A Future History

(OTL = Our Timeline, recall)

A world in which early Heinlein is the norm for reality. Man first landed on the Moon only a little earlier than OTL, but things moved a lot faster after that: due to somewhat different atomic physics rockets capable of reaching the Moon are nowadays as cheap as smallish yachts, and quite a few private individuals own them (although there are strictly enforced regulations). In 2010 there are extensive settlements on the Moon, Venus (swampy, wet, hot, and venomous) and Mars (deserts, canals, and a very ancient race). Saturn is the current limit of space exploration.

On the alternate physics down side, atomic power plants were so unsafe that reactors were built in space from the 60s to the 80s, and rocket fuel and industrial radioactives shipped back down to Earth: only in the 90s were models safe enough to allow on a planet developed. (In 1984, a less than successful "improved version" on the far side of the Moon created a 20-mile wide lake of green glass). The world runs principally on sun-power from super-efficient and cheap solar cells, and increasingly from power beamed down from orbit.

A limited nuclear war in the late 50's left the US and USSR still standing if somewhat battered (the US was the _technical_ winner, but wasn't up to occupying the Soviet Union) but chewed up Europe pretty badly: most of the area between Spain and the USSR (which withdrew from Eastern Europe to maintain order at home) is wacky dictatorships of one stripe or another. A surviving French government in the south of the country expanded north into the radioactive north and what was left of Germany, and is currently ruled by the descendants of an adventurer who claimed he was the rightful heir to the throne of Napoleon Bonaparte. The French Empire is not a first-rank power , but it is powerful enough to dominate much of a depopulated and exhausted European continent, especially those bits that used to be Soviet puppets.An exception is the Central European League of Salzburg, organized by the Swiss (lightly hit by the war, save for the horrible, horrible radiation) and the ex-Soviet general occupying what used to be Saxony. Surrounded by unpleasant neighbors, the League maintains a position of heavily armed neutrality, as does Finland.


After the war, the battered victors, determined to prevent anything like it from happening again, created a League of Nations-run organization to monitor and take steps against any efforts to build up a nuclear assault force anywhere on the planet: with the development of space travel, it moved its monitoring efforts into space, and by 2010 has developed into the Space Patrol, a powerful nuclear-armed organization dedicated to keeping the peace, even if it requires knocking some heads together. Although the US is the biggest space power in terms of money and colonists, with the USSR and China and the Commonwealth substantially behind, the most powerful military force in space is probably the Space Patrol - which the US tolerates since it keeps the rest of the world from grumbling too much about US commercial and colonial dominance in space. The Patrol is multinational and has a strong esperit de corps, and fiercly resists efforts by one nation or another to gain undue influence: its schools, landing fields, etc. are all international territory.

The USSR is still run by Comissars (indeed, it has to some extent turned into a sort of industrial feudalism with a largely hereditary ruling class), but has largely given up on the World Revolution thing and is increasingly cordial to the US and the British Commonwealth (nowadays centered in Canada, along with Australia more populous than OTL: the battered UK is essentially a Canadian province). It has been years since any Space Patrol recruits from Soviet territories have made any real efforts to subvert the Patrol.

This is most likely because they are nervous about the rise of a state-capitalist and increasingly fascistic China, which has modernized earlier than OTL, satellite-ized much of SE Asia, absorbed Singapore, and is increasingly nasty about the status of the Chinese minority in poorer-than-OTL Indonesia. It's a more state-driven economy than our China, with a military and space industry vastly larger than OTL, and has a rather larger population than our China as well (no one-child program): much of its population must supplement their diet with vat-grown food yeast and synthetics, although at least there's no woman shortage or bride-buying.

India, also worried about the Chinese, remains fairly closely tied to the Commonwealth: they're roughly as poor with respect to the US as OTL, but more heavy industry, less software and call centers.

Moving roads, powered by solar energy, were built as a part of the "dispersal of industry and population" drive in the US after the atomic war, and had come to dominate transport in the US by the mid-70s, and went on to link the USSR and the bigger Commonwealth countries: the flourishing of the private flying car, the receding risk of nuclear war, and increasingly cheap and convenient rocket travel are all working against further expansion, though. (China, due to poverty, used electric trains and buses, and now is investing heavily in rocket travel without going through the phase of mechanized roads).

Oil is not used much for transportation nowadays. After the nuclear bombardment of the gulf oil fields in the Short War, the sun-power revolution, and the Arab Red Revolutions, Mexico is the only major marketer of oil to the US, and then principally as a chemical feedstock.

