Weekly Update #242! Tales From Alternate Earths is Available for Preorder

Editor's Note

In case you guys haven't read it already, go check out Dale Cozort's "World War II Was a Team Effort, Deal With It". This was perhaps one of the most popular posts we've on The Update in months. Dale is already working on Part 2, so stay tuned for more WWII discussion that is sure to excite all of you alternate historians out there.

And now the news...

Coming Soon: Tales From Alternate Earths

I just realized I know a lot of people involved in this anthology, but lets start from the beginning. In case you don't know what Tales From Alternate Earths is, here is the description from Amazon:

Our world could have been so very different... 

Eight stories take us on a journey into how our world could have been. What if the nukes had flown that day over Cuba? What if Caesar had survived? Imagine the Tunguska meteor with a different outcome. What if there was a true story behind HG Wells' most famous tale? See the world as it might have been if China discovered the New World first. And what if all of this was never meant to be and dinosaurs ruled the Earth? 

Authors Jessica Holmes, Daniel M. Bensen, Terri Pray, Rob Edwards, Maria Haskins, Cathbad Maponus, Leo McBride, and collaborators Brent A. Harris and Ricardo Victoria show us the world that might have been - if the butterfly's wings had fluttered a different way, if the world changed between heartbeats, if a moment of decision saw another choice. 

This is the fourth anthology from Inklings Press, aiming to provide a platform for new and upcoming authors and to open the door onto different worlds.

Besides my Facebook fried Brent Harris, long time readers of The Update may recognize the name Daniel M. Bensen, who has contributed a lot of articles to the blog. So congrats to him and everyone else who got a story accepted in this anthology. Tales from Alternate Earths is current available for pre-order in case you want to reserve your copy today.

Video of the Week

If you were one of the only people on the Internet not to watch it, here is the honest trailer for Zack Snyder's Watchmen:

I'm also not going to lie...I liked this movie. I know its sort of controversial in comic circles, but its dumb fun and it has a great soundtrack. In other news, don't forget to check out my new video on why Hollywood loves to destroy California:

Still waiting on title card from Marc. Will keep you posted.

You Should Also Check Out...

• SFFWorld's interview with Paul Kane, author of Sherlock Holmes and the Servants Of Hell.
• How excited Germany is to be a good guy in the next world war (via The Beaverton).
• The cover reveal for Lou Antonelli's Another Girl, Another Planet.
• The winner of The Qwillery's July 2016 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars: Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine.
• Why the presidents need a council of historians according to The Atlantic.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger for Amazing Stories, a volunteer interviewer for SFFWorld and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not exploring alternate timelines he enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the day when travel between parallel universes becomes a reality. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.

What If Linear B was the basis for the Roman Alphabet?

Guest post by Daniel Bensen.

The Roman Syllabary, still often called the Traditional European Syllabary, is ultimately derived from Cretan glyphs, spread by the civilization ofacross the northern. Thesimplified the syllabary for their own use, which the people ofimported more or less wholesale. Theempire spread the syllabary across, where it is still used today for sacred or traditional texts, from to, to as well of course indocuments around the world.


Everybody else mostly writes in Hebrew nowadays, though. It’s much easier that way.

[Author's Note: Thanks to Brandon Koller for creating the font.]

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Daniel M. Bensen is an English teacher and writer in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is currently preparing for publication his time-travel adventure/romance Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen.

Map Monday: Quantum Europe by Daniel Bensen

Guest post by Daniel Bensen

This week's Map Monday is a guest post from our friend Daniel Bensen. Check out his blog, Kingdom of Evil, and see his maps: American Nation-States, Mars from War of the Worlds and Eurasia colonized.

Browsing alternate history maps like you do, and I got to wondering. Of course, the borders in a given area (say Europe) depend a lot on historical contingency, the arbitrary choices of leaders and plain old accident, but geography plays a role, too. Unless your alternate history is very alternate indeed, mountains and rivers still function the same way to hinder or aid armies and merchants. So given this geography, what state borders are most likely?

I went to Euratlas Periodis and its series of historical maps of Europe. Then I popped in an entertaining audiobook into my iPod and started tracing the little black lines between 1000 and 2000 CE. Here’s what I got:

A few borders have remained relatively unchanged for the past thousand years: Portugal assumed its present shape during the Reconquista and stuck that way, and France has never managed (or wanted?) to cross the Pyrenees. The Eurasian Steppe is usually occupied by some large state or other, everybody wants a piece of coastline, and Central Europe is just a mess. Focus on only those long-lived borders, and you get:

…in other words a smear of the last thousand years of history.

I’m not sure what series of events might have lead to such a map in the 20th century. Constantinople ascendant over Rome? The absence of Charlemagne? Christian Mongols? A more severe Black Plague? Or maybe we can blame those dang-blurned Protestants, taking over Western Europe and telling rival royal families not to marry each other? What do you think happened?

