/tg/ - Traditional Games

Now Heinlein, no longer a nobody, is in charge thanks to the election in 52 - a contested result decided by the ENIACs, Times Square is THE place to buy black market punch readers to hack Commodore Bob's system, and a bunch of freaks in the faculty of San Francisco have begun publishing do-it-yourself manifestos about cracking the electro-mechanical systems that run almost every function in every day life; provoking a practical war on campuses everywhere by PrezBob.

But Bob is a fair man - if you don't like paying taxes, mandatory public service conscription, and military preparedness training you can always go to an Interzone and live without the protection or responsibility of laws.

Such is life in 1955.

This...

I think I found where Modempunk comes from.

Bump. This is the best thread on /tg/.

Sorry, I haven't really given it much more thought beyond that.

The basic image in my head is that, due to a prolonged period of extensive spending and rebuilding in Europe and Asia between 45 and 48 that the U.S. is, while not impoverished, less middle-class than it was in this time in real life. No big suburban boom, instead the technocrats in Washington maximized agricultural output in the country while instituting population control and urban planning in population centers. Higher education/training subsidies for everyone, not just GI's.

The arcologies and the farm belts are managed by ENIAC computer banks, which have card readers and readouts throughout the cities/towns/highways where they accept/relay data for various civil functions.

>>16606992

I like it.

Of course, the nik in Beatnik came from Sputnik, so there has to be a Cold War going on.

The implied setting of the use of more computerization of artillery tables, more investment in tech development, combining to result in the likely decapitation of Nazi high command with reverse-engineered and improved V missiles or computer-targeted supergun artillery or so forth or simply the use of nuclear weapons earlier in Germany and Japan both created the mentioned situation of a more complicated post-war situation.

I'm thinking the wonder weapons knocked out German high command, for instance, causing an internal civil war/coup of the army removing the party - resulting in a conditional surrender to the Allies as say Allied generals technically lead the country but German coupsters are running the day to day operations and continuing their fights against SS unit holdouts in various areas.

Similarly with warlords in China after the Japanese front collapses due to atomic bomb usage on the home islands. Things being more confusing because of surrenders and collaborators, requiring a longer and messier time of sorting things out by letting the end phases of the wars be fought by pro-Ally collaborators against the diehard hold outs.

This situation is almost stolen whole cloth from the alternate history dotcom timeline "The Ride of the Foxleys".

The idea of a young pro-tech VP in 44 assuming office when FDR dies on schedule and creating a post-war techno-age is stolen shamelessly from the Paul di Filippo story "Mairzy Doats". Seriously, check it out - it assumes Robert Heinlein took Truman's place.

>>16608020

I kind of combined and mixed things of these two sources and my own to create the timeline of technocrat Vannevar Bush setting up a nonpartisan status quo of massive research spending and computer-assisted bureaucratic management of society on a war-time style basis; with a subsequent Henry Wallace presidency serving to cause all the beats and freaks to come out of the woodwork, and the "current" Heinlein presidency creating social conflict as the pro-tech reactionaries fight the pro-tech freaks.

To think how these eccentrics could get elected, you can assume the political situation gets even more fragmented then it was in real life, which already pretty fragmented in 48, with Democrats, Republicans, States Rights, Socialist, Progressive, Christian National Crusade, and Prohibition candidates running for president.

The Foxleys timeline implies that a German surrender and thus a supervisory role like our modern day occupation/assistance of regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan would breathe new life into the semi-demi-hemi-fascist isolationist movement, giving Charles Lindbergh another shot at political office under America First - it taking on an anti-Marshall Plan type message.

>>16608033

And Foxley's also suggests that you could see an unlikely alliance of certain right, center, and left elements in an anti-fascist movement that is convinced of German conspiracies in the government; with the Teutonic Knights having been at the heart of the German General Staff who staged the anti-Nazi coup, as part of a long-term plan for foul German world supremacy.

But onto the Russians and the Cold War..

Coups in Japan and Germany resulting in mediation and an invited top-tier occupation rather than Ally boots on the ground type occupation, and an end to the war before years end 45, means less growth spurts for the Soviet Union but also plenty of opportunity building up communist parties in the reconstructing/neutralized countries.

