New Reality Seeds

[Drifter]

Its my understanding that Brazilian elections in 1945 ousted the Estado Novo of General Vargas in a huge voter turnout. President Dutra was very pro-American, and eventually bankrupted the country by aiding American corporations, leading to the return of Vargas. In this ET 47 timeline, Dutra is still pro-American, and the population are still pretty mad at Vargas, but Vargas and the military get control of the alien tech and parlay it into personal power but not at the expense of the country or the democratic ideas of the population. Vargas eventually becomes president again, but is smart enough to know he needs Western support since Brazilians can't be everywhere, even with superscience technology.

I'm no expert at South African politics but the 1948 elections centered on white power, and Smuts was an integrationist, rightly arguing it was inevitable. Superscience and super money flowing into the South Africa in 1947 would have made the stakes much higher for the whites, since how could they allow anyone but themselves access to that much power? Look at what the coloureds did in India - the Roti Ou would be in Pretoria if you gave them an inch (apologies if Roti Ou is offensive). I agree it won't the exactly the same Apartheid as we get in our timeline, or in Homeline, but I doubt Smuts can hang on to power.

I cribbed that idea about aliens trading with both the West and the Soviets from some short story I read decades ago. I wish I could remember the author, all I recall is that the aliens came, and set up a bidding war between the Soviets and the West as to who gets their aid. The betting was earnest until the West clearly beat them, then the Soviets starting bidding in billion dollar increments - they meant to conquer the West and pay the aliens that way. WWIII follows, the West wins but the aliens have taken over the planet. We conquered ourselves for them.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Might also set it a little further back, for fun. If rare earths are indeed the point, suppose they show up in 1908? Sort of accidentally disassembling the British Empire on the eve of WWI by making two of its colonies much more powerful than the home isles...but also spreading things around a bit simply because humanity will be a bit less organized and disciplined...could even do it farther back, I suppose, to get some really strange cultures to collide with European colonialism...or in prehistory, they strip the place bare! What does the world look like if humanity never had access to much of those elements?

I like the idea of Ancient Aliens. If they arrive whenever the pre-Columbian ruins in the Amazon where thriving cities, you get some weird civilizations possibly colonizing Europe instead of the other way around.

If its earlier, and the aliens took more, I'm not sure we get much of a change to history until the modern era. Even then you probably get more of diesel punk solution to computers and such rather than the micro revolutions of our timeline sees. That in itself will make some changes, and we might be using landlines instead of cell phones today, and computers would still be ruinously expensive and huge.

Changes would be hitting in that timeline's 1980s plus, but I'm not sure how it would play out on a macro level. You still see the Soviet collapse, probably right on schedule, but you don't see the rise of Apple and Microsoft, or advanced aircraft and missile systems.

[patchwork]

Originally Posted by Drifter

I'm no expert at South African politics but the 1948 elections centered on white power, and Smuts was an integrationist, rightly arguing it was inevitable. Superscience and super money flowing into the South Africa in 1947 would have made the stakes much higher for the whites, since how could they allow anyone but themselves access to that much power? Look at what the coloureds did in India - the Roti Ou would be in Pretoria if you gave them an inch (apologies if Roti Ou is offensive). I agree it won't the exactly the same Apartheid as we get in our timeline, or in Homeline, but I doubt Smuts can hang on to power.

He only needs to flip 5 of 8 seats in mine country (witwatersrand) to hold on in '48. The mine bosses are upset that their cheap labor is moving to the cities (and the cities are upset that they're moving there too), a sharing agreement between the mine owners, white mine employees and government concerning the profits of alien tech should be more than enough to alleviate concerns about mine labor shortages. Granted, Smuts dies in '50 anyway, but "free" electricity for everyone and a bit of jiggery-pokery to give more seats to the growing cities and consolidate rural election districts may be enough to keep his successor in power over Malan.

I cribbed that idea about aliens trading with both the West and the Soviets from some short story I read decades ago. I wish I could remember the author, all I recall is that the aliens came, and set up a bidding war between the Soviets and the West as to who gets their aid. The betting was earnest until the West clearly beat them, then the Soviets starting bidding in billion dollar increments - they meant to conquer the West and pay the aliens that way. WWIII follows, the West wins but the aliens have taken over the planet. We conquered ourselves for them.

I believe I read that as well. A bit silly but good fun.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Drifter

Its my understanding that Brazilian elections in 1945 ousted the Estado Novo of General Vargas in a huge voter turnout. President Dutra was very pro-American, and eventually bankrupted the country by aiding American corporations, leading to the return of Vargas. In this ET 47 timeline, Dutra is still pro-American, and the population are still pretty mad at Vargas, but Vargas and the military get control of the alien tech and parlay it into personal power but not at the expense of the country or the democratic ideas of the population. Vargas eventually becomes president again, but is smart enough to know he needs Western support since Brazilians can't be everywhere, even with superscience technology.