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Honorable mention this week goes to Bruce Munro's "Happy Shiny Caliphate" (or "Krapman's Caliphate). You can read the description here. If you want to submit a map for the next Map Monday, email me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com with your map attached and a brief description in the body of the email.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

Best of 2013

Another year of exploring the multiverse has come to an end. Its time once again to recap what we learned this year and pick out the best alternate history of the year.

Just a reminder, there really is nothing scientific about my selections. The works we honor could have been published this year or decades ago. I only honor subjects we covered this year. Some are picked using my own subjective opinion, while others are based on the most page views received. So without further ado (I'm on a budget so I was only able to buy a little ado this year) I bring you the BEST OF 2013!

Best Book

Out of all the books we reviewed this year, I felt the best reviewed book on The Update had to be Dominion by CJ Sansom, reviewed by Alison Morton. This alternate WWII book which features a Britain that made peace with Germany in 1940, won this year's Sidewise Award and was described by Alison as being "an exciting, but moving account of people who become heroic but remain very human."

Best Anthology

We didn't review many anthologies this year, but my vote has to go to Alt Hist 5 edited by Mark Lord. Although there were a couple stories you could skip, it was still another good entry for the only alternate history periodical on the Internet. Please continue to support original alternate history by either buying a copy or sending your own submission.

Best Short Story

I was split on this decision, so the honor for this year's short story goes to "43*" by Jeff Greenfield and "Adrift on the Sea of Rains" by Ian Sales. "43*" gets a shout out for the dubious distinction of being reviewed not once, but twice, on this blog. "Adrift", meanwhile, in my humble opinion should have won the Sidewise short form award. Go check this out.

Best Comic

The honor for this distinction has to go to Before Watchmen, which was reviewed in its entirety through a series of posts by longtime contributor Sean Korsgaard. Check out Sean's introduction to his reviews and read all of his opinions on the prequel to Watchmen using this tag.

Best Film

Although it might be debatable whether this is actually alternate history, Django Unchained gets the nod for best film this year. This revenge fantasy set in the Old South caused quite a bit a controversy, but it was rather entertaining movie. I certainly recommend it.

Best Television Series

I was surprised by how much traffic this review brought in this year so I could think of nothing better than Samurai 7 to pick as the best television series. Reviewed by Sean Korsgaard, who called it the "best anime I've ever seen" is a steampunk-retelling of Seven Samurai. So if you would like to see some steampunk not set in Victorian England, this is a good pick for you.

Best Map

Daniel Bensen submitted a lot of great maps to The Update, but his American Nation-States has to be the best:

Read the article to find out how the map was made.

Best Article

With so many alternate histories about whether the Nazis won World War II or whether the Confederacy won the American Civil War, it is refreshing to see a truly original what if like Ben Ronning's Alternate History and Superheroes. In this article Ben describes the comic industry's experimentation with counterfactuals over the years. Go and check it out now!

Best Interview

This was a difficult category to pick a winner, but if I had to pick the single most interesting person I interviewed this year it was podcaster Jordan Harbour. Host of Twilight Histories and the upcoming Battles of Rome podcast, Jordan has continued to produce great content and is a true fan of our favorite genre. More importantly, he is an interesting guy who has led a full life. Learn more by reading my interview and checking out his podcasts.

Best Contributor

This year's best contributor goes to...everyone who submitted a guest post to The Update in 2013. Yeah, maybe this is a cop out, but this year has been full of excellent guest posts. From contest entries, to author promotions and fan posts, I couldn't have provided such great contest all by myself. Thank you to everyone who submitted this year. I look forward to seeing more work from you, and hopefully new faces as well, in 2014.

Well that's it for year 2013. See you all next year when on January 6th, The Update returns to a full schedule.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. His new short story "Road Trip" can be found in Forbidden Future: A Time Travel Anthology. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

What would Eurasia look like if it had been colonized and chopped up like North and South America?

Guest post by Daniel Bensen.

I can't say why. Maybe it was the Gondwanans or those pesky Martians, or some other invader entirely, but what we get is the polar opposite of the native-run North America you know and love.

Yellow is religion, Blue is language, red perceived ethnicity, Purple culture, Green trade. Looking at them all superimposed, it's easy to see the sad history of Eurasian colonization.

They came from the sea, expanding inland from coastal fortifications down rivers and sweeping across plains. Their early colonies in Southeast Asia were slow to expand, giving the natives some time to mount a resistance and force concessions. As their technology developed, however, the invaders moved faster, spreading across plains and forests, forming unstoppable cultural/economic superpowers. United as the earlier colonies were not, these states grew much larger, transforming vast tracts of land into a form that could support their burgeoning population.  The natives were killed by war, disease, starvation, and eventually simply outbred. Soon, aside from some mixed populations in Southeast Asia and some relics hiding in the desert, tundra, and mountains, all that remained of the original Eurasians were place-names, some words for animals and plants, and a few quaint local customs.