The three post-war years of the Bush presidency would terrify them stiff with all of the technological advancements Vannevar's America would make; and then all those advancements would be handed over more or less due to the admirable but lax civil libertarian approach to national security, and handouts of technology to rebuilding countries without proper supervision, of the Wallace administration; allowing the Soviets to catch up and maybe even start to make some gains.

Which sets things up for a paranoid Heinlein administration.

Oh hell yes.

Sounds like cool stuff. I'm not too computer-savvy, so I can't really think much else up. But putting a lot of the major technological innovators of the 20th centuryin, instead, political positions, might make for an interesting alternate history.

Where's Remington Rand in this picture?

Also, the people who created the computer technology we used today were amazing. Anyone here read Cryptonomicon? It's a pretty amazing (fictional) treatment of that time period (and the 80's tech boom).

>>16608057

Also, if Vannevar's idea of scientists ignoring academic rivalries, private market competition, and political differences to simply advance the technological level of the nation they are in - in this case America - holds, you will have a society where technology and innovation in general come from NASA type government funded research initiatives; rather the all too compatible with advertising and consumerism military-industrial complex of real life.

Imagine the entire military-industrial complex run like NASA, by engineers like in NASA. And this dominating private sector developments as well, with engineers, technicians, and scientists all being on-call Reservists essentially for the Office of Scientific Research and Development.

Meanwhile selective service for reconstruction may have ended in 48, but Wallace would have established a just as large/well funded volunteer arm called maybe Public Service Corps or something, and so you would have still a sort of war-time Rosy the Riveter command economy labor meets paramilitary vibe thing going on with social workers, construction crews, repairmen and electricians and plumbers of all stripes, radio operators, etc.

Also, speaking of Rosie the Riveter, while it is different from this you should definitely just for its own awesomeness check out Viral's game Rivet on 1d4chan.

>>16608091

The computer tech level were talking about here is giant fifties style vacuum tube computers that still use punch cards (the IBM punch card reader being the interface of choice).

Punch card hacking was part of the original concept pitched to me:

"All of my money. Take it. I just imagined the 50s equivalent of cyberpunk with augumented William Burroughs typing on robot typewriters, and Beatnik types hacking the ENIAC with sabotaged punchcards. It's glorious."

Do go on.

I would like more. Lots more.

Here's an idea:

In Ilium, New York, a major industrial center dubbed "Utopia 14" is being constructed. A young and slightly insane technical writer/engineer called Kurt Vonnegut has been appointed as the head director of this ambitious project that, upon it's completion, will be a new center of American industry and science.

Wikipedia:

"The Times Square "Underworld"

Burroughs had an interest in criminal behavior and got involved in dealing stolen goods and narcotics. He was soon addicted to opiates. Burroughs' guide to the criminal underworld (centered in particular around Times Square) was small-time criminal and drug-addict Herbert Huncke. The Beats were drawn to Huncke, who later started to write himself, perceiving he possessed a vital worldly knowledge unavailable to them from their largely middle-class upbringings.

Ginsberg was arrested in 1949. The police attempted to pull over Ginsberg while he was driving with Huncke, his car filled with stolen items Huncke planned to fence. Ginsberg crashed the car while trying to flee. He escaped on foot, but left incriminating notebooks behind. Ginsberg was given the option to plead insanity to avoid a jail term, and was committed for 90 days to Bellevue Hospital, where he met Carl Solomon.[11]"

The Times Square Underworld is, by 55, a hacker haven and the word Beat and Beatnik are synonymous with hacker - in fact are the slang replacing hacker, otherwise it is a criminal technician or something. But Ginsberg and most of the Beats are by that time in San Francisco, just as in real life, but as faculty at universities - pioneering new user interfaces for the super-computer system that runs the nation.

bump

This setting is great. I mean, you could trow in all kinds of things: an energy crisis (would be important to a state relying on electricity), economical stagnation (lets face it: scientific nations are not very competitive), western european nations taking a larger part in the CW, The invention of integrated circuits (which obviously would be opposed by the sitting government, since they rely on the old tech) etc. etc.

