It is 1999. The small (fictitious) town of Grantville, West Virginia, is celebrating the wedding of the sister of the local miner's sindicate boss, Michael Stearns. The celebration happens with normality (save for a few small disagreements with the groom's parents, who do not approve their son's choice) when a ring of fire of several kilometers of diameter surrounds the town for a few seconds... and the town disappears.
It is 1631. Germany is a jumble of hundreds of principalities, dukedoms, counties, archbishoprics, free cities and other dominions of diverse consideration, and part of the Holy Roman Empire. Currently, the Empire is going through one of its worst times, the brutal Thirty Years' War, which is devastating nearly all the territory due to the great battles that are being fought within and the rape, pillage and burn from the many, many mercenaries and other soldiers that are fighting. Suddenly, at the end of May, smack dab in the middle of Thuringia, a large town appears as if by magic, with houses built with materials that look nothing like wood, and who speak a language that only some can identify with the one used in a certain island nation to the northwest of France where King Charles I rules...
Yes, an american town has just been transported in time and space from the later 20th Century United States to Germany in the middle of the 17th Century. And, whoo, boy, this is going to change the course of history in ways no one could actually begin to imagine.
Welcome to the novel saga 1632, written by American Eric Flint, and one of the best examples of how an ISOT works in literature.
The arrival of the Americans to the region completely revolutions everything. The first expedition, launched in order to understand what the hell is going on, Mike Stearns and a few friends save several people's lives, including that of two members of the powerful Sephardic Jew Abrabanel family, and, later, Mike convinces his fellow Americans to create a new nation, based on the idea of the United States, more than a century before the American Revolution beings. However, the advances Grantville brings to the past (better weapons, medicine, communication systems, technology, books) are not enough to offset the clear numerical disadvantage they are in, so they need allies, and soon the looks turn to the King of Sweden, Gustav II Adolf, a (for the time) progressive king, who accepts the alliance offer.
Of course, the "local" people (also called downtimers, comparing time with a current you can go up or down) are surprised by Grantville's society and the advances they bring, but the Grantvillers (uptimers) are equally surprised to find out that the downtimers are not as backwards as they expected (for example, one of the Abrabanels they saved reveals that he knows eight languages, can get by in another three, and does not consider this an accomplishment).
However, not everything is easy for the uptimers: Grantville soon collects as many enemies as allies due to what they represent for the still aristocratic society in the time and place. At the beginning it is not as chaotic, as the uptimers have much modern weaponry and other things, but as the ideas brought by the uptimers expand through Europe, whether it is because Grantville is trading with the ideas or because there are spies that have managed to infiltrate the city and steal information to use it in their favor, the scales begin to balance, and there are many situations in which Grantville's enemies manage to use modern technology against them or another nations.
The first changes in history happen very soon: Gustav II Adolf, who was fated to die in November 1632, manages to survive in the book thanks to the Americans' presence in several vital battles that take place some time after their arrival. Radio becomes an almost indispensable element in the main European courts (save for the Spanish one, which does not bring the new technologies to their country), not only to listen in, but also to communicate. Grantville's schoolbooks become some of the most desired objects in the world, particularly history books, as many kings wish to use them to find out which are the troubles that would have happened/will happen in the future and prevent them from taking place.
As any other good story, there must be an antagonist against whom the main characters fight, whether it is with weapons or wits, and, in here, that person is Armand Jean du Plessis, better known as the Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu. Richelieu, although he would have loved to ally with the Americans (and, in fact, Eric Flint said that the only reason it did not happen this way was because he needed an intelligent adversary for the uptimers), decides to do anything to strengthen the current aristocratic regime in France, even if it means going against the uptimers.
Not everything is politics, fortunately for the readers. Just the first book (1632) has four well-described battles, although not too long (that's what happens when you put modern weaponry against early gunpowder weapons). Many of Grantville's inhabitants manage to make a name for themselves in the society that is being formed by the mix of Americans and Germans, such as an old hippy that makes modern waterproof dyes that make him rich and medicines he sells at cost (making him something akin to a saint in the eyes of the downtimers), a cheerleader that becomes the most lethal sniper of the time by blowing up the enemy officers' brains, a Dungeons & Dragons player who marries a downtimer he rescued at shotgun point and who eventually becomes a general, a kid who at the beginning of the books is still in high school and later is so rich that he can support an entire national economy on his own...
The end result is a very interesting and fun book saga, full of small historical and cultural jokes that can always bring a smile out of the reader (such as Richelieu's attempt to decide whether he prefers Charlton Heston or Tim Curry as the one that has best portrayed him in a film), while it does not lose its nerve when it comes down to showing the great sociocultural differences between 20th Century America and 17th Century Germany (the Americans feel disgusted with the violence that is so common to the time, particularly among the mercenaries, while for the downtimers the ideas of freedom and equality are strange and, depending on their social status, accepted or not.
Apart from the novels, the saga has several short stories, some written by Eric Flint, some by other writers, some by fans that have wanted to contribute to the story. I am trying to see if I can find these stories some time soon, but nothing so far. Well, I'll continue looking.
Last thing to say is that 1632 is part of a "multiverse" known as "The Assiti Shards Universe". The Assiti Shards are an invention of Eric Flint he uses to start up their novels, and their importance is that, when they are thrown against a planet (such as Earth) they move parts of it in time and space exchanging them, in such a way that, in the place where Grantville once was, the Americans that were left behind found an unknown and strange terrain that only one researcher managed to possibly identify these places as part of old Thuringia.
See you next Tuesday, and I hope you like these books!
2014/06/25
The Longest Day
A couple of weeks ago was the 70th anniversary of the Normandy Landings, which meant the opening of the Third Front by the allies against the German Third Reich (the first two being the Eastern and Italian Fronts) and would lead a few months later to the Liberation of France. Even though the real importance of this event is smaller than what many people believe, D-Day is clearly one of the most important events of the 20th Century. It was the greatest amphibious attack in history, with nearly 160,000 Allied troops crossing the English Channel in 5,000 ships from southern England to the Normandy coasts (the famous five beaches, Utah, Omaha (attacked by the USA), Gold, Sword (both attacked by the UK) and Juno (by Canada)), while another 24,000 soldiers were airdropped behind the enemy lines, and more than 1,000 planes established aerial supremacy over the region's skies.
The result was a great victory for the Allied Forces, although German resistance and several mistakes consequence of the lack of experience in this kind of attack complicated the attempts to reach the military operation main objectives, such as the liberation of the cities of Carentan, St. Lô, Bayeux and Caen or the connection of all beachheads (only Juno and Gold managed to achieve this objective in the first day). It would not be until several more days after the landings that said objectives were reached, and by the time the landings ended, the Allies had suffered around 12,000 casualties (4,414 of them deaths), while the Germans lost between 4,000 and 9,000 soldiers out of 50,000 that were defending Normandy.
There are many factors that helped in the success of Operation Neptune (codename for the landings), the careful planning of every move that was to take place (although several troops ended up well away from the place where they were supposed to land), the great support of the Allied ships and planes, the coordination with the French Resistance, the few defenses established by the Wehrmacht in the zone, the development of new technologies like the Mulberry docks and, particularly, the effects of Operation Bodyguard, developed by the British Secret Services to make the Germans believe that the invasion would take place somewhere else (among the suggested objectives were Norway, the Balkans, southern France and the most important of all, Pas de Calais, which was the most credible option, given that it was the nearest point of the continent to Great Britain) and which made Hitler send many divisions to all of those points, easing up the Western Allies' advance. This latter point became even worse when Hitler did not give permission for the troops in Normandy and in inner France to reinforce the positions in Normandy until it was too late to stop the attack.
The only problem is that too many people give this battle a greater value than what it actually had. It is true that it was a great victory, but if there is something most historians agree with is that, whatever the result of the fighting in the French coasts, Germany's defeat would have arrived at some moment or another: a few kilometers to the east (a few thousand, of course), was the Red Army, ready to launch Operation Bagration, which only required five weeks to wipe out the entire German Army Group Centre and allowed the Soviets to reach Warsaw after kicking the Germans out of the Soviet Union. This detail is one that is many times ignored by alternative history writers, who act as if World War Two was only an effort carried out by the Western Allies against Germany.
A failure of the landings was something everyone had in mind, including Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, who even had prepared a speech he would read in this case, but fortunately, it was not necessary. However, what if it had not happened this way? What if the Allied troops were forced to retreat back into England, much like it had happened two years before in Dieppe?
As I have already said, it would not have meant Germany's victory. Right then, the Germans were already in the middle of a tough fight in two fronts, and a German victory in Normandy would haave just pushed back what was unavoidable, although the way this would have been shown would have been very different. To begin with, the Soviets would have probably found a greater resistance to their advance (all those soldiers that would not be defending the Western Front), but the Reds' advance would have been unstoppable. They would have surely "freed" all of Germany, instead of just the eastern half, and then they might have continued pushing west into the Benelux, Denmark and France. Of course, this would mean breaking all agreements made with the other Allies, and resistance to their advances would be extreme. If this were the case, it is very probable that the German troops would rather surrender to the Western Allies rather than to fight the Russians. And that was if the Allies simply did not just launch another invasion to open the third front.: as they had already planned for Operation Dragoon to liberate Southern France, maybe the Allies would choose that path to face the Nazis and later facilitate a less intensive invasion in the north.
By the same rule, it would have been sligthtly less than impossible for this to take towards a possible peace treaty. As agreements with the Soviet Union had established that none of the fighting nations would reach a separate peace with Germany, the hope some German officers had of allying with Great Britain and the United States against the Soviet Union (one of the actual expectations by the members of the July 20th Plot, that of Operation Valkyrie fame) was clearly in vain.
Still, there are many stories in which the point of divergence is, precisely, the failure of the Normandy Landings, but few take into account the Soviet Union's presence, as I mentioned earlyer, but there are, eh? Let's see...
Example number 1: the French graphic novel series Jour J. This uchronic graphic novel series (which deals with many potential events) deals, in its 2nd number ("París, Soviet Sector"), what would have happened if a storm had taken place while the Allied ships were reaching the Normandy coast. Complete operational failure is the main consequence, and France's liberation does not begin until three weeks later, in the south (the aforementioned Operation Dragoon). This difference in time means that Stalin's Red Army manages to take over all of Germany and in the end the Soviet troops are the ones that free Paris. The Iron Curtain, instead of crossing Germany, goes through France, and Paris is the city that ends up divided in different occupation sectors, with the Seine as the dividing line. The story itself speaks about the effects a mysterious serial killer is having in the Cold War, and about a detective from the Allied French zone and his efforts to find said killer while keeping his brothel-based spy ring safe.