This project comes from Dan's to-be-published novel, The World's Other Side. Find out about his other projects on his website. Also find him on Twitter and Deviant art.

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Daniel M. Bensen is an English teacher and writer in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is currently preparing for publication his time-travel adventure/romance Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen.

What if the War of the Worlds had actually happened?

Guest post by Daniel Bensen.

Seen here are the national boundaries of the generally recognized countries of Mars drawn over a false-color elevation map. Population centers are marked in red. Gray denotes uninhabitable areas.

Martian civilization developed in the deep equatorial valleys Buro'fa'sa-uu and then spread westward. Areas of low elevation became desirable as farmland, and there were several waves of invasions from the mountains to the lowlands. The lowlanders however, could grow more food than the highlanders, and so eventually developed armies that kept the highlanders in the mountains. In modern times, highland clans have combined to form nation-states, but they are still very fragmented. Lowland states are larger, more politically organized, and more advanced technologically except in the northern latitudes, where civilization gives way to nomadic tribes. The big basin of La-uu'hi/veo'sa-uu was discovered relatively recently and settled by northern lowlanders. It, and the two lowland equatorial areas form the three big political powerhouses (or "continents") on Mars.

Surrounded by uninhabitable mountains, the lowlands of Mars form inverted "continents" in an ocean of peaks and plateaus.

The cradle of civilization in the equatorial valleys of the central continent of Buro'fa'sa-uu  still holds many ancient hill tribes. These inhospitable places form the ancestral homeland of most of the inhabitants of the more prosperous and advanced Buro'fa'sa-u/bo countries. Fewer tribes still persist in the uplands of the eastern continent of Filuu'cuu'sa-uu, although they are far more homogeneous. La-uu'hi/veo'sa-uu, settled in historical times by the Filuu'cuu'sa-u/bo'la-uu is more politically unified. The far northern steppes of Buro'fa'sa-uu and Filuu'cuu'sa-uu are not technically countries, but rather international territory claimed by various indigenous nomadic tribes.

Modern Martian politics could be described as the story of the old civilization of Buro'fa'sa-uu pitted against the more progressive Filuu'cuu'sa-uu and La-uu'hi/veo'sa-uu. The technical arms-race between the two in the 18th and 19th centuries by the human calender likely led to the developments that made the Earth Invasion possible, as well as the political climate that made the Invasion profitable.

For more, see Martian Law by Daniel M. Bensen.

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Daniel M. Bensen is an English teacher and writer in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is currently preparing for publication his time-travel adventure/romance Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen. Tune in to his podcast next week for more exciting developments in the world of Martian Law!

American Nation-States

Guest post Daniel Bensen.

What would North America look like if, for whatever reason, it had developed indigenous nation-states rather than federal states of colonists?

This is a thought experiment a little different from what I (and everyone else) usually do with alternate history, which is to change an event in the past and extrapolate outcomes, then illustrate those outcomes with a map. What I did here is start with a map. Five maps. See those little colored maps at the top? Those are based off of real maps that trace the way people communicate, trade, and live with each other, based on a lot of interesting statistical analyses (and also US census data).

Yellow is religion, or what belief system the majority of the population belongs to (not necessarily the state religion), based on this census map of religion in the US.

Orange is perceived ethnicity, based on this census map of self-identified ancestry in the US.

Blue is language family, based on this map of indigenous languages. Of course the brushstrokes here are very broad; and you may imagine many minority languages, extraterritorial enclaves, and dialect continua to complicate the rather simple picture.

Purple is culture, or how closely the ways of life of different people resemble each other, based on this map of how frequently people in different parts of the US communicate with each other.

Green is trade, or how much people in different places exchange goods and services, based on this map of dollar bill circulation in the US.

I traced boundaries around those geographical blocs, superimposed them, and found that some of those blocs correspond to each other. That is to say, cultural difference correlates with trade, communication, and language (I'm not convinced it correlates with religion or ethnicity, but feel free to disagree), with a lot of effect from the underlying geography (the Mississippi River, the Rockies, the Appalachians, and the North-South divide are visible in most maps). The blocks that most closely matched each other I traced around with black borders, trying to match those geographical boundaries as much as possible. The result is the big map you see above. The more different the colors, the more of a change you see going across a border.

You'll notice I haven't labelled the map. That's because this map might represent a lot of different timelines. Maybe no plagues killed off the Native American population, and we're left with a situation like post-colonial Africa ("the Democratic People's Republic of Comanche"?). Maybe this from a timeline where indigenous people domesticated horses ("The Union of Three Fires"?). Maybe European colonists came, but only with medieval technology (the Motherflippin' Gruinmarkt!). Maybe I accidentally deleted my version of photoshop, and sai doesn't do labels. Maybe I want to see what names and histories YOU think should be attached to those countries.

Come on! Let me hear 'em!

This project comes from Dan's to-be-published novel, The World's Other Side. Find out about his other projects on his website. Also find him on Twitter and Deviant art.