Number 70 - May/June 2012
For Point of Divergence #70
So for Spring Break this year, we headed on up to Santa Barbara for a few days – and not just because I'm using it in my TrolleyWorld story.
Santa Barbara is only about a hundred miles away from us so the drive took just a couple of hours, about a third of it along the coast. The city itself is fairly small – Wikipedia gives it a population of just ninety-thousand or so and slightly less land area than Pasadena – and it is nestled between the ocean on one side and mountains on the other on what (mostly) flat land there is between the two. A handful of smaller towns are along the coast with it, but basically it is cut off from the vast majority of California by the Santa Ynez mountains that surround it.
[If you wanted a pretty good place to survive a S.M. Stirling Dies the Fire or ISOT-style disaster, Santa Barbara would be such a “pretty good place” – its own reservoirs supply water (gravity fed), it has a smallish total population, a surprising amount of farm land near it, plus seafood resources, plus the Channel Islands to expand to/use for food right off the coast with literally ten times the land area you have on the mainland. Plus oil. Added bonus: Close three roads going through two narrow passes and an even narrower strip between the cliffs and the sea and you've completely cut off the area from any invasion of outsiders...well, unless they have boats]
The city itself is almost completely done in Spanish colonial revival style – with a smattering of Victorian, Craftsman, and other style homes. This is mostly due to them putting in some tough building regs following an earthquake in 1925 that destroyed a lot of the city. There are also tough regs against billboards and “obtrusive” signage for businesses. This is both good and bad: Good in that it make for a very pretty town, Bad in that if you don't know where something is – or at least, have a decent GPS system – you might not be able to find it. That tastefully designed small sign saying “Starbucks” on the side of that Spanish colonial building is easy to miss while you're looking at the tastefully designed small sign saying “Chase Bank” on the Spanish colonial across the street, next to the tastefully signed “McDonalds” and just down the way from the tastefully signed “CVS”...
...you get the idea. If you actually live there, it's probably not a problem (after a while). But if you're a tourist (like us and thousands of others – it is a big tourist town) it's easy to get lost (the overly fancy font on the street signs doesn't help). The streets themselves (even the “main drags”) are almost all narrow, two-lane roads and the blocks – at least in the older sections of town – are all almost perfect squares, which just adds to the “one place looks just like another” air.
While in Santa Barbara, we checked out a lot of the town, some places to eat shown on “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives,” the zoo (tiny but nice – it has California Condors in it!), historical buildings (especially the Courthouse – “Most Photographed Building in America” – and, for me, the train station), saw the mission (which looks like they tried to glue neo-classical features onto a classical adobe building – and, yeah, that works about as well as you think it does) walked Sterns Wharf, and generally enjoyed ourselves.
All the while noting that “Psych's” Santa Barbara is even more nothing at all like the real one than we originally thought...
While on Stern's Wharf, we were surprised by a pelican just flying up and plopping down next to people, quite unconcerned. It then started begging bait fish from the guys fishing. And you know, they're a goofy looking bird...right up until you notice that this is a big bird, and its long, floppy-looking bill has a big, sharp, raptor's hook on the end of it, nearly an inch long...
On our last day, we headed about eight miles up highway 154 to “Cold Springs Tavern.” It started as a stage coach stop back in the 1880s, offering a place to stop, stretch and get something to eat for travelers between Santa Barbara and the towns inland and north of it, and basically hasn't changed all that much since. The buildings themselves are a hundred and thirty year-old log-cabins, a fireplace heats the tavern, and actual kerosine lamps light the place. The whole thing sets in a notch of deep, surprisingly moist (for Southern California) forest alongside the old road and about a mile away (at its closest) from the newer highway.
Very cool. And the food ain't bad either.
Anywho, I don't know how much if any of this will end up in TrolleyWorld's Santa Barbara – though I noticed that my description of downtown matched the real one I hadn't seen yet pretty well (except for the colors – almost everything in this timeline's SB is in a light beige rather than the multiple colors of TW's version. I think my version would be better, mind, but what can you do?).
Being able to stand on Stern's wharf and look out at the islands that play a large part of RoC and the Sea was really cool, though.
On with the show!
