In at the Death- *SPOILERS*

83gemini

It's easy to just chuck all the spoilers in one thread. If there's anything you're curious about just ask:



























Germany and the U.S wins (surprise!) and Japan gets off unscathed.
The CSA gets occupied (and nuked-Hampton Roads and Charleston), France and Russia get beaten (and nuked-Paris and Petrograd) and Britain just gets really, really, really nuked (well 3 in one day-London, and a couple other places).

The CS (Clarence Potter doing his sneaky thing) sneaks a nuke into the outskirts of Philly (it doesn't quite get downtown). The British nuke Hamburg.

Featherston tries to escape from North Carolina (being invaded from occupied Virginia-Atlanta falls before Richmond, but also from occupied South Carolina-Savannah falls before Birmingham) but his plane crashes in Georgia, and he gets out alive...to be shot by Cassius. Cassius gets famous and the CSA surrenders (and becomes a set of restive military districts-Morrel gets to run everything from Virginia to Florida). Patton surrenders in Birmingham

Dewey and Truman beat LaFollete (Harry plays with the old Dewey beat Truman scene).

Most people live, except Featherston and Pinkard (Moss is his lawyer, but he's not that good a lawyer). Even Potter doesn't get hung for his nuking ways.

Carsten probably has skin cancer, but he doesn't die (and gets to command a ship in Mobile Bay)
Dowling gets to retire
Cincinnatus sees his daughter gets married
Martin gets back to negotiating salaries (his war was particularly unpleasant-South Carolina gets torn up Sherman style)
Jorge gets to denounce Mr. Quinn (he tries to stir things up in Sonora)
Armstrong gets stuck occupying Alabama
Dover gets his old job back
O'Doull gets to move back to Quebec
Enos gets out of the navy and back to fishing
Flora gets re-elected even if her party loses in '44.
Moss becomes a JAG
Pound gets to occupy Talhassee
 

83gemini

Just one. It's more plausible then the "Germany conveniently shoots down a British bomber" moment. But it's not like a Confederate nuclear program was all that plausible (the sheer implausibility of the timeline aside).

Interestingly though, it's still one of the better reads in the series.
 

Bill Cameron

Banned
Sheesh...

The Confederates and Britain have nukes? I can barely see Britain getting one, but the Confederacy? That's Turtle-bloat at his best... :rolleyes:

In OTL 1945, the US bomb program owned something like 99.99% of the world's amount of U235, which had been refined in turn from something like 80% of the amount of the world's current supply of U238. U235 was in such short supply that it was used only for one device, the Hiroshima bomb. The Trinity shot and the Nagasaki bomb were plutonium devices, plutonium that the US had spent years and billions manufacturing in perfect safety at Hanford, Washington.

In the OTL, the UK had given the US everything they knew and everything they'd developed with regards to the bomb because the UK knew they couldn't afford to fund such a program in wartime. So, naturally, the much poorer, far more struggling nations of Turtle-bloat's Alt-WW2 could all fund, design, build, and operate Hanford-style reactors of their own to make all the plutonium they needed for their bombs.

Sure. Uh-huh. Anything you say Dr. Turtle-bloat.

And, of course, nothing happens to Japan. Again. Their side lost both world wars and they fought an inconclusive war against the US between both world wars but nothing happens to Japan. Again.

Screw you, Turtle-bloat. I'm glad I haven't been buying your padded dreck since Walk in Hell.

Thanks for the spoilers, 83gemini. The book sounds just as bad as I figured it would be.


Bill
 

Dean_the_Young

Bill Cameron said:
Snip
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Because, you know, the AH on this site is sooo much more realistic. DoD is what should have happened, of course. And writing a comprehensive alternate history of WW1, the inter-war period, and WW2, is something anyone with half a brain could do in half the time.

Right.....:rolleyes:

Now, care to show off your high-quality novels that cover a multitude of characters over 30 odd years? Something that the all-knowing reader will fawn over as the second coming?


