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| United States of Atlantis | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 2 2008, 10:02 PM (615 Views) | |
| SladeJack | Jul 5 2008, 12:43 PM Post #16 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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Thinking on my favorite SF, that's very true. No wonder they often use super-generic pictures of celestial bodies or even ornate designs that don't have any actual illustrations at all. |
| When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well. | |
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| TR1 | Jul 20 2008, 11:23 AM Post #17 |
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Heir Presumptive
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There's a plot description available:
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| "Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman | |
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| SladeJack | Jul 20 2008, 11:52 AM Post #18 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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Oh, great, parallelism. :rolleyes: So the next novella picks up directly after, or very shortly after, the last one left off. I wonder why London feels the need "to bend the colonists to their will" so soon after they backed London to the hilt in the last war--their loyalty was of an independent variety, working toward the common goal as they saw fit rather than deferring to British orders, good bad or indifferent, but the object of their loyalty was correct. In OTL frustration over not being able to move west of the Appalachians pissed the colonists off, but now the only thing west of the Appalachians is water. And it can't be that they're not allowed to move into French Atlantis; they were already starting to do so with no objection. British governments like North's (one gets you fifty North is PM in this timeline) could be pretty dumb but I doubt even they would try to resettle their own people once they'd become established in lands the government had already given them. I also guess the war comes before the Spanish leave Atlantis--more parallelism. Unless perhaps the Spanish join in the struggle partway through. But if Radcliff tries to get them to do that, he loses any possibility of having Spain as an ally and, more significantly, greatly diminishes his chances of having Spain's ally France as an ally. As for "changing the face of the world"--you don't suppose the later novellas will move us up to the point in OTL when the US started to emerge as a global power? If he does that he doesn't leave himself much room for Book Three unless he intends to write novellas set in the future. I certainly hope he doesn't. Besides, Atlantis is too small, unpopulated, and resource-poor to emerge as a world power. Now if they have some cultural or political contribution to make that spreads like wildfire, on the other hand . . . but then they wouldn't be so xenophobic. |
| When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well. | |
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| TR1 | Jul 20 2008, 05:13 PM Post #19 |
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Heir Presumptive
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I suspect it's going to be more purely that Britain just decides to rule at all. We saw New Hastings kill Warwick and William Radcliff fight off direct British rule in Avalon. Just having Redcoats round at all will be the provocation.
That might be a chance for HT to break with the record a bit.
I'm curious about this as well. On the one hand, he's had Radcliffs talking about how great Atlantis will be. But the two previous stories don't give us much hint of that. Even the second one, set towards the end the 19th century (when the US was starting show at least hints of becoming a power) leaves the reader feeling as if Atlantis is this oddball place in the middle of the Atlantic that thinks too highly of itself and hates the rest of the world. Incidentally, neither of the first two stories actually mentioned the importance of Radcliff(e)s. "Audubon in Atlantis" notes that the streets of Avalon are named for the pirates who lived there (Red Rodney among them), but no one in either story seems to venerate the name Radcliff. |
| "Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman | |
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| SladeJack | Jul 21 2008, 01:14 AM Post #20 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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"I suspect it's going to be more purely that Britain just decides to rule at all. We saw New Hastings kill Warwick and William Radcliff fight off direct British rule in Avalon. Just having Redcoats round at all will be the provocation." Eh, I guess. Anglophobe and anti-imperialist that I am, even I must admit that's none too reasonable. "That might be a chance for HT to break with the record a bit." Yes, but not in believable fashion. If neither France nor Spain supports them, they don't stand a chance. They're too badly outweighed by Britain--and the shorter sailing distance to Europe, the presence of large garrisons to the west as well, and less land area in which for guerrillas to move about make that disparity even more keenly felt than OTL. "Incidentally, neither of the first two stories actually mentioned the importance of Radcliff(e)s. "Audubon in Atlantis" notes that the streets of Avalon are named for the pirates who lived there (Red Rodney among them), but no one in either story seems to venerate the name Radcliff." Maybe they eventually get tired of having an aristocratic family in their midst and squeeze them out of power, like that Italian republic--I want to say it was Florence--that prohibited members of noble families from holding political office. Maybe there's even a French Revolution to follow the American Revolution and they wipe out the Radcliff line--and their radicalism changes the face of the world by putting other oligarchies on notice. No one intervenes because unlike France Atlantis is insignificant, and the Revolution eventually winds itself down into a militantly egalitarian and deeply distrustful society. That would be an okay break from OTL, but not as good as ones we've suggested earlier. More likely we won't get even that much. In all likelihood HT didn't intend to make the Radcliffs an enduring powerful family till he wrote the OA novellas and will now ignore the fact that the stories are inconsistent with this and write novellas set in that period "correcting" his omission. |
| When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well. | |
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| Makkabee | Jul 21 2008, 06:50 AM Post #21 |
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Count
