Carpeicthus Memorial Counterfactual Thread

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Because I am in glorious geekmode tonight, that’s why. Post your favorite alternate history scenarios here. For myself, I’ve always been interested in what would have happened if Islam had expanded west into Byzantium, instead of going east into Persia. What would that have changed – and what would have stayed the same?

15 thoughts on “Carpeicthus Memorial Counterfactual Thread”

  1. Wasn’t gonna post here, and I stared at it long. I am a historical forces kinda guy, think history was pretty neat as it was and the world is pretty neat as it is. Think Caesar was just riding a wave, and Napoleon pretty much irrelevant. If Lenin had missed his train, more people would have died. Somewhere.
    But Alexander moving East instead of West? Nah, nothing to conquer to the West. Or never making thru adolescence? The Med became the Hellenistic World because of one man. Maybe. Maybe not. I am lousy at these things.

  2. Leonidas folds at Thermopylae (like the Spartans did at Tempe Pass a few months earlier)rather than standing and dying to buy time. The Greek navy at Artemesiumis outflanked, and rather than inflicting damage on the Persian navy which contributes mightily to the victory at Salamis, the battle of Salamis never happens, neither does Platea. Xerxes rolls through Greece leaving Satraps in command of Athens on his way to Italy. No Golden age, no Alexander (probably)where does the West come from?

  3. If China had decided to conquer and colonize the new world (or the old world, for that matter). Instead, they just sailed by and basically said, “We have everything we need at home. These people are boring, and no threat by a long shot. Let’s turn around.”

  4. ::clap clap clap::
    This is a proud day.
    For some wildly entertaining military history, the “What If” counterfactual series makes fur a great, geeky summer read.
    Here’s one: If Hinckley had been a better shot and incapacitated Reagan for longer or permanently, would George Bush I have been able to wrestle Al Haig off the podium? He was CIA, but a desk jockey.

  5. Here’s mine: what would have happened if I had responded positively in 1982 to the advances of the twice-my-age but incredibly sexy woman who tried to pick me up when she stepped into the bookstore I was working at to get out of the rain?
    Probably an interesting hour or two, then my French girlfriend would have found out, and shoved a screwdriver into my brain as I slept, killing me.
    Oh, wait. Historical scenario.
    Japan agrees to the US terms in 1941 to withddraw from all their occupied territories except Manchuria. Mao-Tse Tung is unable to capitalize on the weakness of the military forces set up against him. Ultra-nationaists in Japan eventually get the upper hand, and eventually cause trouble, but they attack from a weaker position, and are successfully contained by an alliance of the US and Republican China.
    What would have happened if Japan had developed nuclear weapons first?

  6. er, didn’t Islam actually advance into Byzantium? I seem to remember something about the Hagia Sofia Mosque once being a Byzantine Chruch …

  7. “If Lenin had missed his train, more people would have died. ”
    Eh? I’d have put my money on the SRs & Mensheviks forming a coalition in the elected Duma, and the Petrograd Soviet being wound up.

  8. Lately I’ve been wondering what would have happened if the Roman Empire took up Mithraism instead of Christianity. There probably wouldn’t be a lot of grand geopolitical changes*, since the two religions were broadly similar, but there might be some interesting twists in the history of the Jews and the Zoroastrians, since it would now be the latter whose religion is the basis of the dominant faith of Europe. Of course, I don’t know remotely enough about Jewish and Persian history to guess the differences.
    *Well, until the Rapture came along and took away just a few Coptics rather than a huge chunk of the world’s people.

  10. “er, didn’t Islam actually advance into Byzantium? I seem to remember something about the Hagia Sofia Mosque once being a Byzantine Chruch …”
    Excuse me, I was unclear: I meant in the first wave of expansion, not during the Ottoman period.

  11. I should mention a novel by one of my favorite writers, John M. Ford – _The Dragon in Waiting_. The [spoiler] counterfactual leads to the continued expansion of Byzantium into the Renaissance.

  12. “… _The Dragon in Waiting_.”
    That’s The Dragon Waiting: A Masque of History;, actually. (I was the editorial assistant on the Avon reprint edition in 1988.) It won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1984.
    Mike Ford (John M. Ford, but, no, the “M” doesn’t stand for “Mike”) is brilliant in every one of the many, all different, stories he’s written.

  13. “Mike Ford (John M. Ford, but, no, the “M” doesn’t stand for “Mike”) is brilliant in every one of the many, all different, stories he’s written.”
    Generally good guy, too.

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