Two Different Versions of Alexander's Empire Surviving

One of the great hinges on which history turned is the death of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great. Using the combined war machine of Macedonia and the classical Greek city-states, he conquered the gigantic Achaemenid Persian Empire and even some regions outside it in a very short time. He ruled from northern Greece to Egypt to outer India and Central Asia, but before he could consolidate his government and create a lasting dynasty ruling over most of the known (to Europeans) world...he died of a fever, excessive drinking, or a combination thereof. And his generals tore the empire apart, sidelining and killing his wife and son in the process. Had Alexander lived, it would have been a very, very different world, and people have been wondering about what might have happened for a very, very long time.

(One of the earliest works of alternate history is the Roman writer Livy, who wrote a short scenario in which a surviving Alexander fought Rome. He thinks the Romans would have still won, which is...dubious.)

And the alternate history forum which I still check in on even though I'm self-banned (which keeps me out of the cesspool that's Political Chat) has two different versions of one surviving-Alexander timeline, "Blood and Gold." Here's the first version and here's the second.

Some highlights...

*Apparently before his death, Alexander was planning a campaign to subjugate Arabia, which was the crossroads of a rich spice trade. Given how he lives longer this time around, we see that campaign.

*Alexander's Macedonian supporters were growing increasingly resentful of his adoption of Persian customs in order to govern his enlarged empire. This continues to be an issue for Alexander himself and his successors, who govern from the Middle East rather than Greece. And since the Argead (Alexander's family) often practices polygamy, this leads to all sorts of harem intrigue and problems.

*India continues to be a thorny issue for Alexander and his successors, as by the time Alexander heads back for round two (his army mutinied rather than try to advance further the first time), Chandragupta Maurya has founded his empire. Maurya is Alexander's equal and western India is going to be contested zone for generations.

*Alexander soon finds himself embroiled in the politics of Rome and Carthage, the two great powers of the Mediterranean. This is is also going to be an ongoing issue.

Both the original version of the timeline and the revised timeline are dead now and there's apparently a third that's also dead, but they're long and they're fun reads while they last. Enjoy!

ENOLA HOLMES: The Possibilities of an Indian Inspector Lestrade

In the recent Netflix series Enola Holmes, the police officer Inspector Lestrade is played by Adeel Akhtar, who is of Pakistani background. In the original stories, there's no indication that Lestrade was anything but a white Briton (although his name is actually French) and someone online suggested this was simply a case of colorblind casting where the actor's ethnicity/nationality is simply not considered in picking the role, making Lestrade Indian actually raises some interesting possibilities in regards to his back-story and characterization.

For starters, why is an Indian man working as a police officer in Great Britain in 1884, the year the reform bill that's a big part of the movie passed? Akhtar himself suggested that his Lestrade came from a working-class background and had to work his way up to his police position, leaving his back-story full of possibilities.

*India at the time was part of the British Empire and theoretically Indians could travel and live anywhere within its bounds--the Komogata Maru Incident I helped research as a graduate student was a legal test of that concept). Furthermore, many Indian sailors lived in port towns and even had British wives due to there being so very few Indian women in Britain. Akhtar's Lestrade could be from that background, perhaps a former sailor or a child of such, which would tie in with the working-class background. A 1931 census indicated there were thousands of Indian students in British universities, so Lestrade could be going to school part-time and paying for it by working as a police officer. Given his apparent age, this could be something he's been working at for awhile.

*Another possibility is that his presence in the UK is related to the Indian Civil Service. According to the book I used when I taught AP World History, theoretically anybody could work in the Indian Civil Service, but because examinations were held in Britain, it was extraordinarily difficult for Indians to access them. The Indian National Congress was actually founded in part to include more Indians in government--it didn't start out as a national independence movement. Lestrade's family could have paid for him to come to Great Britain to take the exams, he failed, and he's working as a police officer to pay them back. Or more optimistically, he hasn't taken the exams yet and this is how he supports himself until he does. His associations with the civil-service might explain why he is a police officer despite not being British--an Indian man applying to Scotland Yard might be rejected due concerns he might not be able to do the job effectively as a foreigner or simple straight-up racism, but an exception might be made for a civil-service candidate, either current or previous.

*Also, given how Lestrade's name is actually French, there are some other possibilities. This might be a name he adopted upon coming to Britain, indicating a desire to assimilate (especially since one study, albeit a disputed one, suggests Britons with Norman names are wealthier than those without even centuries after the conquest) or perhaps a Dark and Troubled Past he's trying to avoid. Alternatively, given how the French had a colonial presence in India before being defeated by the British, perhaps he's distantly descended from a Frenchman? Bonus points if as such he's actually Catholic, given the history of anti-Catholicism in Britain even in the 19th Century.

Although I'm almost certainly reading too much into this, if more Enola Holmes films are made (it is based on a book series) and Akhtar continues to play the role, this could be an interesting rabbit hole to go down. And if anybody wants to write a fan fiction story elaborating on this, go right ahead.