You're right - Vargas wasn't president; democracy had just been restored. I still don't know how much democracy could have made inroads in this timeline, having only been just restored before the aliens visited. The military would certainly control access to alien tech.

Brazil could become a democracy, but with a 'state-within-a-state' of a powerful military. A bit like a more successful version of today's Pakistan (without Islamic terrorists). There would be democratic governments, but shaky ones, especially in the Congress, while the alien tech-boosted military would be able to do its own thing.

A good question would be how America would react to Brazil's rise. On the one hand, they're an anti-Communist stabilizing force in the Americas. On the other hand, they're a rival in the Americas. Maybe the two would play out like Britain and France in the nineteenth century - rivals for influence overseas, but essentially similar countries, and willing to work together against common threats.

Indeed, it might be that America is friendly with the Brazilian government, but has problems with the relatively independent Brazilian military.

Originally Posted by Drifter

I'm no expert at South African politics but the 1948 elections centered on white power, and Smuts was an integrationist, rightly arguing it was inevitable. Superscience and super money flowing into the South Africa in 1947 would have made the stakes much higher for the whites, since how could they allow anyone but themselves access to that much power? Look at what the coloureds did in India - the Roti Ou would be in Pretoria if you gave them an inch (apologies if Roti Ou is offensive). I agree it won't the exactly the same Apartheid as we get in our timeline, or in Homeline, but I doubt Smuts can hang on to power.

South Africa might not go full-on Nazi, but essentially attempt to 'freeze' the colonial set-up, and use alien tech to do it. Especially if a lot of white refugees from the former colonial possessions in Asia (plus war refugees from Europe) came in - there might be a flood of them after the aliens visit. Meanwhile, Hindu nationalists (the kind that didn't like Gandhi and founded the RSS) would be enforcing their own hierarchy - which could indeed frighten the whites in power in Africa (even though it'd be essentially the same thing, just not with whites on top).

[ericthered]

I've been working on a scenario for some time that fits the 'aliens visit important time in history' divergence pattern. Mine involves a Generation ship with a half-million strictly arboreal aliens settling in the amazon in 1894. They have low TL9-tech and very 'modern' sensibilities. They are a break off of their civilization, who they believe to be overly superstitious and on a path to kill themselves via ecological disaster and/or war.

The aliens are torn on what to do with the humans. They didn't conquer, just settle, and while they try to leave us alone so as to not disrupt our culture, its hard to stay away, and not all of the aliens agree on what's acceptable and what's not.

Yes, some players should identify better with the aliens than with the the humans. That's half of the fun.

[PTTG]

Similarly you could do a whole spectrum of worlds where rogue inventors accidentally invent "time machines" that jump exclusively between a "present" dimension and a "past" dimension- or more. See my weekday skerry for one.

A Victorian Chronomobile constructed by Babbage that goes back precisely 3,000 years makes Egyptology a rather livelier field. Connecting Apartheid South Africa 1970 to 1861 via a Dean Device would rather enhance the guns of the south. If it's a more Cabalic project, then maybe there's a stone circle connecting 800 CE to 1999. I personally like the idea of a NASA project revealing a means to travel back a mere twenty years some time in the late 2010s, producing some interesting opportunities for rapid timeline shifts...

There's at least three ways to handle chronological drift:

1) Ignore it, beyond a little bit of intertia. If you take the last seat on a train, then inertia provides a fortuitous horsecart. If you assassinate Lee, then time goes off the rails; these things happen.

2) Changes DO propagate. The skerry that keeps the two worldlines together also transmits things the "natural way," so you can bury an artifact in the right place in 2000BCE and pick it up 4000 years later at home. The Grandfather Paradox is in full effect, and it probably rapidly balances out to the closest stable time loop.

3) It's possible to break the skerry if things drift past the inertia threshold. Maybe working desperately to fix things (Quick, dress up as Lee and try to remember your history classes well enough to play his side of the war!) will restore the timeline. Maybe.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Drifter

OK, lets say aliens land in 1947 to trade for rare earths. But being relatively advanced they are going to do most of the heavy work themselves so they can get the stuff and get back to where the action is. So they trade with the locals, but why go to DC? Not too many rare earths in the Virginia area. So in this timeline they aliens aren't quite so Euro-centric and go to where the rare earth sources actually are and trade with those humans instead.

India, Brazil and South Africa get alien superconductivity tech in exchange for mineral rights.

The British attempt to retain India but are routed in a disastrous defeat demonstrating the abilities of even the most basic uses of this new technology. Indian forces go on to take Pakistan and, in heady over enthusiasm, move into Indo-China, Indonesia and southern China. While their weapons are irresistible, they can't control the vast areas they've conquered with the anti-Islamic policies they attempt to enforce.

OK, sorry to be a 'stop having fun' guy, but let's not hand the Great Powers (or Pakistan) the idiot ball.

