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Old 11-10-2017, 08:46 AM   #63
Astromancer
 
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
Default Re: GURPS Lucifer-5?

Two points.

First, WWI made airplanes, which were better attack platforms, far more popular that airships. There was always a big preference for airships right into the 1930's. heck blimps saw action in WWII. They were very useful against submarines.

No WWI means that Airships get more investment longer. The technical challenges of airships are greater than airplanes, true, but the benefits of greater cargo load and range aren't to be lightly dismissed. Airships would be a going concern in this world for practical reasons.

Second, H.G.Wells is the author this crowd needs to read for this period. From the early 1890s until the 1930s all intellectually serious young people read Wells. There are reasons that C.S.Lewis attacks Wells in several of his works. "Mr. Wells," according to one major period intellectual, "told us all that the future wasn't going to be what respectable people said it was going to be." This news was amazingly radical in it's implications.

Without a WWI to break hearts and kill trust, this would be a vastly more optimistic, if still seriously scary to many people, world. WWI created a sense of total break with what came before, and on a level that WWII never approached, but all the trends of radical where in place before 1900 and normally before 1880. Events came faster because of the war, but they would have sped up anyway.

Take the Irish issue. Even with the crisis this world has from the Tunguska event, Irish Homerule/independence agitation would continue. Home Rule was almost granted. The fact that the Kaiser would have been against Home Rule in Ireland and supportive of Ulster Protestants, would likely make Home Rule in Ireland more attractive to the average Brit in this world.

Lacking the Russian Revolution, this world might be more inclined to socialism and social democracy. The Right would lack a major bogey man.
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