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Worst AH Ever
Topic Started: Jul 9 2008, 02:14 PM (672 Views)
SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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So what's the worst AH story you've ever had the displeasure to come across?

For me it was the first two episodes of the final season of Enterprise. At the end of the previous season's finale, which capped off a thrilling year-long story of a down-to-the-wire battle to keep a hitherto unknown alien race from destroying Earth, we see Archer, out of left field, captured by an alien in a Nazi uniform. We soon learn that we are in the 1940s but that the Nazis, with a different alien species's help, have invaded and occupied the northeastern US. At one point one of the Enterprise officers announces that he's discovered the reason this history is different. The aliens assassinated Vladimir Lenin a quarter-century earlier. There was no Russian Revolution, no Soviet Union, and with a secure eastern flank the Wehrmacht-Heer focused all its energies on conquering the Western Allies.

Now if there was no Russian Revolution, surely that would have affected geopolitical developments long before the 1940s. (Then again the removal of Lenin doesn't preclude the Russian Revolution, since there were so many other revolutionary leaders, and since hell, he didn't even start the damned thing!) Romanov Russia would stay in WWI till the end and participate in the Versailles conference, and would help to enforce the treaty rather than help subvert it. If despite this Germany still managed to Nazify and rearm, this Russia would be more likely to participate in the war against Hitler, not less. And even if the Germans had a secure eastern flank, that still doesn't mean they could invade and conquer Britain--they tried and failed long before Barbarossa, after all. And it certainly doesn't mean they'd be able to wage a trans-Atlantic campaign, with no bases of support. Maybe they launched from one of the off-shore colonies of one of the countries they conquered, but the US would have to be pretty dumb to let them secure such an island, and even if it did happen, a situation map in a Nazi headquarters shows that they then went the long way around and landed somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic rather than secure a beachhead near their supply base.

Later it turns out the aliens helped the Nazis because they needed their help to build some sort of high-tech weapon to let them return to their own time and place. Now if I'm a time-traveling alien stranded in a war that didn't have any impact on my own culture's history, I'm going to align myself with the side that won so I don't have to interrupt my important efforts of building a high-tech gizmo to figure out a way to change the outcome of the war. And if I'm a German scientist who benefits from an alien saying "We want to cooperate with you on a super-powerful technological project," I'm going to headquarter that project somewhere in Germany, not on another continent and right behind an active front.

The most implausible AH book I ever read was called CSA and the author's name was Howard Means. Its POD was in March 1865. Jefferson Davis invited Grant to attend a ceremony at the Confederate capitol building. Grant assumed he was going to capitulate, but in fact he promised never-ending defiance and performed an elaborate suicide ceremony that galvanized the Rebels. They then launched a renewed offensive and conquered the North with a little help from the British. Whee. :rolleyes:

An unbelievably hard-nosed Robert E Lee set up a military dictatorship despite a debilitating stroke. When elected government was restored, Forrest became President. He had a moment of racial enlightenment and decided that black and white needed to work together to make the CS great and encouraged all Confederates to redirect their old racial animosities toward the conquered Yankees instead. To show he was serious he made Booker T Washington vice president. Double whee. :rolleyes:

I don't know whether the Rebs rewrote their Constitution or the author was just being lazy but instead of a President serving one six-year term, these Presidents serve two four-year terms. A white President must have a black Vice-President and vice versa, and the Presidency needs to alternate between races. An incumbent white seeking reelection runs against a black nominee from the opposition party with a white running-mate. When a black leaves at the end of his two terms, both parties run whites with black running-mates. Every House seat is held by a black and every Senate seat by a white. By mutual consent, every public and most private institutionss provide separate but equal--and they mean it this time--and usually identical facilities for black and white. Major Leage Baseball has a white league and a black league and each league's champions meet in the World Series. The country's schools and universities have two mirror-image campuses, one for each race, though several graduate programs involve interracial cooperation. Intermarriage is strictly forbidden. The entire society is built on mutual respect and harmony between two separate races.

Thus it's very hard for Asians, Hispanics, and others to find a meaningful way to contribute to the society, though they are allowed to immigrate. Interracial children don't even have their existences officially acknowledged, and their parents are outlaws. Every immigrant is required to become some sort of Christian, if they weren't already, but I think they made an exception for Jews. The wasteland that was once the North is now home to subversive groups made up of mixed-race people, pure-race people who aren't white nor black, pure-race whites and blacks who love members of the other race, non-Christians, and homosexuals, which is as illegal as interracial-ness. The plot of the novel centers around a thriller of intrigue surrounding the actions of this subversive group and members of the President's and Vice President's families.

Get past the completely and utterly absurd POD that could never, ever, ever happen and it was actually a pretty good book. The plot element of a subversive group touching so closely on the lives of the most powerful people in the protection of the status quo makes for a pretty good thriller.
When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well.
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Makkabee
Count
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There was a short story in one of the Baen anthologies about Napoleon Bonaparte becoming a priest instead of a soldier and being an ultra Royalist. The first section of the story has him rally the Royalist defenders of Toulon to beat off the Republican siege.

