Been done. Harry Harrison did a trilogy with matriarchal reptiloids who use bioengineering for their technology. Part of the story in the first book (the only one I’ve read) is from the point of view of one of the “dinosaurs” and part from the point of view of a human boy. The human viewpoint is very secondary, though. The main character is most definitely the female reptiloid, Stallan.
Incidentally, there’s a bit in Evolution where he has a velociraptor-type dinosaur which had developed stone-age level technology. They were wiped out by that asteroid strike. If you think about it, it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that earlier species reached some level of sentience and tool making. There wouldn’t be much left in the way of identifiable artifacts from that long ago, and unless it was completely indisputable, any tools found in association with dinosaur bones would be dismissed as contamination or a hoax.
Michael Kube-McDowell’s Alternaties features dozens of alternative histories, all set off from the main timeline by small changes. One neat little twist is the discovery of an alternate universe where a peanut farmer named Carter becomes president.
I have to mention Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream, set in an alternate universe where Hitler emigrates to the US and becomes a popular science fiction writer. The title of the book opens up to discover that the book is not actually The Iron Dream, but rather Lords of the Swastika, Hitler’s masterpiece. In many ways it’s one of the greatest alternate histories since it was written in an alternate history. Lords of the Swastika is Hitler’s vision turned into a novel. It’s even badly written under the assumption that Hitler never mastered English. The Nazis do indeed triumph in Lords of the Swastika, but only as wish-fulfillment – they never came to power (a “scholarly” afterward hints that the Soviet Union now dominates Europe and is only held in check by the US and Japan). It’s a fascinating metabook.
Great recommendations from everyone, so I’ll not waste space trying to catch up on the whole thread (I was gone to visit family the past week).
MarcusF: I’ve read Delenda Est and I can vouch for it being a great story. Poul Anderson has never gotten nearly enough respect, as far as I’m concerned.
As far as my own ideas for PODs go, I actually jotted down a few long before starting this thread. A selection:
The Black Plague fizzles. The feudal system in Europe isn’t weakened in the 1300-1400s, cementing the petty fiefdoms and making it harder for Europe to ‘unify’ on linguistic-ethnic lines. Overpopulation in Europe continues until the various kingdoms attempt to push east into Muslim lands (the Crusades with a massive population backing them up). The result destroys much of the preserved civilization that helped end the Dark Ages.
In September, 1950, Truman negotiates with France to get them to leave Vietnam, as part of the Dewey Plan to establish America-friendly independent nations in South Asia to counterbalance the Red Chinese. France hesitates, but American propaganda in both Vietnam and France (aided by obscure Paris intellectuals) coupled with increasing French casualties convinces the French government that Indochina isn’t worth it. Ngo Dinh Diem’s new government gets massive amounts of American aid in exchange for open trade, open borders, and open bases: Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia all come under official, quasi-official, and unofficial American observation and protection. In 1962, Chinese and American missile boats have a three-day standoff in the Gulf of Tonkin, ending when America agrees to remove missiles from Laos. A marginal ‘revolutionary’ gang in Cambodia known as the Khmer Rouge was not brought to trial by American special forces and nobody in the Army Rangers has ever heard of Pol Pot.
The SA (Brownshirts) win Germany, after the Night of Long Knives doesn’t go to plan. Hitler is deposed, the SS scatter, and Roemer is in charge. A more conventionally socialist Germany forms the western bulwark of International Communism but maintains an Albanian standoffishness to the Soviet Union. German Jews, Slavs, and other ‘undesirables’ are forced into Soviet-style gulags and used as occasional slave labor but there is no Holocaust as such and, since Mengele fled along with Hitler, there is no medical experimentation. The Cold War effectively begins in 1934.