And example number 2: the film "Fatherland" of 1994, based on the novel of the same name, written in 1992 by Robert Harris. In the novel, the point of divergence is in 1942, when Reinhard Heydrich manages to survive the attack that was organized against him in that year, but in the film this event is replaced with a defeat in Normandy, which inexplicably leads to the United States retiring from the war, the United Kingdom surrendering and Churchill going into exile. Germany unifies the European continent into a nation called "Germania" and continues the war against the Soviet Union. When the film begins, it is 1964, as the first preparations for Adolf Hitler's 70th birthday, and in which one of the events will be a visit of the President of the United States, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. (father to John Fitzgerald Kennedy) for a high level meeting. The main characters are an SS Major called Xavier March and an American journalist, Charlie McGuire, and the former becomes involved into the investigation of the murder of a high officer in the Nazi Party, while the latter finds a similar case when she is invited to find another Nazi officer, that also appears dead. I will not reveal the end, in case someone decides to read the novel, but I can tell that the result is the discovery of a secret the Nazi Party leaders want to keep secret forever.
Something that is a bit stranger is to think on the possibility that the invasion became much more successful than what it was, which would have depended a bit on luck and a bit on strategy. For example, taking Caen in the first day would have eased enormously the later advances, as the city's deep water docks would have allowed to unload great quantities of war material, so advancing towards the south and the east would have been faster. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find anything based on this premise. Maybe someone could have written about this? Someone could be able to pull a great story out of it, surely...
Well, I hope that, in spite of how brief this post was (and the fact that it arrived a day too late), you liked this. Hopefully, next Friday's post will arrive on time. See you!
The result was a great victory for the Allied Forces, although German resistance and several mistakes consequence of the lack of experience in this kind of attack complicated the attempts to reach the military operation main objectives, such as the liberation of the cities of Carentan, St. Lô, Bayeux and Caen or the connection of all beachheads (only Juno and Gold managed to achieve this objective in the first day). It would not be until several more days after the landings that said objectives were reached, and by the time the landings ended, the Allies had suffered around 12,000 casualties (4,414 of them deaths), while the Germans lost between 4,000 and 9,000 soldiers out of 50,000 that were defending Normandy.
There are many factors that helped in the success of Operation Neptune (codename for the landings), the careful planning of every move that was to take place (although several troops ended up well away from the place where they were supposed to land), the great support of the Allied ships and planes, the coordination with the French Resistance, the few defenses established by the Wehrmacht in the zone, the development of new technologies like the Mulberry docks and, particularly, the effects of Operation Bodyguard, developed by the British Secret Services to make the Germans believe that the invasion would take place somewhere else (among the suggested objectives were Norway, the Balkans, southern France and the most important of all, Pas de Calais, which was the most credible option, given that it was the nearest point of the continent to Great Britain) and which made Hitler send many divisions to all of those points, easing up the Western Allies' advance. This latter point became even worse when Hitler did not give permission for the troops in Normandy and in inner France to reinforce the positions in Normandy until it was too late to stop the attack.
The only problem is that too many people give this battle a greater value than what it actually had. It is true that it was a great victory, but if there is something most historians agree with is that, whatever the result of the fighting in the French coasts, Germany's defeat would have arrived at some moment or another: a few kilometers to the east (a few thousand, of course), was the Red Army, ready to launch Operation Bagration, which only required five weeks to wipe out the entire German Army Group Centre and allowed the Soviets to reach Warsaw after kicking the Germans out of the Soviet Union. This detail is one that is many times ignored by alternative history writers, who act as if World War Two was only an effort carried out by the Western Allies against Germany.
A failure of the landings was something everyone had in mind, including Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, who even had prepared a speech he would read in this case, but fortunately, it was not necessary. However, what if it had not happened this way? What if the Allied troops were forced to retreat back into England, much like it had happened two years before in Dieppe?
As I have already said, it would not have meant Germany's victory. Right then, the Germans were already in the middle of a tough fight in two fronts, and a German victory in Normandy would haave just pushed back what was unavoidable, although the way this would have been shown would have been very different. To begin with, the Soviets would have probably found a greater resistance to their advance (all those soldiers that would not be defending the Western Front), but the Reds' advance would have been unstoppable. They would have surely "freed" all of Germany, instead of just the eastern half, and then they might have continued pushing west into the Benelux, Denmark and France. Of course, this would mean breaking all agreements made with the other Allies, and resistance to their advances would be extreme. If this were the case, it is very probable that the German troops would rather surrender to the Western Allies rather than to fight the Russians. And that was if the Allies simply did not just launch another invasion to open the third front.: as they had already planned for Operation Dragoon to liberate Southern France, maybe the Allies would choose that path to face the Nazis and later facilitate a less intensive invasion in the north.
By the same rule, it would have been sligthtly less than impossible for this to take towards a possible peace treaty. As agreements with the Soviet Union had established that none of the fighting nations would reach a separate peace with Germany, the hope some German officers had of allying with Great Britain and the United States against the Soviet Union (one of the actual expectations by the members of the July 20th Plot, that of Operation Valkyrie fame) was clearly in vain.
Still, there are many stories in which the point of divergence is, precisely, the failure of the Normandy Landings, but few take into account the Soviet Union's presence, as I mentioned earlyer, but there are, eh? Let's see...
Example number 1: the French graphic novel series Jour J. This uchronic graphic novel series (which deals with many potential events) deals, in its 2nd number ("París, Soviet Sector"), what would have happened if a storm had taken place while the Allied ships were reaching the Normandy coast. Complete operational failure is the main consequence, and France's liberation does not begin until three weeks later, in the south (the aforementioned Operation Dragoon). This difference in time means that Stalin's Red Army manages to take over all of Germany and in the end the Soviet troops are the ones that free Paris. The Iron Curtain, instead of crossing Germany, goes through France, and Paris is the city that ends up divided in different occupation sectors, with the Seine as the dividing line. The story itself speaks about the effects a mysterious serial killer is having in the Cold War, and about a detective from the Allied French zone and his efforts to find said killer while keeping his brothel-based spy ring safe.
And example number 2: the film "Fatherland" of 1994, based on the novel of the same name, written in 1992 by Robert Harris. In the novel, the point of divergence is in 1942, when Reinhard Heydrich manages to survive the attack that was organized against him in that year, but in the film this event is replaced with a defeat in Normandy, which inexplicably leads to the United States retiring from the war, the United Kingdom surrendering and Churchill going into exile. Germany unifies the European continent into a nation called "Germania" and continues the war against the Soviet Union. When the film begins, it is 1964, as the first preparations for Adolf Hitler's 70th birthday, and in which one of the events will be a visit of the President of the United States, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. (father to John Fitzgerald Kennedy) for a high level meeting. The main characters are an SS Major called Xavier March and an American journalist, Charlie McGuire, and the former becomes involved into the investigation of the murder of a high officer in the Nazi Party, while the latter finds a similar case when she is invited to find another Nazi officer, that also appears dead. I will not reveal the end, in case someone decides to read the novel, but I can tell that the result is the discovery of a secret the Nazi Party leaders want to keep secret forever.
Something that is a bit stranger is to think on the possibility that the invasion became much more successful than what it was, which would have depended a bit on luck and a bit on strategy. For example, taking Caen in the first day would have eased enormously the later advances, as the city's deep water docks would have allowed to unload great quantities of war material, so advancing towards the south and the east would have been faster. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find anything based on this premise. Maybe someone could have written about this? Someone could be able to pull a great story out of it, surely...
Well, I hope that, in spite of how brief this post was (and the fact that it arrived a day too late), you liked this. Hopefully, next Friday's post will arrive on time. See you!
2014/06/20
Take the conveyor to Armada-2, see you later
Traveling in time has been, for a long time, one of humanity's dreams, even if science says that, theoretically, this should not be possible. The same could be said about the idea of traveling to alternative realities or parallel universes, because, well, there is no crossing point between both realities.
But, what if there were? What if someone was capable of discovering a way to travel to those parallel universes and come back? And what if it turned out that, in one of those universes, there is already someone doing exactly the same?
This is the world where the characters of the tabletop Role-Playing Game Infinite Worlds, created by Steve Jackson Games, live in.
The point of divergence of the world behind Infinite Worlds is in the year 1997, when the Dartmouth University physicist Paul Van Zandt invented the "parachronic projector", a machine that chould send matter to an alternative dimension (also called timeline). As his research advanced, he started to find stranger worlds, such as some where the Roman Empire had never fallen, or where America was formed by a medieval kingdom. After founding a company called White Star Trading, to trade with the recently discovered worlds, Van Zandt revealed his discovery to the public in 1998, and also revealed a secret related to parachronics (the new science that studied the alternative timelines and how to travel between them) to the United Nations Security Council. In answer, the United Nations created a new body called the United Nations Interworld Council (UNIC), which started a corporation called Infinity Unlimited, charged with the development of all discovered worlds. To better defend these worlds and explore others, Van Zandt started a paramilitar group known as the Infinity Patrol, whose objective is to protect Homeline (the characters' timeline), the Secret of parachronics, Infinity and the innocent people of other worlds, in that order.
As hard as the task was at the beginning, when the idea only consisted of monitorizing other worlds, the situation worsened enormously when it was discovered that Homeline was not the only timeline capable of traveling between parallel universes: a civilization known as Centrum, of great aggressivity and competency and with the will to expand its meritocratic system to other worlds, was also able to use parachronics. However, neither civilization could directly access to each other, so both groups would be forced to work indirectly, so as to weaken each other's position within the multiverse. Another problematic fact is that the Centrum agents (the Interworld Service) is taking control of several Homeline "echoes" (worlds with a history identical to that of another timeline, but with a local year previous to said timeline), for some unknown, but probably bad, purpose.
Of course, there are many other problems the Infinity Patrol has to face every day: there are worlds where magic works, others where superheroes exist, and psychic powers are known to exist in many others. In fact, as the needs of the Patrol increase, trying to recruit people from these worlds to join the Patrol and put their great abilities in the service of all humanity have become more common (the worlds that contain these people are in the list because Steve Jackson Games has many different role-playing games, all of them taking place in different parallel universes where there is magic, superheroes and/or psychic phenomena, but using the same game system, which allows players to unify all of them).
Thanks to the discoveries made by the Patrol, Homeline has changed very much by the year 2027: for example, most cars work now with hydrogen fuel cells, AIDS and cancer are very easy to heal, nuclear fusion power is a reality, and organs can be cloned for self-transplant without there being any immunity problems. However, all of these discoveries have their consequences, such as in Homeline's scientific community: in many cases, Infinity "steals" ideas from other timelines and then brings those ideas to Homeline, so the years of research in certain science fields (such as the development of new vaccines, programming of new simulation algorithms or the design of new products) have started to be useless.