(Heck, Lestrade is public domain by now--although one wonders if a specifically Indian one is--so you could actually write a novel. Just leave out Enola completely and it probably won't be a copyright issue.)

Both My Supervillain-Protagonist Stories Are Now "Wide"

Back in 2013 when I was in graduate school, I wrote two short stories featuring Indian-American supervillain Andrew Patel as the protagonist, "Ubermensch" and "Needs Must." Although I would consider myself a political conservative, I do agree with the concept of more minority representation in speculative fiction, not just on the grounds of giving children the chance to see themselves as superheroes but also because members of these groups have money to spend. Look at the success of Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino hero of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or the Muslim Miss Marvel who will be getting her own Disney show soon. When I first tweeted them out, none other than Muslim fantasy writer Saladin Ahmed retweeted the links for me.

Although I had plans to write more stories featuring Patel, there wasn't a whole lot of reader interest compared to my alternate history and straight science fiction and fantasy projects. I've got a draft of a third story that actually links Andrew and his world with The Thing in the Woods in a Stephen King fashion (I got the idea from my friend Nic, overlord of Myopia: Defend Your Childhood), which I might include in a collection someday. However, that's likely all we'll ever see of Andrew Patel until we get to that future Thing sequel where he makes an appearance.

In the meantime, although I do make sales now and again (I sold a copy each yesterday, for example), the Kindle Unlimited borrows really dried up. According to one of the writing podcasts I listen to, one should stay in KU until the borrows stop coming in and then one should go wide on outlets like Kobo, Barnes and Noble, etc.

To that end, the two tales of supervillain Andrew Patel are now "wide" on non-Amazon markets. "Ubermensch" can be found on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple here and "Needs Must" can be found in these markets here. They are also various library markets like Overdrive, but they're not live there yet.

So if you're interested in the tales of an Indian-American biomedical engineer who read a little too much Nietzsche in college and has transformed himself into a cyborg to achieve transcendence, enjoy!

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Here's a flashback for you. Once upon a time in East Cobb there was a store called Zany Brainy, which was basically an educational toy super-store. And once upon a time, the first movie I remember purchasing for myself (as opposed to asking someone to buy it for me) was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Which I bought on VHS. Yes, it was that long ago.

This was when I was in middle school probably, since Zany Brainy folded in 2001 and this was well before it closed. I remember watching it several times, but it's been many, many years since I saw it. And so when Myopia: Defend Your Childhood did its poll and Indiana Jones won for the November series month, I was ready to review and enjoy. Here's the podcast.

And now for the review...

The Plot

Archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) begins this adventure in Shanghai in 1935, cutting a deal with Chinese gangster Lao Che (Roy Chiao) for a diamond. Lao tries to backstab him as one might expect, and he flees Shanghai with singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and his Chinese orphan helper Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan)...aboard a plane owned by Lao Che.

Lao Che's men abandon the plane in the Himalayas--still in the air--forcing our heroes to land it themselves (for a certain value of "land") in India, where they find themselves facing off against a murderous cult. Who will lose their beating hearts or their everlasting souls to the dreaded Kali-Ma? Only one way to find out...

The Good

*Once we get beyond the annoyingly-long showgirl number, the opening sequence is quite a lot of fun. And it stays fun for around twenty minutes. Gunfights, car chases, a plane crash. Never boring. The movie in general is very fast-paced and quite a lot of fun.

*The acting is generally good. Kate Capshaw is good as Willie, while Amish Puri does scary-intense well as the sinister Mola Ram.

*The depiction of the British Raj's political system is accurate. Around 1/3 of British India was ruled by Indian princes who were once Britain's allies but were eventually reduced to vassalage. Nominally independent royal courts subject to British inspection is something you'd see. You'd also see British-educated Indian officials like the young raja's prime minister.

*However annoying Willie is, seeing Indiana troll her is always good for a laugh. The extended "five minutes" scene stands out as particularly funny.

*There are some very impressive set-pieces, like the hidden temple of Kali and the gigantic idol therein and the mines.

*Although this isn't strictly part of the movie, it did inspire one of my favorite sequences of Family Guy, in which Stewie is enslaved in It's a Small World.



The Bad

*I really didn't like the opening several minutes. We don't see Indiana Jones movies for the showgirl sequences, and we had to suffer through a three-minute-long dance number whose whole purpose is to introduce Willie and the situation with Lao Che. At the very least they could have axed the second dance number and kept the first, or showed Indiana coming into the club when the music starts and watching it (and Willie).

*Willie is incredibly high-maintenance and annoying. Raiders of the Lost Ark love interest Marion was pretty cool and Elsa from The Last Crusade has some complexity, but Willie just got on my nerves. As Indiana explains to Short Round, the problem with her is the noise, and she makes quite a lot of it. Fortunately the events of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull showed that Indiana had better taste in the long run.