Santa Barbara is only about a hundred miles away from us so the drive took just a couple of hours, about a third of it along the coast. The city itself is fairly small – Wikipedia gives it a population of just ninety-thousand or so and slightly less land area than Pasadena – and it is nestled between the ocean on one side and mountains on the other on what (mostly) flat land there is between the two. A handful of smaller towns are along the coast with it, but basically it is cut off from the vast majority of California by the Santa Ynez mountains that surround it.
[If you wanted a pretty good place to survive a S.M. Stirling Dies the Fire or ISOT-style disaster, Santa Barbara would be such a “pretty good place” – its own reservoirs supply water (gravity fed), it has a smallish total population, a surprising amount of farm land near it, plus seafood resources, plus the Channel Islands to expand to/use for food right off the coast with literally ten times the land area you have on the mainland. Plus oil. Added bonus: Close three roads going through two narrow passes and an even narrower strip between the cliffs and the sea and you've completely cut off the area from any invasion of outsiders...well, unless they have boats]
While in Santa Barbara, we checked out a lot of the town, some places to eat shown on “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives,” the zoo (tiny but nice – it has California Condors in it!), historical buildings (especially the Courthouse – “Most Photographed Building in America” – and, for me, the train station), saw the mission (which looks like they tried to glue neo-classical features onto a classical adobe building – and, yeah, that works about as well as you think it does) walked Sterns Wharf, and generally enjoyed ourselves.
All the while noting that “Psych's” Santa Barbara is even more nothing at all like the real one than we originally thought...
Anywho, I don't know how much if any of this will end up in TrolleyWorld's Santa Barbara – though I noticed that my description of downtown matched the real one I hadn't seen yet pretty well (except for the colors – almost everything in this timeline's SB is in a light beige rather than the multiple colors of TW's version. I think my version would be better, mind, but what can you do?).
Being able to stand on Stern's wharf and look out at the islands that play a large part of RoC and the Sea was really cool, though.
“I'd say go and put some toothpaste on it, but you'd look at me as if I was nuts.”
On with the show!
Divergent Opinions - Comments on P.O.D. 69
Robert Gill
“...we should have been hearing Max's warped observations on everything from 9/11, to the Iraq and Afghan wars to Hurricane Katrina!” Hey! Maybe John Stewart is really Max Headroom! After all, we never see them together...
re: “Trafalgar Square”: “Divergence? Genghis Khan spared China, but trashed Europe.” Why? It's like a gang of bank robbers sparing the Bank of England to hit the ATM at the 7-11 across the street.
Speaking of Mongols, vlogbrother John Green is currently running a weekly series of ten to fifteen minute long videos on Youtube called “Crash Course World History” (which is well worth watching, as is its companion “Crash Course Biology”). In the first episode (on developing agriculture) he has the statement “By the way. Over the next forty weeks you will frequently hear generalizations [about history] followed by 'unless you are the Mongols'.”
ct: Me: re: Dr Who and the Brigadier: “I was referring to the Doctor's negligence” Ah! That makes more sense. Still, it's hard to fault the Doctor – when you're 900 years old and have visited, well, most of the Universe, keeping up your social contact list can be a bitch...even with a time machine...especially an erratic one.
(This is a man, after all, who said he'd be back “in five minutes”...and didn't manage it for ten years)
ct: Docimo: “...except wondering if Navajo was the only Native American language used in such a manner [code talkers].” As I discovered, some Choctaws were used in WWI for such things.
re: “Trafalgar Square”: “Divergence? Genghis Khan spared China, but trashed Europe.” Why? It's like a gang of bank robbers sparing the Bank of England to hit the ATM at the 7-11 across the street.
Speaking of Mongols, vlogbrother John Green is currently running a weekly series of ten to fifteen minute long videos on Youtube called “Crash Course World History” (which is well worth watching, as is its companion “Crash Course Biology”). In the first episode (on developing agriculture) he has the statement “By the way. Over the next forty weeks you will frequently hear generalizations [about history] followed by 'unless you are the Mongols'.”
ct: Me: re: Dr Who and the Brigadier: “I was referring to the Doctor's negligence” Ah! That makes more sense. Still, it's hard to fault the Doctor – when you're 900 years old and have visited, well, most of the Universe, keeping up your social contact list can be a bitch...even with a time machine...especially an erratic one.
(This is a man, after all, who said he'd be back “in five minutes”...and didn't manage it for ten years)
ct: Docimo: “...except wondering if Navajo was the only Native American language used in such a manner [code talkers].” As I discovered, some Choctaws were used in WWI for such things.
