{"id":292,"date":"2008-02-16T12:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-16T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/?p=292"},"modified":"2008-02-16T12:09:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-16T16:09:00","slug":"alt-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/archives\/292","title":{"rendered":"Alt history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alternative histories can be a lot of fun – or they can be teeth-grindingly dumb. Part of the trick, it seems to me, is to find a good pivot point – a specific thing that could have gone differently – and then carefully work through the implications. Done poorly, it devolves into a “Well, my Goths invented the Gatling gun” – “So what? My Romans allied with Godzilla!” kind of exercise (complete with the smell of burning plastic and the pop of Black Cats – not that I’d know anything about it); done well, it makes you wonder about why things turned out the way they did.<\/p>\n

All this is a long-winded way of pointing you at a Strange Maps<\/a> post on a map of the Republic of New Netherland<\/a> – maps and alternative history – nice match. While I’m on the subject, C.M. Kornbluth’s Two Dooms<\/a> is alt history that is definitely worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alternative histories can be a lot of fun – or they can be teeth-grindingly dumb. Part of the trick, it seems to me, is to find a good pivot point – a specific thing that could have gone differently – … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scifi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqxx-4I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}