Timeline Thursday: Tarrantry Saga

I've been wanting to talk about the Tarrantry Saga for a while now, but have held out because I honestly haven't read any of the Tarrantry stories. Still its one of the oldest collaborative alternate histories, with stories from the late 1990s, that is not associated with any of the major communities and I felt it should get some attention. So if you don't know what Tarrantry is, lets get stated with this map:

Yep, that is a third British Isle, no doubt made of the bodies of all the butterflies that needed to die so we could get those 1939 European borders we all recognize. The backstory is that Tarrantry had a Celtic culture that became friendly with Rome and later became a semi-independent duchy of France. When the French Revolution happened, the Dukes split from the Republic and Tarrantry gained independence and the dukes were promoted to royals by the Congress of Vienna. Wanting to preserve their independence, they built up their navy for defense, although due to their size they were only ever a middling sea-power at best. Tarrantry soldiers played roles in several important events in the early to mid-20th century, including World War I, the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

Although Tarrantry is ASB, plausibility was never the intention. The Saga actually got its start as a thought exercise on the Battleship v Battleship discussion board (now defunct) about what ships a middle-rank European maritime power might build in the first half of the 20th century. The discussion helped flesh out the Tarrantry universe and led to several short stories. For a time the Tarrantry Saga was actually quite popular, with flags for the Royal Terrentrian Navy and a more detailed maps of Tarrantry being created. Someone even thought the Saga was even notable enough for a Wikipedia article, although it was later deleted.

Sadly, many of the sites associated with the Saga have gone offline, but you can still find references to them at places like The Naval Fiction Board. I still want to read some of the Tarrantry stories one day since they are part of an interesting period in the history of alternate history community. With so many alternate historians centered on just one site, its important to remember that back in the day things were more decentralized and we got a lot of original and fascinating takes on alternate history.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger on Amazing Stories and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not writing he works as an attorney, 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 and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.

Timeline Thursday: Winged Hands of the Reich by SpanishSpy

"Winged Hands of the Reich" is a silly, but enjoyably meta timeline that you can read on the AltHistory Wiki. Created by SpanishSpy, its point of divergence happened in 1940 when the Zheronians ("a fierce batlike species") arrive on Earth using their ships equipped with ISOT drives and ally themselves with Nazi Germany as part of their plan to conquer humanity. With the help of the Zheronians, the Axis powers defeat the Allies and divide the planet between themselves. With the planet under the heel of fascism, humanity begins to colonize the Solar System.

So...do you see what I meant when I said it was silly? Trust me, it gets even weirder the deeper you go into this timeline. For example, Adolf Hitler gets cybernetic enhancements and personally kills Joseph Stalin, while Charles de Gaulle becomes a space pirate. This is one of those timelines, however, that is not meant to be taken seriously. References to ASB, ISOT and other popular alternate history tropes are prevalent throughout the timeline. Take Operation Sealion, which only succeeded in this timeline because the Germans had the help of the bat-like Zheronians (and if you don't understand why that is funny then turn over your alternate historian card this instance!). In fact, discovering them all is half the fun of reading "Winged Hands of the Reich".

You can really tell SpanishSpy is a true fan of alternate history, not only from what I mentioned above, but also because of all the cameos by famous alternate historians in the timeline. Harry Turtledove, L. Sprague de Camp and Philip K. Dick are all leaders of the dissident literature movement of Pluto, a dumping ground of the Reich for undesirables (which includes not only John Birmingham, but also real life Jewish partisan Mordechai Anielewicz, who was made famous as a POV character in Turtledove's Worldwar series). S. M. Stirling, sadly, never made it to the relative safety of Pluto and was eventually captured by the Reich (a reference to his banning from AlternateHistory.com perhaps?).

To be fair, "Winged Hands of the Reich" is not without its flaws. The articles associated with the timeline are rather bare and not much work has been done since 2013. Additionally, I couldn't find any maps, flags, photos or any other original graphical content associated with the timeline, just stock images (hence why I used the image above that I found through Google instead of pulling it from the timeline). With a dedicated crew of contributors, this could become a first class ASB scenario that will make readers both laugh and think critically of the genre they love. As for now, its just junk food, which should always be consumed in moderation.

If there are any other web original timelines you would like me to review, please share in the comments below or email me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger on Amazing Stories and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not writing he works as an attorney, 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 and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.

