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Description
Ok, an ASB (SF become fantasy due to time passing) map - a 1930s SF flavored world in 2012. There was no WWII, and the various lesser Unpleasantness of the 30s and 40s are far enough back in the rear view mirror that most people do not dwell on them much. There was no Holocaust, this world's version of Nazis being less psycho (and therefore rather more long-lived) than those of OTL, although a lot of Jews have found reasons to leave Europe east of the Rhine since 1933. France has undergone some political changes. The British were much more successful in transforming their Empire into a multi-national union, and remain one of the Big Powers, at least collectively. A rather catastrophic geological event took out much of Central America, and a gigantic dike had to be built to prevent the waters to the east from flowing into the Pacific and messing up the Gulf Stream (relations of Europe with the US are by necessity cordial: after all, US forces in Greater Honduras can always bomb the Cordilleran Inter-Continental Wall and put Europe in the deep freeze if things get hairy).

The Wall is run by the League of Nations, a rather more powerful institution than OTLs UN in 2012. Currently, there is a major crisis in the east, where *Fascist China is trying to forcibly regain Manchuria from Japan and the local puppet regime: all the terrible weapons of super-science are being used, and the other major powers scramble for a diplomatic solution while the League maintains a naval and land quarantine of the area to prevent other nations from meddling and possibly spreading the war abroad (the Russians have already been grumbling about Chinese incursions).

A more technocratic and effective form of Communism, autocracy on the German/Chinese/Italian model and Democracy are all considered "valid" or "functional" forms of government, although of course all three consider their own form the best. It is in some ways a cynical world, in which such things as national self-determination and the universal value of democracy are hardly considered. Outside of East Asia a lazy detente of sorts holds, and in fact the US, Germany and France of late have begun discussions on a joint mission to Mars in hopes of stealing a march on the proposed Commonwealth-USSR effort...

PS - I am aware of recent studies that indicate that taking out the Gulf Stream wouldn't do much to Europe's climate: after all, this is from an SF setting with a tidally locked Venus, talking plants, and habitable Jovian moons. Not our sorts of physics and planetary behavior at all.

Description
Ok, an ASB (SF become fantasy due to time passing) map - a 1930s SF flavored world in 2012. There was no WWII, and the various lesser Unpleasantness of the 30s and 40s are far enough back in the rear view mirror that most people do not dwell on them much. There was no Holocaust, this world's version of Nazis being less psycho (and therefore rather more long-lived) than those of OTL, although a lot of Jews have found reasons to leave Europe east of the Rhine since 1933. France has undergone some political changes. The British were much more successful in transforming their Empire into a multi-national union, and remain one of the Big Powers, at least collectively. A rather catastrophic geological event took out much of Central America, and a gigantic dike had to be built to prevent the waters to the east from flowing into the Pacific and messing up the Gulf Stream (relations of Europe with the US are by necessity cordial: after all, US forces in Greater Honduras can always bomb the Cordilleran Inter-Continental Wall and put Europe in the deep freeze if things get hairy).

The Wall is run by the League of Nations, a rather more powerful institution than OTLs UN in 2012. Currently, there is a major crisis in the east, where *Fascist China is trying to forcibly regain Manchuria from Japan and the local puppet regime: all the terrible weapons of super-science are being used, and the other major powers scramble for a diplomatic solution while the League maintains a naval and land quarantine of the area to prevent other nations from meddling and possibly spreading the war abroad (the Russians have already been grumbling about Chinese incursions).

A more technocratic and effective form of Communism, autocracy on the German/Chinese/Italian model and Democracy are all considered "valid" or "functional" forms of government, although of course all three consider their own form the best. It is in some ways a cynical world, in which such things as national self-determination and the universal value of democracy are hardly considered. Outside of East Asia a lazy detente of sorts holds, and in fact the US, Germany and France of late have begun discussions on a joint mission to Mars in hopes of stealing a march on the proposed Commonwealth-USSR effort...

PS - I am aware of recent studies that indicate that taking out the Gulf Stream wouldn't do much to Europe's climate: after all, this is from an SF setting with a tidally locked Venus, talking plants, and habitable Jovian moons. Not our sorts of physics and planetary behavior at all.