Normally, the players are Agents of the Infinity Patrol, in charge of working to watch a certain timeline to protect it from potential threats, even those that may come from Homeline, or to infiltrate them and subvert those that may be a danger for the local timeline or for Homeline, whatever the reason (mainly those ideas that might lead the timeline to find out about the Secret). Due to the lack of human resources Infinity has (10,000 full-time field agents and another 50,000 agents are not enough to keep an eye on thousands of timelines), the Agents must be very versatile in their knowledge and ability to act in any circumstances, particularly when it comes down to infiltrate other places. An Agent's training is incredibly tough, as it last approximately one year, in which they live in another timeline where the Ice Age has not finished yet, and where the biggest demonstration of how hard the training can be is Sleepover, a trial that takes place in December and consists on waking several cadets in the middle of the night, leave them several hundreds of miles away from the Academy and let them find their way through sabertooth tiger and mammoth territory, just with what they are wearing when they wake up and what they can pick within 5 minutes.
There are many worlds out there, but there are few that have a great impact in Infinity's policies. I put down here some of those worlds in which Infinity tends to intervene: apart from its name (which tends to indicate what makes the timeline different from others), there is the Point of Divergence and some characteristics about the timeline when the game takes place:
But, what if there were? What if someone was capable of discovering a way to travel to those parallel universes and come back? And what if it turned out that, in one of those universes, there is already someone doing exactly the same?
This is the world where the characters of the tabletop Role-Playing Game Infinite Worlds, created by Steve Jackson Games, live in.
The point of divergence of the world behind Infinite Worlds is in the year 1997, when the Dartmouth University physicist Paul Van Zandt invented the "parachronic projector", a machine that chould send matter to an alternative dimension (also called timeline). As his research advanced, he started to find stranger worlds, such as some where the Roman Empire had never fallen, or where America was formed by a medieval kingdom. After founding a company called White Star Trading, to trade with the recently discovered worlds, Van Zandt revealed his discovery to the public in 1998, and also revealed a secret related to parachronics (the new science that studied the alternative timelines and how to travel between them) to the United Nations Security Council. In answer, the United Nations created a new body called the United Nations Interworld Council (UNIC), which started a corporation called Infinity Unlimited, charged with the development of all discovered worlds. To better defend these worlds and explore others, Van Zandt started a paramilitar group known as the Infinity Patrol, whose objective is to protect Homeline (the characters' timeline), the Secret of parachronics, Infinity and the innocent people of other worlds, in that order.
As hard as the task was at the beginning, when the idea only consisted of monitorizing other worlds, the situation worsened enormously when it was discovered that Homeline was not the only timeline capable of traveling between parallel universes: a civilization known as Centrum, of great aggressivity and competency and with the will to expand its meritocratic system to other worlds, was also able to use parachronics. However, neither civilization could directly access to each other, so both groups would be forced to work indirectly, so as to weaken each other's position within the multiverse. Another problematic fact is that the Centrum agents (the Interworld Service) is taking control of several Homeline "echoes" (worlds with a history identical to that of another timeline, but with a local year previous to said timeline), for some unknown, but probably bad, purpose.
Of course, there are many other problems the Infinity Patrol has to face every day: there are worlds where magic works, others where superheroes exist, and psychic powers are known to exist in many others. In fact, as the needs of the Patrol increase, trying to recruit people from these worlds to join the Patrol and put their great abilities in the service of all humanity have become more common (the worlds that contain these people are in the list because Steve Jackson Games has many different role-playing games, all of them taking place in different parallel universes where there is magic, superheroes and/or psychic phenomena, but using the same game system, which allows players to unify all of them).
Thanks to the discoveries made by the Patrol, Homeline has changed very much by the year 2027: for example, most cars work now with hydrogen fuel cells, AIDS and cancer are very easy to heal, nuclear fusion power is a reality, and organs can be cloned for self-transplant without there being any immunity problems. However, all of these discoveries have their consequences, such as in Homeline's scientific community: in many cases, Infinity "steals" ideas from other timelines and then brings those ideas to Homeline, so the years of research in certain science fields (such as the development of new vaccines, programming of new simulation algorithms or the design of new products) have started to be useless.
Normally, the players are Agents of the Infinity Patrol, in charge of working to watch a certain timeline to protect it from potential threats, even those that may come from Homeline, or to infiltrate them and subvert those that may be a danger for the local timeline or for Homeline, whatever the reason (mainly those ideas that might lead the timeline to find out about the Secret). Due to the lack of human resources Infinity has (10,000 full-time field agents and another 50,000 agents are not enough to keep an eye on thousands of timelines), the Agents must be very versatile in their knowledge and ability to act in any circumstances, particularly when it comes down to infiltrate other places. An Agent's training is incredibly tough, as it last approximately one year, in which they live in another timeline where the Ice Age has not finished yet, and where the biggest demonstration of how hard the training can be is Sleepover, a trial that takes place in December and consists on waking several cadets in the middle of the night, leave them several hundreds of miles away from the Academy and let them find their way through sabertooth tiger and mammoth territory, just with what they are wearing when they wake up and what they can pick within 5 minutes.
There are many worlds out there, but there are few that have a great impact in Infinity's policies. I put down here some of those worlds in which Infinity tends to intervene: apart from its name (which tends to indicate what makes the timeline different from others), there is the Point of Divergence and some characteristics about the timeline when the game takes place:
- Centrum: 1120, the White Ship does not sink while it crosses the English Channel (those who have read "The Pillars of Earth" will know what happened when it did sink). Infinity's main enemy, Centrum is the only timeline that has developed parachronics independently, apart from Homeline. William Adelin's survival unified France and England under the same throne, and the Mongols' attacks made them turn their eyes towards the Atlantic, which they crossed, taking over the Americas. By the end of the 19th century, the Anglo-French Empire controlled the entire world, but the nuclear destruction of London started a brutal civil war that only Australia managed to be free from. There, the politic-military cabal known as Centrum took power, and later rebuilt and unified the world in a strict meritocratic society in which each person is induced to a certain Service and ascends within depending on their abilities, and where cultural uniformity and slow technological progress are part of normal life.
- Reich-5: 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is murdered (yes, like in The Man in the High Castle). Infinity's other great enemy, Reich-5 is a timeline dominated by the Third Reich and the Japanese Empire, and where the United States of America are controlled by a fascist government after their defeat in the Axis' invasion of 1950, which took place a few years after Germany's victory in World War Two. Although, for a Aryan German, this world may be almost a paradise, for anyone else it is hell, as Nazis have no problem in killing anyone that dares to raise arms against them or does not fit their racist ideas. When Infinity discovered this timeline, it did everything in its hands to prevent any knowledge of it from expanding, due to the highly dangerous possibilities of what might happen if contact was established. However, it was too late: a group of Spetsnaz (Russian special forces) was detected by the Nazis when they made a training incursion into Reich-5 and attacked, leading to the death of most of the team. Although the Spetsnaz managed to destroy most of their parachronic equipment, the Nazis managed to take part of it, and, worse of all, with the body of one Spetsnaz that had an special ability to travel between worlds. Fortunately for Infinity, the Reich's internal policies prevented the formation of a large-scale group, but the SS managed to take over the parachronic research in this world, starting the Raven Division with which they hope to make their dream of a Thousand World Reich a reality.
- Aeolus: 1688, the Protestant Wind does not happen, preventing William of Orange from taking the British crown. James II's reign allows him to restablish Catholicism in England and star an alliance with France, which allows Louis XIV to win in the Spanish War of Succession. This works in France's favor later, because, when Ferdinand III dies, the French king inherits the crown. A rebellion soon happened, freeing Spain and several other territories from French domination. In 1894, the Russian War of Succession takes place: this does not directly change too many things, but it provokes the massive flight of refugees towards the west. One of them, Mikhail I. Gurevich, meets Henri Coanda in 1930, and between the two of them they create the first plane in local history, skipping propeller-propulsed planes and directly inventing the jetplane. Meanwhile, the publishing of a book that advocates in favor of the Republica as a form of government (nothing similar existed ye) leads later to a rebellion that takes place in Austria after the Emperor rejects demands of democratic reforms. The rebels are successful in expelling the Emperor and form a Republican Alliance that later convinces Gurevich and Coanda to build planes for them, allowing the Alliance to have a chance at winning a war against the invading Russians. As an extra, Infinity's special forces' boss is the local Otto Skorzeny, with the same ability for fighting as his "self" from our world, but with a republican zeal that makes him hate all of his Nazi "selves".
- Armada-2: 1588, the Invincible Armada manages to invade England and restore Catholicism in Europe, establishing its supremacy through several interventions in Europe and America. However, time allows the Ottoman Empire and Sweden to modernize and present opposition to the Spanish domination, while the French colonies in the New World have managed to independize, forming an oligarchical republic.
- Azoth-7: 1693, Isaac Newton discovers the Philosopher's Stone. In this world, Newton's discoveries in the field of alchemy completely change the world, giving an absolute power over the world to those nations that have managed to create their own Stone: England, which dominates North America: Spain, which controls South America; Venice, in control of Africa and Turkey; and Prussia, which manages to successfully invade Russia and China. The four powers not only control a world economy based on alchemy, but they also are able to travel to other stars in search of special gems and jewels that can be used for many applications.
- Caliph: 796, the printing press is invented in Baghdad. This moment gives birth to an Islamic Renaissance that changes the world, followed almost immediately by an Industrial Revolution that makes personal firearms easily available in the 11th century. The collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate into successor states was not an obstacle for advances and exploration to take place. While there is only one Christian state (Firanj, which controls the north of France, Scandinavia and the British Islands), the rest of the world is controlled by the Muslims, who, even though the local year is just 1683, it is incredibly advanced, with colonies in several exoplanets and star gates capable of communicating two points at a large distance simultaneously. However, the existant peace between the world's caliphates has been broken due to the emergence of the Jamahiriya, a powerful secular state that has taken control of the Americas (called Talentis in this timeline) in a matter of a few months, and its alliance with the Caliphate of Hind (in India), which has launched an invasion of Persia: a global war seems inminent.
- Dixie-1: 1856, William Walker keeps control of Nicaragua. His presence allows the Confederate States to break the blockade imposed by the United States, and in the end the CSA gained their independence. Both nations expand (the United States into Canada, the Confederacy towards Mexico and Central America) and, after a war between them that took place in the 1910s, a cold war ("The Long Drum Roll") exists between both nations, a war that has lasted decades.
- Ezcalli: 508 a.C., the Carthaginians discover the New World. The soon contact between both sides of the Atlantic makes new crops available for the Europeans (potatoes and tomatoes, among other things), while the natives manage to get over the problem of the illnesses brought by the Europeans. The Roman Empire disintegrated due to the Emperor's inability to control their people through the power of Egyptian grain, and several barbarian invasions prevented its resurgence, particularly when the Mongols attacked in the 13th century. Meanwhile, in Mexico, the Tenochca tribe created its own empire, and when the Black Death ravaged the Americas, the Tenochca expanded towards the north and the south, becoming a great power that trades with Africa and Asia while keeping their bloodthirsty religion and threaten to continue expanding.
