New Reality Seeds

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

I think I remember reading about that. Somewhat different timeline, but I think I found the article interesting, even if I'm not sure where or when I read it.

Really, Pulp-7 might well be a temporary designation, sine it seems to be transitioning into a more comicbookish world.

Just found it - Igor-1, from Pyramid 63, with a super-science gadget that made mad scientist gadgeteers.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

American radicals seem to always be a herd of cats. Cool Cats generally, but cats all the same.

Not that I have much experience with foreign radicals, but that seems to be a truism for most cultures. Radicals, by definition, are going to be thinking outside the box.

But I tend to agree with David, and history; the first thing to do after the revolution is purge the ranks. That probably means taking Walt Whiteman out back and shooting him, being the cooler variety of cat.

[patchwork]

Originally Posted by fchase8

Just found it - Igor-1, from Pyramid 63, with a super-science gadget that made mad scientist gadgeteers.

The other comparable one was Kirby-1, in an even earlier Pyramid iirc - like all the Kirbys it was prone to reality quakes, but Gadgeteers started turning up around 1908 and had shaped the entire 20th century. It seemed to be based on the old Edisonades - Kirbys 2, 3 and 4 all developed conventional supers, but Kirby-1 somehow never made the change, and the Amazing Inventor was the only archetype of superhero that ever appeared.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by patchwork

The other comparable one was Kirby-1, in an even earlier Pyramid iirc - like all the Kirbys it was prone to reality quakes, but Gadgeteers started turning up around 1908 and had shaped the entire 20th century. It seemed to be based on the old Edisonades - Kirbys 2, 3 and 4 all developed conventional supers, but Kirby-1 somehow never made the change, and the Amazing Inventor was the only archetype of superhero that ever appeared.

Huh. Any idea which Pyramid it was in? Are we talking 'early' as in 'Volume 1 or 2,' or just the earlier parts of Volume 3?

*looks for it in Worlds of Infinite Worlds*

It says Kirby-1 is on Best of Pyramid Vol. 1 (apparently chapter 9?), which I don't have. Sounds interesting, though.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Drifter

Not that I have much experience with foreign radicals, but that seems to be a truism for most cultures. Radicals, by definition, are going to be thinking outside the box.

But I tend to agree with David, and history; the first thing to do after the revolution is purge the ranks. That probably means taking Walt Whiteman out back and shooting him, being the cooler variety of cat.

Most revolutions occur in places that never were democracies (however flawed). Since the USA has a different history, how could we assume that the politics must always work out the same way?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Most revolutions occur in places that never were democracies (however flawed). Since the USA has a different history, how could we assume that the politics must always work out the same way?

There was plenty of purging in the American Revolution; it simply managed to get ahold of itself because the revolutionaries were professional wheeler-dealers and not theorists. There is more to be said for smoke-filled rooms then many give them credit for.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

There was plenty of purging in the American Revolution; it simply managed to get ahold of itself because the revolutionaries were professional wheeler-dealers and not theorists. There is more to be said for smoke-filled rooms then many give them credit for.

There's a lot of truth, in this statement. The American Revolution was unique in a lot of ways. Most revolutions follow the French model.

The reason is pretty straightforward, really. Those most inclined to fight in a revolution are those with the greatest emotional commitment to change, and that means extremists. Throughout most of the last 200 years of Western history, the most energetic extremists have been radical leftists.

Reactionary extremists are just as bad, really, but they're more inclined to suborn the existing system, rather than try to overthrow it. Mussolini and the NAZIs took power more-or-less legitimately, for instance, but then used the power to quash dissent and implement their agendas.

In the modern Middle East, dictators supported by the Western world have spent the past 80 years executing any leftists they find. That means the only remaining outlet for extremist change lies in reactionary Islam. The Jihadists simply survived, better.

The problem, of course, is that while extremists fight passionately, they govern horrifically. Extremists, by definition, don't have much patience with those who disagree with their world-views -- views the vast majority of humanity doesn't share.

So, they try to implement their ideas, discover those ideas can't work because the vast majority of any population has better things to do than adhere to some narrow ideological framework, and so the revolutionaries resort to oppression (a "Thermidorian Period"). This usually triggers a violent counter-revolution.

The cycle may repeat itself a couple times, until the extremists either give up in frustration (or all get dead), and finally a government of some sort that mostly works appears (or the entire country disintegrates into utter anarchy, for awhile, and must rebuild itself from scratch -- see Somalia).

What made the American Revolution so unique was that the guys mostly in charge of the country before the war remained in charge, afterwards. Almost every Founding Father had served in colonial legislatures, under the notional control of the governors appointed by the Crown. Most of those governors had very little to do with the responsibilities of daily governance; the legislatures carried the water.

