Alternative Histories

These were devised at short notice for SoonerCon 30 in June 2022.  Feel free to weave your own stories or catastrophes based on these things that didn’t happen!

Alternate History Lines

 ·         2800 BC.  Mesopotamian junior lieutenant Gilgamesh dies at age sixteen from a fall, after a loose nail shakes loose from his horse’s shoe.

·         1804.  German composer L van Beethoven discovers that Napoleon Bonaparte has crowned himself Emperor of France. Beethoven tears up his recently completed Symphony 3, originally dedicated to Napoleon, and commits suicide.· 1910. British emigrant William Henry Pratt, working on a Canadian farm, dies of sepsis after piercing his own foot with the tine of a pitchfork.

·         1910.  Struggling artist Adolph Hitler meets struggling actor Robert Wiene.  Wiene convinces Hitler to submit sketches to some producer friends.  Hitler’s designs for The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, released in 1920, establishes Hitler as a surrealist of the first order.  He is awarded the first Academy Award for art direction in 1929, for his work with Fritz Lang on Das Reich der Dr. Mabuse.

·         1934.  After receiving funding from JP Morgan to develop his “defensive” particle-beam weapon, Nikola Tesla sneezes as he throws the switch at its first demonstration.  Earth immediately splits in half, killing all life.

·         1942.  Small-time musician Jim McCartney, conscripted as a fireman during World War II, dies in a burning building.  His amateur-scientist son, James Paul, dies in 1962, likewise by fire, experimenting with asbestos clothing.
·         1955.  In an fistfight over script credit for the in-development film Moby Dick, director John Huston and author Ray Bradbury stumble into a Hollywood street, where both are flattened by a steamroller.
·         1963.  TV producer Gene Roddenberry is killed at a Christmas party by the jealous husbands of three actresses.
·         1963.  After a brief meeting with Pope Paul VI in 1963, President John Kennedy resigns and enters a monastery.  Soon thereafter, now-President Lyndon Johnson loses an arm-wrestling match with Nikita Khrushchev.  Due to a bet made before the event, Germany is signed over to the Eastern Bloc.
·         1965.  Martin Luther King defeats George Lincoln Rockwell in a brutal twelve-round boxing match.  Rockwell honors a pre-fight agreement and dissolves the American Nazi Party, using its assets to fund scholarships in poor neighborhoods.

·         1966.  Star Trek, a new TV sci-fi TV series starring Lloyd Bridges, Martin Landau, and Paul Fix, airs for six episodes and is quickly dropped.  Variety describes its leading character, Bridges as Captain Robert April, as “acting like he's underwater.”
·         1971.  During a secret trip to China, Henry Kissinger is caught in flagrante delicto with the daughter of Premier Zhou Enlai.  He is immediately executed, and in retaliation President Nixon sends Captain Manhattan to destroy the Chinese capital city.
·         1974.  An Ethiopian dig looking for human ancestries is cancelled. In a related story, the dog belonging to paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey dies after choking on a bone.
·         2005.  The success of the action sci-fi series Laser Cats, starring Andy Samberg and Bill Hader, prompts George Lucas to film an all-feline version of Star Wars, provoking protests when Han spits first.
·         2022.  An embarrassed Vladimir Putin goes on a worldwide TV linkup to announce withdrawal of all forces from Ukraine.  “It’s all a mistake,” he says.  Unveiling a tabletop model of a skyscraper, he explains,  “I wanted to get a NEW CRANE.”

See you Thursday, if the timeline doesn't split!