Edit: This is harsh, but not half as harsh as you were being to Turtledove. You don't have to like a man's writing, but not liking it doesn't make it crap.
 
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Faeelin

Banned
Dean_the_Young said:
Because, you know, the AH on this site is sooo much more realistic. DoD is what should have happened, of course. And writing a comprehensive alternate history of WW1, the inter-war period, and WW2, is something anyone with half a brain could do in half the time.

Edit: This is harsh, but not half as harsh as you were being to Turtledove. You don't have to like a man's writing, but not liking it doesn't make it crap.
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No.

The fact that it is bloated, inaccurate, and has poorly written characters makes it crap.
 

Wanderlust

Okey dokey... What happens to Britain-land and Ireland, besides the nuking? And post-war? Is Churchill tried as a War Criminal?

Also, the 'Germany conveniently shoots down a British bomber moment' eh?Was Britain poised to deliver the smackpunch to Germany?
 

Number three

Wesforce said:
Okey dokey... What happens to Britain-land and Ireland, besides the nuking? And post-war? Is Churchill tried as a War Criminal?

Also, the 'Germany conveniently shoots down a British bomber moment' eh?Was Britain poised to deliver the smackpunch to Germany?
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Churchill loses his election.
 

Number three

The Future and the Middle East

This morning I could not help but think, what would the Middle East of this world look like in 50+ years? There will not be an Isreal.

If he does write a new series telling of future events, will world powers carve out a black homeland in Africa or repatriate blacks to Liberia creating constant warfare in Africa. Ok they already have constant warfare.

With so many Nuclear Powers, what will the world and future Wars bring? You have a bellicose and unbeaten Japan, Germany holding Europe and the US dominating the America's. No way do these countries leave each other alone.

Fitzbelmont was brilliant. Too brilliant in the end. His ideas are leading to the next level of nuclear activity and warfare.
 

Bill Cameron

Banned
Dean_the_Young said:
Now, care to show off your high-quality novels that cover a multitude of characters over 30 odd years?
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Dean_the_Young,

Sadly, I can't exhibit any high-quality novels I've written. On the other hand, neither can Turtledove.

Seriously, if you believe Turtledove's writing is 'high quality', you need to read much much more. And not Star Wars, Star Trek, D&D, and other fan-fic garbage either. Barnes & Noble has a "2 For 3 Sale" going on this month. You can pick up three trade paperbacks by actual authors(1) for about the price Turtle-bloat is going to charge for his latest crap. And it's not all Dickens and Austen either, there are several contemporary authors featured too.

Something that the all-knowing reader will fawn over as the second coming?
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That's the problem; fawning readers. No matter what crap Turtle-bloat's word processor spews forth you, and people like you, will buy it. Good, mediocre, bad, horrific, several books milking a single book story, it doesn't matter because you need to keep up with the soap opera he's selling you. This phenomena is known as King-Mitchner-Cartland Syndrome. It occurs when an author becomes so popular that anything they write will sell no matter what. A book could be nothing more than their grocery list and people will still snap it up regardless. Their work escapes editorial control and enters the realm of the accountants, accountants who want one book to become a series and who want a series to become a series of series.

Why does this happen? Simple; You keep buying. You're the addict and they're the pushers. You're the enabler.

You don't have to like a man's writing, but not liking it doesn't make it crap.
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As Faeelin correctly points out, it's the fact that Turtle-bloat's work is bloated, inaccurate, and has poorly written characters makes it crap and not my opinion. My opinion doesn't matter one whit because you, and everyone like you, will buy the book regardless. Examine the both sides of the coin here, my loathing Turtle-bloat's work may not make it crap but you liking Turtle-bloat's work doesn't make it good either.

Despite the hundreds of examples in the 12 books in this one series, do you still need an example of Turtle-bloat's crap? Let me expand on my earlier post in this thread discussing the absurd amount of fissionables available in the timeline.

