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Description

OK, this one is a commission: a map I did to illustrate this scenario on Alternate History Weekly, alternatehistoryweeklyupdate.b… where the author (Matt Mitrovich, folks: one of the good ones) speculates on the future of Harry Harrison’s “Hammer and the Cross” series. www.uchronia.net/bib.cgi/label…

I have generally tried to follow the author’s description, only changing some things to reflect plausibility issues (notable some names for states which almost certainly would have been butterflied [1] ). This is a world in which an organized Nordic/Viking religion arose, and competed successfully with Christianity in northern Europe, promoting a freer and more equal society than that Christianity sought (also, no meddling Popes). Also, something of a rebirth of learning and science took place, spreading to Islamic Spain and beyond, leading to a more technologically advanced world by modern times. The Germans established their state on a more secure basis than the HRE of OTL, and did not fall into the trap of feudal disintegration, although the Emperors ultimate overreached themselves in their ambitions to unify Christianity under their rule.

Christianity was in fact largely smashed in France and the British Isles, and never took hold in Scandinavia: a weakened western Catholic Church reunited through German mediation with an eastern one led by a new Bulgarian dynasty in Constantinople, only to shrink further as a German *reformation influenced by Nordic models created a distinctly different German brand of Christianity. Today the “universal” Church exists mainly in the East, with outliers in northern Iberia and Italy, and the Bishop of Rome is no more important than the one of Santiago de Compostela.

Permanent contacts were established quite early with North America by a larger *Viking world, but the initial colonization was slow and patchy enough that by the time the European (and Al-Andalucian) trickle of colonists became a flood in the 14th century, the native Americans had already lived through multiple plagues without annoying armed foreigners showing up immediately afterwards, and had picked up some immunities while populations bounced back someone. Also, colonization was complicated by the multiplicity of nations and religions involved, some with very different agendas, allowing some native groups to play off different invaders against each other: in the end, a number of independent native states and confederations survived. In the Old World, an alternate *Mongol Empire arose and managed to establish itself on a more permanent basis, while the Islamic world west of India struggled with the implications of the intellectual reformation coming out of Al-Andalus. The Reconquista failed, but Anatolia remained mostly Christian under new management.

Aside from a rather different course of historical events, this world differs in two fundamental ways from ours: the first is that Gods are real things. Not actual creators of the world, but entities somewhat similar to Diskworld Gods (Terry Pratchett, we miss you), which feed on faith and exist in a non-physical “psychic” domain, taking on forms and characteristics depending on the beliefs of their followers. Although they can’t move mountains or smite nations, operating through the channel of humans particularly attuned to them (saints, heroes) they can achieve some fairly impressive local effects, enough to make such channelers “superheroes” to some extent. This understanding, developed over centuries of observation and confirmed by modern science, is what is known as the “Hundite Consensus” after a famous researcher of the divine. There are of course plenty of people who still feel that, well, YOUR God is a manifestation of the mass subconscious, but MY God is real and the creator of the universe: others believe in a supreme Uncaused Cause in a Deist sort of way, and draw a sharp line between this Being and “personal Gods.” Of course, being a believer in the Hundite Consensus has its troubles: people who believe in gods as human constructs generally don’t believe with the fervor of those who believe their God is the creator of the universe and dispenser of eternal rewards and punishments: per capita, nations where the majority is solidly Hundite tend to have fewer and weaker channelers per capita than those nations where religion is still “supernatural.” And of course there is the problem of personal belief: does the government have an obligation to promote a view of the national Gods as helpful and moral entities? After all, if enough people believe in a God who is a vindictive asshole, He or She will be a vindictive asshole. This is further complicated by the fact that now people are trying _deliberately_ to create new Gods: modern neural sciences have reached the level where people can effectively brainwash themselves into believing in a God. Reports of a Squid-God cult are particularly disturbing…

Such things of course breed reaction, and there are the Svandists, who believe that for the safety and sanity of humanity, such “psychic parasites” must be rooted out – not just Gods, but any sort of non-real entity people can believe in enough to become active (Gods are of course the most impactive, but studies indicate that other things have an existence of sorts in the psychic plane – for instance, the fairy tale and cartoon creatures that so many young children believe in. Not to mention the Yuletide Troll).

The most extreme case is the Svantist “rational” state of Caucassia, the sort of anti-imagination dictatorship Ray Bradbury warned us of, where the population’s thoughts are regularly monitored for any signs of irrational belief and everyone starts the day with a good brain scrubbing. This is unpleasant enough, but the Caucassians fervently seek to spread their vision to the entire planet, and aren’t afraid of using force if needed: they’re a small country, but unlike OTL North Korea they are rich enough that they can afford quality weapons of mass destruction.

