New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by somecallmetim

Sort of like a Meiji Revolution for the Turks? That is a cool idea. It seems the biggest weakness they'd need to overcome is the lack of any Ottoman identity amongst their subject peoples. If they can make those folks want to be Ottoman, they stand to be a major world powers, given how much of the world's oil supply they are sitting on. Of couse, that is vastly easier said than done.

Pretty much. I assume that the Ottoman Empire still flies apart hard, or maybe harder in the 20th century.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by somecallmetim

This is more or less stream of consciousness, so please forgive any blunders:

Namagiri

The point of divergence is the recovery of Srinivasa Ramanujan from his illness in 1920 (which he attributes to his family goddess Namagiri, an aspect of Lakshmi). At first, the effects are small, mathematics progresses faster, but that doesn't have much of an effect on the broader strokes of history. WWII comes around very similar to its form in Homeline. Ramanujan's work with highly composite numbers allows a form of encryption not developed on Homeline. It is inferior to the techniques used by Homeline Mathematicians at the cusp of TL 9, but it is better than any alternative of its time. (Essentially it is TL 6+1 encryption). One of the side effects of his involvement in the Bletchley Park cryptographic work was a friendship with Alan Turing. In this timeline, Turing avoided prosecution for "indececny", and manages not to poison himself either intentionally or through mischance. Ramanujan also supports the cause of Indian independence after the war. His support doesn't serve to speed the process much, but his close friendship with several members of the British government and support for Gandhi's vision of a united India allows him to serve as a go between, and while the separatist movements in Ceylon and the territories that make up Pakistan in homeline never quite vanish, they are worked into the larger nation of India, which is chaotic, but dynamic and relatively prosperous.

The Indian government supports the independence of Tibet, resulting in the Sino-Indian War of 1960. India is victorious, and China is humiliated. It also serves to sour relations between the Chinese and Soviet governments, as the USSR does not intervene. It is widely suspected in China that the USSR had agreed not to interfere before the invasion, in order to weaken the MAoist regime.

The Soviet Union does a poorer job infiltrating the UK and US atomic weapon programs and generally has a poorer showing in the Cold War. The recession of the 1970s is less severe in the West, and by the late 70s Eastern European populations are rebelling openly against the Communist governments. In some cases, like the GDR and POland, it leads to the formation of free governments. In others like Albania, it leads to brutal crackdowns by local authorities. In 1982, with the death of the General Secretary of the CPSU, a democratic protest breaks out across the USSR in the mostly bloodless May Revolution.

The result of all of this is a world where the last remaining communist powers are China, North Vietnam, and Laos. NVN is increasingly looking to reunification with the south, which is more prosperous, but also highly corrupt. China is like a huge North Korea circas 1990, with careful isolation of the population, a cult of personality revolving around the premier, and a stagnant economy. India is huge, powerful and edging up on the US as first amongst equals in the modern global economy. The less fierce Cold War has resulted in less of South America and Africa being turned into proxy battlefields for the superpowers, with more stable and independent governments. The UK, the Eurozone, India, and the USA are close to parity in terms of culture influence and wealth. Computer technology is approaching the lower edge of TL 9, while the rest of the techbase is mid-8. The current year is 1993, Ramanujan passed away late last year at 105. Homeline discovered the timeline three years ago and mathematicians in Homeline are still going through the dizzying variety of alternate mathematics to be plundered from the timeline.

An interesting world. A place to go treasure hunting and avoid the clever people who might catch you. Might I suggest the Cabal as the princepal opponents in this world. You've have to figure out their plans, or if they even have them.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Pretty much. I assume that the Ottoman Empire still flies apart hard, or maybe harder in the 20th century.

You assume they can't get away with keeping the middle east lower tech than turkey. That was historically very much not the case, and the Turkish population is large enough to function as the capital in a world-spanning empire. Look at the British empire for an example. With a concerted effort, it may be possible to entice the arabs into wanting to be part of the empire -- but it would need to be concious and concerted.

Such a power will really hurt England. They most likely loose the suez, and there is another maritime power in the Indian ocean capable of opposing them.

Namagiri

I see this as a near parrellel, rather than a far one. One of those "Pretty much the same, but hey, its different!" worlds.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

An interesting world. A place to go treasure hunting and avoid the clever people who might catch you. Might I suggest the Cabal as the princepal opponents in this world. You've have to figure out their plans, or if they even have them.

Why hunt? Just buy some used textbooks at the college bookstores.

[somecallmetim]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Why hunt? Just buy some used textbooks at the college bookstores.

