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I'M THINKING ABOUT CREATING A UNIVERSE
by Nicki Benson |
I’m thinking of creating a universe.
[Already done that — God.]
Be quiet. I’m blogging.
This universe wouldn’t be a completely fictitious place, but our own world with one crucial difference: the First World War never happened.
The reason that the diplomatic crisis of 1914 didn’t lead to a general European conflict was due to the events of July 30 — 31, when the planet was bombarded with untold trillions of hard black spheres the size of golf balls that resulted in a great deal of damage to buildings but because they fell everywhere at night brought about a relatively low death toll. Nor did the spheres prove to be dangerous after they had landed, quickly decaying into a formless sludge that dissolved upon contact with water.
It was soon established that this was not a natural occurrence. The greatest concentrations of spheres had fallen on the most populous cities. Land under cultivation had received no more than a light dusting. Ocean-going ships reported seeing none at all. Whether the bombardment was a warning from heaven or the prelude to an invasion from Mars, there could be no doubt that it had been a deliberate act.
The immediate result was most keenly felt in Germany, where Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg had already decided for war upon the advice of his Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke. This decision was now rescinded. Within days the ambassadors from each of the Great Powers had gathered around the conference table with one remit in mind: peace in our time.
[A more comprehensive account of the diplomatic situation will be provided if and when the rules of this universe are codified.]
But although the spheres had released no poison gas or spores, they were not completely inert. Unknown to anyone, they had contained nanobots. These molecule-sized machines went to work in two different ways.
1
They altered the DNA of certain strains of pine tree, creating a variety that would become known as ‘sylvestris’. Its timber proved so durable — when treated with a resin that its cones provided — that it became the standard material for any kind of building. It also burned with a thermal efficiency so high that over the course of the next fifty years or so it made fossil fuels obsolete. Not only that, but the trees could tolerate just about any soils or climatic conditions. The world found it had a clean, sustainable resource that would forever change its economic and social development.
2
The nanobots also altered the DNA of some human beings. It took decades for the mutations to be recognised and classified, but in the end nine were identified. They were given names corresponding to the nine muses of Greek mythology.
[This is partly because of their appearance, of which more later.]
A muse mutation is female. She is not possessed of superhuman abilities, but nevertheless exhibits extraordinary talents. She is determined, persuasive and shares with her ‘fellow’ muses an understanding that seems to verge on the telepathic. She is respected but at the same time she is feared.
Yet the mutation is not evident at birth. It occurs at or just after puberty, affecting between 5 and 10% of the population. The onset is sudden and traumatic — blurred vision, high temperature and an itching sensation — and takes around thirty-six hours to run its course. Depending upon which part of the world the transformation happens in, and not which ethnic group to which they may belong, the mutant will become physically indistinguishable from the other muses in that area.
And here’s the tg element (drum roll!). The nanobots don’t care what gender you are, as long as you satisfy their genetic requirements. As many boys as girls become muses.
So what’s their agenda? Simply that the planet and its people are being terraformed — if that’s the right word to use for an extra-terrestrial intervention. Because a muse’s children are muses from birth, and eventually they’ll replace homo sapiens. What happens after that isn’t for me to say.
STIPULATIONS
I’ve never created a universe before, and I don’t intend to place any restrictions on this one. If I’m any judge of tg fiction it won’t appeal to all that many writers, so the last thing I want to do is put off anyone who’s genuinely interested in exploring what the world might have been like had sense prevailed in 1914. No Hitler, no holocaust and maybe no atomic weapons — but no computers or mobile phones either?
What I’d like at this stage are suggestions. If it won’t work then tell me. If it needs refining then tell me how. You never know, you could be credited as a co-creator.
One more thing. Despite the picture I uploaded for the heading, the muses won’t all be white.
Comments
This would also change other world events
No WW I so even though Hitler would have been born he would not have seen combat in France as a Corporal and been gassed. This would also mean no WW II because the Prussian Imperial government would not have fallen. Some other war later might have taken place though because the Austrian-Hungarian Empire would also still exist and they might have ended up with problems with the Ottoman Empire. Also, the Russian Imperial family would also probably still be alive because it took the hardships of WW I to cause the Russian Revolution during the end stage of WW I. In fact, because there was no First World War the ENTIRE political landscape would be totally different because it was that war that was the catalyst to pretty much everything with the social, political AND religious events that lead to where we are today.
