The Gaming Outpost

I’ve done an article on ‘Ten Faces of America’ which shows ten different alternate dimensional Americas which are not neccessarily evil or bleak. Its an attempt to create what I could call ‘Dimensional Differences’. Too many other dimensions in SF are either America or Evil America. What about all the other Americas which are modestly different? The places where everyone drives on the left side of the road, votes for their Provincial Electors to go to the capital in Boston, spices their coffee with a pinch of salt, and drives their three-wheeled diesel cars?

I want to create a long set of lists of ‘little differences’, but for now….partially courtesy of the Ladyfair, the Eleventh Face of America.

Benjamin Franklin won. The American Turkey is the national bird. We still eat it for Thanksgiving, but it has a bit more sacred aspect as if we are partaking of America. Also, he got the German language to be the official language of America. Both were close-run things in other worlds, and went the other way, but not here.

The result of the German language over the English was a bit less philosophy, and a bit more of science in the early days and well into the late 1800′s. This was primarily beneficial as many of the elitist philosophies were damaging and distracting, and so a more down to home approach by half-clever elites was beneficial as it kept them out of trouble.

Its a world in which ‘nerd’ never becomes a word, and where the tern ‘intellectual’ always has connotations of ‘crazy’ and ‘inbred’.

But these are subtle changes. You would have to hunt for them.

The way everyone speaks German, and eats sauerkraut sausage dogs as they watch basketball games would be much more obvious.

One other benefit of the change was a moderation of Anglo drinking habits. While the biergarten approach never totally took hold, still its example of drinking in moderation for pleasure instead of getting stone drunk had an influence.

Prohibition did not quite succeed. The Mafia did not get the boost of money from Prohibition. Organized crime remained largely disorganized, or more properly organized on a small scale.

As the Great War with Kaiser Wilhelm vs. the English rolled around, the mood in the country was divided. In another world, the pro-German feeling was strong, but the pro-English was stronger still. Or as Winston Churchill said…one of the happiest accidents of history was that the Americans spoke English. Here, tho’, it was more divided. And so America sat out the War.

The Kaiser imposed terms on England which were accepted. The Kaiser found himself with a worldwide empire, and the English found themselves with a smaller empire. Thus began the Cold War.

The competition heated the fires of colonialism, and the recourse to violence made the pleas of some of the colonials for liberation to be of null effect. The traditional Laws of War kept hold instead of International Law growing. The empires rejected the policies of self-determination and liberationist thinking, and the assumptions behind them. There was Law, but it was a simpler, harsher, more rational, and more direct law exemplified by this anecdote.

The great men of India came to the English viceroy of India, and spoke. “Great lord, it is the custom of our people that when a man dies, his woman be cast upon the fire as well.”
The English viceroy Gordon replied. “It is our custom that when a man burns a woman, we hang him. So you build your fire, and we will build our gallows next to it.”
Thus ended the practise of suttee. And with actions like this, it became safe for a young woman with a child to travel from Shanghai to Reykavik with no escort by boat and train.

The smaller size empire was more easily managed, and the competition proved a bracer of spirit to the English. The Germans were just plain happy to have an empire, and not at all inclined to give it up.

Gandhi spent many years in an English prison. He was well-treated until the day he died, but he never saw India freed from the English.

And much of the horrors of the Twentieth Century never happened. Aggressive English and German naval forces imposed order and good government at the point of a sixteen inch battleship cannon. A number of small wars usually by proxy were fought between England and Germany….one of these was in Russia. In the end, Russia was divided between the two powers, and Lenin, well he never got his train ride. Instead he died in a German prison at hard labor.

Concentration camps, gulags, ethnic cleansing, and Bleeding Africa never happened here.

As a side note, the verser upon arriving in America and hearing German may well think that the Nazi’s won World War Two. However, the only Schickelgruber that is in the history books is a moderately successful Austrian painter of landscapes who has retired to teach a school on landscape painting in Bavaria.