Timeline Thursday: Hockey Zombies From Outer Space

So when I commented on Facebook the other day that I was alerted to the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup victory by the fireworks going off in my neighborhood my friend Jen challenged me to "write a short story about the day the hawks won like turn it into an alternate history story mixed with sic fi and zombies". At first I laughed it off until my mind actually started working on that very idea. It inspired me to write this short story and reboot the Timeline Thursday series. So enjoy and apologies ahead of time for the completely misleading title...

You've ever heard of Enrico Fermi?

Seriously? What do they teach you kids in college. Nevermind. Fermi was a scientist. Worked on the bomb in the 1940s. The bomb. One of the smartest people in the world Fermi was and one day he asked where are all the damn aliens were at? The galaxy as old as it is you think we would have heard from them by now. Now all we have to do is look outside to answer his question.

Yes I'm saying aliens caused this. You really think everything happening  right now was done by humans? Don't believe everything you read on the Internet, not that we have that anymore to worry about anymore.

Yeah I heard that one too. Tell you the truth I thought at first it was some biological weapon that got loose before I got tapped to head the Project. It all began when they noticed something in the Oort Cloud...um the Oort Cloud is this sphere surrounding the Solar System full of comets and...

So you know about the Oort Cloud but not Enrico Fermi? Fine, whatever, back to the story. So this thing that shouldn't be moving broke its orbit and started heading toward Earth. I remember the exact day they discovered it too. That was the day the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in 2015. I wonder if Duncan Keith got picked up in any of the sweeps. Be a real shame to lose him.

Sorry, anywho, no one knew what to make of it. It looked like an asteroid but when we took a closer look we saw...things on it.

Hard to describe really. Like dead trees with branches reaching for the stars. We kept prying eyes away from it and most of the other governments were on board. We just kept it in our sights and prepared for the worst and then...it stopped. For a few years it just sat there orbiting the sun near Jupiter, minding its own business until...

Exactly, the meteor showers. Nice catch, maybe there is hope for you here after all.

I'll get to that, this is more important. When all those surprise meteor showers were reported around the world we knew we screwed up, but we didn't know how truly fucked we were. It was slow at first. Increase in missing persons, food shortages, seemingly random acts of violence, towns waking up discovering they were covered in yellow dust...

Spore is perhaps a better name. They are actually microscopic creatures that enter the host and take over the higher functions. They force to victim to gorge themselves to give them the nutrients they need to start replicating. Then the growths begin so they can store more of themselves before going poof and use to winds to spread a new generation of spore babies to other hosts. Of course, sometimes they use the direct approach. Scratching and biting. I'm sure you had you share of that, huh?

Sorry to hear that, but what you did was a mercy. Whoever they were was long gone before they tried to do that.

Of course, it doesn't help, but what else is there to say at this point? Empathy is what makes us human and we aren't fighting anything human. We think that thing up there is actually a probe. Something left here by someone very old and very powerful to watch us and wait for the time when it had to kill us. That thing is the answer to Fermi's paradox. We haven't found any aliens yet because someone kills them off before they even get a chance to say hello.

Fight? How do we fight something we can't even reach? Kid, look around you, the fight is over. We lost. Don't let these guns and tall walls deceive you. This is the sinking of the Titanic after everyone has been ordered to abandon ship and the rich are the first in line for the lifeboats.

I agree, that is bullshit, but I rather save some than let everyone die. That is the Project's stated purpose anyway. We are building the ark to survive the flood and we are taking two of every dirty politician, trust fund brat, Wall Street scumbag, Hollywood whores and every other kind of our "betters" we can find. All putting their faith into something that no one has figured out a good name for yet.

Now you are asking the right questions. I am not sure what everyone else around the world is doing right now to survive, but you can bet your ass everyone from the highest plutocrat to the lowliest peasant is trying to stave off the darkness. I heard the Poles actually shot a rocket into space with frozen embryos on board. Hah! Apparently they can into space.

Sorry, bad joke. Like I said, we all have our plans, but ours is the only one that is going to work.

Because its my plan. When you were studying liberal arts, I was actually doing something useful with my student loans. I'm not ashamed to admit it, but I am a certified genius and the good old US of A recognized that and gave me a job. Before the Project I was working on the most secret of secret projects. Man, those were the days. Never-ending funding and not a single ethics committee in sight...

Right, I'll just cut to the chase. We are going to resettle in parallel reality where history turned out differently as we know it, preferably one with a developed enough infrastructure to support an influx of temporal refugees.

