Post by redsycorax on Jan 25, 2023 3:30:05 GMT
So, why are AUs so generally gloomy compared to our own? One reason might be that the most popular subvariant is those timelines where Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won the Second World War, which certainly would be far worse than our own. Any bona fide Earth-X would be a very dark place - think of Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, for example. Some of the other subvariants would also have their negative aspects- although we haven't yet seen a DC AU where the South won the American Civil War, look up Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee to witness the consequences. One steadily accumulating subvariant has a nuclear war breaking out at some point, such as the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 turning into a fully-fledged nuclear exchange (as in Justice League Animated's classic two part episode "Legends" - or even worse, as a result of the Soviet mainframe malfunction and the absence of Stanislav Petrov so that an accidental nuclear war breaks out in 1983. Further back, there are other AUs where religious dictatorships prevail- either due to the success of the Spanish Armada against Elizabethan England in 1588 (Keith Roberts, Pavane) or the non-existence of Protestantism (Kingsley Amis, The Alteration), the premature death of Elizabeth I from smallpox in 1562, or the continued existence of the Puritan Commonwealth in England past 1660 (Alan Brennert: Batman: Holy Terror).
What about "better" AUs than our own, though? For some reason, things usually seem to turn out better if the United States loses the Revolutionary War and remains under British rule (such as in Harry Harrison's A Transatlantic Tunnel Hurrah/Tunnel Through the Deep. Or, Richard Dreyfus and Harry Turtledove's The Two Georges. Although, Richard Meredith's At the Narrow Passage has a repressive British Empire pitted against a vengeful American Republican Army. Or, the British Government treats Alan Turing more respectfully in the fifties and that Earth has a headstart on ourselves when it comes to information technology because of his lengthened life. Or, Hitler is assassinated in the 1930s and the Nazis fall apart before they can seize power so there is no Second World War (Jerry Yulsman, Elleander Morning). Or would it be worse than OTL? In Norman Spinrad's Iron Dream, Adolf Hitler emigrates to the United States, so communists seize power in Germany instead of the Nazis and by its fifties, Japan, Australasia and the United States stand alone against a rapacious Greater Soviet Union. Hitler is a seriously awful pulp author here and most of the book deals with his subtextually fascist Lord of the Swastika, set in a post-apocalyptic future with a totalitarian human empire determined to wipe out mutants.
However, define 'better' in this context. Is technologically advanced necessarily better? Would a two millennium old Roman Galactic Empire be better than our own? What about an Earth that hadn't undergone two world wars last century but because of that is relatively backward when it comes to civil and human rights as a result due to the social changes that those wars initiated? On the other hand, there wouldn't be massive loss of life caused by those wars either- although there might be alternative conflicts that claimed lives instead. Or if nuclear weapons hadn't been developed in the mid-forties- which would have meant the Allied invasion of Japan in 1946 and the loss of millions of Allied and Japanese lives? And perhaps a series of devastating conventional wars of greater magnitude than our own? Axis-dominated Earths tend to be slightly more technologically advanced than our own- Man in the High Castle has humans already on the Moon and landing on Mars in 1962, but also a Nazi/Japanese Cold War about to turn deadly hot. Multiversity's Earth-10 also has Axis lunar and Martian bases- but also a hideously escalated Nazi Holocaust. On the other hand, Superman: Red Son has an ascendant technologically advanced Greater Soviet Union due to Superman's personal leadership as its dominant global power, which renders communism more akin to its propagandistic depiction as a utopian ideology of peace and plenty than was ever the case in OTL. We learn very little about how everyday citizens of the GSU view their lives there, unfortunately.
(And what about Earth-Two? Is it better or worse than our own Earth, or just different? Apartheid was gone earlier there, and Quebec is independent.)
And does different necessarily mean worse than our own? Two of the most original AUs in this context are those where Celtic polytheists are based in America due to Muslim success in Southern France in the seventh century CE (Wheels of If) or even further back, Carthage wins the Second Punic War and wipes out Rome (Poul Anderson's Delenda Est). They're not as technologically advanced as our own world, but there are serious ethical problems with wiping out billions of people through abrogating the existence of that alternate history.
If I were to apportion most effective and original DC AUs from our own, I'd have to say the aforementioned Justice League Animated two-parter "Legends" (all right yes, it's obvious I love the Justice Guild intensely given how much fanfiction I've written set on Earth-109), Alan Moore's Watchmen, Superman Red Son and Batman Holy Terror, as well as Wonder Woman Amazonia. As I've said in other threads, my chief problem with Earth-X is that it pulls its punches, something that it shares with Tangent Comics' Earth-9 and its diluted Cuban War in October 1962. And how bad is Earth-Three? I think Grant Morrison's depiction of it post-Crisis gets it right, beyond merely inverted historical details to our own, in Justice League: Earth-2. I also prefer the more recent versions of the Axis-dominated Earth-
10/X in Multiversity and the Freedom Fighters short series.