Nic sent me this Family Guy video that mocks how obnoxious Willie is, although in Kate Capshaw's defense, she only got involved with Spielberg AFTER getting the part.



*I can understand why the government of India got so pissy about the movie that they banned it (they also got pissy about Clone High and got it removed from MTV--shame on India for hyping up how they're the largest democracy while engaging in petty censorship) when we see the villagers cringing before Indiana and friends. This is improved somewhat when it's revealed that the village priest believes they've been sent by the god Shiva to save their children and sacred stone (i.e. they're sacred-by-association), but the optics are very White Savior-y. And then there's the dinner sequence that has to be seen to be believed. :)

*There are a bunch of obvious callbacks to Raiders, like a big minion who gives Indiana a run for his money in hand-to-hand combat and a flight through a tunnel chased by an oncoming natural feature. Could be a little more original.

*Can any of the villains actually hit what they're shooting at? Even though the fact this is a prequel undermines the suspense, if Indiana or any of the other heroic characters get winged or injured but not killed (maybe an arrow in a limb that doesn't damage anything vital but slows them down or causes lots of pain), it might up the suspense a bit. Hell, one reason I liked Valkyrie so much is that even though I knew the coup against Hitler would fail, there's a big chunk of the movie where it looks like it actually worked.

*For someone who is at least nominally a Christian, a character gets rather indignant about some practitioners of Thuggee having "betrayed Shiva."

The Verdict

9.0 out of 10. Quite a lot of fun.

Some Good Books From Graduate School...

I will soon hand in my last assignment for a class on global social movements, completing the coursework for a master's degree in history (major world, minor U.S.) at Georgia State University in Atlanta. All that remains is the oral and written exams I'll be taking this June and I'll have my M.A.

As part of earning a master's degree, one has to read a lot of books. I chose the non-thesis option, so I had to take ten classes instead of nine. And that means even more books. Luckily this is a subject I'm strongly interested in, so reading wasn't a chore at all.

Below are some of my favorite graduate-school books and the reasons why I enjoyed them.

Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History-Editor Alexander Cook oversaw an anthology of articles by different historians focusing on different situations using Mao's Little Red Book as the lens. And it's really interesting--you have the student left in 1960s and 1970s Germany, you have the Shining Path in Peru, you have the Maoist-ish regime in Tanzania, and China during the Cultural Revolution. Plus it's provided me with some choice dystopian bits like every village having a loudspeaker providing the population with the regime's guidance--and in some cases loudspeakers inside people's houses they can't turn off.

Before European Hegemony-This book describes the world system from the 13th Century until the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean with armed warships. The bare bones of this world system are wool from England is made into textiles in the Low Countries, traded by Italians into the Middle East, and eventually from there goes to India, the East Indies, and China. But that's a massive oversimplification. My main problem with the book is that it understates the role of Islamic piracy in the Mediterranean in the Dark Ages (something the Pelican History of Medieval Europe points out), but that's a pretty small nitpick.

Killing for Coal-This book is about the big 1914 coal strike in Colorado. It's generally remembered for the Ludlow Massacre, but not for the fact that the miners proceeded to spend the week after the massacre beating the crap out of the Colorado state militia. Seriously, if things hadn't been headed off, there could've been some kind of statewide U.S. version of the Paris Commune. The book is a really interesting exploration of the coal industry at the time, the labor struggles wracking it, and just how darn important coal was for the U.S. at the time. This book played a major role in my decision to add more class-labor elements to the Wastelands series I'm working on, plus it was a source of really interesting information on what coal was used for. Fortunately most of Battle for the Wastelands (the first book, which is already written) takes place in a more rural area among soldiers scrabbling to maintain a limited technological base; it's the second novel, Battle for the Wastelands: Escape (formerly titled Escape from the Wastelands) where this influence will be felt.

Before Columbus-This book examines the Mediterranean antecedents of the Spanish settlement of the New World. There's a very interesting historical analogy involving the Reconquista. Parts of Spain the Christians conquered from the Muslims were like the British Empire in India, with a large number of Muslims ruled by a Christian/collaborator ruling class, while others were like the American West with a relatively small Muslim population and a much more arid landscape. I remember reading somewhere that Spanish kids play "Moros y Christianos" instead of "Cowboys and Indians" and that might be the inspiration for it. The Colombian Exchange, one of the books I'm reading for my exams this June, definitely compares the cowboy culture of the Spanish New World with Spain before the Muslims were expelled.

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II-I first learned about this from an excerpt in the historiography book The Houses of History and ordered an abridged one-volume work for a paper on the influence of author Braudel. It's a good example of the "longue duree" type of history with a strong dose of environmental determinism. Very interesting.