In essence, the revolutionaries were the guys who already ran the place. They just severed the increasingly-tenuous connection with their nominal rulers, who (increasingly incompetently) tried to run things with a 30-day lag due to transportation and communication limits.

The fact that the guys mostly in charge before the war fostered the revolution so they could be the guys completely in charge, afterwards, with no second-guessing from a bunch of nobles more than 3,500 miles away (by ship) made for a pretty unique situation.

Even then, the most "extreme" (to the extent they were extremist, at all...) had to make a pretty serious adjustment to things, after the Article of Confederation proved so wholly inadequate. However, it was mostly those same guys who got together in the smoke-filled room and hammered out a deal that worked much better -- which tells you the extremists didn't get much traction.

There's a reason Thomas Paine moved to France, as soon as that revolution got going.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Most revolutions occur in places that never were democracies (however flawed). Since the USA has a different history, how could we assume that the politics must always work out the same way?

Because people are still people. Shay's Rebellion was about civil rights and taxes, and was soundly put down. The Terror occurred in a great democratic revolt.

Mechanically it almost has to happen - you have a lot of people with a lot of ideas, suddenly thrust into power. Not all those ideas are going to be good. Now here you have a problem with the definition of "good" - usually it means whatever the people with the most economic and/or raw force power think is beneficial. So you get people with ideas that might be "out there", and they don't have as much economic or force to enact their ideas, but because they (along with everyone else on the winning side) just "won", they don't give up.
So the dominant group has to clean house. Maybe its out of a desire to see a stable society, maybe its a desire for personal power (and often one justifies the other, if only in the leader's mind). Maybe its violent, maybe its just ostracizing and public condemnation and rejection.

All I'm saying is that revolutions usually have a period of 'clean up' following a success, if only to get rid of the wilder elements that would have emptied the cities to live on idealized farms eating corn flakes or whatever weird health food. Or THAT happened and the Kellogg boys had to get rid of those city dwelling banker types.

So maybe the communist revolution in late 19th century America isn't violent, and Walt Whiteman might be on the winning team. Or he might have gotten involved with a wilder element, and instead of shooting him his works are just burned in town squares and the intellegencia condemns his works.

Actually a communist America where all the cities were emptied ala Khmer Rouge Cambodia might be a fun timeline to explore. Back to nature, self sufficiency and 189- New York mostly empty. Would some groups attempt to emulate the late, great American Indians? Would the frontiersmen revolt and form their own governments or are they part of the ideology? Would Canada/Britain move in? Maybe France, or Mexico? Would a rural USSA be able to defend itself, or make itself so impossible to govern no one would try for long?

[PTTG]

It sounds a little like magical influences to remove the USA from the 20th century for some reason.

Someone magically infuences the population to drive them to rural society, probably makes an effort to burn down the major cities....

By the 1950s, there's a new colonialism as the Japanese Empire, the Russian power, and whatever European group survived both wars all establish colonies in the American Wilderness.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by PTTG

It sounds a little like magical influences to remove the USA from the 20th century for some reason.

Someone magically infuences the population to drive them to rural society, probably makes an effort to burn down the major cities....

By the 1950s, there's a new colonialism as the Japanese Empire, the Russian power, and whatever European group survived both wars all establish colonies in the American Wilderness.

If it's limited it doesn't necessarily have to be magical. Although an Alvin Maker universe can go this way. And by limited I mean a limited land area, say what we think of as the urbanized mid-Atlantic coast, Boston to D.C., as becoming the heartland of a non-urban movement.

Call it Fourier-2, while technically socialist as opposed to communist, it is based on good, solid 19th century utopian ideals. Charles Fourier somehow becomes a leading force in American culture. Hawthorne and Emerson were fans, so they help lead his charge against "civilization" - that is, intellectualism. He is promptly assassinated, but just at the wrong time. His anti-civilization ideas are taken up, while their inherent downsides are ignored. Not just intellectualism, but most of what we take for granted as hallmarks of civilization, suddenly are marks of scorn. Fourier Camps sweep the mid-Atlantic and parts of New England. The cities empty, often by force, as libraries are burned, great buildings smashed, professors and landowners lynched.

Now these Camps quickly come under the control of local strong-men. After that first summer when a lot of people want to go back to the cities, they have to face the first waves of purges. Many of the half deserted cities are looted and burned. The Southern states and Midwest, frontier areas, left leaderless, go independent in all but name. By 1847 the Confederate States are warily eyeing the draconian "utopia" that the Fourier communities have become.

Without the unifying federal government, various European powers, and eventually Japan, are able to carve up the American Wilderness by the 1950s.