How could this benefit 5E standard continuity? Well, there's Earth-Four. I've suggested that the Silver Ladies intervention might have had some consequences on the history of the eighties there. For one thing, the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan would have been successful, Brezhnev's life has been extended due to their nanotechnology skills, the Star Wars/Strategic Defence Initiative is a lot more advanced than OTL and the USSR is more prosperous and stable, so it can develop the advanced technology needed to return the Silver Ladies to their original planetary system eventually. What would the long-term consequences be? Chernenko and Andropov might not become Soviet Premiers on Earth-Four given their fragile health would cause them to predecease a longer-lived Brezhnev, but would Gorbachev succeed Brezhnev when the latter's health crossed the point of no return? How would all this affect the Charlton heroic ensemble?
What about "better" AUs than our own, though? For some reason, things usually seem to turn out better if the United States loses the Revolutionary War and remains under British rule (such as in Harry Harrison's A Transatlantic Tunnel Hurrah/Tunnel Through the Deep. Or, Richard Dreyfus and Harry Turtledove's The Two Georges. Although, Richard Meredith's At the Narrow Passage has a repressive British Empire pitted against a vengeful American Republican Army. Or, the British Government treats Alan Turing more respectfully in the fifties and that Earth has a headstart on ourselves when it comes to information technology because of his lengthened life. Or, Hitler is assassinated in the 1930s and the Nazis fall apart before they can seize power so there is no Second World War (Jerry Yulsman, Elleander Morning). Or would it be worse than OTL? In Norman Spinrad's Iron Dream, Adolf Hitler emigrates to the United States, so communists seize power in Germany instead of the Nazis and by its fifties, Japan, Australasia and the United States stand alone against a rapacious Greater Soviet Union. Hitler is a seriously awful pulp author here and most of the book deals with his subtextually fascist Lord of the Swastika, set in a post-apocalyptic future with a totalitarian human empire determined to wipe out mutants.
However, define 'better' in this context. Is technologically advanced necessarily better? Would a two millennium old Roman Galactic Empire be better than our own? What about an Earth that hadn't undergone two world wars last century but because of that is relatively backward when it comes to civil and human rights as a result due to the social changes that those wars initiated? On the other hand, there wouldn't be massive loss of life caused by those wars either- although there might be alternative conflicts that claimed lives instead. Or if nuclear weapons hadn't been developed in the mid-forties- which would have meant the Allied invasion of Japan in 1946 and the loss of millions of Allied and Japanese lives? And perhaps a series of devastating conventional wars of greater magnitude than our own? Axis-dominated Earths tend to be slightly more technologically advanced than our own- Man in the High Castle has humans already on the Moon and landing on Mars in 1962, but also a Nazi/Japanese Cold War about to turn deadly hot. Multiversity's Earth-10 also has Axis lunar and Martian bases- but also a hideously escalated Nazi Holocaust. On the other hand, Superman: Red Son has an ascendant technologically advanced Greater Soviet Union due to Superman's personal leadership as its dominant global power, which renders communism more akin to its propagandistic depiction as a utopian ideology of peace and plenty than was ever the case in OTL. We learn very little about how everyday citizens of the GSU view their lives there, unfortunately.
(And what about Earth-Two? Is it better or worse than our own Earth, or just different? Apartheid was gone earlier there, and Quebec is independent.)
And does different necessarily mean worse than our own? Two of the most original AUs in this context are those where Celtic polytheists are based in America due to Muslim success in Southern France in the seventh century CE (Wheels of If) or even further back, Carthage wins the Second Punic War and wipes out Rome (Poul Anderson's Delenda Est). They're not as technologically advanced as our own world, but there are serious ethical problems with wiping out billions of people through abrogating the existence of that alternate history.
If I were to apportion most effective and original DC AUs from our own, I'd have to say the aforementioned Justice League Animated two-parter "Legends" (all right yes, it's obvious I love the Justice Guild intensely given how much fanfiction I've written set on Earth-109), Alan Moore's Watchmen, Superman Red Son and Batman Holy Terror, as well as Wonder Woman Amazonia. As I've said in other threads, my chief problem with Earth-X is that it pulls its punches, something that it shares with Tangent Comics' Earth-9 and its diluted Cuban War in October 1962. And how bad is Earth-Three? I think Grant Morrison's depiction of it post-Crisis gets it right, beyond merely inverted historical details to our own, in Justice League: Earth-2. I also prefer the more recent versions of the Axis-dominated Earth-
10/X in Multiversity and the Freedom Fighters short series.
How could this benefit 5E standard continuity? Well, there's Earth-Four. I've suggested that the Silver Ladies intervention might have had some consequences on the history of the eighties there. For one thing, the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan would have been successful, Brezhnev's life has been extended due to their nanotechnology skills, the Star Wars/Strategic Defence Initiative is a lot more advanced than OTL and the USSR is more prosperous and stable, so it can develop the advanced technology needed to return the Silver Ladies to their original planetary system eventually. What would the long-term consequences be? Chernenko and Andropov might not become Soviet Premiers on Earth-Four given their fragile health would cause them to predecease a longer-lived Brezhnev, but would Gorbachev succeed Brezhnev when the latter's health crossed the point of no return? How would all this affect the Charlton heroic ensemble?