Me
re: “RoC and the Sea”:
“to be continued, hopefully not as slowly...” Yeah...that hope may be shattered. I'm coming down towards print-off time here (just a week to go) and I've barely gotten her to the corner of Nacional and Mission...
As usually, part of the problem was one of my typical bouts of “I Get Really Obsessed With A Minor Detail...Usually Map Related...and spend all my time on that.”
This time I started working on where the Santa Barbara Street Railway lines should go – you know, because they're like, briefly mentioned in the story. That led to trying to see if Santa Barbara had actually had a trolley system I could use to base it on, because recent attempts at mapping TrolleyWorlds lines into Google Maps – and the problems of some of them going right over very tall mountains – has shown that this is probably a good idea if I want to maintain any realism at all.
That led to discovering that, yes, Santa Barbara had a trolley system, but that almost all I could find out about it on the web was that, yes, Santa Barbara had a trolley system...
(I finally found a map online that showed the lines, if faintly, which as I later discovered is good as even the Santa Barbara Public Library itself only has a single book on the subject – which I skimmed through over our vacation)
Then, having figured out where the OTL lines went, I went on to base the TW lines on that...then made some changes...then changed my mind about a couple of loops and made some more changes...then actually went to Santa Barbara and went “oooo, you don't want to go that way” and made some more changes...then I had to make it pretty, using an old map as the basis for the 1962 map for Elena's Santa Barbara...then...
...yeah. You know: The usual.
Anywho, there'll be at least some more RoC and the Sea...and a nice map.
As usually, part of the problem was one of my typical bouts of “I Get Really Obsessed With A Minor Detail...Usually Map Related...and spend all my time on that.”
This time I started working on where the Santa Barbara Street Railway lines should go – you know, because they're like, briefly mentioned in the story. That led to trying to see if Santa Barbara had actually had a trolley system I could use to base it on, because recent attempts at mapping TrolleyWorlds lines into Google Maps – and the problems of some of them going right over very tall mountains – has shown that this is probably a good idea if I want to maintain any realism at all.
That led to discovering that, yes, Santa Barbara had a trolley system, but that almost all I could find out about it on the web was that, yes, Santa Barbara had a trolley system...
(I finally found a map online that showed the lines, if faintly, which as I later discovered is good as even the Santa Barbara Public Library itself only has a single book on the subject – which I skimmed through over our vacation)
Then, having figured out where the OTL lines went, I went on to base the TW lines on that...then made some changes...then changed my mind about a couple of loops and made some more changes...then actually went to Santa Barbara and went “oooo, you don't want to go that way” and made some more changes...then I had to make it pretty, using an old map as the basis for the 1962 map for Elena's Santa Barbara...then...
...yeah. You know: The usual.
Anywho, there'll be at least some more RoC and the Sea...and a nice map.
Dale Cozort
The main problem with the original version of American Indian Victories is that, since it was put together from a couple of dozen previously separate articles/scenarios, some things (like, “who are the Tarascans”) get repetitively explained several different times throughout the book when once (with maybe some addition new info each time they come up) would be enough.
And even that's a minor problem, because a lot of people will read it a scenario at a time, rather than as a single book, so that won't bother them at all.
re: “One Giant Leap”: Okay, this is actually pretty cool. It manages to both be in the style of one of those young adult series (my favorite – and apparently Germany's...go figure – was The Three Investigators) without either being quite as...hokey as they usually were or – worse – parodying them.
I actually started (and may continue – though by “started” I mean about half a page) a Doc Savage story written as if the series had continued until at least 1959...and was set in Pasadena-D.1 But it's actually really, really hard to create a mystery featuring a “super-science” threat that can be stopped by six guys with machine pistols, roadsters, and the occasional dirigible...
IAE, the story was only meant to be “background” in Blue Flash (maybe Peter would start reading it or something, I don't really know yet), so it's not like there's a lot of pressure on me to continue...
Your story, however, probably should be continued – even if there isn't any AH in it.
One nit, I had to read through the bit with Mary saying “Woman on the floor over here” a couple of times before I grasped that she was talking about someone in a different booth. At first, I was thinking “why is she calling Reggie a woman?”
re: “There Will Always Be An England” pt7: Still remains good. However, I think the sections (past England in present, present England in past, present Normandy) are all broken up too much. There doesn't really seem to be a reason to be with Lloyd's group for one short page, break to go with Roy (and then Billy) and come back to Lloyd for – basically – the rest of that group's story.