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The "less land" problem isn't so much of a much -- the Americans didn't use the west as a base or refuge for eastern operations. Also remember that in this scenario the British don't have Indian allies tying down American -- excuse me, Atlantean -- forces on the frontier. |
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| SladeJack | Jul 21 2008, 07:29 AM Post #22 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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I guess, but using the less land as a wash and leaving the Indians out (I just had an amusing picture of the British trying to form an alliance with the giant geese) still won't get them anywhere near the point where they can win with no European allies. Unless the Brits, with Atlantis being so poor and being the secondary front in New World Colonization struggles. decide it's not worth pressing most of their advantages--and that wouldn't make lor much of a read. "We pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to a struggle against someone who really doesn't care all that much what we do!" We know the Brits will fight for Atlantis and if they're going to fight, they might as well make a fight out of it, eh? |
| When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well. | |
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| Makkabee | Jul 21 2008, 08:50 AM Post #23 |
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Count
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The British will certainly fight if they expect the war to be a walkover. The question becomes at what point do they decide the blood and treasure spilled is more than it's worth? The Americans made the war very expensive for Britain even before the French and Spanish entered the conflict. Whether they could have outlasted the British without active intervention... well, I don't suppose we'll ever know. They couldn't have won the way they did -- Yorktown was highly improbable without the French army and completely impossible without the French navy -- but a peace of exhaustion where Britain hardly ever suffered a Saratoga style disaster but could never win a decisive victory either and finally gave up to focus their efforts elsewhere isn't impossible. |
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| TR1 | Jul 21 2008, 10:28 AM Post #24 |
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Heir Presumptive
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As I've said in earlier in the thread, I suspect the "Fuck this" moment comes much earlier for the Brits than in OTL. We've had the Brits in OA bitch about what an obsticle Atlantis is to Terranova, which is actually worthwhile. Plus the description from "The Scarlet Band" made it sound relatively quick. Obviously, Atlantis by its geography has strategic value to Europe (if nothing else, as a pit-stop), so I could very well be wrong. In OTL, I know King George's stubborness played it's part in dragging out the process, and that would almost certainly be in Atlantis. |
| "Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman | |
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| SladeJack | Jul 23 2008, 03:06 PM Post #25 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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Maybe the British will grant the Atlanteans some sort of Dominion status after a short, indecisive struggle, and their condition is that they get exclusive use of the semi-continent as a pit stop, but take no hand in their foreign and economic policies aside from that. Maybe they even make the formerly-British Atlanteans chase the Spaniards out to make good that monopoly. If that's the case the dustjacket flap is grossly exaggerated but that's not unusual. Who are we kidding, we'll get an OTL redux whether it makes sense or not. |
| When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well. | |
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| Makkabee | Jul 23 2008, 03:52 PM Post #26 |
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Count
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Opening Atlantis started out differently than OTL -- I really liked the notion of settlements from several nations dotting the shore close by, and the way Turtledove handled their dealings with one another. I really liked the rebellion against the arrogant noble parasite. You're right however that the last section was mostly a replay of OTL. The support for the slave rebellion was different though, and I hope that plays a big factor in the next book in the series. Maybe we'll see a more racially just society in Atlantis than OTL America. |
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| SladeJack | Jul 23 2008, 04:28 PM Post #27 |
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The Grand SladeJack
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The opening showed promise but soon enough Atlantis became a European playground. The difference is that North Americans are joining Africans in chains while Asians get locked out altogether. I was hoping that what we'd see was a neutral territory where every continent had some say in its settlement. Of course, the Amerinds and Africans couldn't build ships to get there (certainly the Africans couldn't, and in the Amerind case I guess we'll have to take didn't as a stand-in for couldn't unless we ever learn just how wide the Appalachian Sea is) and if the Asians could they'd land on the west coast of Terranova instead. When they see the ship coming from the west and speculate that Asians (even mythical ones) are joining the game I briefly got my hopes up. The different countries living in each other's pockets, more or less (less as we see soon enough) was fun but that was about as little as you could deviate from OTL without having foul called. Killing Warwick was a nice deviation, but from that route they got onto an alternate course that led them to the same place as the OTL one: Europe as lord of uninhabited or sparsely inhabited continents with Britain leading the way in the struggle to colonize the most. As for the middle, pirate, story, that was pretty much a generic yarn and I don't think it owed anything to a single historical event, but it kept bringing in references that showed that small differences caused by the colonies being founded earlier (Warwick's attempts to rule New Hastings and the revolt against him are likely outgrowths of extracontinental colonization during the English War of the Roses had there been such a thing at the time) are being factored out. The slave revolt was good but again is pretty much a natural development of having the colonies's borders run latitudinally rather than longitudinally. So HT is adapting his story to the changed circumstances of the new island in an intelligent way, but he's not venturing very far off the beaten path. |
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