White Flight-Although I question the argument that modern American conservatism emerged from specific policies intended to stymie integration (there are non-racist reasons to oppose expansion of mass transit, after all), this is still a very interesting history of Atlanta, the city supposedly "too busy to hate" during the Civil Rights era in the U.S. Lots of interesting stuff, including what happened to an American Neo-Nazi trying to keep blacks from moving into a particular neighborhood in the late 1940s. Seriously, antagonizing a prosecutor who's a WWII Marine veteran is a really, really bad idea. Also provides an interesting political history of Atlanta and the surrounding communities before, during, and after the civil rights era.

Birth of the Modern World-Another book I'm reading for exams this June. This is book is notable for introducing me to the "industrious revolution" paradigm that predates the Industrial Revolution and puts the American Indian wars in the context of Australian wars against Aborigines and the wars of the British and their Indian clients against tribal peoples in India. Growing industrial states finally suppressing tribal/nomadic peoples, basically.

Britons-A very interesting book about the origins of the British national identity. Some of the material early on really de-romanticizes the Jacobites (apparently they weren't even that popular in Scotland) and uses patterns of landownership and intermarriage to describe the growth of a collective "British" identity incorporating English, Welsh, Scots, etc.

American Babylon-I met the author while selling books at a conference and he was very pleased to know that I liked this book, which is about the growth and decay of Oakland, better than Origins of the Urban Crisis, which is about the growth and decay of Detroit. The latter is considered one of the best books in the field, but I thought American Babylon was written better and more detailed.

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures-Chocolate and tobacco were used in sacred and political ceremonies by the indigenous populations of the Spanish New World. So how exactly did they become popular foods/products in Europe? This book explains how. It's also got some interesting stuff about how the Indians adapted to Spanish rule and how the Spanish colonists picked up a lot of indigenous culture in Mexico.

On Sony, THE INTERVIEW, and Free Speech

I got into an interesting Facebook discussion with my friend Zaid Jilani after I posted this article about how both Republicans and Democrats are standing together against attempts by North Korea (or groups putting on a very good show of acting on behalf of the regime) to stop The Interview as a piece of uplifting news.

To make a long story short, Zaid said that this wasn't a free-speech issue, but Sony covering up for the incompetence of its IT department (Sony has been hacked before, on top of this recent bit of idiocy) by using the hack as part of a publicity campaign for The Interview, a movie that it feared would not do well. He did not see why he ought to give money to a company that repeatedly puts its customers at risk by failing to secure its electronics. To make a long story short, he said that Sony has been playing everybody rushing to its defense in the name of "free speech."

To be fair, he's raised some good points. If he doesn't want to see The Interview because that would be rewarding incompetence, so be it. And I could easily imagine any executive with any degree of intelligence following the dictum of never letting a good crisis go to waste. No less an authority than Forbes magazine agrees.

However, I disagree that it's not a free-speech issue:

*Most of the major American movie chains refused to screen the movie out of fear of extralegal violence, be it a threat of 9/11-esque violence (which might inspired some homegrown moron to attack a theater--I doubt there are North Korean commandos running around) or the more probable danger of hacking. The Sony hack crippled its electronic infrastructure--hacking isn't just a matter of embarrassment (racist Sony e-mails, nude pictures) but a real threat to one's business.

*For a time it seemed like Sony was going to bury the movie completely--they initially said there were "no plans" to release it on Video On Demand or DVD. Had that happened, the North Koreans would have straight-up silenced a critic well outside of their territory. It'd be like agents of the Nazi regime coming into the U.S. and waging a terror campaign to get United Artists to shelve The Great Dictator.

*An adaptation of the graphic novel Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea that might feature Steve Carrell had the plug pulled on it in the middle of development.

*When a Texas theater chain decided to air Team America World Police in place of The Interview to show it would not be intimidated by North Korean threats, Paramount Pictures prevented them from screening the movie.

*The Associated Press theorized that the attack on Sony would deter Hollywood from making films featuring overseas villains.

These electronic attacks and threats of physical violence have unleashed a massive "chilling effect." People are being intimidated from speaking their minds, producing art, etc. by either a foreign regime, a private entity (a hacker gang trying to sound scarier than it really is), or a combination of the two (a hacker gang working for North Korea). Chuck Wendig explains it very well.

Zaid repeatedly referred to The Interview as a crappy movie. That's purely a subjective matter--I've loved movies like Skyline that had horrible RottenTomatoes ratings and disliked movies like Get Him to the Greek that had much better ratings. RT currently gives The Interview a 48% and a kind of middling critical consensus. I could easily imagine the movie being crap--I didn't really enjoy Wedding Crashers and I disliked Get Him To The Greek so much I turned off the movie 15 minutes in and returned it.

However, just because a movie is crap doesn't mean it isn't worth defending. I read parts of The Satanic Verses and didn't really understand or enjoy it, but that doesn't mean Salman Rushdie should have been left to the tender mercies of the Ayatollah Khomeini and goons inspired by him.

Furthermore, free speech is something that should be extended as broadly as possible to the most unpopular people to make sure everybody is protected.