(The other big international worry is the Federated Khanates of Grand Tatary, the authoritarian nature of which is disliked by a world mostly democratic, the massive corporations of which are disliked by a word moderately socialistic, and the massive population of which would make them the world’s Top Power if the sub-Khans would ever agree to a more centralized state: not something currently likely, to everyone’s relief).

The other big difference from OTL is that the Neanderthal people are still around: they’ve just gotten very good at hiding, (indeed, they’re generally referred to as the Hidden Folk) and mostly live in areas remote and barren enough that Homo Sap Sap doesn’t settle there in numbers. They’re not backwards hunter gatherers: they have proven surprisingly capable at keeping up technologically in spite of their isolated existence, and appear to mostly live in hidden redoubts well underground: it’s somewhat unclear what power sources are involved, and their actual numbers are highly speculative. Generally attitudes are “live and let live” (rooting them out would be both dangerous and expensive), although there was a bit of a fracas during the Oil Age when Neanderthals lost their patience with humans saying that their models for global warming were “questionable” and “needed more research”. Although political contacts are rare and indirect, a certain degree of interaction with humans is ongoing: there are after all a fair number of people who are genetically 25% or more Neanderthal out there. The largest settlements appear to be in the northern hemisphere (although there are those that disagree: see map notes).

The world is rather more technologically advanced than our own: nano-manufacturing, artificial intelligences, cybernetic brain implants and technological mind manipulation, fusion power, genetically engineered plants and animals. A nanotube space elevator rises to orbit from a floating base in the Atlantic, carrying humans and resources halfway (energywise) to their destinations on other planets. And recently, faster than light travel has been perfected (sort of: it’s complicated and involved alternate universes) allowing for a land rush to the first planet to be discovered with a livable biosphere. (They’re still arguing over whether it should be called “Vanaheim” or “Asena”).

This is not a world where human destiny is entirely up to humans: the Hidden Folks have their own agendas, and the Gods are far from mere puppets of human belief. As a descendant of King Shef, first (and only) King of the North, is about to find out…

[1] Yes, I did forget about Novgorod, but after all isn’t “new city” a likely enough name, and after all it’s not necessarily the same city.

Description

OK, this one is a commission: a map I did to illustrate this scenario on Alternate History Weekly, alternatehistoryweeklyupdate.b… where the author (Matt Mitrovich, folks: one of the good ones) speculates on the future of Harry Harrison’s “Hammer and the Cross” series. www.uchronia.net/bib.cgi/label…

I have generally tried to follow the author’s description, only changing some things to reflect plausibility issues (notable some names for states which almost certainly would have been butterflied [1] ). This is a world in which an organized Nordic/Viking religion arose, and competed successfully with Christianity in northern Europe, promoting a freer and more equal society than that Christianity sought (also, no meddling Popes). Also, something of a rebirth of learning and science took place, spreading to Islamic Spain and beyond, leading to a more technologically advanced world by modern times. The Germans established their state on a more secure basis than the HRE of OTL, and did not fall into the trap of feudal disintegration, although the Emperors ultimate overreached themselves in their ambitions to unify Christianity under their rule.

Christianity was in fact largely smashed in France and the British Isles, and never took hold in Scandinavia: a weakened western Catholic Church reunited through German mediation with an eastern one led by a new Bulgarian dynasty in Constantinople, only to shrink further as a German *reformation influenced by Nordic models created a distinctly different German brand of Christianity. Today the “universal” Church exists mainly in the East, with outliers in northern Iberia and Italy, and the Bishop of Rome is no more important than the one of Santiago de Compostela.

Permanent contacts were established quite early with North America by a larger *Viking world, but the initial colonization was slow and patchy enough that by the time the European (and Al-Andalucian) trickle of colonists became a flood in the 14th century, the native Americans had already lived through multiple plagues without annoying armed foreigners showing up immediately afterwards, and had picked up some immunities while populations bounced back someone. Also, colonization was complicated by the multiplicity of nations and religions involved, some with very different agendas, allowing some native groups to play off different invaders against each other: in the end, a number of independent native states and confederations survived. In the Old World, an alternate *Mongol Empire arose and managed to establish itself on a more permanent basis, while the Islamic world west of India struggled with the implications of the intellectual reformation coming out of Al-Andalus. The Reconquista failed, but Anatolia remained mostly Christian under new management.