- Friedrich: 1176, Frederick Barbarossa defeats the Italians in the Battle of Legnano, and later does not drown during the Third Crusade. Barbarossa's efforts give him enough power to force the Pope to return control of the national churches to the kings, and his good relationship with the Knights Templar gave him great support in a world where magic is possible. His son Henry managed to expand his Roman-Germanic Empire towards the east, eliminating the Byzantine Empire and adding it to his conquest. However, Infinity's main problem here is that the Raven Division is infilitrating this world, giving the Empire war matériel to continue with its conquest plans.
- Gernsback: 1893, Nikola Tesla marries Anne Morgan, the daughter of financier J. P. Morgan. With the resources this brings to him, Tesla manages to invent radio and builds a tower that can emit globally from Wardenclyffe, Long Island. His later invention of working wireles electricity transmission caused a global panic and an economic crash, but Morgan's efforts allowed him to establish America and Europe, restoring prosperity to the world and strengthening the League of Nations. The discovery of nuclear fission lead soon to its exploitation as an energy source thanks to the World Science Council, and when Andrei Sakharov defected from the Soviet Union to warn the world that Stalin was trying to have an atomic bomb built, the League declared the war against the Soviet Union, winning after a two-year-long war, and the League would later become a great power by itself. For Infinity, the main headache is to prevent Centrum from taking control of this timeline, as Centrum considers this world has a great potential to become another world similar to Centrum. However, Infinity also has other problems related to the sexual and racial discrimination that still exists in this timeline, which never underwent the harrowing experiences of the Second World War.
- Johnson's Rome: 31 a.C., Mark Anthony and Cleopatra win in the Battle of Actium, making Egypt the centre of the Roman Empire, which manages to survive plagues and barbarian invasions. The great change took place in the local year 1192, when Alex Johnson, owner of an interworld tourism service, arrived to this world and introduced several reforms at a local and regional level, making him the second most powerful man in the Empire (behind the Emperor), and this world in basically his propriety in the eyes of Infinity, whose main task is to stop several terrorists that have support from other worlds.
- Merlin-1: 1945, the Trinity atom bomb test sparks the Hellstorm, which brings magic to the world. The concentration of a good part of magic in the United States makes them an hyperpower capable of winning the Cold War. Without Infinity knowing, Merlin-1's CIA is spying on them, and without either of them knowing, the Antarctic penguins (who can use magic after a second Hellstorm appeared in the continent) have reached an agreement with a fascist Argentina led by an immortal Eva Perón and a group of Nazi sorceres, who have also made contact with Reich-5.
- Roma Aeterna: 9 BC., Drusus does not die while campaigning in Germany, and becomes the Emperor in the year 29 instead of Tiberius. This stabilizes the Empire, which did not fall until 400 years later than in reality due to a succession crisis. Rome's ideals were not forgotten, though, and two centuries later a Second Empire was started in North Africa, and it managed to recover the control over the rest of the Empire and discover the Hesperides (América) at the other side of the Atlantic. This Second Empire also fell, because of a combination of cultural petrification and the Mongol invasions. The Hesperides provinces would later rediscover steam power and eventually unify, crossing the Atlantic and forming the Third Roman Empire in 1806, now expanding further towards the east. Centrum's activities in this world are so great that Infinity knows nothing about how far their control reaches, something that caught them by surprise when several touristic agents met Centrum agents by accident.
- Shikaku-Mon: 1497, John of Trastámara (the Catholic Monarch's only son) survives and becomes King of Spain. While the Habsburg decayed, Japan was Christianized thanks to the efforts of the Portuguese Jesuits, and Sweden unified with the north of Germany. A republican rebellion in Portugal made the Portuguese kings evacuate to Brazil, which became an independent empire, while France obtained a global dominancy that later lost in the middle of the 19th century. A war that took place between 1927 and 1932 ended in a technical tie, killing many, and eventually turning Sweden into the first totalitarian state in the world. "Right now", the world can be described as a cyber-punkish society, where the important thing is how much money you have, and Infinity is worried about the locals being capable of creating their own parachronic technology.
- United States of Lizardia: 65 m. a.C, the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs does not fall. One of the weirdest parallels Infinity has seen, so much that even those people that have been studying it for years have yet to believe it. Basically, it is a world identical to ours (at least, up to the local year of 1991), with the same languages, same nations, similar cultures... but the locals are not humans. Instead, the intelligent species of this timeline is a set of creatures that descend from bipedal dinosaurs. Curiously, this is one of the few worlds which Infinity would like to ally with, as the dinosaurs are almost human in behaviour, and they feel that there is a high chance of friendship with these strange beings is a possibility.
See? I said a few weeks ago that I would talk about this. I hope you have liked it, that you are not annoyed because it came too late, and that you will enjoy this weekend while I think about next Tuesday's post...
2014/06/17
The Three Greats of History
History is many times developed thanks to the efforts of the people, whether it is thanks to what one of them does, sometimes because of the collective will of the group. But one thing many people that work in the field of history (and in the field of alternative history) wonderis about the fundamental factor in how history passes. There are three theories about this that historians have been calling The Great Man, The Great Moment or The Great Motherland.
- The Great Man states that it is the person, the individual, the one that makes history change and directing it along a certain path or another. The Roman Empire would have never appeared if it weren't for the efforts of Gaius Julius Caesar and his adoptive son Octavius Augustus, Charlemagne was the perfect man to establish the Holy Roman Empire, the Catholic Monarchs were the only ones that could unify Spain, without Napoleon France would have continued to be a revolutionary republic, the United Kingdom would have not been able to resist the Nazi attacks if Churchill had died before his time. History is, basically, a biography of the people that control the destiny of all those that are under their rule. This theory, although once held in great estimation by historians (such as Plutarch, who implicitly believed in the idea), it has fallen in disuse.
- The Great Moment says that it is the situation that makes events go in one way or the other. The chaos during the death throes of the Roman Republic would have convinced someone to attempt to take absolute perpetual control and become Emperor, some noble or king would have managed to unify many territories in central Europe, Castile and Aragon would have unified in order to defend each other from other nations, some general or politician would have managed to impose his will on the others and would have crowned himself as France's sovereign, England would have resisted Nazism, no matter who their leader actually was. This means seeing history as sociology, where social changes happen because of the mass movements, and influential people are people that appear in the right place and the right time and who have the required abilities to play their role. Hegel and Marx are two of the writers this idea is most associated with.
- The Great Motherland states that the thing that drives history is the regional and continental ecology, that it is driven by the mass of events joined in one instead by the individual events. An island near to the sea, looking into a great ocean, with many coal and iron veins in its territory, would have become the United Kingdom. If it is about horses, coal, iron and barley, then it would probably become something similar to Prussia. Instead, if you have rice, silver, chickens and typhoons, then the natives will have to deal with China's foreign enemies. And if what you have is gold, no work beasts or infectious illnesses and no metalworking, then the thing that is going to happen is that a foreigner will come and steal your gold while you die because of smallpox. One book that works with this idea in mind is the famous Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
There are many books that have been written about what actually makes history, and alternative history is not ignorant about this. COnsidering the fact that, within alternative history, the characters are what tend to be the ones everything written is concentrated on, so it is natural that, for them, the most popular theory is that of The Great Man. And, yes, I am a bit guilty about giving this impression, because most stories I have written about are based on The Great Man. Hey, there is a lot of historical (haha) influence in here. However, it is not always in this way, and sometimes a new story in which The Great Moment or The Great Motherland are the theories appears. I will not include stories where The Great Man is the one that makes the change, but I will about the other ideas:
- Making History by Stephen Fry, which I already spoke about in the post about Adolf Hitler, is a good example of a story that comes from The Great Moment. Hitler's non-existence not only does not prevent World War Two or the Holocaust, but it also allows someone more charismatic than Hitler to occupy his role in history, giving victory to the Nazis in World War Two (OK, there is a bit of Great Man in here, my apologies for that).
- The saga Command & Conquer: Red Alert is another demonstration of what The Great Moment can be, once more centered in Hitler. Hitler's disappearance in 1924 prevents the Nazi Party from taking control of Germany, but instead Stalin's Soviet Union becomes more powerful and begins a more brutal World War Two, and a Third World War follows several years later, a war far more deadly than the Second.
- However, Command & Conquer: Tiberium Series has much more to do with The Great Motherland: the appearance of the substance known as Tiberium on Earth radically changes the geopolitical situation, eventually destroying a good part of the planet due to the damaging effects it has in Earth life, changing the course of history forever (though, the individual known as Kane also has a lot of influence in the events...).
- Also, The Peshawar Lancers by S. M. Stirling has things change because of an environmental development: the Northern Hemisphere is bombarded with several meteorites, forcing the survivors to evacuate towards the south (Africa, India, Oceania) in order to survive the enviromental problems caused by the meteorite fall. The British Empire becomes an even more powerful entity than in real life, and at the time the book takes place (the year 2035), it is lord and master of a good part of the planet, but their technological level remains at a level similar to that previous to the First World War, although with some things more advanced than in real life.
As you can see, it is not always a person the one that makes everything change around them. It is also the circumstances, or the natural events, that can change history radically. Now that you know all of this, I hope you will come back on next Friday, where I will speak about a certain, very interesting role-playing game that is based specifically in the idea of alternative histories...
2014/06/13
The future that never happened
Given the large quantity of possibilities we have to tell stories, it is clear that it might be possible for people to ask themselves what would happen in the future, imagining that, maybe, we would already be colonizing Mars, bleeding out in another stupid world conflict or enjoying a great utopia that provides for everyone and does not allow anyone to suffer. However, for many of those stories, the passing of time has made it so that, what when they were written was the future, it became the present first and later the past.
This, dear readers, is what is known as "honorary alternative history", which does not count as actual alternate history because it was written at a time in which it seemed like the described events would happen, but in the end they never took place, for whatever reason.
There are many examples, and very famous. The best I can think about is, undoubtedly, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's film made in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke, who also wrote a novel at the same time the film was being produced and would later work on several literary sequels to the novel (2010, 2061 y 3001) that extended the consequences of the events that took place in 2001. In this latter book, after the famous scene with the monolith with Also sprach Zarathustra as the background music while our ancestors fight and make their first tools, another monolith is discovered on the Moon that, when it is being investigated by astronauts, sends a signal to Jupiter. This is the reason why Dave Bowman, Frank Poole and another three astronauts are in the Discovery spaceship while they travel to Jupiter, next to the famous artificial intelligence HAL (according to Clarke, the fact that, by replacing each letter with the one immediately after, you can get IBM, was non-intentional). However, I am not going to say what really happens in the story (that's what the film and the novel are for, after all), but I will write about the effects of trying to write over what might happen in the nearby future.