>>16614064

I was going to suggest the Suez Crisis leading to an Anglo-French Union as a third force in the CW due to American anti-imperialism; but with Heinlein instead of Ike you know he'd support it.

However, we can instead have the Anglo-French Union happen during the war in 44, following up the proposal for such.

Or, simply an early European community due to a whole Germany that had a military coup and surrender to the Allies before either side was too close to Berlin (Soviets and Western allies, I mean).

That would certainly make the Teutonic-General Staff conspiracy people incensed, if a whole Germany with a strong influence of the German army is rehabilitated in the 3 year 45 to 48 rebuilding process under Allied supervision/light occupation and results in a strongly coordinated Europe. That'd make the conspiracy theorists think the Nazis had faked the coup in order to retake Europe and the UK this time from within.

Also, there has to be a place in Transistor Beat for Standford Ovshinsky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Ovshinsky

Here's an idea...

>1944
>D-Day fails.
>Stauffenberg successfully assassinates Hitler.
>After a short strife, a new cabinet headed by Dönitz takes over.
>1945
>"Rheintochter" missiles cause severe damage to the Allied bomber fleet.
>A second allied amphibious landing at Calais fails again.
>The Allies and Germany sign a truce. The Soviets, utterly exhausted (just like the Allies and the rest of the Axis), also sign a cease-fire agreement with the Reich.
>Russia succumbs into another civil war.
>1948
>Germany announces the start of it's space program.
>Telefunken develops a new "computational device" that rivals IBM's best computers.
>Britain and the US also start their own respective space projects. The Space Race begins.
>1950
>The first German satellite, dubbed "Adler-1" enters orbit. For two hours it broadcasts a single morse code as a looping message: "Deutschland Über Alles."

Also, Abwehr hackers everywhere.

>>16615186

D-Day successful, coup is successful. They negotiate a surrender. Generals Montgomery and Patton become the occupation leaders of Germany, but they are commanding what is essentially a German military government as German soldiers move against Waffen-SS units in a civil war type situation. Trials are held in country for Nazis, the Opposition (the political backers of Stauffenberg) are technically in power but really the pro-coup military, especially the Navy, are the real unifying force in the neutralized Germany.

>>16614064

A prototype microchip would make a great MacGuffin that governments, corporations, scientists, beats, Germans, Russians, Anglo-French, Heinlein, Wallace's party, etc. would all be willing to spy, steal, intimidate, and in some cases kill for.

http://archive.easymodo.net/tg/thread/12541147

It took me a while to find it, but the link above is something this thread could draw a lot from.

Bump?

i dig it.

Morning bump, keeping the dream alive.

ALIIIIIIVE

>>16616855

This setting doesn't HAVE to have the Isaac Asimov circa Foundation series obsession with atomics being used in everything...but it can.

>>16625699
I figured with that conflict over switching from analog to digital computers, a possible outcome might be the atomic-friendly and suburban-conservative-McCarthy bloc as a swing reaction to the libertarian policies of the mid-50s.

>>16615186
>Implying D-Day made that big of a difference

By D-Day, the Germans are already on their last ropes. Everything after Kursk was downhill.

It has echoes of Atompunk, so you may want to mine that thread for ideas.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/6514867/

Sadly the followup threads, which focused more on the internal threats of Bitniks, Women's Libbers and Greasers don't seem to have been archived.

atombump

President Heinlein has my vote. Please make him more like old Heinlein, with shades of right wing anarchism and unabashed hedonism.

>>16631867
>Please make him more like old Heinlein, with shades of right wing anarchism and unabashed hedonism.

I think that's the point.

>>16634289

In my mind Heinlein post his young idealistic liberal phase is a militaristic technophile libertine on matters of sex, drugs, and race but no great civil libertarian - perfectly willing to go police state on communists and opponents. In Heinlein's America you can have free love, the pill, and racial equality; but you can't vote unless you have either served in the army or in the public service corps, and he views the Constitution as more of a guideline than a rulebook in terms of his presidential powers and those of his military-intelligence complex.

For more president Heinlein, read the di Filippo story Mairzy Doats, mentioned earlier.