshoting), the vast majority of “boosters” will never see the other side, in depth or otherwise.
Shouldn't it be possible to sail all the way around the snapshoted US53 (and 2011 too, for that matter)? If so, while all the sea trade might now be coastal, it might also actually increase a great deal over the years – because boats are still the cheapest bulk transport around (especially initially, with all those trans-ocean cargo vessels now just sitting with nothing to do). Between sailing completely around the continent, deep within it thanks to the Great Lakes (however they exist there), and up the Mississippi/Missouri complex, quite frankly 90% of the US's population is within a couple of hundred miles of a dock – and at least half of them more like within fifty.
That may not affect their “inward looking” mindset, but I doubt that coastal areas are going to become all that much less important.
ct: Kurt Sidaway: Not only would Nazi scientists “freak” at some of the concepts tossed out on The Big Bang Theory, but they've actually got a scientist making sure what's on all those whiteboards shown on the show not only matches what the characters are “working” on, but is accurate as well (see thebigblogtheory.wordpress.com). Talk about a give-away (I mean, until the batteries die).
Kurt Sidaway
Oh, “real life.” Pfftt! That old thing...
ct: Me: “I enjoyed Cherie Priest's Dreadnought when I read it...I thought the character of Mercy was well written and found I was caring what happened to her. Unfortunately I did not get the same for 'Dylan' or 'Alek' in Scott Westerfield's books. Whilst a passable read, I kept thinking 'what?' or 'how?' too often to thoroughly enjoy them.”
Oh, I agree Priest is a much better writer than Westerfield – though some of that may simply be because he was tuning his books for a “young adult” audience.
But I just find it easier to accept a 19th century invention of gengineering (as impossible as that is) than physics-violating zombie gases and armored dirigibles.
I think I kept treating Westerfield's storyline as sorta anime-like, probably because of the mecha and the “girl who dresses as a boy to have adventure girls can't have who then falls in love with the boy also on that adventure” story – something which makes up about half the plotlines of all anime (the other half, of course, being made up of “girl in sailor suit who initially beats up boy – probably with a repeating bazooka – but eventually admits she loves him”6). That probably unconsciously lowered my “oh how does that happen?!?” filters.
If Rome Hadn't Fallen. Have to add that to my Amazon wish list.
ct: You: Oooo! I got a coconut!
...now, if I only liked coconut...;)
ct: Robert Gill: Ah yes. Sorgel's massive redesigning of the center of Africa, very cool (if you're not one of the millions displaced, or hundreds of species extincted, anyway).
ct: Me: “I enjoyed Cherie Priest's Dreadnought when I read it...I thought the character of Mercy was well written and found I was caring what happened to her. Unfortunately I did not get the same for 'Dylan' or 'Alek' in Scott Westerfield's books. Whilst a passable read, I kept thinking 'what?' or 'how?' too often to thoroughly enjoy them.”
Oh, I agree Priest is a much better writer than Westerfield – though some of that may simply be because he was tuning his books for a “young adult” audience.
But I just find it easier to accept a 19th century invention of gengineering (as impossible as that is) than physics-violating zombie gases and armored dirigibles.
I think I kept treating Westerfield's storyline as sorta anime-like, probably because of the mecha and the “girl who dresses as a boy to have adventure girls can't have who then falls in love with the boy also on that adventure” story – something which makes up about half the plotlines of all anime (the other half, of course, being made up of “girl in sailor suit who initially beats up boy – probably with a repeating bazooka – but eventually admits she loves him”6). That probably unconsciously lowered my “oh how does that happen?!?” filters.
If Rome Hadn't Fallen. Have to add that to my Amazon wish list.
ct: You: Oooo! I got a coconut!
...now, if I only liked coconut...;)
ct: Robert Gill: Ah yes. Sorgel's massive redesigning of the center of Africa, very cool (if you're not one of the millions displaced, or hundreds of species extincted, anyway).
Anthony Docimo
re: J. Edgar:
“I didn't know Hoover had been responsible for organizing the Library of Congress.” Well, he worked at the Library, but...
J. Edgar Hoover worked at the Library of Congress for a period of five years. He began as a messenger and rose to cataloger and finally, clerk. Biographer Curt Gentry notes that a coworker of Hoover estimated that Hoover was destined to become chief librarian had he stayed there.
...which doesn't sound too “organize-y” to mean. I mean, beyond that normally done by a cataloger/clerk. Mind you, it might make a good what-if, “J. Edgar, Chief Librarian, LoC” – though it's likely the LoC is too small a “pond” to satisfy Hoover's need to be in charge.
re: Welsh as Britain's “Navajo Code Talkers”: There's more likely to be someone in Germany that can translate Welsh than there is someone in Japan that's good with Navajo.7
Still, it's worth remembering that what was used in the Pacific wasn't just straight Navajo (Diné bizaad), but a code made up in Navajo.8 Something similar could, no doubt, have been done with Welsh.
But how good were the Germans at cracking British codes in the first place? Would this actually make a difference, or just be an added layer of gilt on the security already in place?
(does a bit more online research)
Hmmm:
A similar system employing Welsh was used by British forces, but not to any great extent during World War II. Welsh was used more recently in the Balkan peace-keeping efforts for non-vital messages.
Looks like your “what-if” just became a “what-was...”
Oooo! Another interesting bit:
In the closing days of World War I, a group of Choctaws serving in the U.S. Army used their native language as the basis for secret communication among Americans, as Germans could not understand it. They are now called the Choctaw Code Talkers.
re: The British Monarchy dies in WWI: It's difficult to imagine what could kill off so many at the top of the line of succession all at once – especially since many of them aren't even in the same country.