The problem is he keeps on having Napoleon on the other side turning French Revolutionary victories into defeats, but then has history proceed exactly as if the French revolutionaries had won. He keeps on having all these meaningless turning points that still lead to the French Revolutionary Gotterdammerung at Waterloo.

It's the worst AH in print that I've ever read -- makes Harry Harrison look like a fucking genius by comparison.

There's a libertarian AH about how wonderful and ideal it would be if the people of the US had toppled that tyrant Washington and restored the Articles of Confederation, but I've never read it -- as with CSA the premise was such a steaming pile of bullshit that I couldn't bring myself to actually read the thing.

For worst AH novel, Philip Roth's AH is the weakest in terms of premise and resolution, but has the redeeming feature of encapsulating the cultural fears of his community. Read it in terms of alternate history though rather than as a mid-20th century American Jew's nightmare and it's shit.
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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I really hated Roth's illogical book but the way you describe it does let it make a modicum of sense. Means, yeah, the POD really sucked but it wasn't bad. It helps to imagine you're reading about a parallel universe rather than an ATL. The stupidity of the POD doesn't affect the main story too much.
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Custer
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Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes series.
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Makkabee
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I wish Harrison's S&S books were the worst published AH I've ever read.

If we expand into comic books, Luftwaffe 1946 is failburger smothered in weaksauce.

Having Goerring die and Richtoven live so that when WWII rolls around the Luftwaffe ends up with a smarter commander is fine for an AH premise, and having Eisenhower get shot down a la Yamamoto so that the Allied command is more divided and less efficient is a decent way to slow down the allied advance, but the author had to keep getting sillier and sillier to keep things going.

The Japanese discover oil in Antarctica.
The Germans develop a fusion bomb -- not fission, FUSION, and use it to destroy the Allied Atlantic fleet at sea. And so on. Even the author admitted that didn't make sense, he just didn't know how else to keep things going.
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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"Even the author admitted that didn't make sense, he just didn't know how else to keep things going."

And he didn't take that as a sign to discontinue the project?

"Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes series."

That was bad, but as Mak says, unfortunately there's much worse out there. Congratulations for avoiding that.

What I really hate about Roth's book was that it was a rare case of AH being popular across the board. So people who never read AH get the idea that that's what it looks like and don't even realize what's wrong with that. I had a number of people open conversations with something like

"Oh yes, I read a book like that [an AH book] recently myself--Did you ever hear of The Plot Against America?" :fail:
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Makkabee
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Nightmares don't have to make sense.

That pretty much boils down any defense of Roth's book to a single sentence.

I'll be the first to admit that if you're looking for plausible AH you need to look elsewhere.
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TR1
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Worst in prose: Harrison (no surprise).

But the comic series "Alter Nation" with cybernetic Edgar Allen "Dark" Poe leading the steam-punk Kaiserreich in the invasion of America was the worst AH I ever read.

I only read the prologue of the Means book, but I could see where it was going.
"Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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The prologue made me want to chuck it, and in fact it sat on the shelf for a few weeks after that (I couldn't chuck it because my brother had given it to me as a gift. I've had to give up valuable shelf space for more lousy books that way.) but thankfully, that's not where it went.
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TR1
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If I'd received it as a gift, I'd probably would have read it. Then I would have just donated it under the cover of one of our residence shifts.
"Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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Actually I still have it. I usually only throw out/dispose of/donate books I really don't like and keep books I've read around for nostalgic value. A habit I really should break myself of.
When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well.
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The Guy from Fiji
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SladeJack
Jul 10 2008, 03:09 PM
Actually I still have it. I usually only throw out/dispose of/donate books I really don't like and keep books I've read around for nostalgic value. A habit I really should break myself of.

Hell, when I moved out to Washington I gave about a box of books to a friend, sold two more to a used store, and I still have 3-4 boxes. I do a purge once every two years.
Sic Temper Molemannis!
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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One time I tried to sell three boxes to a used store. The kid looked through them and made snap judgments about what would and wouldn't sell. I think he was just making it up. He wound up only taking one box's worth. And he paid me for it in store credit--he's not getting the point that I want fewer used books, not more. I took the other two boxes to my friend, we were going to sell them on EBay but never got around to it and wound up throwing them out months later. I hate to throw out books, no matter how bad.

I should start purging.
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MapleLeafs4Ever
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If nothing else, then donate them to a public library rather than throw out books. If they don't want a particular book, they can sell it in their discard rack and buy something else for circulation. If the book is too embarrassing to admit you own it, then drop it off in the after hours book return (if your library system has them).
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SladeJack
The Grand SladeJack
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Yeah, I felt bad throwing them out. I had to move out of that apartment in a hurry. From now on they'll go to the library. I don't think I'll bother trying to sell them.
When you wipe your ass, make sure you wipe it really well.
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