Aside from a rather different course of historical events, this world differs in two fundamental ways from ours: the first is that Gods are real things. Not actual creators of the world, but entities somewhat similar to Diskworld Gods (Terry Pratchett, we miss you), which feed on faith and exist in a non-physical “psychic” domain, taking on forms and characteristics depending on the beliefs of their followers. Although they can’t move mountains or smite nations, operating through the channel of humans particularly attuned to them (saints, heroes) they can achieve some fairly impressive local effects, enough to make such channelers “superheroes” to some extent. This understanding, developed over centuries of observation and confirmed by modern science, is what is known as the “Hundite Consensus” after a famous researcher of the divine. There are of course plenty of people who still feel that, well, YOUR God is a manifestation of the mass subconscious, but MY God is real and the creator of the universe: others believe in a supreme Uncaused Cause in a Deist sort of way, and draw a sharp line between this Being and “personal Gods.” Of course, being a believer in the Hundite Consensus has its troubles: people who believe in gods as human constructs generally don’t believe with the fervor of those who believe their God is the creator of the universe and dispenser of eternal rewards and punishments: per capita, nations where the majority is solidly Hundite tend to have fewer and weaker channelers per capita than those nations where religion is still “supernatural.” And of course there is the problem of personal belief: does the government have an obligation to promote a view of the national Gods as helpful and moral entities? After all, if enough people believe in a God who is a vindictive asshole, He or She will be a vindictive asshole. This is further complicated by the fact that now people are trying _deliberately_ to create new Gods: modern neural sciences have reached the level where people can effectively brainwash themselves into believing in a God. Reports of a Squid-God cult are particularly disturbing…

Such things of course breed reaction, and there are the Svandists, who believe that for the safety and sanity of humanity, such “psychic parasites” must be rooted out – not just Gods, but any sort of non-real entity people can believe in enough to become active (Gods are of course the most impactive, but studies indicate that other things have an existence of sorts in the psychic plane – for instance, the fairy tale and cartoon creatures that so many young children believe in. Not to mention the Yuletide Troll).

The most extreme case is the Svantist “rational” state of Caucassia, the sort of anti-imagination dictatorship Ray Bradbury warned us of, where the population’s thoughts are regularly monitored for any signs of irrational belief and everyone starts the day with a good brain scrubbing. This is unpleasant enough, but the Caucassians fervently seek to spread their vision to the entire planet, and aren’t afraid of using force if needed: they’re a small country, but unlike OTL North Korea they are rich enough that they can afford quality weapons of mass destruction.

(The other big international worry is the Federated Khanates of Grand Tatary, the authoritarian nature of which is disliked by a world mostly democratic, the massive corporations of which are disliked by a word moderately socialistic, and the massive population of which would make them the world’s Top Power if the sub-Khans would ever agree to a more centralized state: not something currently likely, to everyone’s relief).

The other big difference from OTL is that the Neanderthal people are still around: they’ve just gotten very good at hiding, (indeed, they’re generally referred to as the Hidden Folk) and mostly live in areas remote and barren enough that Homo Sap Sap doesn’t settle there in numbers. They’re not backwards hunter gatherers: they have proven surprisingly capable at keeping up technologically in spite of their isolated existence, and appear to mostly live in hidden redoubts well underground: it’s somewhat unclear what power sources are involved, and their actual numbers are highly speculative. Generally attitudes are “live and let live” (rooting them out would be both dangerous and expensive), although there was a bit of a fracas during the Oil Age when Neanderthals lost their patience with humans saying that their models for global warming were “questionable” and “needed more research”. Although political contacts are rare and indirect, a certain degree of interaction with humans is ongoing: there are after all a fair number of people who are genetically 25% or more Neanderthal out there. The largest settlements appear to be in the northern hemisphere (although there are those that disagree: see map notes).

The world is rather more technologically advanced than our own: nano-manufacturing, artificial intelligences, cybernetic brain implants and technological mind manipulation, fusion power, genetically engineered plants and animals. A nanotube space elevator rises to orbit from a floating base in the Atlantic, carrying humans and resources halfway (energywise) to their destinations on other planets. And recently, faster than light travel has been perfected (sort of: it’s complicated and involved alternate universes) allowing for a land rush to the first planet to be discovered with a livable biosphere. (They’re still arguing over whether it should be called “Vanaheim” or “Asena”).

This is not a world where human destiny is entirely up to humans: the Hidden Folks have their own agendas, and the Gods are far from mere puppets of human belief. As a descendant of King Shef, first (and only) King of the North, is about to find out…

[1] Yes, I did forget about Novgorod, but after all isn’t “new city” a likely enough name, and after all it’s not necessarily the same city.