It exacerbates that “giving false equivalencies of times” problem I mentioned last zine.
Oh Ho! So Gilbert's somehow gotten back (to the future). The only thing, I don't think he would assume that “if our England is back then, that England must be here.” It seems to me he would be more likely to assume that present England was just gone, or that everyone and everything on the present England was sent back, and not even consider where the “then” England went, if he even assumes it went anywhere.
After all, the whole concept of ISOT island swaps is a long way in the future!
I like the Piltdown Man reference, but their scientist must be one of the last who doesn't think there was something “wrong” with the Piltdown fossil, even if they didn't think it was a forgery. Heck, a fluorine content test to check its age was proposed in 1943 (though I suspect people were a bit too...busy to do much about that at the time).
“...they may be able to do it to the beachhead here, or even to the United States.” At which point I would be asking “Sir, can they?”
re: “Snapshot” pt10: What can I say but, way cool!
I somewhat lost track of who was talking to whom when Lyle and Greg were discussing what could be making the lights, so that there was a slight mental pause while I figured out who thought it being an ERB story would be really neat (Lyle). That might be only my problem, though.
I note that Pastor Julius says “we have better meds here than you do in 2011” but that this doesn't necessarily mean they're from US53 (which if they do would give them a hell of an article of trade). That suggests...interesting things...
re: “The BEMs Really Are Alien” pt4: Continues to be interesting – and you're actually coming up with a coherent plot (and Plot) as you “seat-of-the-pants it.”
Can't see anything really to change.
re: Making the Indian Wars Last Longer: “...they needed rapid-fire rifles of their own...and that made them dependent on outsiders for munitions.” Somehow, you'd have to arrange for there to be a group of outsiders with a reason to want to at least slow down the U.S.'s spread west. Maybe the whole “54° 40' or fight!” situation gets a lot closer to the “or fight” side of the argument and, while the border is still set more or less as on OTL, there are enough Canadians (with assets) who feel they are just one or two surviving Indian tribes away from the U.S. starting to move in on those last five degrees...
re: An Alternate History Publishing Venture?: I'm glad that – for “self publishing” at least – ebooks are beginning to converge around the epub standard.
Now if the readers that handle epub would just do it more...uniformly it would help a great deal. Currently, it makes the differences between how IE and Firefox2 handle webpages look effectively non-existent – even though in the real world, web designers can spend as long getting a webpage to also display right in IE as they took to get it to work the first time for all the other browsers.
We won't even talk about the dozen or so proprietary formats (that usually only work in proprietary readers) out there, where in reality, you don't even actually own the book you've bought!
Currently, ebooks are a mess,3 similar to the flurry of mutually incompatible home computer OS's that were around in the late 70s/early 80s.
That said, I suspect that ten years from now, the vast majority of new authors will be starting in ebooks – and twenty from now, paper books will be in the same position vinyl records currently are – produced for those “purists” who have lots of disposable income around that they can use on the latest Stephen King novel while snottily declaring those electronic things aren't real books...
re: Belgium doesn't end up with the Congo: Given that, in a lot of ways, the whole “Scramble” is pretty much a result of Leopold's desire for a Congo Kingdom, you might end up making the colonial map almost unrecognizably different, at least in the interior of Africa. Might even end up with a couple of minor colonial wars, absent Leopold running around Europe doing his “compromise, compromise, compromise, as long as I get the Congo, compromise” spiel.
re: Boer Republics Survive: Not only do the Boer's have to put off war until at least WWI, they then have to not look too “German” to the British while that war's on. Any sign of favoring (or being favored by) the Central Powers has a good chance of bringing the British down on them.
re: The Hordes From Chicago: Boy! I'm glad I'll be in Santa Barbara for this! It'll be a balmy 50 at the lowest, with just a 4 mph mean wind speed.
