AHF_fiction

Dreadnoughts, tanks, zeppelins, gatling guns – you won’t get those in an alternate history cos they’d be called something else!

It is unlikely that the all big-gun battleship would be known as a South Carolina (the nearest rival in terms of planning and completion dates) and given that very soon the dreadnought became the super-dreadnought it is quite likely that without a name that could be applied ubiquitously the battleship would have become a super-battleship.

Tanks were so designated to confuse potential German spies or informers, especially when they were being transported by rail. In German they are panzerkamfwagen – armoured battle wagons. One can imagine a similar descriptive name in English if the tank deception never gets taken up. IMHO Turtledove’s “barrels” may SEEM to emulate OTL’s “tanks” but is based on a misconception, and the likelihood of a visual nickname being taken up seems less likely than a bland descriptive naming.

Obviously zeppelins are also known as airships, yet even in Philip Pulman’s books they are still called zeppelins, the same in Dr Who of recent. Its a more evocative name, somewhat alien sounding and menacing. But unless the good count invents them and invents them for an Imperial Germany that uses them aggressively, in the English-speaking world they would remain AIRSHIPS

And of course a gatling gun is a type of revolving proto-machine gun but like Bofors guns or oerlikons, it is all refllective of the manufacturer or inventor. They could easily be called Dobbs guns or Schmidt guns.

The problem for the writer of alternate history fiction is that if he uses an analogous name it can come across as vague and non-sensical to the reader. For example, reading about the powerful Dobbs Gun used against the natives it won’t be obvious to readers you mean something like the Gatling gun.

Aeroplane and automobile companies are another area. I have often used a made-up company called Ardent across different stories because it sounds good and plausible. For general vehicles an Ardent standing in place of a Rover or a Renault or a Chevrolet makes enough sense and is one marque replaced by another.

But at the limousine or sports car ends unless it is made plain that the new make is equivalent to an OTL one, the whole effect can be lost. In Angevinia (Shadows of the Future) I did this with a top-end Ardent but in general substituting Ajax for Cadillac or South Star for Aston Martin won’t work unless you also describe the car – something that would not be necessary if you used the short-hand of saying “a Cadillac” or “an Aston Martin”.

Similarly the TYPES of automobile all have their origins in something limousine, station wagon,estate, saloon, coupe etc. A lot of these early type-names came from equivalent carriages and horse-drawn coaches. BUT if your POD is sufficiently far back, THESE too will have changed so you need to create an ATL carriage-type to evolve it into being applied as an early automobile tye. Many of these early types have faded from use but some have remained – limousine being a prime example. For later usage comparative terms MIGHT emerge or something similar used in an equivalent context.

In aeroplanes the issue is virtually identical with regard to manufacturers’ names, and model makes. In a First World War equivalent everyone knows what a Sopwith or a Fokker implies, but if these were Lippschitz and Bernard, well it would be obvious by context but the names would lack the “mental association” and seem oddly out of place, even though objectively speaking neither Sopwith nor Fokker has any ‘magic’ about the word that is their name. In most cases the reader will get used to it, and if you’ve used an OTL minor manufacturer as an ATL major or leader in this field, then the mental jump will be less eg in Tsar Michael The Great the manufacturer Halberstadt was still around producing jet fighters in the 1950s.

But think also of the words ‘fighter’ and ‘bomber’. And not only these but remember that the USA labels its aircraft F-this or B-that using this terminology. But it was not INEVITABLE that it would emerge. Perhaps they would have been Corsair and Destroyer. The word ‘bomb’ itself is something that may not come into being in an ATL.

If Corsairs and Destroyers are flying over your battlefield, then your ATL equivalent of the USA could be sending C-111s and D-2s into battle…

Grey Wolf