Actually, that’s very similar to the international situation in Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory series of novels (in which, as you may have guessed, the POD is the South winning the Civil War). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Turtledove#The_Southern_Victory_Series.
Howard Waldrop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Waldrop) wrote a short story, “Hoover’s Men,” in which Herbert Hoover, after leaving the presidency, becomes head of the FCC and imposes a vigorous regulatory system that facilitates television (color, yet) hitting the mass market in the late 1930s. But he doesn’t really explore the effects on politics or international relations.
Heck, there’s one I’ve been meaning to write. The Trent Affair was an incident when on November 8, 1861, a U.S. warship boarded a British mail ship and arrested two Confederate agents travelling to Europe. There was a big kerfluffle and a lot of posturing from the Americans and British, with the latter’s Parliament drafting a very nasty letter in response but it fortunately being toned down by Prince Albert. The Americans, having briefly hailed the captain of the warship as a hero, were quick to sober up and back down, not wishing war on two fronts. Albert died of typohid on December 13.
Divergence point: Albert dies a mere six weeks earlier.
Result: The letter is not rewritten. War hawks in Parliament press the issue and a naval war ensues. 13,000 battle-hardened British troops already stationed in Canada threaten U.S. territory, which despite having a much larger population, is not sufficiently organized to defend itself from North and South. The British threaten to burn Washington (repeating their actions in the War of 1812) and it looks like they may succeed. Lincoln is forced to make concessions in order to keep Northeastern industrial centers intact (which he knows will be critical if the Confederacy is to be defeated), yielding sparsely-populated western territories to British North America (i.e. proto-Canada). Lincoln’s critics, of which there are many, jump on this. Horace Greeley sniffs that Lincoln has yielded one Washington (the territory) to save another (the District). The civil war continues, with Robert E. Lee scoring early victories. George McClelland, former commander of the Union Army but suspended by Lincoln in 1862, runs agasint him in the 1864 election and wins. Though he tries to bring the Civil War to an end, it’s beyond his abilities and the seceeded states remain Confederated.
Meantime, the British quickly realize that they have no chance of holding onto their gains in Western North America. The Americans are multiplying and expenading westward too rapidly. Unable to encourage sufficient numbers of colonists from Britain, they instead start a systematic campaign in support of the underground railroad, rapidly draining the slave population from the Confederacy, causing its complete collapse and reassimilation into the United States circa 1885. The British apply the same colonial practices to the escaped blacks as they have to other “coloured” Empire populations, as in India. There is a great deal of overt racism and indoctrination. The blacks, with white educators, are sent West to populate and ultimately defend that region should the U.S. ever decide to retake it. They build the transcontental railroad as they go. The Confederation of Canada is briefly delayed, to 1885.
In the alternate “present”, Canada is on the verge of celebrating its 1985 centennial. The border between the Unitied States and Canada is one of the longest in the world, but neither side would dream of leaving it undefended. Alliances in the two World Wars have softened relations a bit, but in recent years there has been a great deal of tension surrounding another international incident. An American draft-dodger, seeking refuge in Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam, was gunned down by Canadian border guards as he tried to swin across the Columbia River (since 1862, the official border, though there has been occasional “Forty-Four Forty or Fight!” rhetoric). Racial tensions aggravate the situation, since the guards are black (as is most of the Western Canadian population) and the would-be dodger was white. Western Canada is highly militarized (by “real” Canadian standards) and advanced Avro Arrows routinely make “sovereignty flights”, sometimes playing chicken with American F-14s and the occasional Alaskan MiG. Trouble is, not all of the posturing is directed against the Americans or Soviets. The Easterners in Toronto and Montreal seem less and less responsive to Western Canada’s needs, and some arguments can be made that a (typically Canadian) polite form of Apartheid has been forming for the last hundred years. Is it time for a Canadian civil war, with the main prize being the Alberta oil fields? Canadian nuclear silos are manned but few can guess at their targets and the clock is ticking.
I’ll get back to you when I have a first draft.
See Harry Harrison’s The Stars and Stripes Forever. But he took that POD in a different direction than you’re proposing.
Interesting idea but the doctor was too devoted to the environment for such a diversion. Some of today’s biodegradable plastics can be traced back to his work with soybeans.
A better question would be: what if Dr. George Washington Carver had a computer and the internet at his disposal?
Blast his oily hide!
Honestly, I had the idea before Harrison’s book was published. I swear.
That’ll teach me to procrastinate.
I think you should still do it, Since Harrison’s is very much “Rah, rah USA !” I think it would be interesting to see a Canadian perspective on the subject.
Isn’t *all *of Harrison’s work “Rah, rah, USA!”? All that I’ve read has and it turns me off.
September 11th, 2001 might have passed without incident, but the nation is stunned by the anthrax attack in the Washington DC Metro the next march. Gore endures scathing criticism for ignoring the clear hints about fundamentalist Islamic development of bioweapons and wasting his efforts persecuting Middle Eastern men who just wanted to learn to fly.
Critics paint rosy scenarios showing that Bush would have at least retaliated against the perpetrators, and a few other folks who happen to be in the way…
Not really, read Make Room, Make Room (the book that gave us Soylent Green) or Bill the Galactic Hero among others.