You're joking? Genocidal aliens and zombies aside, I honestly thought this would be the hardest concept to sell.

Counterfactuals? Never heard of them.

Spare me the explanation. I'm glad you are excited, but let me fill you in on some history not in your books. So there was this guy called Nikola Tesla...

I don't care if you've heard of him, let me finish. These next parts are very important. So Tesla head a strange signal over one of his machines. Crazy Serb thought he was hearing a message from the Martians. Turns out he was actually communicating for the first time in recorded history with someone from an alternate reality. Those who knew the truth covered it up in fear of how people would react.

Don't have too much faith in humanity kid. People can be kind of stupid, especially when they learn their savior or prophet is no where to be found on this other Earth. We found a lot of new toys too. Mostly harmless stuff really. Some of it we even released to the buying public and raked in the cash. Other stuff...well lets just say I know Uncle Sam isn't a saint, but he is certainly not a monster.

Trust me if we thought it would work against the zombies we would unleashed those dogs a long time ago. Anywho, the US government has been studying, communicating and travelling the multiverse now for more than a century. They have pulled what funding they can from groups like NASA and even used the whole UFO conspiracy craze to distract people from the research happening at Area 51. Pretty clever, huh?

Cliche? Everyone is a freaking critic. Well the plan now is to find the right reality that can support us. It can't be some primitive world where we never progressed beyond walking apes. Most of these people haven't even looked at dirt in their lives, much less farm it. It also can't have too many angry natives who decide to dispose of all those illegal immigrants crossing over into their reality. So while we man the barricades here we have been sending teams of soldiers, scientists and historians to find our new home. That's why you were picked up in one of the sweeps.

Isn't it obvious? We need historians in the field so they can learn about these worlds and tell us how they are different. That is important for picking our new home. We need to understand these worlds before we can live on them.

Classical history is good. We just got a report from one team that watched a chariot race where Central Park should have been. If you are lucky, maybe you will even get to go there.

Yep, that is why you are here. You may just be a graduate student, but you seem to know your history. Plus playing soccer all those years kept you in good shape, which is important. Some of these worlds can be pretty dicey and knowing how to run is a plus.

I'm not going to lie. We have lost teams before and probably will lose some more going forward. This is dangerous, but you can save lives this way and more importantly...listen I have been pushing for more recruits, any we can find. We need more teams for what I have planned.

Well for one thing it means I get to save some useful people for a change. For another, if these aliens exist here they can sure as shit exist in these other timelines. We haven't found evidence of them yet, but it is not like we can just commandeer a telescope and take a look. For all we know we could be doing this forever. Abandoning one timeline for another every time the aliens decide the time is right to wipe us out.

No, its not pointless. Remember, I'm a genius. I need more teams travelling farther than ever before. Going to the most distant realms of the multiverse until we are not even sure the people we meet there are still human. We are either going to find a reality where the aliens don't exist or we're going to find someone badder than them. Someone we can deal with to bring those bastards down and maybe even save this Earth. Our Earth.

So kid, what's it going to be? Are you ready to take a trip into the great unknown or are you going to take your chances outside these walls?

Good choice.

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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.

Timeline Thursday: The Irish Empire by John J. Reilly

Today's Timeline Thursday comes after an exhausting search for an old work from the Golden Age of Online Alternate History. After reaching out to members of the community for some help and using the Wayback Machine, I finally found what I was looking for: "The Irish Empire" by John J. Reilly.

The timeline is actually a short summary of a fictional book. It tells the story of an Ireland that is conquered by the Roman Empire and grows to become a major maritime power after the fall of the Western Empire. Some of its accomplishments include discovering North America in the 700s and converting the Eastern Slavs to Roman Christianity. Yes, I know this sounds like a typical wank, but like many great works of fiction, its the bad guy that makes the story stand out.

In this case the bad guy is the Quetzal League, a Native American civilization that began after a Mississippian culture absorbed the Mesoamerican civilizations. Their culture was likened to the Indus Valley Civilization by the fictional author for its stark uniformity, but it is almost Lovecraftian with its culture of self-obliteration and desire to spread its teaching across the world. It is only stopped in 1989 when the Quetzal League mysteriously collapses in a fit of mass suicide that is meant to parallel to the fall of the Soviet Union.