I suspect that due to the extra-terrestrial intervention in your 1914 that there would be an entirely different flashpoint tjat would lead to the development of advanced electronics. Believe me, SOMETHING would have eventually lead to a new WW I probably around 10 to 20 years later because alot of those Imperial governments in Europe and the Middle-east were rotten to the core. The flashpoints would probably still be the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, the Persians and the Russians. It would also probably take longer for the U.S. to come out of it's isolationist shell.
Good Points
Good points. If it hadn't been for the 1914 - 1918 war there's no doubt that Britain would eventually have joined Germany in an alliance against Russia. That was where the smart money saw the threat coming from.
But I didn't start this blog to speculate on geopolitics so much as to invite people to wonder what the social implications might have been. The status of women, for example. And in the UK, the hands-off attitude of the state, which until 1914 saw its role as maintaining law and order, and little else.
Looked up Woman's Sufferage movement...
Women's Suffrage
From Grolier
The struggle to achieve equal rights for women is often thought to have begun, in the English-speaking world, with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). During the 19th century, as male suffrage was gradually extended in many countries, women became increasingly active in the quest for their own suffrage. Not until 1893, however, in New Zealand, did women achieve suffrage on the national level. Australia followed in 1902, but American, British, and Canadian women did not win the same rights until the end of World War I.
The United States
The demand for the enfranchisement of American women was first seriously formulated at the Seneca Falls Convention (1848). After the Civil War, agitation by women for the ballot became increasingly vociferous. In 1869, however, a rift developed among feminists over the proposed 15th Amendment, which gave the vote to black men. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others refused to endorse the amendment because it did not give women the ballot. Other suffragists, however, including Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, argued that once the black man was enfranchised, women would achieve their goal. As a result of the conflict, two organizations emerged. Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association to work for suffrage on the federal level and to press for more extensive institutional changes, such as the granting of property rights to married women. Stone created the American Woman Suffrage Association, which aimed to secure the ballot through state legislation. In 1890 the two groups united under the name National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In the same year Wyoming entered the Union, becoming the first state with general women's suffrage (which it had adopted as a territory in 1869).
As the pioneer suffragists began to withdraw from the movement because of age, younger women assumed leadership roles. One of the most politically astute was Carrie Chapman Catt, who was named president of NAWSA in 1915. Another prominent suffragist was Alice Paul. Forced to resign from NAWSA because of her insistence on the use of militant direct-action tactics, Paul organized the National Woman's Party, which used such strategies as mass marches and hunger strikes. Perseverance on the part of both organizations eventually led to victory. On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment granted the ballot to American women.
Great Britain
In Great Britain the cause began to attract attention when the philosopher John Stuart Mill presented a petition in Parliament calling for inclusion of women's suffrage in the Reform Act of 1867. In the same year Lydia Becker (1827 –90) founded the first women's suffrage committee, in Manchester. Other committees were quickly formed, and in 1897 they united as the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, with Millicent Garret Fawcett (1847 –1929) as president. Like their American counterparts, the British suffragists struggled to overcome traditional values and prejudices. Frustrated by the prevailing social and political stalemate, some women became more militant. Emmeline Pankhurst, assisted by her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903. Her followers, called "suffragettes," heckled politicians, practiced civil disobedience, and were frequently arrested for inciting riots. When World War I started, the proponents of women's suffrage ceased their activities and supported the war effort. In February 1918 women over the age of 30 received the right to vote. Suffrage rights for men and women were equalized in 1928.
Other Countries
European countries such as Finland (1906), Norway (1913), and Denmark and Iceland (1915) granted women the vote early in the 20th century. Other continental powers were quick to accord women the right to vote at the end of World War I. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Netherlands granted suffrage in 1917; Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Sweden in 1918; and Germany and Luxembourg in 1919. Spain extended the ballot to women in 1931, but France waited until 1944 and Belgium, Italy, Romania, and Yugoslavia until 1946. Switzerland finally gave women the vote in 1971, and women remained disenfranchised in Liechtenstein until 1984.