It seems a very likely scenario you've got. The L.A. Area has further problems in that people trying to go to where the food is are going to be funneled by mountains to take one of three narrow paths: Down the coast towards the relatively empty area between L.A. and San Diego (which is not where I'd go – that'd be a “short term viable” area, to use your terms). Up the coast towards Ventura (and then get stopped after Ventura by that blockade the Santa Barbarians have put up on I-101 – so again, only short term viable, maybe medium). Or north-west through the Tejon Pass and into the San Joaquin Valley, which would be ideal, food and water-wise, but which means a trek of at least sixty miles even if you're in San Fernando to start (closest spot in L.A. to the San Joaquin – it's eighty-six miles from my house, and there's a lot of L.A. Basin still south and east of me) over a pass that tops out at 4,200 feet – and may or may not have snow in it, depending on the time of year/weather.
Mind you, you could also go north (again, through mountain passes) or east (well, at least this one is much lower), but both these directions lead into the desert, which may not be your ideal survival destination and – bonus! – going east is even farther for me (at least) than heading for the Central Valley...
ct: Robert Gill: “Oh, another AH bike rider. Wait. Does that mean you're a bike riding in an alternate history?”
Hmmm, that give me an idea...
ct: Me: re: Dies the Fire: Well, as I mentioned above, my new favorite spot to ride out a “Dies the Fire” scenario (DTF? Hey, if it can be ISOT, why not DTF!) would be Santa Barbara. Got water supply? Check! Temperatures you'd have to deal with? As I said above, on Sterling's DTF date, temps would be between 50-66 (that almanac.com site is cool – thanx!), but in general, SB weather looks like this:
So, more check!4 Your two biggest killers – dehydration and hypothermia – and I've already conquered them just by being in Santa Barbara.
“...most urban-dwellers have...little experience with dealing with the cold” Cold doesn't really bother me that much – though admittedly the “cold” in question is usually of the L.A. Variety. Dee Dee, OTOH, seems to have a comfort range of about 72-78 degrees – below 72 “Oooo, it's cold!” Above 78 “Aaaaa, it's hot!” ;)
Honestly, one of the most unlikely parts of Dies the Fire to me was when that group of SCA people got together... and worked out a society with almost no fighting over who would be in charge in about five minutes. In my – admittedly limited – experience, five SCA members locked in a room for a week will break up into one two and two one-member “kingdoms,” with the fifth leaving to join the Barbarian Freehold Alliance...
And even that's a minor problem, because a lot of people will read it a scenario at a time, rather than as a single book, so that won't bother them at all.
re: “One Giant Leap”: Okay, this is actually pretty cool. It manages to both be in the style of one of those young adult series (my favorite – and apparently Germany's...go figure – was The Three Investigators) without either being quite as...hokey as they usually were or – worse – parodying them.
I actually started (and may continue – though by “started” I mean about half a page) a Doc Savage story written as if the series had continued until at least 1959...and was set in Pasadena-D.1 But it's actually really, really hard to create a mystery featuring a “super-science” threat that can be stopped by six guys with machine pistols, roadsters, and the occasional dirigible...
IAE, the story was only meant to be “background” in Blue Flash (maybe Peter would start reading it or something, I don't really know yet), so it's not like there's a lot of pressure on me to continue...
Your story, however, probably should be continued – even if there isn't any AH in it.
One nit, I had to read through the bit with Mary saying “Woman on the floor over here” a couple of times before I grasped that she was talking about someone in a different booth. At first, I was thinking “why is she calling Reggie a woman?”
re: “There Will Always Be An England” pt7: Still remains good. However, I think the sections (past England in present, present England in past, present Normandy) are all broken up too much. There doesn't really seem to be a reason to be with Lloyd's group for one short page, break to go with Roy (and then Billy) and come back to Lloyd for – basically – the rest of that group's story.
It exacerbates that “giving false equivalencies of times” problem I mentioned last zine.
Oh Ho! So Gilbert's somehow gotten back (to the future). The only thing, I don't think he would assume that “if our England is back then, that England must be here.” It seems to me he would be more likely to assume that present England was just gone, or that everyone and everything on the present England was sent back, and not even consider where the “then” England went, if he even assumes it went anywhere.
After all, the whole concept of ISOT island swaps is a long way in the future!
I like the Piltdown Man reference, but their scientist must be one of the last who doesn't think there was something “wrong” with the Piltdown fossil, even if they didn't think it was a forgery. Heck, a fluorine content test to check its age was proposed in 1943 (though I suspect people were a bit too...busy to do much about that at the time).
“...they may be able to do it to the beachhead here, or even to the United States.” At which point I would be asking “Sir, can they?”
re: “Snapshot” pt10: What can I say but, way cool!