"The Irish Empire" is a delightful critique of our own history which just enough touch of the weird to make it truly memorable. I was happy to discover there are still others who have fond memories of Reilly's work, not just from the people who helped me find the old website, but also from this map I found on AlternateHistory.com that shows SRegan's intepretation of what the world of "The Irish Empire" looks like:

Sadly this post does not have a happy ending. By seeking out the old timeline I was reminded by the fact that John Reilly is no longer with us. Back when the community was much more decentralized, I must have visited John's site dozens of times looking for updates or new works. It is still sad to know I won't be able to do that anymore. You can still see his old site thanks to the Wayback Machine and I highly recommend you take a moment and check out "The Irish Empire" and other works by John Reilly.

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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.

Timeline Thursday: Let's all go down the Strand - Images of 1984 reboot by Will Ritson

A really quick Timeline Thursday because I have been slacking on posting. A while back Sean Korsgaard reviewed "Images of 1984 - Stories from Oceania" by Will Ritson. It is an AlternateHistory.com timeline centered around a world where the events of Orwell's 1984 actually happened, but it uses the fan theory that states Oceania is only confined to Britain and the rest of the world is fine.

It was a great dystopia that turned Britain into North Korea. Characters from the novel interacted with famous historical people of the time including Oswald Mosley, Eric Blair and billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch as Britain evolves into Oceania and eventually is liberated in the 21st century by a coalition of foreign powers.

Well the doubleplusgood news is that Ritson has begun work on reboot to "Images of 1984" which he is calling this time: "Let's all go down the Strand - Images of 1984 reboot". Much like the original, this timeline hinges on Mosley reuniting with the Labour party in 1931, thus avoiding tainting himself with fascism. The timeline was only rebooted a few weeks ago, but already it has wet my appetite for more "Images of 1984" updates.

The story is not told in a straight narrative. Through brief snippets that jump around three centuries, Ritson drops hints about how Oceania came to be, what was happening in the background during 1984 and what post-Oceania Britain is like. Not all of them seem to make sense at first read, but they give glimpses about what future plot lines that may emerge in later updates.

That is where the bad news comes in. Ritson so far has only posted sporadically with several days between each one. The current break is about a week old as I write this and there is no guarantee when the next one will come out. Still the reboot is a quick read that I think will get you excited for me. You can always read the original to satisfy your craving.

Long live Big Brother!

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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.

Timeline Thursday: An Examination of Extra-Universal Systems of Government by Ephraim Ben Raphael

I decided to do a little digging and discuss an AlternateHistory.com favorite of mine that has not been updated in quite some time. It is called "An Examination of Extra-Universal Systems of Government" by Ephraim Ben Raphael. It features a fictional traveler who is writing a book covering how different forms of government succeeded (and failed) on different timelines.

The timeline covers different types of socialist/communist, anarchist/libertarian and monarchist forms of government, with other chapters hinted at. Ephraim even includes an chapter on non-traditional states before the timeline went quiet back in September 2013. Updates were in the form of excerpts from the book where the narrator interviews people in the timeline, usually important people inside the government type being featured, and gives a brief history of the timeline. Ephraim also provides maps and flags, such as the one below from a world where there are two United States:

And his scenarios have inspired other map makers, like Bruce Munro, who made this map based off of Ephraim's scenario where socialism was the dominate form of government:

The key draw to the timeline for me, however, is when these governments fail. Although the fictional author of the book tries to present an unbiased view of these different types of governments, its when he visits the worlds where these systems collapsed that you get neat little micro-dystopias. My favorites include a failed libertarian America that is now confined solely to Guantanamo Bay and a rump Soviet Union...IN SPACE!

Sadly, as I mentioned before, the timeline has not been active for quite sometime. Hopefully one day Ephraim will return to it, but in the meantime, go read what he has already written. The easily digestible chunks of alternate history goodness are great for those who don't want to commit to a full timeline, but more importantly, it is just a great piece of alternate history.

As always, if there are any timelines you would like for me to check out or ones you would like to recommend to our readers, please contact me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.

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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.

Timeline Thursday: Great White South

A while back I was an active contributor on the Alternate History Wiki. Some of you might remember my work on the collaborative timeline, "1983: Doomsday", but there was another timeline I also contributed a lot of my time and energy. It was called "Great White South". Check out the map below to get an idea about what this timeline was about:

As you can probably guess, "Great White South" features a warmer Antarctica that can support human colonization. Originally created by user NuclearVacuum (aka Devon Moore), the point of divergence happens in the far past where Antarctica becomes mysteriously warmer without raising the world's sea levels. Alien space bats are certainly in play as this warming event is never explained.