Kubrick and Clarke imagined that, by the year 2001, we would already have colonies in the Moon, several great-sized space stations, common interplanetary space travel (well, these only work when going to Mars), functioning artificial intelligences... but in other situations we would be behind the times, such as the idea that we would still be using typewriters and computers would communicate by printing on paper. Also, according to both of them, Pan Am would be chartering trips to space stations, AT&T would provide telephone services and the Soviet Union would still be alive in the year 2001, but it does not look like there is a method to connect many computers in a joint network (for those missing the joke, the former and the latter do not exist anymore, while the second is in serious competition with others; of course, about space travel and Moon colonies, there's no word).
And that is another thing that has been clearly incredible: not just the fast expansion of Internet and its influence in people's normal life, but the fact that people did not even think that something similar would ever exist. One of the few that tried their hand at it was Mark Twain, who wrote in one of his works about a device called "telelectroscope", which used the phone network to allow people to exchange information (curiously, he also wrote about something that can be easily compared to social netowrks). None of the Great Three science fiction writers (Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein) ever wrote about an interconnected computer network, although there are some similar things, such as Mike, the computer that controls all of the Moon's systems in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (Heinlein) or the Encyclopedia Galactica from the Foundation saga (Asimov).
Any work written before the fall of the Soviet Union also run into the risk of suffering this same problem. Tom Clancy, for example, tripped on this stone with some of his novels: Red Storm Rising (1986) has as its central argument the Third World War (another element that appears very commonly in fiction, but that, to this day, has yet to happen, fortunately), which starts with the Soviet Union invades West Germany in an attempt to distract NATO from a planned invasion of the Persian Gulf to take the oil the USSR cannot produce after an Islamic terrorist attack in a great Russian refinery; while The Sum of All Fears, published shortly before the Soviet Union's dissolution, shows the USSR as a supporter for the Middle East pacification plan put forward by the main character, and the patsy for a terrorist plan that intends to spark World War Three.
The idea of the Third World War is also very popular (so to speak) in the genre of future history, and many works dealing with it end up becoming obsolete due to the historical changes that have taken place since it was published. Apart from the already mentioned Red Storm Rising, we have Red Dawn (1984), which begins when the Soviets, with the aid of Nicaragua and Cuba, invade the United States of America; The Day After (1983), which shows how an attempt by the USSR to block West Berlin (again) leads to a nuclear war; The Third World War (1978), which ends with the fall of the Soviet Union after the nuclear destruction of Birmingham (United Kingdom) and Minsk (current Belarus), and Twilight 2000 (which should not be confused with the literary saga Twilight), a tabletop role-playing game where the war begins when NATO invades Poland, starting a nuclear war that ends up with the United States divided in different fragments and the destruction of the Soviet Union.
Another candidate to being flagged honorary alternative history is Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, which stated that, by the end of the 20th century, we would not only have robots, but that they would also be autonomous and self-conscious (still somewhat primitive when compared to what would appear later) thanks to the iridium-platinum positronic brain, which allowed for the robots' programation with the Three Laws of Robotics.
According to the Star Trek series, a scientist "discovered" in 1986 how to make transparent aluminium (actually, the Enterprise spaceship crew have exchanged this formula for the elements they need to build an enormous water tank that can allow them to carry to humpback whales to the 22nd century), and a series of wars called the Eugenics Wars took place between 1992 and 1996.
We could also speak about Jules Verne, one of whose less known novels was called Paris in the 20th Century. Here, the writer imagined how life would be in the French capital in the middle 20th century. It is a life where technological knowledge is preferred to cultural knowledge, having an artist or a person directly related to art as a relative is considered to be something shameful, there are no wars because the weapons designed by engineers and chemists are so advanced that no country dares start a war against others (well, that's one good thing, at least) and the main strength that impulses industry is compressed air. The main character, a young man that wishes to earn his living through writing, suffers because of the indifference of a society that does not understand nor accept his passion for literature.
Finally, Billy Wilder's film One, Two, Three, Splash!, in which the main character is a Coca Cola executive in West Berlin who hopes to expand his market to East Berlin, suffered this problem when the Berlin Wall was built... right while the movie was being filmed, pretty much screwing with the entire plot.
These are some of the many situations that can change since the moment a story is written about the future until one reaches (or not) that future. But I can tell you that I still have the hope to see humanity return to the Moon and step on Mars, something I am sure will happen relatively soon.
My apologies for taking my time to write this, but I was a bit ill and did not realize that it was time to publish this until some time ago.
See you!
This, dear readers, is what is known as "honorary alternative history", which does not count as actual alternate history because it was written at a time in which it seemed like the described events would happen, but in the end they never took place, for whatever reason.
There are many examples, and very famous. The best I can think about is, undoubtedly, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's film made in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke, who also wrote a novel at the same time the film was being produced and would later work on several literary sequels to the novel (2010, 2061 y 3001) that extended the consequences of the events that took place in 2001. In this latter book, after the famous scene with the monolith with Also sprach Zarathustra as the background music while our ancestors fight and make their first tools, another monolith is discovered on the Moon that, when it is being investigated by astronauts, sends a signal to Jupiter. This is the reason why Dave Bowman, Frank Poole and another three astronauts are in the Discovery spaceship while they travel to Jupiter, next to the famous artificial intelligence HAL (according to Clarke, the fact that, by replacing each letter with the one immediately after, you can get IBM, was non-intentional). However, I am not going to say what really happens in the story (that's what the film and the novel are for, after all), but I will write about the effects of trying to write over what might happen in the nearby future.
Kubrick and Clarke imagined that, by the year 2001, we would already have colonies in the Moon, several great-sized space stations, common interplanetary space travel (well, these only work when going to Mars), functioning artificial intelligences... but in other situations we would be behind the times, such as the idea that we would still be using typewriters and computers would communicate by printing on paper. Also, according to both of them, Pan Am would be chartering trips to space stations, AT&T would provide telephone services and the Soviet Union would still be alive in the year 2001, but it does not look like there is a method to connect many computers in a joint network (for those missing the joke, the former and the latter do not exist anymore, while the second is in serious competition with others; of course, about space travel and Moon colonies, there's no word).
And that is another thing that has been clearly incredible: not just the fast expansion of Internet and its influence in people's normal life, but the fact that people did not even think that something similar would ever exist. One of the few that tried their hand at it was Mark Twain, who wrote in one of his works about a device called "telelectroscope", which used the phone network to allow people to exchange information (curiously, he also wrote about something that can be easily compared to social netowrks). None of the Great Three science fiction writers (Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein) ever wrote about an interconnected computer network, although there are some similar things, such as Mike, the computer that controls all of the Moon's systems in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (Heinlein) or the Encyclopedia Galactica from the Foundation saga (Asimov).
Any work written before the fall of the Soviet Union also run into the risk of suffering this same problem. Tom Clancy, for example, tripped on this stone with some of his novels: Red Storm Rising (1986) has as its central argument the Third World War (another element that appears very commonly in fiction, but that, to this day, has yet to happen, fortunately), which starts with the Soviet Union invades West Germany in an attempt to distract NATO from a planned invasion of the Persian Gulf to take the oil the USSR cannot produce after an Islamic terrorist attack in a great Russian refinery; while The Sum of All Fears, published shortly before the Soviet Union's dissolution, shows the USSR as a supporter for the Middle East pacification plan put forward by the main character, and the patsy for a terrorist plan that intends to spark World War Three.
The idea of the Third World War is also very popular (so to speak) in the genre of future history, and many works dealing with it end up becoming obsolete due to the historical changes that have taken place since it was published. Apart from the already mentioned Red Storm Rising, we have Red Dawn (1984), which begins when the Soviets, with the aid of Nicaragua and Cuba, invade the United States of America; The Day After (1983), which shows how an attempt by the USSR to block West Berlin (again) leads to a nuclear war; The Third World War (1978), which ends with the fall of the Soviet Union after the nuclear destruction of Birmingham (United Kingdom) and Minsk (current Belarus), and Twilight 2000 (which should not be confused with the literary saga Twilight), a tabletop role-playing game where the war begins when NATO invades Poland, starting a nuclear war that ends up with the United States divided in different fragments and the destruction of the Soviet Union.
Another candidate to being flagged honorary alternative history is Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, which stated that, by the end of the 20th century, we would not only have robots, but that they would also be autonomous and self-conscious (still somewhat primitive when compared to what would appear later) thanks to the iridium-platinum positronic brain, which allowed for the robots' programation with the Three Laws of Robotics.
According to the Star Trek series, a scientist "discovered" in 1986 how to make transparent aluminium (actually, the Enterprise spaceship crew have exchanged this formula for the elements they need to build an enormous water tank that can allow them to carry to humpback whales to the 22nd century), and a series of wars called the Eugenics Wars took place between 1992 and 1996.
We could also speak about Jules Verne, one of whose less known novels was called Paris in the 20th Century. Here, the writer imagined how life would be in the French capital in the middle 20th century. It is a life where technological knowledge is preferred to cultural knowledge, having an artist or a person directly related to art as a relative is considered to be something shameful, there are no wars because the weapons designed by engineers and chemists are so advanced that no country dares start a war against others (well, that's one good thing, at least) and the main strength that impulses industry is compressed air. The main character, a young man that wishes to earn his living through writing, suffers because of the indifference of a society that does not understand nor accept his passion for literature.
Finally, Billy Wilder's film One, Two, Three, Splash!, in which the main character is a Coca Cola executive in West Berlin who hopes to expand his market to East Berlin, suffered this problem when the Berlin Wall was built... right while the movie was being filmed, pretty much screwing with the entire plot.
These are some of the many situations that can change since the moment a story is written about the future until one reaches (or not) that future. But I can tell you that I still have the hope to see humanity return to the Moon and step on Mars, something I am sure will happen relatively soon.
My apologies for taking my time to write this, but I was a bit ill and did not realize that it was time to publish this until some time ago.
See you!
2014/06/10
The child that could (not) reign
It is 1498. Castile and Aragon are worried, for Juan, Prince of Asturias and heir to the crowns of his parents Isabel and Fernando, died last year, maybe victim of tuberculosis, at the age of 19. As he was the only direc male descendant of the Catholic Monarchs, the only hope both of them have of keeping the unification of Spain is for one of her daughters to have a son that can continue their legacy. Fortunately, both Isabel, the primogenite, and Juana, the second child, are married and pregnant.
The first to give birth to her child is Isabel, Queen of Portugal, who gives birth to a baby boy on August 23rd 1498 in the city of Zaragoza, child who will be called Miguel de la Paz, or Miguel da Paz in Portuguese. Sadly, Isabel dies in childbirth, and her husband, Manuel I of Portugal (nicknamed "The Fortunate"), will not marry again until three years later, this time with Maria, the Catholic Monarchs' fourth child (third girl). Meanwhile, Juana gives birth to Leonor, who will eventually become Manuel I's third wife and later Francis I of France's second wife.