I somewhat lost track of who was talking to whom when Lyle and Greg were discussing what could be making the lights, so that there was a slight mental pause while I figured out who thought it being an ERB story would be really neat (Lyle). That might be only my problem, though.
I note that Pastor Julius says “we have better meds here than you do in 2011” but that this doesn't necessarily mean they're from US53 (which if they do would give them a hell of an article of trade). That suggests...interesting things...
re: “The BEMs Really Are Alien” pt4: Continues to be interesting – and you're actually coming up with a coherent plot (and Plot) as you “seat-of-the-pants it.”
Can't see anything really to change.
re: Making the Indian Wars Last Longer: “...they needed rapid-fire rifles of their own...and that made them dependent on outsiders for munitions.” Somehow, you'd have to arrange for there to be a group of outsiders with a reason to want to at least slow down the U.S.'s spread west. Maybe the whole “54° 40' or fight!” situation gets a lot closer to the “or fight” side of the argument and, while the border is still set more or less as on OTL, there are enough Canadians (with assets) who feel they are just one or two surviving Indian tribes away from the U.S. starting to move in on those last five degrees...
re: An Alternate History Publishing Venture?: I'm glad that – for “self publishing” at least – ebooks are beginning to converge around the epub standard.
Now if the readers that handle epub would just do it more...uniformly it would help a great deal. Currently, it makes the differences between how IE and Firefox2 handle webpages look effectively non-existent – even though in the real world, web designers can spend as long getting a webpage to also display right in IE as they took to get it to work the first time for all the other browsers.
We won't even talk about the dozen or so proprietary formats (that usually only work in proprietary readers) out there, where in reality, you don't even actually own the book you've bought!
Currently, ebooks are a mess,3 similar to the flurry of mutually incompatible home computer OS's that were around in the late 70s/early 80s.
That said, I suspect that ten years from now, the vast majority of new authors will be starting in ebooks – and twenty from now, paper books will be in the same position vinyl records currently are – produced for those “purists” who have lots of disposable income around that they can use on the latest Stephen King novel while snottily declaring those electronic things aren't real books...
re: Belgium doesn't end up with the Congo: Given that, in a lot of ways, the whole “Scramble” is pretty much a result of Leopold's desire for a Congo Kingdom, you might end up making the colonial map almost unrecognizably different, at least in the interior of Africa. Might even end up with a couple of minor colonial wars, absent Leopold running around Europe doing his “compromise, compromise, compromise, as long as I get the Congo, compromise” spiel.
re: Boer Republics Survive: Not only do the Boer's have to put off war until at least WWI, they then have to not look too “German” to the British while that war's on. Any sign of favoring (or being favored by) the Central Powers has a good chance of bringing the British down on them.
re: The Hordes From Chicago: Boy! I'm glad I'll be in Santa Barbara for this! It'll be a balmy 50 at the lowest, with just a 4 mph mean wind speed.
It seems a very likely scenario you've got. The L.A. Area has further problems in that people trying to go to where the food is are going to be funneled by mountains to take one of three narrow paths: Down the coast towards the relatively empty area between L.A. and San Diego (which is not where I'd go – that'd be a “short term viable” area, to use your terms). Up the coast towards Ventura (and then get stopped after Ventura by that blockade the Santa Barbarians have put up on I-101 – so again, only short term viable, maybe medium). Or north-west through the Tejon Pass and into the San Joaquin Valley, which would be ideal, food and water-wise, but which means a trek of at least sixty miles even if you're in San Fernando to start (closest spot in L.A. to the San Joaquin – it's eighty-six miles from my house, and there's a lot of L.A. Basin still south and east of me) over a pass that tops out at 4,200 feet – and may or may not have snow in it, depending on the time of year/weather.
Mind you, you could also go north (again, through mountain passes) or east (well, at least this one is much lower), but both these directions lead into the desert, which may not be your ideal survival destination and – bonus! – going east is even farther for me (at least) than heading for the Central Valley...
ct: Robert Gill: “Oh, another AH bike rider. Wait. Does that mean you're a bike riding in an alternate history?”