In Canada women won the vote in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan in 1916; after federal suffrage was achieved in 1918, the other provinces followed suit, the last being Quebec in 1940. Among the Latin American countries, national women's suffrage was granted in 1929 in Ecuador, 1932 in Brazil, 1939 in El Salvador, 1942 in the Dominican Republic, 1945 in Guatemala, and 1946 in Argentina. In India during the period of British rule, women were enfranchised on the same terms as men under the Government of India Act of 1935; following independence, the Indian Constitution, adopted in 1949 and inaugurated in 1950, established adult suffrage. In the Philippines women received the vote in 1937, in Japan in 1945, in China in 1947, and in Indonesia in 1955. In African countries men and women have generally received the vote at the same time, as in Liberia (1947), Uganda (1958), and Nigeria (1960). In many Middle Eastern countries universal suffrage was acquired after World War II. In some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, there is no suffrage at all, and in others, such as Kuwait, it is very limited and excludes women completely.
Bibliography: Buechler, S. M., Women's Movements in the United States (1990); DuBois, E. C., Feminism and Suffrage (1978); Flanz, G. R., Comparative Women's Rights and Political Participation in Europe (1984); Flexner, E., Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, rev. ed. (1975; repr. 1996); Frost, E., and Cullen-Dupont, K., Women's Suffrage in America (1992); Green, E. C., Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (1997); Holton, S., Feminism and Democracy: Women's Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900 –1918 (1986); Kraditor, A. S., The Idea of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890 –1920 (1965); Pankhurst, Sylvia, The Suffragette Movement (1931; repr. 1971); Smith, Harold L., The British Women's Suffrage Campaign, 1866 –1928 (1998); Solomon, M. M., ed., Voice of Their Own: The Woman Suffrage Press, 1840 –1910 (1991); Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, et al., eds., The History of Woman Suffrage, 6 vols. (1881; repr. 1971); Weatherford, Doris, A History of the American Suffragist Movement (1998); Wheeler, M. S., ed., One Woman One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement (1995).
So, in conclusion, by 1914 there was a very large WS movement in the US, UK and Canada by 1914 with 1915 seeing some very important things happen.
No
Both the Russian Revolution and the demise of the Ottoman Empire were "accidents waiting to happen." Both had "top heavy" governments that were very corrupt and overtaxed the common people. The middle class would have revolted because of too many restrictions. The Russian and Ottoman monarchies would not have survived. Jewish claims and land purchases on Israel, possibly including "Greater Israel" would have continued unabated, especially with Christian persicution. Also Brittan and France had designs on the Middle East. The U S would continue to be insular. War between Japan and U S.
Questions that I can't answer:
1. Kerensky or Stalin
2. Another war between Russia and Turkey
3. Israel successful?
4. How large a land grab Brittan, France, Japan.
5. Austrian controlled countries revolts successful?
6. Would Treaty of Paris, ending Napoleonic Wars lead to League of Nations?
7. If no Stalin: U S would stay out of Vietnam.
8. Would Vietnam be democratic?
9. Would P R of China be Republic of China and democratic?
10. A major cause of WW II resulted in independence of colonies. Would that have happened?
11. American civil rights was result of WWII. Again, would that have happened?
12. If Israel: Dome of Rock or Temple?
13. Ethiopia: Italian colony?
14. The Bomb?
shalimar
Oh I love!
Alternate history stories! :) Okay I'll throw my thoughts out following the outline of your blog. The first thing that comes to mind is certain areas are going to be hit harder than areas due to construction practices. Areas that need to be sturdily built to withstand heavy snows is going to suffer less than tropical areas whose only fear is rain and wind.
It also depends on just how these things do their damage. If they can punch though a steel boiler like that on a steam-engine widely used in trains of the period think about the steam explosions.
However, we also know they are nanotechnology which trumps everything I just said. They could easily be programed to 'damage' an area to a specified degree targeting desired areas. It would seem that industrial capacity would be a high on that list particularly foundries and steel works.
