Deviation Actions
Description
Steamboy 2015:
A map based around a continuation of the story of the anime movie Steamboy. This world diverged from OTL earlier on in the 19th Century with an accelerated industrial revolution. By 1866 the world had technology that would not exist in OTL for several decades. Trains that wouldn't be common until the 1880s, Zeppelins and other minor but important inventions all existed and advanced the progress of the world further than they were in their OTL equivalent. Then there was the Great Exhibition of London which took place in 1866 instead of 1851.
The Great Exhibition was heralded as the finest expose of technological marvels in the world. However the opening ceremony had barely begun when the Steam Castle Incident took place. After the battle between the British army and the private forces of the visiting O'Hara Foundation was interrupted by the rise and subsequent destruction of the Steam Castle the world was sent into shock by the after-effects. A quarter of London was in ruins from the field of freezing cold that expanded from the castle's steam thrusters or the debris from it's explosion. Fingers were pointed and excuses made as the British government swore to make heads roll for the atrocity that had been committed in their capital.
The O'Hara Foundation swore ignorance of the actions and decision that led up to the Incident and threw around enough money to shut the mouths of anyone who could contradict that claim. Eventually scapegoats were found and punished. Robert Stevenson (he provoked the Foundation and exacerbated the crisis), Archibald Simon (he obviously went rogue in an attempt to sell weapons to line his own pockets) and Edward Steam (that man was obviously a lunatic if you just listened to the way he talked) were eventually chosen to bear the blame though Doctor Edward Steam obviously wasn't found and was presumed dead in the remains of the Steam Castle. Now safe the O'Hara Foundation immediately begun working to find a way to recoup the losses from the Steam Castle.
None of this actually hampered scientific progress. In fact the sight of a metal fortress lifting off the ground and hovering in the air on compressed steam alone galvanised the visionary and the genius to experiment. Nations terrified of the power of the weapons that had been deployed by the Foundation also worked to develop new weapons of their own. New steam engines revolutionised mechanisation and advanced technology further. Electricity and the beginning of the switch to oil based engines took off in the early 1870s, steam powered aircraft were flying under their own power by the late 1870s and from there even more miraculous strides were made in all scientific fields by a world enamoured with the fruits of invention.
Of course this still didn't prevent conflict. The Grand War between the great powers of the world began in 1872 over a thing in Germany (or was it Italy?). Industrial warfare would become an uncommon but traumatising feature of the Late 19th and Early 20th Century and its stresses would come to define the world and the balance of power. War and revolution would take place in the turbulent era with each new innovation altering the power dynamic. It took the development of nuclear weapons to end the worst of the escalating global conflict and begin a Cold War.
By 2015 the world is still in a state of Cold War.
Technologically this world is far ahead of ours. Supersteam and the various engines that were derived from the second industrial revolution were phased out about a century ago. However the steampunk attitude to science and technology can still be seen in places. Everything is huge and efforts to produce significantly cleaner energy only took off in the latter half of the 20th Century. Advances in air filtration and toxin cleaning techniques helped accelerate the moves into space and the oceanic abyssal trenches and were very helpful for combating chemical warfare and industrial accidents. Coal and oil burning power generators are still in use, especially in the less developed parts of the world. However the move towards renewable fuel sources is well under way with solar conductors and wind turbines being built across the developed portions of the planet that can produce power in this manner.
Nuclear power has been around since the 1920s but there have been enough accidents and scares to put people off employing it on a larger scale than OTL. Nuclear weapons saw some use during the final stage of the Second Great War when the Prussian and Austrian Empires were struck by several nuclear weapons.
Robotics are far ahead of OTL. Walking vehicles have been around in some form since the 1860s and though they eventually proved to be extremely vulnerable around the legs they were very useful in scaling difficult terrain during the Grand War and subsequent conflicts. Fully functioning robots were developed in the 1950s though computer programming capable of giving the same level as OTL chess playing computers is very new. True AI is proving elusive with every attempt either being a failure or extremely limited in its adaptability and learning capacity. These advances have done wonders for cybernetics which are now about as functional as regular humans limbs with a few exceptions. They are now being used as standardised prosthetics for people who have suffered diseases and accidents.
