Here's a short piece based off of the background of the Xenozoic Tales/Cadillacs and Dinosaurs attempting to make it more semi-rational. Originally, it was going to be a full-sized entry but lack of info on the pre-catastrophe world made it be smaller and rather more disorganized than most.
To be specific, it's based on the bits of the RPG sourcebook that give something of a brief timeline for it all. I've made up 90% of it, mostly to explain exactly how and why the massive global warming happened -- no, "industry making CO2" doesn't explain a over ten degree rise in temperature along with dinosaurs coming back. It just doesn't. The kind o
Prehistoric
3
Literature
SF Setting: Of Man and Lizard II of II
THE FREE HUMAN POWERS Seventy years after the treaty of Brisbane, the free human powers still stand in opposition to the Lizards. Not standing united since humanity remains quarrelsome and divided as ever. Human technology hasn't closed the gap with their adversaries, but in many ways isn't that far behind the lizards. There are clunky fusion plants, human military technology has caught up with then and they're only a few years away from making spacecraft capable of in-system activity as fast as lizard craft: starships are well beyond current capabilities[1], but the scientists are talking generations or more optimistic, decades and not centuries at this point. The fine details are of course either expensive or at this point impossible to keep up although, human scientists already point out what strides have been made so far since it's essentially a series of extremely complicated engineering problems as opposed to inventing NEW solutions. If the LIZARDS could invent this, catching
Alien Space Bats
15
Renaissance and early modern
3
Literature
Generic AH: Qing China survives Part II of II
*** THE EMPIRE OF THE QING Much has changed in China since 1898, even if the monarchy still exists and bureaucrats wear robes. Despite being an authoritarian, nationalistic government with strongly statist economic policies the Qing Empire isn't just a rightwing version of OTL's People's Republic of China even if there are similarities such as having a large secret police[1], an economic agenda focused on modernization to name two examples. One of the biggest differences in China's retaining confucian-style "collective responsibility' and using the bao jia/household system as the means for surveillance/taxation/distributing welfare. Anoher strong difference is that China is structurally theoretically[2] an abolutist monarchy, as opposed to a party-state. Despite no communism, China's economy is only relatively as large as OTL's due to the United States not seeing any reasons to let east asia's exporters run one-way trade wars combined with the Qing favoring
The long 19th century
9
World Wars
21
Literature
Bubble
Usually I don't do cultural PODs as descriptions but here's a piece requested by one of my friends. Yes, it's another scenario suggested by Mako-chan, the same person behind "Crazy days". This one has been sitting in the archives for something like 7 to eight years. The divergence is that the fashion designer who in OTL discovered "Twiggy" in 1966 instead in 1958 finds someone else. He notices an overweight 18 year old redhead who he describes in his private journal as having "a slight double chin, smallish breasts, a bubble butt and baby face" but "still very pretty in kind of a harmless girl next door sort of way. Kind of cherubic I guess."[1] As a bet with one of his friends, he decides to recruit her as a model, using the name "Bubble". Surprisingly she is popular and that fashion designer's works sell. His friend is out a few grand. Within a few years, other designers pick up on it. Think of it as a cultural shift paralleling OTL's move towards thinner and thinner girls in
Cold war and modern
26
Literature
5500 AD
It is somewhere in the middle of what, in some calendars is the middle of the 6th millenium. Somewhere between 5350 and 5650 if you must have exact dates -- given the differences between timeframe involves the locaiton of the furthest out colonies/places with robot terraformers and some worlds have fallen from civilizaiton this isn't hugely important unless you're on one of those worlds that fell in between those two years. On the upside, it's not a dystopia per se. On the downside... no singularity.
It's one of those futures, the ones without FTL or aliens. No transhuman singularities or AI smarter than the theoretical human maximum, and wh
Future
2
PODs by period
Future 2
5500 AD by OttoVonSuds, literature
Literature
5500 AD
It is somewhere in the middle of what, in some calendars is the middle of the 6th millenium. Somewhere between 5350 and 5650 if you must have exact dates -- given the differences between timeframe involves the locaiton of the furthest out colonies/places with robot terraformers and some worlds have fallen from civilizaiton this isn't hugely important unless you're on one of those worlds that fell in between those two years. On the upside, it's not a dystopia per se. On the downside... no singularity.
It's one of those futures, the ones without FTL or aliens. No transhuman singularities or AI smarter than the theoretical human maximum, and wh
A state of disobedience 2076 by OttoVonSuds, literature
Literature
A state of disobedience 2076
Alright, the second writeup from ASOD.
xxx
It is over 40 years later, and it is now July 4, 2076. Following President Scudder's death via syphillitic lesions in 2034, america spiralled into chaos, which ended with the takeover of America by the communist portion of the anti-Scudder movement by early 2036. Like his predecessor, Comrade President Hoffman ran an isolationistic, corrupt despotic regime that called itself the "Union of Progressive Communities" and talked about reconciliation while interning millions in work camps. At least, this regime was secular and wasn't much nastier than Tito's yugoslavia.
The North American Confederacy is