For example, Hustler magazine is incredibly tasteless, vile, and sexist. It ran an ad depicting Jerry Falwell confessing to incest with his mother, it mocks female politicians by depicting them in sexual situations, one magazine cover featured a woman in a meat grinder, and apparently it had some kind of spread depicting a pornographic version of a concentration camp. Even if you don't have a moral objection to pornography, Hustler is garbage.

However, so long as Hustler's right to free speech, however vile, is protected, more prosaic incidents of artistic nudity (and I mean legitimate art) are in significantly less danger from Moral Guardians on the right (artistic nudity is sinful and immodest, and according to the Calvinists undermines the gospel) or on the left (artistic nudity is exploitation of women). And if history is anything to go by, these groups will impose censorship if they could. This applies to both social conservatives and social liberals.

The same goes for "hate speech." As long as the speech of definitely hateful people like the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, etc. is protected, you won't have the kind of censorship of far more innocent things that "hate speech" laws in France, India, Poland, Britain, etc. have led to.

To quote A Man for All Seasons, I'd give the Devil the benefit of the law for my own safety's sake.

So I will be seeing The Interview as a matter of principle. If the movie sucks, so be it. If I'm giving money to a company that's too inept to protect its employees and customers, so be it. This is about taking a stand against appeasement and threats of violence, in defense of artistic freedom against crude coercion.

E-Reader Publishing: Three Months In (UPDATED 12/29)

This post was originally published on 12/25, but due to a sudden problem, I felt the need to go back and revise. Read it and you'll see why.

On September 3, I self-published my story "Melon Heads" on Amazon.com for the Kindle, thus beginning my experiment in self-publishing for e-readers. September 20 saw the second coming of my previously-published story "I am the Wendigo" and November 16 saw my Lovecraftian tale "The Beast of the Bosporus." My most recent self-published story, "Illegal Alien," debuted on Amazon December 11. At some point I created a formal Amazon author page as well.

At first, I enrolled all of them in the Kindle Direct Publishing Select program, which allows members of Amazon Prime to borrow my stories for free (I still get paid through a fund set up for this purpose) and allows me to release my stories for free on certain promotional days. However, being part of KDP Select is conditional on not having the stories available online anywhere else.

KDP Select proved to be a mixed bag. The promotional days allowed me to move large numbers of copies free, which I had hoped would generate more reviews and build buzz, leading to more sales later. The increased number of reviews I expected did not come through (most reviewers are people I already know), although there's no way of knowing the long-term effects of having dozens if not hundreds of readers having seen my content for free. Maybe I'm creating a fan base that will pay off in the future when I have real books available. After all, I did once get some traffic to this blog from a Google search for "Illegal Alien Matthew W. Quinn." The number of free copies moved on the first promotional day tends to be significantly higher than the number moved on later days, and I recall only actual borrow.

So I bought some Facebook advertising for the short stories, remembering how successful it had been in attracting readers to my blog in the summer of 2011. This provided to be a major bust--I'd spent upwards of $70 on advertising, but gleaned few if any sales. This not only applied to my ads for "Melon Heads" and "Wendigo" that received relatively few views and clicks, but even my ads for "The Beast of the Bosporus" that received over 100,000 views and over 100 clicks. Paying $45 for a much nicer cover for "Illegal Alien" didn't generate much sales either. So far, "Illegal Alien" has made 1/4 of the sales "Melon Heads" made in its first month, although since it was published mid-month, I won't be able to make an accurate comparison even after four weeks pass.

This meant more drastic measures were needed. I turned off the KDP Select auto-renew for all four stories. The other stories were either still in their first term or I'd allowed them to renew for another term, but "Wendigo" would no longer be Kindle-exclusive come December 21. This would be especially useful because an ad I'd purchased for my Facebook fan page increased my fan count from 80 to close to 1,400 (as of 12/29), most of whom apparently are from Turkey or other Middle Eastern countries. As far as I know, people from these countries cannot buy from Amazon (except through tricky means like getting a UK e-mail address to access Amazon.co.uk). People from India can access the same Amazon as Americans, but that would exclude Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.

On Christmas Eve, I made the leap to Smashwords, putting up "Wendigo." Soon afterward, I "greased the wheel" a little bit by paying $5.00 to "promote" the post announcing the story was now on Smashwords. The number of "likes" I've gotten from my Middle Eastern fans indicated the move was much appreciated. Within 24 hours, I'd sold ten copies of "Wendigo" in two batches of five. I figured Smashwords' sale of stories in multiple file formats (to allow people using different e-readers or not using e-readers at all) and not being limited by country had paid dividends.

Then when checking my Smashwords Dashboard, I noticed my royalties had been cut in half. I queried Smashwords and looked at the Excel spreadsheet and found that five of the ten sales had been refunded due to "fraudulent payment method." I wrote Smashwords and learned that thieves use Smashwords to either test out stolen cards or "max out" said cards. My remaining five sales were refunded as well for the same reason.