Even if you were being serious, it’s a dull, predictable story.
Now, if Gore was elected President and in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, getting severely injured in the attack and leaving the response to Vice-President Lieberman… that has potential. You’d have to wait a while to get the sufficient historical perspective, ten years at least.
Hernán Cortés happened to arrive the year before, thereby not coinciding his arrival with the expected return of Quetzalcoatl in the year of Hun Hunahpu’s return on the Aztec cyclical calendar. As a result Moctezuma thought him to be simply a marauder and was able to get the Aztecs to band together with the Tlaxcaltecas in an effort to slay their common conquering enemy. The extra 2,000 warriors from Tlaxcala therefore never joined up with Cortés, and indeed the 30,000 inhabitants from Tlaxcala were never slain. The extra numbers resulted in the Aztecs winning the battle. (A stretch, I realize, although even with the horses and modern weaponry he would only have had 500 men w/o the army from Tlaxcala). Cortés, realizing his certain death had he returned to Spain defeated, agreed to remain as advisor to Moctezuma.
As a result, everything that would have occurred after their surrender never happened - since his men are all dead, a smallpox outbreak does not break the Aztec’s spirits, Tenochtitlán does not get destroyed by Cortès’s soldiers, Cuauhtémoc does not surrender. Cortès, upon hearing that Velasquez has sent more troops for his arrest for insubordination, prepares the armies of both people (remember the Tlaxcaltecas are now allied with the Aztecas) for his own survival. Spain gives up, the New World discovery is postponed, Mexico conquers the new lands of North Mexico and South Mexico, the balance of power has shifted for all time, penis ensues.
…which quickly bogs down in a bloody stalemate, with U.S. Air Command carpet-bombing Japanese cities into apocalyptic firestorms, and Japanese civilians taking to the hills to become guerrilla fighters. Stalin sends two armies into the Sakhalin Islands and Hokkaido, strengthening positions for a quick strike onto the crucial main island of Honshu. As American casualties mount, the U.S. is forced into an infuriating round of three-way peace negotiations which result in a permanent stalemate and ideologically partitioned Japan, with a Communist, Moscow-dominated North (renamed Japanese Siberia), a central, nationalist, xenophobic, and Emperor-worshipping Nippon, and an American-occupied Southern Japan (Kyushu and Shikoku).
Humiliated, Truman declines to run for re-election and Eisenhower wins in a landslide on the promise to contain further Soviet expansion. When a bellicose Stalin springs the Berlin Wall in the spring of '49, Eisenhower decides to nuke Moscow – before they will be able to retaliate in kind.
Hooray?
Trying to beef up his image for a second term, President Gore takes a “hard hand” approach to North Korea, culminating in the U.S.-U.N. led “liberation action” of late 2003.
Despite the U.S.’ claims, inspectors are unable to find an concrete evidence of North Korean nuclear weapons—in fact, their entire nuclear program was backwards and primitive, perhaps years away from creating a deliverable weapon.
On the homefront, a conservative movement blasts Gore’s decision to send U.S. troops to fight in “the U.N.'s war.” U.S. military planners are criticized for not anticipating the massive need for food and basic infrastructure from North Korean population, and for being ill-prepared for the continuing threat posed by Chinese and loyalist Korean communist partisans.
Kim Jong Il’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Something like that.
Not to hijack this thread, but given the Clinton Administration’s well-documented “obsession” with fighting terrorism in general and Al Qaeda in particular, the notion that President Gore would reverse this trend and ignore early signs of terrorist activity doesn’t make sense.
OK, the German General Staff takes Lenin and puts him in a railcar headed for Finland Station. There he launches The Revolution.
The Germans keep the railcar sealed to ensure the toxin of Communism does not escape.
What if it did?
The Germans become a Socialist Republic united with the Soviets at the same time a combined British/French Army mutany vapor locks the Associated Powers in place.
The war never ended. One side can draw on the endless resources of the Soviets. The other of the New World. The East babbles mindless BS about worldwide socialism while The West goes on and on about Freedom. Both sides become military dictatorships.
Technical innovation is hampered by massive losses at the front and a natural conservatism in societies fighting for their lives. People who might ‘make trouble’ are sent to the front.
I have never seen any fiction that addresses this.
As you describe it, the result sounds 1984-ish.
OK, so on 7 December, 1941 the American cruiser USS Pearl Harbor is on nuetrality patrol in the North Sea when she is attacked and sunk by German airplanes.
In the Pacific, the Japanese declare war on Germany as an excuse to sieze (Vichy) French Indochina. The American fleet (with a few Japanese allies) sails to Suez with a large contingent of Marines.
World War II in Europe with no Pacific theater. Again, I have never seen this POD (unlikely as it is) discussed.
In the 1930s, the US Army held that anti-aircraft guns were the basis for the defense of cities against air attack. They held two tests, where a sock target was towed behind an aircraft and was subject to small- and then large-calibre anti-aircraft fire.
In our time line, the targets were untouched. As a result, the US went into fighter aircraft and aircraft carriers in a big way.
What if the two targets were both shot down?
We might presume this would have happened by dumb luck, or perhaps because aircraft were simply eas(ier) targets for AA fire than they are in our timeline. How would this have changed things?