But, let's go back to the recently born Prince. As he is male, Miguel is recognized as heir to the Crowns of Aragon, Castile, Leon and Portugal, becoming the Prince of Asturias, Gerona and Portugal. The young child stays with his maternal grandparents, who hope that, in this way, the unification that would take place in the person of Miguel after the death of the boys' grandparents and father will be dominated by the Castilian-Aragonese side, while the Portuguese nobility expects that it might be them that control the unification. However, disgrace does not cease to happen to the family, for Miguel dies on July 19th 1500 at the age of 1 year and 329 days. The Princedom of Asturias and Gerona remain vacant, passing then to his aunt Juana and later to her son Carlos, future Carlos I, while the heir to the Portuguese throne will be Manuel I's and Maria's first son, the future João III of Portugal. The dreams of an Iberian Union would not become real until 1580, when Philip II's troops defeated António, Prior of Crato, in the Battle of Alcantara: this union lasted until 1640, when the Portuguese War of Independence happened and João of Braganza managed to be crowned as João IV of Portugal.
There is no doubt that young Miguel da Paz, had he survived the illness that took him, would have changed the course of history in ways we can barely suspect.
I can start with what is the most obvious thing: should Miguel have survived to become an adult, he would have become King of Castile first (after Isabel's death in 1504), perhaps Navarre in 1512 (if Fernando follows the same plans as in real life and sends an army there in that year), Aragon in 1516 (after Fernando's death) and, finally, Portugal in 1521 (when his father follows his grandparents). After the three crowns become unified in the same person, these would form the base of the greatest empire in history, dominating the Caribbean Sea, Central and South America and a good part of Africa and Asia. Eventually, much like it was happening in other countries at this time, centralizing efforts to concentrate the power in a fixed capital (probably Madrid because of its central position within the Iberian Peninsula and the fact that the old capital of the Visigothic Kingdom, Toledo, had its expansion stopped by the Tagus river), but, considering the Portuguese situation, it would be probable that this advances would be much slower. Perhaps a different system would have been developed, a sort of federal kingdom, in which each of the kingdoms would have local autonomy, but all of them would be always subjected to the same laws. The concentration of national efforts in the colonization of the Americas, Africa and Asia might lead to a potential isolation of Spain (it is said that the Portuguese kings did not like the fact that the Catholic Monarchs gave the union of Castile and Aragon the name "Spain", because they also felt like they were "Spanish", at least back at the time) from the affairs taking place in the rest of Europe, unless some event prompted their intervention. Such a relatively early unification between both nations would have probably prevented the Spanish and Portuguese languages from existing as such: with time, the kingdom would speak one language, surely similar to Galician but with several differences, while Portuguese and Castilian would be reduced to the level of Euskera or Catalonian, and as such spoken just in some places. The eventual conflict with France and England for domination in Europe and away would have existed, but this time the balance would favour Spain a bit more. And it is very much likely that, while the colonies would end up becoming independent, the situation might have ended up differently, of course as long as the kings and political leaders of the time were able to act intelligently.
Of course, many other things would have radically changed. To begin with, Charles, son of Juana (*our* Carlos I) would have become Count of Burgundy and Sovereign of the Low Countries in 1506, but he would have not ascended to the Spanish throne in 1516. Whether this would have eased or not his crowning as Emperor of the Holy Roman-Germanic Empire, it is harder to say, as, on one side, he would be lacking the gold and silver that was coming from America and with which he would have been able to bribe the Electors to pick him, but, on the other side, his being a person with less personal power might have helped convince the German princes and bishops to vote for his candidacy. A clear thing is that, whomever became the Emperor later, he would have had to deal with the future division caused by the start and expansion of Protestantism, which would have been even more unstoppable than it would have been in reality: if Charles V had been unable to do so with large monetary resources at his disposition, Maximillian of Burgundy's replacement in the Imperial throne would have had it a lot more complicated. The Ottoman threat would also be there, but a Spain that became more concentrated in the south and the west would, nonetheless, be able to better defend itself in the North of Africa and in the Kingdom of Naples, maybe forcing them out of the Western Mediterranean and prompting them to concentrate in attacking towards Vienna. Were Vienna to fall, the gates to Central Europe would be open to the Turks, but it would also be the call for all of Christendom to point their weapons at them, perhaps even sparking a Crusade (of course, there is the chance that some of them might be willing to ally with them, such as France). In England, if Henry VIII were to decide to divorce Catherine of Aragon (his first wife and mother of Mary, Queen of Scots) and were excomulgated, the situation would be a lot worse for England, as an unified Iberia would have left them with little support in the continent. Who knows? Maybe the equivalent to the Armada Invencible manages to defeat the English Navy, opening the way for the Tercios to restablish Catholicism as the island's main religion.
Many things are left in the inkwell about how Spain would have developed in later centuries, but, as this is a matter of great interest, it is not strange that many people may have wanted to speak about it.
The first of the examples of people that worked out young Miguel da Paz's potential luck was the first Spanish uchronia, Cuatro Siglos de Buen Gobierno (Four Centuries of Good Government) by Nilo María Fabra, gentleman that was generous in writing, as he also wrote science-fiction, and he was the founder of the Agencia de Noticias Fabra, the precursor to the Spanish Agencia EFE. Mr Fabra, in this short tale, turns Miguel into a fair and noble king, that takes care of expanding the Empire's borders in Africa and Asia, and also establishes permanent General Courts to ensure the good government of his nation. This work can be easily found on the internet, and in this link (in Spanish, I fear) you can access it, within the Iberistas forum.
In AlternateHistory.com there are loads of stories, written both by Spaniards and non-Spaniards, which speak about the same matter. For example, this link has a timeline that explains clearly and concisely the events that change due to Miguel da Paz's survival. And the story Two Lucky Princes, has as a POD the survival of not only Miguel da Paz, but also of Arthur of Wales, Henry VII's first son and Catherine of Aragon's first husband.
See? A great example of what an early death can cause. Imagine that we were living nowadays in a country that was born in the Iberian Union created in the person of Don Miguel I, King of Castile, of Aragon, of Navarre and of Portugal (and who-knows-how-many more noble titles). I am doing so right now, and I am sure that we would not have had so many problems at a national level.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you will do the same again on Uchronia Lallena's next post, next Friday.
2014/06/06
First Person Iron Storm
Well, this should have probably been about Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings, but I was a bit pressed for time and went with something else.
Ever since the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device was patented in the year 1947, the world of videogames has been present in our history. Maybe not so much as what has happened with other forms of entertainment, such as cinema or sports, but they have been there for many years. With them, the fans have lived Link's adventures, we have seen Cloud trying to stop the meteorite that threatened to destroy the planet, we tried to help Gordon Freeman to stop the Combine, but we have alsos taken our time trying to introduce tetrominos in holes to form lines, helping our favourite plumber to find his princess or, simply, trying to hit a ball in such a way that the other player will not be able to reach it.
Alternative history offers many a possibility for the world of videogames, given the versatility of ideas it can propose. Normally, videogames based on the premise of a history that could have happened in some other way tends to be of the RTS (Real Time Strategy) type, in which the player controls a group of military (and some civilian) units in order to attempt to eliminate the enemy or keep control over a certain position, or of the Great Strategy type, where you control one nation and its armies and you must declare war or make deals with outer countries in order to gain supremacy, whether it is at a regional or a global level.
Another genre that is quite good for this thematics is that of the FPS (First Person Shooter), as developing the story's background is quite easy, as long as the main character's actions fit within the established parameters. For example, in the videogame saga Medal of Honor, most of whose games take place in World War II (although some of the latest have taken place in the Cold War or even in the nearby future), always have a soldier (or severals soldiers, each of which is controlled in a different battle) as the main character, and his mission tends to be to infiltrate the enemy lines, either to destroy an advanced position, free several prisoners or find plans pertaining to future attacks.
One of these videogames (one FPS) is the one that gives title to this post: Iron Storm, by 4X Studios.
The Point of Divergence in the game's background can be found in the Russian Revolution. In real life, this event, that started on November 1917 (the part about it being called Red October is because, at the time, the Russians were still using the Julian calendar, instead of the Gregorian calendar, which was later adopted by the Communist government), took place in answer to the government that had come out of the White Revolution of the previous February, who had been unable to fulfill the promise of getting out of the wildly unpopular Great War (First World War). The Red Revolution was successful in that it took control over the main power points, although between 1917 and 1921 Russia became involved in a brutal civil war, in which the allies of White Russia (France, United Kingdom, United States) tried to support Kerensky's government, but the aid sent was not enough to stop the Communists' advance, and the Communists would finally take full control of the country and establish the Soviet Union.
In Iron Storm, the First World War does not end in 1918, but the Central Powers manage to resist the Entente attacks until the 1920s, when Baron Nikolai Akexsandrovich von Ugenberg (based on a real person, Roman von Ungern-Sternberg), who manages to take over Mongolia and, from there, invade Russia and defeat the Bolsheviks, to later invade Germany and declare war both against the Entente and the Central Powers with the sole aim of establishing a Russo-Mongolian Empire from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This invasion is partially successful, as it manages to absorb most of the German Empire's remains, but lines finally stabilize across Germany in 1929. In the end, all the European territories that have yet to be taken by the Russo-Mongols (including the parts of Germany and Austria that have not been invaded) unify in one large nation, forming the United States of Western Europe in 1933. However, the chaotic economic situation forces the USWE to depend, economically and militarly, on the British Empire and the United States of America: actually, the Alliance army has been introduced in to the American stock trade, so private investors can now speculate with the lives of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers that are fighting the Russo-Mongolian Empire.
The game takes place in 1964, in the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War. Lieutenant James Anderson, born in 1924 from unknown parents (he is a war orphan) and one of the Allied Army's greatest legends, is sent to the front so that he can infiltrate the enemy lines and destroy a secret weapon research facility, because there are suspicions that the Russo-Mongolians could be working on a powerful weapon that would put an end to the conflict in their favour. For this mission, Anderson has to fight tirelessly, crossing several battlefields and killing the Empire's best soldiers in order to reach the laboratory. The lieutenant is captured, but he manages to escape and kill several scientists, discovering in the process that the weapon is the atomic bomb. After partially sabotaging the research and taking an armored train to Berlin, where he expects to be able to steal all the data pertaining to the atomic bomb.
