Sideways
Donor
For a while now I’ve really wished this website had a culture of Rec Lists. It seems a shame how old timelines get lost and new members have to try and catch up on a canon of work when it’s never really described what is important and what’s not. To try to fill that gap, I plan to write a regular rec list of AH that I have enjoyed particularly.
To kick this off, I’m going back to the AH I read when I first got online as a pre-teen. It was a different time. My Gods. It was different. “TLIAW” was just a collection of letters, most timelines were literally time lines, following a year-a-paragraph format. There was no such thing as a vignette. Or rather, most things were vignettes.
I was obsessed. Here are some of my favourites from the time that I think hold up if you’re not a child.
An Evil British Empire -
Alison Brooks was one of the early AH writers, and is mostly famous for coining the term “Alien Space Bats”. Back in pre-2000 times she wasn’t the most prolific writer, but she was one of the silliest. I could (and probably should) link to the first story with an ASB in it. But this story, with Moriarty secretly running the British Empire, is particularly strong in my memory for some reason.
The Human Timeline -
A very 90s alternate history space opera. It has a United Federation of Planets, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton get cameos. It starts off kind of Star Treky, then it goes all Babylon5-ish. It’s epic. Parts of it don’t hold up very well, but I absolutely worshipped it at the time.
Thieves Honour
I loved Alternate History Travel Guides. The setting was a collection of worlds that had developed a way to connect parallel universes and had opened themselves up for tourism. There’s lots of good examples of what are now called vignettes, but this story about the theft of the Mona Lisa particularly stuck in my mind over the years.
What if all Americans DISAPPEARED?
A little time line where all Americans spontaneously combust. The French get insulted a bit, Monica Lewinski gets a mention for some reason. This happened a lot back then.
Going back to the archives through the Wayback Machine really does demonstrate how far we’ve come in the last decade. Most of the time lines I read avidly back then are similar in quality to ones that, today, would be considered an unpromising first attempt from any newbie to the forum. It’s also odd to see how this website goes from being a site by a guy called Ian, to being a comprehensive directory of AH with a discussion forum, to absolute domination.
I kind of miss the old ways, though I was only ever a lurker. I wrote a time line when I was eleven. I think Hitler flew a Zeppelin for the navy of Nauru. I submitted it to a website and got a very polite response from a kindly gentleman whose name I wish I could remember.
To kick this off, I’m going back to the AH I read when I first got online as a pre-teen. It was a different time. My Gods. It was different. “TLIAW” was just a collection of letters, most timelines were literally time lines, following a year-a-paragraph format. There was no such thing as a vignette. Or rather, most things were vignettes.
I was obsessed. Here are some of my favourites from the time that I think hold up if you’re not a child.
An Evil British Empire -
Alison Brooks was one of the early AH writers, and is mostly famous for coining the term “Alien Space Bats”. Back in pre-2000 times she wasn’t the most prolific writer, but she was one of the silliest. I could (and probably should) link to the first story with an ASB in it. But this story, with Moriarty secretly running the British Empire, is particularly strong in my memory for some reason.
The Human Timeline -
A very 90s alternate history space opera. It has a United Federation of Planets, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton get cameos. It starts off kind of Star Treky, then it goes all Babylon5-ish. It’s epic. Parts of it don’t hold up very well, but I absolutely worshipped it at the time.
Thieves Honour
I loved Alternate History Travel Guides. The setting was a collection of worlds that had developed a way to connect parallel universes and had opened themselves up for tourism. There’s lots of good examples of what are now called vignettes, but this story about the theft of the Mona Lisa particularly stuck in my mind over the years.
What if all Americans DISAPPEARED?
A little time line where all Americans spontaneously combust. The French get insulted a bit, Monica Lewinski gets a mention for some reason. This happened a lot back then.
Going back to the archives through the Wayback Machine really does demonstrate how far we’ve come in the last decade. Most of the time lines I read avidly back then are similar in quality to ones that, today, would be considered an unpromising first attempt from any newbie to the forum. It’s also odd to see how this website goes from being a site by a guy called Ian, to being a comprehensive directory of AH with a discussion forum, to absolute domination.
I kind of miss the old ways, though I was only ever a lurker. I wrote a time line when I was eleven. I think Hitler flew a Zeppelin for the navy of Nauru. I submitted it to a website and got a very polite response from a kindly gentleman whose name I wish I could remember.