Hmmm, that give me an idea...
ct: Me: re: Dies the Fire: Well, as I mentioned above, my new favorite spot to ride out a “Dies the Fire” scenario (DTF? Hey, if it can be ISOT, why not DTF!) would be Santa Barbara. Got water supply? Check! Temperatures you'd have to deal with? As I said above, on Sterling's DTF date, temps would be between 50-66 (that almanac.com site is cool – thanx!), but in general, SB weather looks like this:
So, more check!4 Your two biggest killers – dehydration and hypothermia – and I've already conquered them just by being in Santa Barbara.
“...most urban-dwellers have...little experience with dealing with the cold” Cold doesn't really bother me that much – though admittedly the “cold” in question is usually of the L.A. Variety. Dee Dee, OTOH, seems to have a comfort range of about 72-78 degrees – below 72 “Oooo, it's cold!” Above 78 “Aaaaa, it's hot!” ;)
Honestly, one of the most unlikely parts of Dies the Fire to me was when that group of SCA people got together... and worked out a society with almost no fighting over who would be in charge in about five minutes. In my – admittedly limited – experience, five SCA members locked in a room for a week will break up into one two and two one-member “kingdoms,” with the fifth leaving to join the Barbarian Freehold Alliance...
Kurt Sidaway
ct: Me:
“I've always thought pre-war cars look stylish, but must have been uncomfortable to drive.” Yeah. Their springs are better than wheels directly on the frame...but only just.
I was talking to one of the drivers, he said they were pretty good going uphill, because they had a lot of torque, but down was more...interesting...as the brakes were amusingly small.
Sanctuary started out as a web series before being picked up by SciFi (the first few episodes really show this – all the sets are CGI and they could only afford a handful of actors), but the “superpowered” leads (at least so far as the immortal Helen Magnus and teleporting “Jack the Ripper,” John Druitt) date from then. Mind you, they've managed to fit why they're like this into their mythology pretty well.
Actually, they kinda backed off from one of the original leads having a “superpower” – Will Zimmerman sort of had an ability to “see clearer” and find the reasons behind things/see things others couldn't – a slightly amped variant on the “power” of the leads of Psych and The Mentalist, really – but that ability seems to have more or less been forgotten in the past few seasons – perhaps because it just wasn't as impressive as teleporting or being a vampire or whatever. Or perhaps because Psych and The Mentalist just do that “power” better.
“I was assuming at least a modicum of intelligence on the part of the readership, after all they were discerning enough to be reading one of Dale's stories.” Well, thanks for giving us some benefit of the doubt – however, we are a society where 80% of the population believes in angels, but only 30% believe man is causing global climate change...
ct: Anthony Docimo: “Imagine the crisis if the next in line turned out to be Karl Eduard, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha or, horror of horrors, the Kaiser himself.” I'm not too sure how much can be done “on the fly” by the handlers of succession in Britain, but it doesn't seem too unreasonable that some sort of “if you're currently at war with us, you don't get to be our king” ruling can get written up real fast.
Mind you, the Kaiser being the king on both sides of the conflict at the same time could be awesome – story-wise, anyway. Since he won't have near the power in the U.K. as he does in Germany, he might have to have Germany stand down simply because he can't really order the British to do so.
re: Best Allied Tank: Wow! I'd heard of pocket battleships before, but never pocket tanks!
Poketanks?5
I was talking to one of the drivers, he said they were pretty good going uphill, because they had a lot of torque, but down was more...interesting...as the brakes were amusingly small.
Sanctuary started out as a web series before being picked up by SciFi (the first few episodes really show this – all the sets are CGI and they could only afford a handful of actors), but the “superpowered” leads (at least so far as the immortal Helen Magnus and teleporting “Jack the Ripper,” John Druitt) date from then. Mind you, they've managed to fit why they're like this into their mythology pretty well.
Actually, they kinda backed off from one of the original leads having a “superpower” – Will Zimmerman sort of had an ability to “see clearer” and find the reasons behind things/see things others couldn't – a slightly amped variant on the “power” of the leads of Psych and The Mentalist, really – but that ability seems to have more or less been forgotten in the past few seasons – perhaps because it just wasn't as impressive as teleporting or being a vampire or whatever. Or perhaps because Psych and The Mentalist just do that “power” better.