Humans eventually discover the cold continent and the written history of the timeline begins. First members of the Fuegian culture expand across the continent, later followed by Europeans. Colonization by Europeans are minor affairs due to the distance and harsh terrain. Russians tend to dominate these early efforts, but colonization picks up in the late 19th century with the British, Germans, Danish and Chileans all carve out their own enclave. Following World War I, the political map of Antarctica changes drastically after the Russian empire collapses into new independent colonial and native states, with the Americans even grabbing a piece. Antarctica continues to be involved in global affairs although decolonization does not happen until the late 20th century.

"Great White South" tends to parallel our timeline's history, unlike the horrifying "Green Antarctica", but it was still a neat collaborative timeline to work on. It lacked the scope of "1983: Doomsday", but still allowed for some world building as different cultures who usually wouldn't live near each other interact. Sadly it doesn't look like much has been added to this timeline since 2011, but perhaps one day a new contributor will pick up where we last left off.

As always, if there are any timelines you would like for me to check out or ones you would like to recommend to our readers, please contact me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.

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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.

Timeline Thursday: Where Hearts Were Entertaining June by PlatoonSgt

I touched on this briefly in a past Map Monday, but now I am ready to talk about PlatoonSgt's timeline Where Hearts Were Entertaining June, currently being published on Alternate History.com.

It is set in a world where the little known English Armada ("little known" because I didn't know anything about it until recently) was more successful in breaking the power of the Spanish navy. In the peace treaty the British get Brazil and set out to colonize it, leaving the east coast of North America to the French, Dutch and Portuguese, completely screwing up the map as we know it. Don't believe me? See below:

The World in 1750.

PlatoonSgt goes into a lot of detail about how these alternate colonies evolve culturally, economically and politically.  As you read the timeline you see how Brazil becomes even more cosmopolitan (with a diverse number of ethnicities and religions intermingling) than the English colonies of North America in our timeline.

PlatoonSgt also doesn't ignore the butterflies and recognizable names disappear quickly as a new generation is born (allowing for some pop-culture references including a Scottish "King in the North" named Robert). What is even more refreshing is that he spends time not just discussing European and American history, but also the changes to China, India, Indonesia and elsewhere. Coverage of the areas outside of "western civilization" is a common omission in many alternate histories and I am glad PlatoonSgt didn't make this same mistake.

The timeline currently stretches to the 1750s, but I am still reading updates from the 1730s so I can't comment on the entire timeline. Still I like what I have seen so far and look forward to reading the rest.  As always, if there are any timelines you would like for me to check out or ones you would like to recommend to our readers, please contact me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.

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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.

Timeline Thursday: CSA Today by Matthew White

Years ago, people looked at the state of American politics and asked a simple question: who actually won the American Civil War? It is not that ridiculous of a question. The last half of the 20th century was full of southern politicians, on both sides of the political spectrum, holding positions of national importance. So Matthew White decided to showcase how the political careers of northern and southern politicians would be different if their respective regions were separate nations in his timeline "CSA Today".

I will be completely honest: this is not a very plausible timeline. White doesn't go into detail about how the South won the American Civil War or how the CSA handled the end of slavery (a crisis that historian Roger Ranson thought could have broken up the nation in the 1880s if not handled correctly). The CSA's continued existence to the 1960s is simply presented as a matter of fact with no explanation. Meanwhile, the butterfly effect is completely ignored by having world history still play out as it did in our timeline, with recognizable political figures still gaining importance in their respective nations.

The separate histories of the two nations differ drastically. The American history tends to be kind of dull, with issues such as civil rights and national healthcare having been dealt with earlier. The Confederate history tends to be the more interesting of the two and darker. White portrays the Confederacy as a poor, corrupt and intolerant nation racked by civil disorder. I can already hear the furious clicking of keyboards as people prepare to tell me everything that is wrong with this scenario, so please let me preempt that by getting to the point of this Timeline Thursday.

Many alternate histories are criticized for their author's political bias and rightfully so. That being said, there is a fine line between political attacks and social commentary/satire. Both can be controversial, but only one can successfully act as the warped mirror of society the author intended. Regardless of whether or not you agree with White's timeline or whatever message you think he was trying to get across, you can't ignore the fact that alternate history (like science fiction in general) can and has been used to point out the flaws in mainstream society. "CSA Today" is an early example of this phenomenon in the young online community of alternate historians and probably influenced many of those who read it.