(Smashwords limits purchases to five at a time to minimize the impact of fraud--some poor author "sold" 1,000 copies to a fraudster and then had his purchases refunded.)

Rather than earning $7.85 in a day, I'd earned zero--and my royalties remained zero as of 12/29. I'm not going to complain too much, since it's just one short story and I've only been a Smashwords member for a week or so. Some discussion on LinkedIn indicates that "premium status" (which ensures one's writing is marketed on other sites) on Smashwords is where the real money comes from, and that's still pending. Before I pass judgement on Smashwords as a whole, I'll wait to see what happens with that. I might even buy a Facebook ad for "Wendigo," since it's much, MUCH less limited than Amazon KDP and that might have been a reason behind the first Facebook ad campaign's failure.

My strategy for the moment is to publish the three remaining stories on Smashwords as soon as their KDP Select periods end, which will be in February and March. Any future stories I self-publish will be on KDP Select for one term (to allow for one or two promotional days) and then placed on Smashwords. Maybe I'll post my stories on lulu.com as well.

A Former Soviet Solution To Antibiotic Resistance

Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem throughout the world.  Overuse of antibiotics, especially pre-emptively soaking animals in them or people badgering doctors into prescribing them antibiotics for viral infections (which cannot be treated by antibiotics) or other issues, has led to many diseases becoming resistant to more and more antibiotics.  People taking them until they feel better and then stopping is also a major problem.

Here're some links showing just how dire the situation is.

Drug-resistant "white plague" lurks among the rich and poor

Health chief warns age of safe medicine is ending

In our globalized world, foolish antibiotic policies in India have led to antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis strains in Britain. An antibiotic-resistant bacteria that gets on an airplane could well trigger another pandemic.  Tuberculosis was the 19th Century's version of AIDS--compare the musical Rent and the opera La Boheme.  I remember reading about immigrant screening at Ellis Island and how people who had tuberculosis were turned away.  Thanks to human foolishness, an older killer has undergone a not-so-glorious resurrection.

A member of my alternate-history forum whose name is Jello Biafra said in the former Soviet bloc, bacteriophages were used for decades as an alternative to antibiotics.  Basically a bacteriophage is a virus that kills bacteria.

Here's an article about how there's research into bacteriophages capable of killing MRSA, which is a very dangerous disease.

British biotech boasts antibiotic breakthrough

The article on phage therapy describes many hurdles to use of bacteriophages.  The most aggravating of these, and the one most easily dealt with, is regulatory.  The FDA is apparently very reluctant to approve such things, and given how individualized the treatment is, it might be necessary under current law for the FDA to approve each and every individual treatment.  That would be bloody absurd.

The FDA should lower the regulatory barriers to bacteriophage research.  In fact, given the lack of interest in the private sector in researching bacteriophages for various reasons, it might be prudent for the FDA to fund the research.   I generally favor small-government solutions to problems, but if there's market failure going on and the stakes are this high, it's time to be pragmatic.  An antibiotic-resistant pandemic could kill tens of millions, while fear of such could throw a wrench into the globalized economy that has helped contribute to a generally-peaceful world.

(Per my comment about Ellis Island, imagine if it became necessary to screen travelers from India for super-tuberculosis.  Heck, imagine if it became neccesary to quarantine India entirely.  That would be a very bad situation.)

Some Off-the-Wall (But Plausible) Alternate History Scenarios

Here are a couple of alternate-history scenarios posted on AH.com that are incredibly plausible and well-thought-out responses to fairly bizarre challenges.

The first one is a challenge to get Alexander the Great in Japan.  Although some people thought it was ridiculous, the user-name whose handle is Admiral Matt came up with a really awesome scenario.

Alexander the Great in Japan

To make a long story short, there's a mutiny against Alexander while he's in Afghanistan and he and his loyalists end up wandering across Asia, intermarry with some horse-tribes, and conquer Korea.  As an old man, he invades Japan to fight pirates there.  AM made a comment about how he wouldn't get anything more than a novelette out of this scenario.  I think I'll post this entry in the original thread to jog his memory.  That scenario was just awesome.

Here's a second one, based on a topic I posted this afternoon in response to a discussion about neo-paganism in a society with minimal Abrahamic religious influence.  I came up with the notion of a Wiccan Tibet.

The user whose handle is jakewilson posted the following scenario:

(Partially) Wiccan Tibet

Basically, Tibet ends up a protectorate of an India that becomes a British Dominion (think Canada) and Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca, visits the country.  He notices the use of pentagrams in Tibetan Buddhist ritual and ties it in with his "Witch Cult" theory.

Those of you who are interested in alternate history and creativity in general might like these scenarios.

Two Interesting Alternate History Scenarios

I just found on my alternate-history forum a timeline that has been going since last fall that, since it's in the Post-1900 forum, is available for my loyal readers to see without joining the web-site.