'some details on superconductivity' (per the earlier post), even if you add a few working examples of the technology, does not equal instant access to large numbers of irresistible weapons. It's unlikely to equal even particularly fast access to small numbers of irresistible weapons. It is a game-changing scientific advance, but one that it would be massively difficult to keep out of the hands of other nations, especially those for whom good spies are vital, if you want to use the knowledge, rather than burying it. This is especially true if the aliens visited openly, as was implied earlier.

It would be a big advantage for those nations, but not nearly to the point of shifting the balance of power to the degree you suggest.

[TGLS]

And another thing, apparently South Africa wasn't producing rare earths in 1947. So if these aliens are willing to build new mines, why aren't they willing to go to the Mountain Pass Mine in California or China (current producer of 90% today's market)?

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

OK, sorry to be a 'stop having fun' guy, but let's not hand the Great Powers (or Pakistan) the idiot ball.

'some details on superconductivity' (per the earlier post), even if you add a few working examples of the technology, does not equal instant access to large numbers of irresistible weapons. It's unlikely to equal even particularly fast access to small numbers of irresistible weapons. It is a game-changing scientific advance, but one that it would be massively difficult to keep out of the hands of other nations, especially those for whom good spies are vital, if you want to use the knowledge, rather than burying it. This is especially true if the aliens visited openly, as was implied earlier.

It would be a big advantage for those nations, but not nearly to the point of shifting the balance of power to the degree you suggest.

I think you underestimate the political savvy of the receivers of the "miracle tech". Aliens land, don't see much difference between one tribe of primitives from another, and make a deal with the locals. India, on the verge of independence from Britain, will realize there is no way the British aren't going to come in with everything they have to control this power. They ask the aliens for protection, and failing that, how to protect themselves from those other tribes that will surely overwhelm them.

Ditto for South Africa and Brazil. They know that the US and company are still armed to the teeth and won't think twice to nuke them flat to get at that alien tech. The first thing they are going to ask from those aliens is for a way to counter nukes and invading armies. The aliens, being nice guys, are going to give them that protection, or at least tell them how to do it.

Western espionage abilities were not quite what generations of James Bond readers might like to think. The British were infiltrated by the Soviets completely. The West never did get much information "from" the Soviets, and allowed a lot of our secrets to get released to them. If anything its going to be the Soviets that glean critical information, but its iffy they can do anything with it before South African or Indian interests can enforce an economic blockade. Maybe another parallel sees the Soviets rise as a Second Tier country, maybe having a restive alliance with the Mao's forces in North China and ideologically countering South Africa across Europe.

Originally Posted by TGLS

And another thing, apparently South Africa wasn't producing rare earths in 1947. So if these aliens are willing to build new mines, why aren't they willing to go to the Mountain Pass Mine in California or China (current producer of 90% today's market)?

You get the first timeline Astromancer put forward with the California deposits.

Rare earths are somewhat misnamed - they are relatively common, just expensive to process. China has been able to corner the market because they undercut virtually everyone else in the world with massive government subsidies.

The aliens could very easily just go to Antarctica, or Mars, and mine the stuff and there would be virtually no change to the timeline. Maybe that's what caused the UFO sightings in the mid to late 20th century in Homeline; alien scouts that thought better of violating the Prime Directive outside of the occasion cattle mutilation or farmer probing.

In fact you'd have to have that happen in Homeline for this timeline cluster to exist. Aliens are out there in our 1947, but decided to go to Van Maanen's Star instead. Or, to keep it closer to home, mined some Saturnian moons, the wake of their ship roiling some of the rings (idea gleefully stolen from Niven/Pournelle in Footfall).

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

OK, sorry to be a 'stop having fun' guy, but let's not hand the Great Powers (or Pakistan) the idiot ball.

'some details on superconductivity' (per the earlier post), even if you add a few working examples of the technology, does not equal instant access to large numbers of irresistible weapons. It's unlikely to equal even particularly fast access to small numbers of irresistible weapons. It is a game-changing scientific advance, but one that it would be massively difficult to keep out of the hands of other nations, especially those for whom good spies are vital, if you want to use the knowledge, rather than burying it. This is especially true if the aliens visited openly, as was implied earlier.

It would be a big advantage for those nations, but not nearly to the point of shifting the balance of power to the degree you suggest.

The power shift could just be in perception, with Brazil, India, and South Africa treated as great powers. For India specifically, it wouldn't so much conquer Pakistan as keep all of India united after independence. This would also include Bangladesh, and possibly Burma & Sri Lanka. Any attempt to move into southeast Asia, like get involved in the Dutch East Indies, could either just be gaining influence, or a military move could be repelled.

For spies stealing the alien tech, it would depend on how reproducible it is. If it's beyond human understanding, then would be very hard to steal. Of course, the harder it is to understand, the less useful it would be - so if it was big enough to seriously tip the balance of power, would also be easier to steal.