For that reason alone I felt it deserved some recognition, because even works of alternate history that are implausible (and borderline offensive) can still have an impact on our community. As always, if there are any timelines you would like for me to check out or ones you would like to recommend to our readers, please contact me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.

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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.

Timeline Thursday: Out of One, Many by Erwin Wodarczak

I know balkanized North Americas are old hat with many alternate historians, but at one point we all had to experience it for the first time. For me it was "Out of One, Many" by Erwin Wodarczak. To give you an idea of what we are working with, here is a map:

North America in 1878.

The timeline is, according the author, inspired by "What If Elbridge Gerry Had Been More Rational and Less Patriotic? (1787)" by William Riker, original published in What If? Explorations in Social-Science Fiction edited by Nelson Polsby. The point of divergence is in 1787 when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention fail to come to an agreement on congressional representation. A conflict over Vermont between New England and New York breaks the United States further apart and the Union eventually dissolves.

"Out of One, Many" features a lot of elements that caught my attention as a young alternate historian. It has an enlarged Virginia controlling the Midwest (except for the Western Reserve), a French Louisiana that would create an empire across the Great Plains, a British West Coast and smaller states like New Jersey and Delaware making a go as independent nations instead of being shoehorned into a larger nation. This timeline formed the foundation for how I approached all balkanized North America timelines and it still holds a special place in my heart.

Perhaps I am being overly sentimental, but I do believe the early 21st century was a golden age for online alternate history. There was a bevy of personal author sites where you could find timelines and even tie-in fiction. Today most of these sites have disappeared, but you can still find them using the Wayback Machine. That is when I rediscovered Wodarczak's "Out of One, Many" in 2009. I created a new project that I dubbed "Save Our Alternate History", where I would copy these old timelines (with the author's permission, of course) and post them on the AltHistory Wiki.

"Out of One, Many" was the first, and only, timeline that I transfered to the wiki. Although Wodarczak gave me his blessing, the second timeline I tried to transfer failed after the author refused to give me permission. Stymied, I lost interest in the project and moved on to other things. The original timeline is still intact on the Wiki, so I highly recommend you go and read it.

I am starting to think I should rename this series "Throwback Thursday". I am not sure how many retro timelines I will cover, but I am enjoying this and I hope you are too. If there are any other timelines you would like me to check out or you would like to recommend to our readers, contact me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.

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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.

Timeline Thursday: The Drowned Baby Timeline

For the inaugural Timeline Thursday I would like to go a little old school and recommend The Drowned Baby Timeline by Johnny Pez. To give you an idea of what we are working with, check out this map below:

That is a map of the Polish Commonwealth in 1945. You see in this world, a certain well-known Austrian drowns as a baby. History carries on as usual until Ernst Röhm launches a right wing coup of Germany. Unable to maintain his hold, he opts for a quick, victorious war against Poland in 1936. Unprepared for war, the Germans are eventually driven back outside the gates of Warsaw (by a cavalry charge no less). Germany is defeated and is divided between Britain, France and Poland.

Poland, surprisingly, annexes their portion of Eastern Germany and reforms itself into a multi-ethnic federation called the Polish Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is tested in 1944 when they go to war with the Soviet Union over Lithuania and things go well for them thanks to the help of German scientists and generals fighting for the Poles. The post-war Poland enjoys a cultural renaissance and finds itself an important player in global affairs.

The Drowned Baby Timeline is one of the first timelines I remember reading when I discovered the Internet's alternate history community. Original posted on Soc.history.what-if, the timeline uses the Great Man Theory by arguing the right person (or the wrong person in this case) can have an impact on history. Although there are many serious subjects throughout the timeline (from civil rights, genocide, nuclear weapons, etc.) the series has a humorous tone. It is full of historical in-jokes and pop culture references ranging from the Lone Ranger to Casablanca. It was also amusing to read about Eric Blair argue against the Great Man Theory of History, but he is just one of many historical VIPs to make an appearance in this timeline.

You can check out the complete The Drowned Baby Timeline at Johnny Pez's blog where he also posts updates to the Sobel Wiki. If there are any other timelines you would like me to check out and recommend, contact me at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.

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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.