It's a more sexist, conservative world than OTL, on the whole, (although the women of post-nuclear Britain are pretty liberated): although there are women politicians, engineers, etc., attitudes in the US are early 60's at best, and they are worse in continental Europe and China. There's a higher birthrate than in our world in most of the industrialized nations (the "pill" has only recently been invented, and is illegal in a lot of places). On the positive side, race relations are no worse than OTL, and in some ways may be better (skin color is simply less of a big deal socially in much of the US)

(it's not so much that women have less legal rights than OTL, as that there is less of a sense that they need to exercise them and pursue their own careers - feminism as we understand it never really got off the ground, and it's easier to support a family on one job than it is here. There are exceptional women that rise to the heights of politics or science or whatever, but that's what they are: exceptions).

The US, after the terrors of the 50s, once the pressure was off underwent a 1960s even wilder than OTL, culturally brilliant but also marked by violence and political wackyness. From the late 70s on, a sharp turn in the direction of conservatism came about, with a renewed flourishing of blue laws, and in a world where the Republicans never worked to capture the theological right, a rising "Christian dominationist" movement which has been displacing Democrats in the South and Republicans in the Midwest [1] since the late 80's. Many-times-over millionaire preacher Nehemiah "the prophet" Scudder has the most popular religious TV and radio programs in the nation, and has been talking about a run for the presidency in 2012.

An increasing number of Jews think they see writing on the wall and are leaving the US for the Commonwealth or Latin America and Israel.

Some talk about the Philippines joining the US came up again recently, but foundered on the details, such as how many states they should join the US as. There are extensive US and Soviet underground settlements powered by artificial radioactives in Antarctica. (Little America has over 10,000 inhabitants and the highest percentage of PHDs on earth). New York has started roofing itself over for weather-control purposes.

Africa, where colonial rule mostly collapsed after the Short War, is a bit of a mess – dictators are common, B'aathist Egypt is worrysome, and the French and Pan-Balkan dictatorships meddle. A few bits still tied to the Commonwealth are islands of sort-of-order. White rule has ended in South Africa more messily than OTL, and a black dictatorship incorporating Namibia and Rhodesia is making things hot for its remaining white population.

There are three big geosynch space stations, and numerous smaller stations and power plants – US, Soviet, Chinese, Commonwealth, Japanese, [2] Greater French – nearer the earth. The Moon is rich in diamonds, which helps attract settlers, although few make fortunes. Mars and Venus are too far off for most private ventures, and are still the monopoly of the largest powers.

Computers are rather clunky tube-powered things, alternate physics making transistors as we know them impossible. Medical science is in some ways more advanced than OTL: there is extensive use of bacteria-fighting phages in combating infection, and there are some pretty effective medicines for scrubbing arteries clean of cholesterol (which may explain why fatty foods and steak dinners are rather more popular than OTL 1986, although not why smoking remains socially acceptable). The understanding of human psychology and motivation has increased substantially in recent years, and new methods of propaganda and message manipulation are being eagerly studied by Scudder's already sizeable election planning staff.

Rocket rides at the fair and TV with huge screens, wonderful reception, and rather fewer than OTL channels. Glasses-free 3-d is just coming into commercial practicality. The variety show continues to flourish, and music is often a bit sappy or overly "sincere" by our standards: there is no such word as "snark", and "edgy" generally is understood as "apprehensive."

Attitudes towards risk are a bit different than in our world, more like OTL early 20th century: people fly heavy cargo planes and personal rockets and helicopters that would never be allowed off the ground by safety-minded bureaucrats of OTL, and go seek fortunes on other planets that kill them at rates comparable to British fortune-seekers in 19th century India.

Mars has canals, a lot of desert, and a lot of ruins. Martians are a very old race: some of these ruins go back to a time humans barely qualified as apes. They have largely abandoned technology: they exist in a state of almost perfect harmony with eachother and their environment, have lifespans of multiple centuries, and needed no form of government until the arrival of humans required their cobbling something together to deal with them. They are few in numbers, and so far have had no trouble sharing the planet with human settlers. (Human conservationists are a bit annoyed that the Martians simply don't care about the demolition and/or looting of abandoned Martian cities by Earth settlers).

Venus is only habitable by humans in the polar regions, where it is not much worse than the Amazon jungle, and even then it requires inocculations, frequent chemical baths, and use of ultraviolet light to avoid slowly rotting away from fungal infection. The amphibious stone-age (but very plant-fungus-insect-etc savvy) Venusians trade the various high-value botanical products of their swamps for tobacco, which gives them a better hit than high-quality cocaine does for a human. A series of recent exposes about the near-slavery contract labor on Venus is subjected to has badly hurt the stock of the various Venusian trading corporations, and stregnthened the view among Christianist Americans that space travel is fundamentally a thing of the devil.

[1] Due to less damage than the east coast in the Short War, the Midwest is more important politically in this TL than in ours.

[2] With fewer markets, damage from the Short War, and more protection of US industry, Japan is poorer than OTL – still a respectable industrial power, but never approaching superpower status – and closely integrated into the US sphere of influence.