And even then, well, there are several thousand on the complete list of the line of succession (which is never published, BTW). I can't see them all getting killed off!
Mind you, if you could kill enough off to get to this...
...then cool!
There was a book whose title escapes me with this basic plotline (most of the line of succession killed off by a dirigible disaster, a nobody ends up the King) that was the basis for the (bad) movie King Ralph. I just wish I could remember the title now...
ct: Me: No idea if any more of Baldwin's commercials will make it into the story...but do know it will continue to be called Blue Flash...;)
J. Edgar Hoover worked at the Library of Congress for a period of five years. He began as a messenger and rose to cataloger and finally, clerk. Biographer Curt Gentry notes that a coworker of Hoover estimated that Hoover was destined to become chief librarian had he stayed there.
...which doesn't sound too “organize-y” to mean. I mean, beyond that normally done by a cataloger/clerk. Mind you, it might make a good what-if, “J. Edgar, Chief Librarian, LoC” – though it's likely the LoC is too small a “pond” to satisfy Hoover's need to be in charge.
re: Welsh as Britain's “Navajo Code Talkers”: There's more likely to be someone in Germany that can translate Welsh than there is someone in Japan that's good with Navajo.7
Still, it's worth remembering that what was used in the Pacific wasn't just straight Navajo (Diné bizaad), but a code made up in Navajo.8 Something similar could, no doubt, have been done with Welsh.
But how good were the Germans at cracking British codes in the first place? Would this actually make a difference, or just be an added layer of gilt on the security already in place?
(does a bit more online research)
Hmmm:
A similar system employing Welsh was used by British forces, but not to any great extent during World War II. Welsh was used more recently in the Balkan peace-keeping efforts for non-vital messages.
Looks like your “what-if” just became a “what-was...”
Oooo! Another interesting bit:
In the closing days of World War I, a group of Choctaws serving in the U.S. Army used their native language as the basis for secret communication among Americans, as Germans could not understand it. They are now called the Choctaw Code Talkers.
re: The British Monarchy dies in WWI: It's difficult to imagine what could kill off so many at the top of the line of succession all at once – especially since many of them aren't even in the same country.
And even then, well, there are several thousand on the complete list of the line of succession (which is never published, BTW). I can't see them all getting killed off!
Mind you, if you could kill enough off to get to this...
There was a book whose title escapes me with this basic plotline (most of the line of succession killed off by a dirigible disaster, a nobody ends up the King) that was the basis for the (bad) movie King Ralph. I just wish I could remember the title now...
ct: Me: No idea if any more of Baldwin's commercials will make it into the story...but do know it will continue to be called Blue Flash...;)
Wesley Kawato
“March Madness” ...in Britain...weird indeed.
ct: Me:
“I got my information from a book called “Tesla” by Tad Wise.” You do know that's a novel, right?
Waves may get “bigger” (well, the circle they form gets bigger, the waves themselves get lower) as they move away from the splash point – but they also lose energy as they do so. That's why throwing a rock off Santa Monica pier doesn't cause a tsunami in Japan.
A great circle line from New York to where Perry was (and how did Tesla know where Perry was?) does roughly continue on to go through Tunguska, yes. And that's the only thing in the whole “theory” that's actually correct. I'm sorry, everything else is Grade-B 1930s Science Fiction.
ct: Cozort: I don't know how old your computer is, but judging by how you talk about it, you aught to be able to find a replacement that – even if used – is loads better than what you have now (not the least reason being it isn't going to instantly die if you use it too much) for less than a couple of hundred dollars – possibly much less, as a quick look on Amazon shows a P-4, 1 GB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive refurbished machine for a whole $69. You'd have to reuse your monitor & keyboard & mouse, but still...
Heck, check the Pennysaver, or nearby computer repair shops. There's lots of big deals out there and it's not like you can put this off forever.
Waves may get “bigger” (well, the circle they form gets bigger, the waves themselves get lower) as they move away from the splash point – but they also lose energy as they do so. That's why throwing a rock off Santa Monica pier doesn't cause a tsunami in Japan.
A great circle line from New York to where Perry was (and how did Tesla know where Perry was?) does roughly continue on to go through Tunguska, yes. And that's the only thing in the whole “theory” that's actually correct. I'm sorry, everything else is Grade-B 1930s Science Fiction.
ct: Cozort: I don't know how old your computer is, but judging by how you talk about it, you aught to be able to find a replacement that – even if used – is loads better than what you have now (not the least reason being it isn't going to instantly die if you use it too much) for less than a couple of hundred dollars – possibly much less, as a quick look on Amazon shows a P-4, 1 GB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive refurbished machine for a whole $69. You'd have to reuse your monitor & keyboard & mouse, but still...
Heck, check the Pennysaver, or nearby computer repair shops. There's lots of big deals out there and it's not like you can put this off forever.
So I was going to finish up RoC and the Sea this disty...and didn't quite make it.
Part of the problem was the above-mentioned change in hours for the month of January. When most of your day is spent trying to not-sleep, very little actual writing gets done. And what little time I had, I filled up making overly detailed maps of the town of Furusato, on Pasadena-D's Terminal Island.
Which made for a nice cover, but...
Then came February and I could do some more writing on this. Unfortunately, bits of it suggested changes I need to do to early parts. Worse, those changes suggested things I could change in, of all things, Blue Flash, which I also started writing some more on. Which would have been fine, except now I wasn't writing this.
Then I needed to find out what word I used previously as TrolleyWorld's term for “movies” ...which led to reading through some of the old TrolleyWorld stuff (both the story and the notes/reference materials/timelines/etc)...which led to rewriting changing some of that both to fit the new story and simply because, as Dale has discovered, stuff you've written years before often seems...not up to standards any more.