However, when he arrives to the Imperial Palace, Anderson is forced to defend himself from several American Black-Ops soldiers, who have arrived there to kill everyone in the building. It is then that Anderson learns a terrifying truth: an organization of businessmen and military leaders known as the Consortium has been financing the Empire in order to prolong the conflict and profit from Europe's constant need for American material and war support. Anderson was sent in order to stop the nuclear weapon research because it would tip the balance in favour of the Russo-Mongolians and put an end to the war, which is something that the Consortium does want. Ugenberg, angered for this betrayal, tells Mitchell, the American Black-Ops commander (and also the commander that sent Anderson into the mission), that he now intends to make peace with the USWE, to leave behind the legacy of a peacemaker instead of that of a conqueror, but Mitchell kills him. Anderson then tries to stop Mitchell, knowing that this might be the only chance to stop the war, but he is unsuccessful and dies. The game ends with a televised Russian news report that states that Ugenberg was killed by Allied troops, and that the war would continue in his name, followed by a sentence that, even nowadays, makes much sense for everyone:
See you next Tuesday!
Ever since the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device was patented in the year 1947, the world of videogames has been present in our history. Maybe not so much as what has happened with other forms of entertainment, such as cinema or sports, but they have been there for many years. With them, the fans have lived Link's adventures, we have seen Cloud trying to stop the meteorite that threatened to destroy the planet, we tried to help Gordon Freeman to stop the Combine, but we have alsos taken our time trying to introduce tetrominos in holes to form lines, helping our favourite plumber to find his princess or, simply, trying to hit a ball in such a way that the other player will not be able to reach it.
Alternative history offers many a possibility for the world of videogames, given the versatility of ideas it can propose. Normally, videogames based on the premise of a history that could have happened in some other way tends to be of the RTS (Real Time Strategy) type, in which the player controls a group of military (and some civilian) units in order to attempt to eliminate the enemy or keep control over a certain position, or of the Great Strategy type, where you control one nation and its armies and you must declare war or make deals with outer countries in order to gain supremacy, whether it is at a regional or a global level.
Another genre that is quite good for this thematics is that of the FPS (First Person Shooter), as developing the story's background is quite easy, as long as the main character's actions fit within the established parameters. For example, in the videogame saga Medal of Honor, most of whose games take place in World War II (although some of the latest have taken place in the Cold War or even in the nearby future), always have a soldier (or severals soldiers, each of which is controlled in a different battle) as the main character, and his mission tends to be to infiltrate the enemy lines, either to destroy an advanced position, free several prisoners or find plans pertaining to future attacks.
One of these videogames (one FPS) is the one that gives title to this post: Iron Storm, by 4X Studios.
The Point of Divergence in the game's background can be found in the Russian Revolution. In real life, this event, that started on November 1917 (the part about it being called Red October is because, at the time, the Russians were still using the Julian calendar, instead of the Gregorian calendar, which was later adopted by the Communist government), took place in answer to the government that had come out of the White Revolution of the previous February, who had been unable to fulfill the promise of getting out of the wildly unpopular Great War (First World War). The Red Revolution was successful in that it took control over the main power points, although between 1917 and 1921 Russia became involved in a brutal civil war, in which the allies of White Russia (France, United Kingdom, United States) tried to support Kerensky's government, but the aid sent was not enough to stop the Communists' advance, and the Communists would finally take full control of the country and establish the Soviet Union.
In Iron Storm, the First World War does not end in 1918, but the Central Powers manage to resist the Entente attacks until the 1920s, when Baron Nikolai Akexsandrovich von Ugenberg (based on a real person, Roman von Ungern-Sternberg), who manages to take over Mongolia and, from there, invade Russia and defeat the Bolsheviks, to later invade Germany and declare war both against the Entente and the Central Powers with the sole aim of establishing a Russo-Mongolian Empire from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This invasion is partially successful, as it manages to absorb most of the German Empire's remains, but lines finally stabilize across Germany in 1929. In the end, all the European territories that have yet to be taken by the Russo-Mongols (including the parts of Germany and Austria that have not been invaded) unify in one large nation, forming the United States of Western Europe in 1933. However, the chaotic economic situation forces the USWE to depend, economically and militarly, on the British Empire and the United States of America: actually, the Alliance army has been introduced in to the American stock trade, so private investors can now speculate with the lives of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers that are fighting the Russo-Mongolian Empire.
The game takes place in 1964, in the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War. Lieutenant James Anderson, born in 1924 from unknown parents (he is a war orphan) and one of the Allied Army's greatest legends, is sent to the front so that he can infiltrate the enemy lines and destroy a secret weapon research facility, because there are suspicions that the Russo-Mongolians could be working on a powerful weapon that would put an end to the conflict in their favour. For this mission, Anderson has to fight tirelessly, crossing several battlefields and killing the Empire's best soldiers in order to reach the laboratory. The lieutenant is captured, but he manages to escape and kill several scientists, discovering in the process that the weapon is the atomic bomb. After partially sabotaging the research and taking an armored train to Berlin, where he expects to be able to steal all the data pertaining to the atomic bomb.
However, when he arrives to the Imperial Palace, Anderson is forced to defend himself from several American Black-Ops soldiers, who have arrived there to kill everyone in the building. It is then that Anderson learns a terrifying truth: an organization of businessmen and military leaders known as the Consortium has been financing the Empire in order to prolong the conflict and profit from Europe's constant need for American material and war support. Anderson was sent in order to stop the nuclear weapon research because it would tip the balance in favour of the Russo-Mongolians and put an end to the war, which is something that the Consortium does want. Ugenberg, angered for this betrayal, tells Mitchell, the American Black-Ops commander (and also the commander that sent Anderson into the mission), that he now intends to make peace with the USWE, to leave behind the legacy of a peacemaker instead of that of a conqueror, but Mitchell kills him. Anderson then tries to stop Mitchell, knowing that this might be the only chance to stop the war, but he is unsuccessful and dies. The game ends with a televised Russian news report that states that Ugenberg was killed by Allied troops, and that the war would continue in his name, followed by a sentence that, even nowadays, makes much sense for everyone:
There is no greater naivety than the belief in the patriotism of capital. A capitalist may be a patriot, capital is not.Well, there, that is another part of culture that I have spoken about. I think I am only missing comics, manga and tabletop games. Once again, if there is some specific matter you want me to write about (whether it is something from culture, a technical term or an historical event), do not doubt in asking about it.
See you next Tuesday!
2014/06/03
The battle where the one-armed man lost the hand, but not the art.
A battle that marked the end of an era. That stopped the maritime expansion of the power of the Ottoman Empire. That had a great meaning for Christian Europe, which was trying to stop the one that was its main enemy in that moment.
In this post, dear readers, I will speak about the Battle of Lepanto, which was undoubtedly a very important event that took place in the 17th century, given the consequences it eventually had.
The idea of presenting naval battle against the Ottomans started in the year 1571, when it became known that the island of Cyprus, then controlled by the Venetians, had been taken by the Turks, and its main city, Famagusta, was being besieged. The Christians soon formed the Holy League, formed by Venetia, Spain, Genoa, Tuscany, Savoy, Urbino, the Papal States and the Knights of Mala, sending a fleet of 212 ships under the control of the Spanish Don Juan of Austria, while the Ottoman fleet was led by Müezzinzade Ali Paşa and had 251 ships.
The battle took place on October 7th 1571 in the Gulf of Corinth, in front of the ancient city of Lepanto (nowadays known as Naupacto) and ended with the loss of 7500 men and 17 ships on the Holy League's side, and 20000 men (between dead, injured and captured), more than 200 ships and 10000 Christian slaves on the Ottoman side that were freed by the winning Christians. The battle marked the end of Turkish power in the Mediterranean Sea, because, although they were able to easily rebuild their fleet, the human losses (particularly that of veteran sailors and the composite bowmen that formed the Ottoman's main sea combat force) were almost impossible to counter, and the recently built ships remained unused for years in the Golden Horn's waters, while the Christians became the dominant force in the sea.
Before speaking about what might have been, I would like to speak about a few interesting anecdotes that I consider quite interesting.
To begin with, the Battle of Lepanto was the end of the galley era: although they were still useful to face enemies within the Mediterranean Sea, out of it things changed, as galleys were not good at the very tough task of sailing through the Atlantic Ocean, where the greatest European naval powers of the time (Spain, Portugal, France, England) were pointing their gazes towards, as America was at the other side. From that moment on, the main navies of the world would be propelled by wind and sail.
Another thing, this one of great cultural value, is that Miguel de Cervantes, the famous author of Don Quixote, fought in the Battle of Lepanto as a Marine Infantry in the ship Marquesa. Although affected by a strong fever, Cervantes insisted on fighting, as "he would rather die fighting for God and his king, than to remain under deck". He received three arquebus' injuries, two on the chest and a third that damaged his left arm in such a way that would leave that hand useless for the rest of his life, so one of the nicknames by which he would be known is El manco de Lepanto (the title is a reference to him). Cervantes, proud of participating in the battle, would make many references in his works to this event: in Journey to Parnassus, he wrote "you lost the movement of the left hand, for greater glory of the right one"; The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha contains the Tale of the Captive Captain, in which Ruy Pérez de Viedma tells how, during the battle of Lepanto, he was captured by the Turks and sent to Argel, before being able to return to Spain; and, in the Second Part of The Quixote, he wrote, as an answer to the taunts written by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda (nickname used by the author that wrote the false continuation of Don Quixote in 1614) about his injuries, the following words:
In regards to urban legends, it is said that Pope Pio V, at 5 PM of October 7th 1571, ordered all the writers he was meeting with to stop all of their activities, because they had to celebrate the Christian victory. Nowadays, it would have been easy to understand, considering the great spread of mobile phones and instant message methods, but back then the fastest thing they had were messengers and pigeons, so the official news of the victory did not arrive to Rome until two weeks later.
OK, now that we have explained history, we can begin with alternative history. What things would have changed if the result had been different?
The clearest change is that the battle could have been an Ottoman victory, instead of Christian. How could this have happened? Perhaps the intervention of Alvaro de Bazán and Juan de Cardona, who commanded the Holy League's naval reserve, could have arrived too late to stop the Ottoman offensive into the Christian's center and right wing. Maybe the elements play against the Christians. Either way, a defeat would have opened the way into the Western Mediterranean Sea to the Ottomans, who would have surely used this advantage to begin much daring attacks, perhaps even launching a maritime invasion of either Italy or Spain. It would have probably failed, but either way such an attack would have left a deep footprint into the local people's psique.
Another possibility: a greater victory of the Holy League against the Ottomans. Imagine that the Ottomans lose all of their ships. And all of their admirals. This pretty much leaves the way open for the Christians to continue the battle against the Turk in much better conditions, in spite of the continuous presence of Berber corsairs, all of which would suddenly find themselves without the support the Sublime Porte gave them in older times. This victory, combined with the introduction of sail-powered ships it would have allowed Spaniards and Italians to destroy these pirates by taking the different cities that supported them best, and maybe retake the island of Cyprus. In order to go further, though, they would have needed the collaboration of other nations, which would have been more complicated (particularly France, who had decided to betray the rest of the Christian nations by negotiating with the Ottomans).