Behold, Protect and Survive by Macragge1.

The scenario depicts the effects of a mid-1980s nuclear war on Great Britain.  It's not as awful as the film Threads, which has been posted in pieces on YouTube but isn't available on DVD apparently, but it's a lot more brutal than The Day After, Threads' American counterpart.  The titles of each chapter come from "Protect and Survive" British Civil Defense instructions about what to do after a nuclear war.

Things aren't as horrific as Threads because central authority in Britain survives (the Soviet bomb intended for Portsmouth, a major Royal Navy base, malfunctions, and the city becomes the de facto national capital), so the country doesn't break down into feudalism (complete with urban refugees planting potatoes by hand under the guns of the surviving soldiers), nuclear winter is more "the year without a summer" than "a new Ice Age," and enough of the North Sea oil fields survive that mechanical agriculture can continue.  However, the story extends into the months following the war, unlike TDA, which ended with the announcement of a cease-fire between the U.S. and the Soviet Union a few days after the primary nuclear exchange.

The story contains moments of both brutality and heartwarming. 

The former includes a civil servant in Newcastle or thereabouts denying rations to infants because they cannot work in reconstruction efforts and being overthrown by a soldier whose son died in Northern Ireland who distributes food to infants but also puts Irish nationals or those with Irish names in a soccer stadium with no food until they confess to being in the Irish Republican Army and being involved with some incidents of civil unrest.  There's also a scene of 14-15-year-old girls (some of whom are still wearing their school uniforms) offering themselves sexually to soldiers outside of Portsmouth in exchange for food. 

The heartwarming bits includes a young British girl offering what little food she has to a starving sailor from a Typhoon-class Soviet submarine that ran itself aground at Whitby, prompting nearby adults to do the same and possibly averting the lynching of the submarine crew, and a British exploratory team that crossed the Atlantic in one of Britain's last surviving nuclear bombers conversing with the dying President Ronald Reagan in Columbine, Colorado.

Overall, I think it's very good--a very interesting scenario with a lot of technical detail.  However, one board member who claims to have worked with the Strategic Air Command said the scenario was entirely too optimistic and that in real life, Britain would be totally leveled.  I will defend Macragge1 on the grounds that the projections from the time might not have included high numbers of Soviet missile malfunctions--apparently a lot of them weren't well-built and had a significant failure rate.

Some board members recommend this be published as a book.  Given how easily and cheaply Ebooks can be done, I think that would be a good idea.  The scenario is still ongoing, so publishing can wait until it's done.


Here's another scenario, one that actually caused several people to join the site just to comment on it.

Behold, The Anglo/American-Nazi War by the illustrious CalBear.  The premise is that the Nazis take Stalingrad, Stalin has a paranoid fit and kills off his best generals (including Zhukov, the one who broke the Germans in the East in our history), and the Germans defeat the Soviets in the East.  Although Britain is protected by the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, the U.S. Army Air Corps, and the U.S. Navy--forces that contain the Germans and Italians in Europe and destroy Japan--the Germans have mastery of Continental Europe and an invasion is not possible until the 1950s.

CalBear is a major gearhead and it shows.  The description of all the technologies used, including tactical nuclear air-to-air missiles used to scupper a Nazi bombing raid on New York City, is well-done.  The geopolitical situation is also well-plotted.

The timeline also has its moments of horror.  During a less nasty phase of the war, the Allies make a deal with the Germans--rubber for Jews.  The Germans provide 1,500 decorated Jewish veterans of WWI (who I think might have been exempted from German racial laws) and said they were all that were available.  The Poles as an ethnic group in Europe have been rendered extinct and I think the Ukrainians are hard on their heels.  The Nazis extort a labor tribute from Molotov's puppet Soviet regime, most of whom never come home.

CalBear said the point of the timeline was to show what evils the Nazis would have perpetrated if they'd won and it is most horrid.  Of course, then everyone can cheer when the Nazis--technologically behind the Allies with their sciences poisoned by Nazi politicization to make that worse--get blasted by superior Allied weaponry.  Most awesome is when D-Day finally comes, a major role is played by Polish exile units and the Indian Army (both viewed as inferior races by the Nazis) and the SS get mashed.

Plus India in this timeline is not partitioned, which is great.  In my opinion, the partition of India was one of the greatest mistakes of the 20th Century, one whose bad consequences echo to this day (al-Qaeda, the threat of an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war, etc).

The second scenario can also be viewed by non-members.  Y'all enjoy!

An Indian Muslim Woman Stands Up to Extremism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/27/AR2010122704455.html?wprss=rss_print

Good to see that this woman is able to stand up to the prejudice many Hindu Indians have against Muslim Indians and the elements within her own community who would have her "bury her talent in the sand" so to speak because she is a woman and, according to "traditional" values, ought to dedicate herself solely to familial activities and not use her other abilities.