In the OTL, the US owned over 99.99% of the U235 in the world and that amount was severely limted by the amount of U238 available. So limited as a matter of fact that the US only had enough for ONE bomb and was forced to create plutonium for its others. It took 3 years of uninterrupted work, plus thousands of centrifuges and hundreds of miles of gas diffusion pipes, for the US to produce enough U235 for only one bomb. And that was the result of the work done by a US that is far richer and far safer than Turtle-bloat's alt-US. When our richer, safer, uninterrupted US began creating plutonium, because there wasn't enough U238 currently available on the planet to refine U235 from, it still only had enough of that fissionable material for only THREE more bombs by the summer of 1945; the Trinity bomb, the Nagaskai bomb, and the spare that wasn't used.

Yet, Turtle-bloat wants us to believe that the nations of his poorer, war ravaged, world running programs that were bombed and otherwise interrupted were able to create enough fissionables for WELL OVER TEN atomic weapons; three on London, one on Paris, one on Petrograd, one on Hamburg, one shot down over Germany, one on Hampton Roads, one on Charleston, one in Philly(2), and still more used somewhere in England.

Yeah right, Turtle-bloat. Pull my other leg, it has bells on it.


Bill

1 - Paraphrasing Capote here; Turtledove isn't an author, he's a typist.

2 - The Confederate bomb is the most idiotic of Turtle-bloat's completely idiotic 10+ bombs. Remember that in the OTL the US only had enough U235 for one bomb? And then only after years of refining? The OTL US had access to what was then the world's best supply of pitchblend which was in the Belgian Congo and the OTL Nazi program was hampered by a lack of 'natural' fissionables because Germany did not have access to those same supplies. So, either the Alt-CSA somehow got access to U238 and then beat the OTL US' refining speed or the Alt-CSA somehow contructed and ran enough Hanford-style breeder reactors to produce plutonium and once again beat the OTL US' production speed. Yeah, right.
 

Peter Cowan

Disregarding the nukes bit - given the dilution of effort and resources in Turtledove's timeline, the idea that any one country could develop an A-bomb is farfetched - where did the bombers to drop them come from? There is nothing to suggest that B-29 or Lancaster bombers (the only ones that could carry such a large load existed). Mind you, the paratroops on Missionary Ridge came out of left field, so I suppose anything is possible.
 

Bill Cameron

Banned
Trotsky said:
Turtle-Bloat?
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Trotsky,

Neat huh? I like it almost as much as another author's knickname:

S&M Stirling.

That's very witty, in an eight-year old child sort of way.
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Yup. Sort of like posting under an assumed name and calling yourself a chief assault leader, right? :rolleyes:

Be sure and buy the book. Turtle-bloat could use a new toupee, maybe this one would have some brains in it.


Bill
 

Adam

Bill Cameron said:
Peter,

The fissionable materials, the bombers, the paratroopers, and much much more all came from the same place. And that place is the desire to sell us more books.


Bill
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Goddamn suh, that's the lowest piece of trolling I've ever seen on the boards.
 

Hobelhouse

You're kidding. THe CONFEDERACY gets a bomb. The Cofederacy that's being over run on all sides, suffers from a horrendous shortage of manpower and talent and furthermore has nearly no uranium on its soil?

God dman. I had been predicting that Germany would get the bomb first, use it on as a knockout blow on Britain, followed by the US getting the bomb and nuking either Houston or Charleston. But Britain? Never mind their program never got much accomplished OTL, when the US was ON THEIR SIDE.

Too bad about Featherston, I wanted to see him captured and stand trial. Be a nice turn-around from OTL and maybe give us a chance of seeing what a Hitler trial would have been like.

Carsten has skin cancer? Really? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: Too bad about that zinc oxide, eh?

I wanted to see Pinkard die in a camp revolt. Picturing a black man beat his brains out with a shovel is kind of a satisfying image.
 
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