Third chance: the battle ends up in technical tie, so to speak. None of the two navies earns victory in battle, and they both have to retreat when the night falls. The ending result of this combat would have depended on how many ships each side would have lost. If they had been few, the situation would have similar to the one that existed before the battle, but if it had been otherwise, both sides could have easily proclaimed a pyrrhic victory... and the ending would still depend on the actual losses. Problems would have been lesser for the Holy League, as the losses would have been shared between all of its members and because of the development of sailing, but this situation could have easily led later to a breakdown of the League because of leadership problems.
Other things that would have changed due to the battle were those that affected the people that participated in the battle. Let's say, Miguel de Cervantes. Had he died in the battle, it would have left us without one of the greatest jewels of Spanish literature: El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, recognized world-wide as the first modern novel, and which has had so much influence both in writers and Spanish Literature students. And, had he not been injured, his life would have certainly changed, so much that he might have even decided to remain enlisted in the Spanish Navy as a Marine Infantry.
In regards to Don Juan of Austria, his death in the battle would have forced someone else to take charge of pacifying the Low Countries, which, at the time, were in rebellion (mostly the northern half) due to many reasons, the main of them being the religious question. Whoever Philip II had sent to the region instead of his half-brother in order to stop the rebellion would have certainly had a different impact. He (or she) might have been more able in the ability to hold diplomatic conversations (perhaps that person could have pacified the region by accepting, at least temporally, tolerant policies towards the Protestants that lived in what is nowadays Netherlands), or it could have been a more military capable person, who might have led the Spanish soldiers into a bloodier, and perhaps successful, end of the war.
Another person that could have died and changed everything was Álvaro de Bazán, Marquiss of Santa Cruz and one of the best sailors in Spain at the time, would have later affected the Spanish attempts to defeat the Portuguese rebels that were resisting, from the Açores Islands, the unification of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns under Philip II. Had the Portuguese been able to resist, they could have become a source of inspiration for the people in the mainland to continue resisting the unification. If he lives, as in real life, it could still change, as his experiences in the battle might have given him new ideas on how to command a fleet. A more decisive entrance of the Marquiss in the battle could have also given him the clout to convince King Philip II to accelerate the recruitment and construction of the Armada Invencible, which he would have been in charge of had it not been for his sudden deceasement while he awaited in Lisbon.
And there are so many other things I could mention, but which I have no more time (nor space) to speak of... because any of the things that happened there could have happened differently. A lost arquebus shot, a cannon shot that hits a ship somewhere else, the wind blows in another direction, a group of galley slaves rows just a little stronger... infinite variables we will never know which could have been the consequences of.
I close up with this, and I hope you have liked the story. See you next friday!
In this post, dear readers, I will speak about the Battle of Lepanto, which was undoubtedly a very important event that took place in the 17th century, given the consequences it eventually had.
The idea of presenting naval battle against the Ottomans started in the year 1571, when it became known that the island of Cyprus, then controlled by the Venetians, had been taken by the Turks, and its main city, Famagusta, was being besieged. The Christians soon formed the Holy League, formed by Venetia, Spain, Genoa, Tuscany, Savoy, Urbino, the Papal States and the Knights of Mala, sending a fleet of 212 ships under the control of the Spanish Don Juan of Austria, while the Ottoman fleet was led by Müezzinzade Ali Paşa and had 251 ships.
The battle took place on October 7th 1571 in the Gulf of Corinth, in front of the ancient city of Lepanto (nowadays known as Naupacto) and ended with the loss of 7500 men and 17 ships on the Holy League's side, and 20000 men (between dead, injured and captured), more than 200 ships and 10000 Christian slaves on the Ottoman side that were freed by the winning Christians. The battle marked the end of Turkish power in the Mediterranean Sea, because, although they were able to easily rebuild their fleet, the human losses (particularly that of veteran sailors and the composite bowmen that formed the Ottoman's main sea combat force) were almost impossible to counter, and the recently built ships remained unused for years in the Golden Horn's waters, while the Christians became the dominant force in the sea.
Before speaking about what might have been, I would like to speak about a few interesting anecdotes that I consider quite interesting.
To begin with, the Battle of Lepanto was the end of the galley era: although they were still useful to face enemies within the Mediterranean Sea, out of it things changed, as galleys were not good at the very tough task of sailing through the Atlantic Ocean, where the greatest European naval powers of the time (Spain, Portugal, France, England) were pointing their gazes towards, as America was at the other side. From that moment on, the main navies of the world would be propelled by wind and sail.
Another thing, this one of great cultural value, is that Miguel de Cervantes, the famous author of Don Quixote, fought in the Battle of Lepanto as a Marine Infantry in the ship Marquesa. Although affected by a strong fever, Cervantes insisted on fighting, as "he would rather die fighting for God and his king, than to remain under deck". He received three arquebus' injuries, two on the chest and a third that damaged his left arm in such a way that would leave that hand useless for the rest of his life, so one of the nicknames by which he would be known is El manco de Lepanto (the title is a reference to him). Cervantes, proud of participating in the battle, would make many references in his works to this event: in Journey to Parnassus, he wrote "you lost the movement of the left hand, for greater glory of the right one"; The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha contains the Tale of the Captive Captain, in which Ruy Pérez de Viedma tells how, during the battle of Lepanto, he was captured by the Turks and sent to Argel, before being able to return to Spain; and, in the Second Part of The Quixote, he wrote, as an answer to the taunts written by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda (nickname used by the author that wrote the false continuation of Don Quixote in 1614) about his injuries, the following words:
What I cannot help taking amiss is that he charges me with being old and one-handed, as if it had been in my power to keep time from passing over me, or as if the loss of my hand had been brought about in some tavern, and not on the grandest occasion the past or present has seen, or the future can hope to see. If my wounds have no beauty to the beholder's eye, they are, at least, honourable in the estimation of those who know where they were received; for the soldier shows to greater advantage dead in battle than alive in flight; and so strongly is this my feeling, that if now it were proposed to perform an impossibility for me, I would rather have had my share in that mighty action, than be free from my wounds this minute without having been present at it.There are two anecdotes about the actions of Don Juan of Austria (illegitimate son of Charles I of Spain with German Barbara Blomberg) during the battle: one of them is that Don Juan decided to dance on his ship's deck at the beginning of the battle, showing his scorn for the danger he was in; and the other is that, in the middle of the battle, he boarded one of the Turkish ships wearing his whole armor, traversed it killing all of the Turks in the ship, and he returned back to his own ship without suffering an injury.
In regards to urban legends, it is said that Pope Pio V, at 5 PM of October 7th 1571, ordered all the writers he was meeting with to stop all of their activities, because they had to celebrate the Christian victory. Nowadays, it would have been easy to understand, considering the great spread of mobile phones and instant message methods, but back then the fastest thing they had were messengers and pigeons, so the official news of the victory did not arrive to Rome until two weeks later.
OK, now that we have explained history, we can begin with alternative history. What things would have changed if the result had been different?
The clearest change is that the battle could have been an Ottoman victory, instead of Christian. How could this have happened? Perhaps the intervention of Alvaro de Bazán and Juan de Cardona, who commanded the Holy League's naval reserve, could have arrived too late to stop the Ottoman offensive into the Christian's center and right wing. Maybe the elements play against the Christians. Either way, a defeat would have opened the way into the Western Mediterranean Sea to the Ottomans, who would have surely used this advantage to begin much daring attacks, perhaps even launching a maritime invasion of either Italy or Spain. It would have probably failed, but either way such an attack would have left a deep footprint into the local people's psique.
Another possibility: a greater victory of the Holy League against the Ottomans. Imagine that the Ottomans lose all of their ships. And all of their admirals. This pretty much leaves the way open for the Christians to continue the battle against the Turk in much better conditions, in spite of the continuous presence of Berber corsairs, all of which would suddenly find themselves without the support the Sublime Porte gave them in older times. This victory, combined with the introduction of sail-powered ships it would have allowed Spaniards and Italians to destroy these pirates by taking the different cities that supported them best, and maybe retake the island of Cyprus. In order to go further, though, they would have needed the collaboration of other nations, which would have been more complicated (particularly France, who had decided to betray the rest of the Christian nations by negotiating with the Ottomans).
Third chance: the battle ends up in technical tie, so to speak. None of the two navies earns victory in battle, and they both have to retreat when the night falls. The ending result of this combat would have depended on how many ships each side would have lost. If they had been few, the situation would have similar to the one that existed before the battle, but if it had been otherwise, both sides could have easily proclaimed a pyrrhic victory... and the ending would still depend on the actual losses. Problems would have been lesser for the Holy League, as the losses would have been shared between all of its members and because of the development of sailing, but this situation could have easily led later to a breakdown of the League because of leadership problems.
Other things that would have changed due to the battle were those that affected the people that participated in the battle. Let's say, Miguel de Cervantes. Had he died in the battle, it would have left us without one of the greatest jewels of Spanish literature: El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, recognized world-wide as the first modern novel, and which has had so much influence both in writers and Spanish Literature students. And, had he not been injured, his life would have certainly changed, so much that he might have even decided to remain enlisted in the Spanish Navy as a Marine Infantry.
In regards to Don Juan of Austria, his death in the battle would have forced someone else to take charge of pacifying the Low Countries, which, at the time, were in rebellion (mostly the northern half) due to many reasons, the main of them being the religious question. Whoever Philip II had sent to the region instead of his half-brother in order to stop the rebellion would have certainly had a different impact. He (or she) might have been more able in the ability to hold diplomatic conversations (perhaps that person could have pacified the region by accepting, at least temporally, tolerant policies towards the Protestants that lived in what is nowadays Netherlands), or it could have been a more military capable person, who might have led the Spanish soldiers into a bloodier, and perhaps successful, end of the war.
Another person that could have died and changed everything was Álvaro de Bazán, Marquiss of Santa Cruz and one of the best sailors in Spain at the time, would have later affected the Spanish attempts to defeat the Portuguese rebels that were resisting, from the Açores Islands, the unification of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns under Philip II. Had the Portuguese been able to resist, they could have become a source of inspiration for the people in the mainland to continue resisting the unification. If he lives, as in real life, it could still change, as his experiences in the battle might have given him new ideas on how to command a fleet. A more decisive entrance of the Marquiss in the battle could have also given him the clout to convince King Philip II to accelerate the recruitment and construction of the Armada Invencible, which he would have been in charge of had it not been for his sudden deceasement while he awaited in Lisbon.
And there are so many other things I could mention, but which I have no more time (nor space) to speak of... because any of the things that happened there could have happened differently. A lost arquebus shot, a cannon shot that hits a ship somewhere else, the wind blows in another direction, a group of galley slaves rows just a little stronger... infinite variables we will never know which could have been the consequences of.
I close up with this, and I hope you have liked the story. See you next friday!
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