And you can't forget the religious angle. All the major religions would be up in arms claiming divine intervention. After all everyone could see a war was coming. All of Europe had been preparing for the conflict for years.
I would take it that the 'sylvestris’ trees were fast growing as well as providing all the benefits you listed. Presumably there is also a visual difference? I would suggest that since pines don't grow everywhere, that perhaps a fast-growing species in each of the major temperate zones be effected by the 'sylvestris’ mutation.
As for the Children of the Fall, being different is going to be interpreted by each culture in vastly different ways. In few they will celebrated, but I fear in most its not going to be pleasant.
And you have remember that several very smart people is going to be around at that time. The Theory of Relativity was completed one year later than this in 1915 by dear Albert. Niko Tesla was still working on his broadcast power experiments at Wardenclyffe as well as demonstrating a blade-less turbine in 1913. Edison didn't die till October 18, 1931 so he is also still around.
Perhaps personal computers and cell phones might not be around, but computers almost certainly would in some form. That is unless the nanos ate them! Punch card Tabulators (Made by IBM of course!) were in production and vital for census and other accounting tasks. The first vaguely modern computers were called super-tabulators at first since one was developed from the other.
I'm sure others will correct and add to this, but it is a start. It also depends on 'when' your first stories actually begins.
Another interesting note is that you could tie the Tunguska event into this too. I've always found it fascinating that genetic mutation is higher not only in the trees at the blast site, but along the trail of the meteor as if something were following it or dropping off behind it.
Great ideas!
hugs
Grover
Mallorns They Ain't!
Thanks for such a well thought out comment. The stories I've begun writing are all set in the present day, though that need not be the case should other writers want to join in. Yes, the sylvestris trees would grow very quickly. And they'd lend the landscape a rather monotonous aspect. Mallorns they ain't!
(Funny you should mention Tunguska. That was the event I originally planned to work into my Richard/Ruth stories as the source of the mysterious mind transfer device. And it's no coincidence that Chrysanthemum von Witzleben went missing in 1908, the very same year. One day I'll put all that together.)
The question of acceptance is one I hope will be explored thoroughly. Some muses may not wish to embrace their heritage. Others will form secret societies or communes. None will do very much in the way of smiling.
Here's a taster.
The electric train slides soundlessly to a halt. Through the grimy window I can see an empty platform protected from the pouring rain by a high arched canopy, and hear a voice talking in an accent that sounds as if it belongs in Devon or Cornwall.
“Porritsmuth an’ Saysee. This is Porritsmuth an’ Saysee. Remain aborred for Porritsmuth Arburr an’ the Gosporrit an’ Oyeel o’ Woyeet ferries.â€
Fortunately the announcement is translated on each of the station’s nameboards.
Portsmouth & Southsea. Remain on the train for Portsmouth Harbour and the Gosport and Isle of Wight ferries.
Portsmouth and Southsea. My stop.
No sooner have I risen from my seat than the other passenger riding in the compartment leaps up. He’s got the door open in a jiffy, and my overnight bag off the luggage rack in only one shake of a lamb’s tail. His reward is one last look at the tight-fitting faded jeans I fill so well, not forgetting a farewell glance at the contours straining at the fabric of the T-shirt I wear beneath my leather jacket.
I doubt if he’d have had the nerve to ogle me if I hadn’t dyed my hair dark brown and grown it back to shoulder length. But that’s a price I’m willing to pay if it means I can pass for an ordinary eighteen year old girl.
“Thank you,†I say politely, though I don’t smile.
“Any time, love.â€
I bristle at that, but not for long. When I think about the manner in which I was once addressed I have very little cause for complaint.
My high-heeled ankle boots make contact with the pitted, uneven asphalt, and the latest chapter in my life is about to begin.
A chapter in which every word will be a lie. Because there’s no other way.
Hmmm
It took me a moment to realize that you were talking about von Moltke the Younger, not the one who famously said "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." In German, of course. Probably while staring down his nose through his monocle.