“I was assuming at least a modicum of intelligence on the part of the readership, after all they were discerning enough to be reading one of Dale's stories.” Well, thanks for giving us some benefit of the doubt – however, we are a society where 80% of the population believes in angels, but only 30% believe man is causing global climate change...
ct: Anthony Docimo: “Imagine the crisis if the next in line turned out to be Karl Eduard, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha or, horror of horrors, the Kaiser himself.” I'm not too sure how much can be done “on the fly” by the handlers of succession in Britain, but it doesn't seem too unreasonable that some sort of “if you're currently at war with us, you don't get to be our king” ruling can get written up real fast.
Mind you, the Kaiser being the king on both sides of the conflict at the same time could be awesome – story-wise, anyway. Since he won't have near the power in the U.K. as he does in Germany, he might have to have Germany stand down simply because he can't really order the British to do so.
re: Best Allied Tank: Wow! I'd heard of pocket battleships before, but never pocket tanks!
Poketanks?5
Tom Cron
“What if Atenism had survived? Would Egypt have prospered?” Unless Official Support of Atenism grew so strong that they actively tried to ban other/older religions – and thus start some sort of civil war – it probably wouldn't have too much effect on Egypt's prosperity at all. Another god/religion alongside the older ones, heck, Egypt was good at adapting to those (probably Atenism would get subsumed into the older religion eventually). Only if it tried to “fight it out” would it likely cause problems.
And if it did, well, we can see how well that worked for Akhenaten's religion. I personally feel it was just too centered on him to survive long without him, even if he hadn't ticked off the priests of Amun-Ra, etc...
re: Big News: Being long out of copyright, The Ifs of History is also available from Project Gutenberg – though obviously not as nicely done as the Fireside Press version (or as portable, if you don't have an ebook reader).
ct: Me: re: The Brig: “I met Nicholas Courtney at Dixietrek here.” I wasn't fortunately enough to – though I have met two Doctors,6 an Ace and a Benson!
And if it did, well, we can see how well that worked for Akhenaten's religion. I personally feel it was just too centered on him to survive long without him, even if he hadn't ticked off the priests of Amun-Ra, etc...
re: Big News: Being long out of copyright, The Ifs of History is also available from Project Gutenberg – though obviously not as nicely done as the Fireside Press version (or as portable, if you don't have an ebook reader).
ct: Me: re: The Brig: “I met Nicholas Courtney at Dixietrek here.” I wasn't fortunately enough to – though I have met two Doctors,6 an Ace and a Benson!
Wesley Kawato
“Should it be a space travel story, or alternate history?” It could be a space travel story set in an alternate history. POD's had the beginnings of a couple of those, but they never seem to get finished.
ct: Me: “I thought the Brigadier was the one character BBC would never kill off.” Well, technically they didn't – Nicholas Courtney, the actor who played him, died.
Since Courtney was the Brigadier (and was him for forty-three years) if they tried to replace him with another actor, Whovians around the world would probably rise up and burn the BBC to the ground.7 It seemed best that, if he was dead, so should be the Brigadier, who after all, had already been shown to be getting old, retiring, living in a nursing home, etc...
And it gave him, in an odd sort of way, one last Who appearance...and one that wasn't just sort of a tacked on tribute, but actually contributed to the plot.
ct: Me: “I thought the Brigadier was the one character BBC would never kill off.” Well, technically they didn't – Nicholas Courtney, the actor who played him, died.
Since Courtney was the Brigadier (and was him for forty-three years) if they tried to replace him with another actor, Whovians around the world would probably rise up and burn the BBC to the ground.7 It seemed best that, if he was dead, so should be the Brigadier, who after all, had already been shown to be getting old, retiring, living in a nursing home, etc...
And it gave him, in an odd sort of way, one last Who appearance...and one that wasn't just sort of a tacked on tribute, but actually contributed to the plot.
In case it wasn't obvious, that's the AH version of Google Maps on the tablet. The little popup there at the bottom left adjusts what alternate you're looking at – though it must be a bitch to control with just three tiny sliders...
“Tokiwa Low” was a restaurant in East San Pedro (“Furusato”) until they cleared everyone out at the start of WWII. And the two pictures are of the memorial to the town on Terminal Island.
Notice on the small “paper” map that Los Angeles, while giving Furusato its independence, held onto all the docks and most of the harbor facilities that surround it. Even Fish Harbor, source of most of Furusato's employment! Bastards!
It's implied by the lack of changes to Terminal Island that shipping through San Pedro Harbor is at least an order of magnitude lower on Pasadena-D's world than here, since here the island's about doubled in size with containerized ship facilities...