I hadn't been thinking about the mathematics as a mcguffin for adventures, because mathematics journals tend to be really open, but we found out recently that the NSA was trying to conceal the fact that certain random appearing equations actually had non-random graphs (meaning encryption based on them was breakable by anyone who knew the solution.) Maybe their is a group of mathematicians hiding some awesome cryptographical trick or something like the truly lossless compression algorithm. Or if that is too dry, maybe they are close to discovering a way to reliably calculate the Dho-Na curves from Charles Stross' Laundry series, and of course, Infinity would want to stop them. (The Cabal may be more ambivalent, if they can find somewhere safe to watch from.) In a less horrorific vein, the movies Pi and Rites of Love and Math include mathematical formulae with numinous potential in a weirder mode.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Why hunt? Just buy some used textbooks at the college bookstores.

It will be a good 20 years behind whatever the intelligence agencies have.

[PTTG]

The Confederate States of America convince Great Britain to join in the war in 1860 by offering choice regions of the New England. Specifically, regions the Confederacy has no intention to administer anyway.

The war drags on longer by at least a year, but despite inroads into the north, the South still loses... Mexico, more stable in this TL, claims many key coastal cities in the gulf (at least for a time).

GB saw the writing on the wall and solidified its gains on the eastern seaboard. It pushed south and eventually claimed most of the East Coast. By 1868, the only parts of the North American continent controlled by the USA are the west and the midwest.

In the rest of the world, Europe sees the gradual fall of France to a Britain allied with Germany, and Japan falls to Russia and China, but only in name; the population remains insurgent and restless. Emboldened by the Russian alliance and secure from Japan, China marches south over the most forbidding mountain range in the world to face British forces in India, and the Empire sees some of its only real losses in the world. Holland's colonial interests, along with some British and Turkish forces, split up Africa in a mostly orderly fashion.

It sounds a bit hectic, I suppose. If anyone wants to find out what happens next, check out the vDip game it's based on.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Why hunt? Just buy some used textbooks at the college bookstores.

The Cabal needs special snowflakes, because they are flakes who are truely "special." It comes with being conspiratorial wizardlings.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

The Confederate States of America convince Great Britain to join in the war in 1860 by offering choice regions of the New England. Specifically, regions the Confederacy has no intention to administer anyway.

The war drags on longer by at least a year, but despite inroads into the north, the South still loses... Mexico, more stable in this TL, claims many key coastal cities in the gulf (at least for a time).

GB saw the writing on the wall and solidified its gains on the eastern seaboard. It pushed south and eventually claimed most of the East Coast. By 1868, the only parts of the North American continent controlled by the USA are the west and the midwest.

In the rest of the world, Europe sees the gradual fall of France to a Britain allied with Germany, and Japan falls to Russia and China, but only in name; the population remains insurgent and restless. Emboldened by the Russian alliance and secure from Japan, China marches south over the most forbidding mountain range in the world to face British forces in India, and the Empire sees some of its only real losses in the world. Holland's colonial interests, along with some British and Turkish forces, split up Africa in a mostly orderly fashion.

It sounds a bit hectic, I suppose. If anyone wants to find out what happens next, check out the vDip game it's based on.

This would lead to another American War of Independence. Set this in the 1890-1910 period and Teddy Roosevelt might be allied with Mother Jones against an allience of Robber Barrons siding with Britain. Certainly keeping America in line would be fully as brutal as what they did in Ireland. The Empires would still fall and the USA would be clearly seen as an anti-Imperial power. Perhaps the USA in the middle of the 20th century would face fascist twins in Britain and Germany.

[patchwork]

Originally Posted by somecallmetim

This is more or less stream of consciousness, so please forgive any blunders:

Namagiri

The point of divergence is the recovery of Srinivasa Ramanujan from his illness in 1920 (which he attributes to his family goddess Namagiri, an aspect of Lakshmi). At first, the effects are small, mathematics progresses faster, but that doesn't have much of an effect on the broader strokes of history. WWII comes around very similar to its form in Homeline. Ramanujan's work with highly composite numbers allows a form of encryption not developed on Homeline. It is inferior to the techniques used by Homeline Mathematicians at the cusp of TL 9, but it is better than any alternative of its time. (Essentially it is TL 6+1 encryption).

This is pretty awesome. It seems to me that Ramanujan's work would be much more useful for breaking encryption than making it, though, resulting in a world where the modern idea of "strong encryption" never came to pass We can, of course, do both, as two different timelines.

I'm really having trouble seeing a Sino-Indian war going hot in 1960. Both powers can defend very well and project power rather poorly; both of them have strained relationships with both of the established superpowers, leading to a lot of uncertainty in outcome. I think the most you can get is Mao attempting to invade India and failing to accomplish anything of consequence, followed by a lot of sulking and shrieking all around. (Which might be enough to get the outcome you were looking for.)

One other knockon effect will be about a 20 year jump in chemistry. Ramanujan's equations published in the 1910s formed the basis of quantum chemistry in the 1960s; it languished a bit because he wasn't personally able to advocate for his work, and because computers capable of providing real solutions to his equations in a timely manner hadn't been built yet. We start getting some interesting synthetic polymers and such in the 1960s, maybe even the 1950s, if his work has continued and been prominent.