(See my earlier comments on the film Tangled if you want to read about my severe disdain for those who would try to keep people from living up to their full potential.)

It's unfortunate she did give into the pressure to marry and leave university.  Given her husband's family seem like decent sorts--they haven't tried to stop her from engaging in her health activism, for starters--hopefully she will be able to go back to school and finish her degree.  And hopefully her example will show her brother and others drawn to extremism and attempts to push women out of public life how wrong they are and serve as an example for other Muslim women under similar pressure.

Some Thoughts on a Crossover Between "Space: Above and Beyond" and "Battlestar Galactica"

http://www.alternatehistory.net/Discussion/showthread.php?t=155109

A member of my message-board whose handle is robertp6165 has started writing a crossover between Space Above and Beyond and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.  The basis scenario is that when Racetrack's Raptor's jump-drive malfunctions, it takes her to the Lion's Head Nebula--one of the guideposts of the Thirteenth Tribe's journey from Kobol to Earth.  "New Caprica" is never found, Baltar never becomes the Colonial president, and the Colonial survivors encounter the Wild Card squadron from SAAB.

(He said the "trainwreck" of Seasons Three and Four never happens as a result.  I liked some elements of those seasons, but the macro-plot and Final Five stuff was immensely irritating.)

Robert wanted to stick with the more extreme variant of the Chariots of the Gods theory that inspired the original Battlestar, the notion that humans are not native to Earth and there are other human civilizations out there.

(If I remember correctly, the more "normal" COG theory is that aliens visited ancient Earth and helped bring about early civilization, which isn't nearly so much of a clash with what science has discovered about our genetic kinship with Earth life even if it is extremely unlikely.  The "we're not from here" version, however, is easily-disproven garbage.)

Back when I was active on the Sci-Fi Channel's Battlestar forum, I was among those who wanted the Colonials to find an advanced Earth, perhaps one where humans lived in harmony with artificial intelligences, and that Kobol had been settled from Earth.  Given the timeframes involved (I think the settlement of the Twelve Colonies from Kobol was 3,000 years before the series began), it would have to take place many thousands of years in the future for this to work.

However, when I was younger, I was really into cryptozoology (literally the study of unknown animals, it's basically stuff like Bigfoot).  Among the many books in the 0000 section of the library, where Bigfoot, UFOs, conspiracy theories, etc. lurked, was a book claiming there had been an advanced civilization in ancient India that developed nuclear technology and bombed itself out of existence.  The book cited some alleged fused glass, the sort that's found as a result of nuclear explosions, and some other anomalous odds and ends.

Here's a Google search that has some links elaborating on this theory, since I cannot remember the book I found and it's probably out of print anyway:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=nuclear+war+in+ancient+india&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Dean Koontz's novel Twilight Eyes has a similar concept--there was an ancient advanced civilization on Earth that literally bombed itself back into the Stone Age, only with this one, the perpetrators were "goblins"--genetically-engineered shape-shifting soldiers bred for war that got out of control and into positions of power.

Robert's scenario involved a war between the Twelve Tribes that founded the Twelve Colonies and a Thirteenth Tribe that objected to the former's enslavement of the Cylons and joined them in revolt as the cause of the original Exodus from Kobol.

For a back-story more consistent with what science has discovered, I suggested a mishmash of the India scenario and the Twilight Eyes scenario.  Basically, there was an advanced civilization centered on India thousands of year ago that developed artificial intelligence and treated them like uppity machines rather than thinking beings.  These early "Cylons" revolted, aided by humans who objected to the situation, and the resulting war devastated Earth.  Many of the survivors left Earth and settled Kobol (which side did this isn't really important), while those that remained behind had their civilization collapse and had to build their way back up again, to the point we ended up with the scenario depicted in SAAB.  Given one of the dangers of nuclear war is radiation-induced sterility and/or birth defects, the group that left Earth could have collected human populations not immediately affected by the war, which would explain the racial diversity of the Twelve Colonies rather than all of them being Indian.

Robert said he wanted to stick with the original back-story and suggested that the Panspermia theory used in the show to explain the origin of the alien Chigs--basically bacteria from Earth were blown clear by the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs and ended up on their planet, leading to an entire ecosystem evolving--could be used to explain the genetic kinship between humans-from-another-planet and Earth life.  Basically, all life on Earth originated on Kobol and a celestial event similar to what brought Earth life to the Chigs' world brought Kobolian life here.

It's Robert's story and it's better written than some other examples of SAAB/BSG fan-fiction that someone linked to in the thread, so I'm not going to complain too much.  However, I think I might use the "nuclear war in ancient India" scenario if I wanted to have a story with an advanced human culture from outer space in our present-day or near-future.

Hmm...a friend of mine is writing a book involving an advanced human culture from deep space.  I think I'll send him this when I'm done.  And maybe I'll see if I can get hold of SAAB DVDs--apparently it was a really good show.