The Russian problem may not be what many people think it is. The Communist Revolution came about because the Germans shipped a bunch of very toxic revolutionaries from their exile in Paris to Moscow via a sealed train. Without that you'd still be dealing with Czar whoever. So you basically wouldn't be dealing with the Communist revolutionaries.
The Ottoman Empire was on its last legs and would have collapsed in a few decades anyway.
The biggest problem I see with it is that you're inventing a back story to the story you really want to tell, and the back story may cause you more problems than you're anticipating. For example: did the 1918 influenza pandemic happen? In this timeline it started in a fort somewhere here in the US, and would have stopped WW I all on its own - people were dying like flies.
In the universe I invented for the stories I have on this site, I wrote the story I wanted to write, and then invented the back story around it. It's not one of the ones on this site; among other things, there are no TG elements. The TG elements in the universe fell out of the biotechnology aspect with a remarkably small amount of handwavium.
What I'd suggest is that you not worry about the realpolitic. Historians usually count the end of the 19th century with WW I, because that changed everything. It completely broke the back of the British nobility, for example. A lot of people died in the war who would have made major contributions to science. Just handwave whatever "future history" you need.
You'd keep all the
You'd keep all the aristocratic societies. Russia would implode anyway, but without Lenin you might get the democratic socialists instead of the autocratic ones. The european nations would keep tighter control over their colonial empires.
Not sure what would happen to authorative states like Germany. They wouldn't lose the first world war, but people might get unhappy with militarism. Depending on how society developes one might see a revolution here. Especially since the Kaiser wasn't the smartest loaf of bread.
Anyway, I wonder more if the muses are ordinary women, or if they are psychologically different. I mean certain pecularities of female psychology make empire building rather complicated. Or do the aliens just intend to turn the entire population into their females to have a more docile population to take over?
Japan in China, Burma etc.
No I haven't got an alternate history for 20th Century Asia, but I'm sure somebody will.
Intriguing universe Nicki. The terraforming/DNA programming sounds as much like
the "helpful" aliens from AC CLarke's CHILDHOOD'S END as any invasion set-up...
~hugs, Veronica
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Laika, on the nature
of aliens there are several ways I can imagine this going. Let's address your helpful critters first. With their superior wisdom they can see we're heading for trouble and from the goodness of their 16 chamber hearts decide to intervene. Mankind will be so much happier this way. All it takes is a little tweaking of those pesky genes and they're done!
Next comes the not so nice aliens. Earth at this point is on the edge of a new level of development. By effectively stalemating them at this stage and by introducing 'Muses' to help control the masses, in a few years all the new Masters/Mistresses have to do is step off their transports to set up their new homes and plantations.
I'm assuming there is some kind of genetic programming making the mutated children and their children loyal to the incoming management change.
Now its the evil alien's turn which is a variant of the not-so-nice ones. After having aggression breed out of humanity by the Muses, hunting down the remnants is just a mornings exercise before going out and surveying what use they can make of what mankind has left behind. So very nice for them to have all these refined metals just laying around for Earth's new dominant species to make use of.
On another note, there was a lot of good ideas about societal and cultural changes due to The Great War. Influenza, Woman's Suffrage, the final teetering fall of aristocratic governments and other changes as well. Let's not forget the War pulled millions of farm-boys out of the fields where they became aware of a bigger world. Well, the ones that survived that is. Let's not forget the survivors such as TE Lawrence and JRR Tolkien wrote of their experiences and influenced millions of others like us. No WWI would also mean no Frodo and Sam marching into the No-Man's land of Mordor.
I would also imagine that the Roaring Twenties would be much more ... sedate.
On the other hand I agree with X that unless the back story is very important the present of your story then, a lot details just tend to stop up the drain. Useful for your universe's bible, but not so much for your readers.
From your tease, I'm going to say your Muses/Sirens are not accepted by the world at large and this girl is living under cover.
I'm very interested in seeing where this goes.
:)
hugs
Grover
Create a Story
I have created and cocreated at least two universi. Also created a sub universe. The difference between what you did and my universi is that there are stories in my universi. To give your universe a chance to grow you MUST write at least a story. Otherwise it will die. It still may as with most of my universi.