Humanity also has a greater presence in space. The first objects to leave earth's atmosphere were launched in the 1880s though it took longer for anything either living or useful to be sent. Humanity now has several functioning orbital habitats and a base on the Moon. Only one of the habitats is privately owned (it offers people a week in space in relative luxury. The waiting list is surprisingly long) with every other off-world institution being run by either a national government or international agreement.
The British Empire is no longer the sole world power and hasn’t been for nearly over a century. They have had to adapt very quickly in order to survive and have since found themselves becoming the leader of one of the two major power blocs in the Cold War.
Britain is the leader of the integrationist bloc, a collection of imperialist states that try to modernise the world by intervening in other states and developing them in a way they consider appropriate. Most of them are colonial states that are trying to reform their old empires into federated or semi-federated superstates. The ideas behind integrationism is to bring the people of their colonies into the Empire's core. Of course this first involves spreading the culture of the colonial state to these people and 'civilizing' them before they can be accepted as equal partners in the new federal states. Usually criteria for full acceptance into the higher strata of these superstates is a certain level of social and economic development.
Whilst they are the first integrationist state the British are struggling to federate their empire. Old prejudices die hard and many officials have come off as patronising to the African and Asian people they are trying to incorporate into the new central government. Progress is slow - and in some places torturous – but it is still ongoing.
Britain is infamous for two industrial revolutions now and whilst Lloyd and Edward Steam are both considered lunatics in the history books, Ray Steam is a historical hero even if he questioned most of the government's decisions during his lifetime. Britain's position as the workshop of the world slipped away a long time ago but they do everything in their power to remain on top of science and technology. Both public and private research and development institutes exist throughout the Empire and have helped the British Empire keep on top of high technology. The government is elitist but in a much more technocratic manner. They have also been much more willing to employ socialist methods after the threat of socialist revolution was removed. The British welfare state has largely been applied to the rest of the Empire.
The white dominions have been 'equal partners' in the Empire for a long time now and are heavily integrated with the UK. The other areas of the empire are where things become a lot more difficult with London going to great lengths to justify why a colonial state deserves to be a dominion or not. By this point the confusingly complex system of varying levels of autonomy has been the best solution to the problem of governance. India has been a difficult issue since the 30s. Now that it has still managed to become the decentralised industrial centre of the British Empire the British have decided not to give up on it but nationalists still plague certain areas and many in London are starting to consider putting their money where their mouth is and let more Indians into the government. Culturally the Empire has become increasingly metropolitan. Whilst Britain has exported its values and technology to as much of the Empire as possible they have picked up food, fashions and even language from across their territories.
France has been a close ally of Britain ever since Germany and the Ottomans fell to revolution. They have since become the most powerful integrationist state on the continent and have been integral to the development of the European Community. Though still technically the junior partner to Britain the French are one of the strongest integrationist states in the world.
France, surprisingly, has made more progress in developing a federal empire. Though they too have had their difficulties the French Empire (still under a Bonapartist monarchy but wholly constitutional) is a federated state with a dizzyingly complex governmental system. Their empire is supposed to be much more simple than the British Empire but it too has succumbed to the decentralisation and tier system of autonomy that most integrationists have had to resort to remain in one piece. They have to accept that they will have to allow Muslims into their central government if they want to remain as prominent members of the bloc (which nearly caused a civil war). Now African Muslims can get into the highest echelons of the French parlement as long as they do not mention religion that much and can speak French. Muslim extremism is a bit of a problem still has prompted numerous bloc interventions in France's more unstable constituent provinces.
The European Community was the result of the rather violent collapse of the European Socialist Collective, a German founded socialist state that covered much of Central and Eastern Europe between the 1920s and 1950s. Its unfortunate implosion not only ended the short tri-polar phase of the Cold War but discredited orthodox socialism in much of the world. The integrationists rushed into the chaos to grab as much as possible before the nationalists could take advantage of it as well.
Out of all the members of the EC the German Confederation is he closest to challenging France. Despite the collapse of the socialist government German nationalism was too entrenched to divide them up again. Instead they were restructured in a way that kept them too decentralised to threaten French dominance within the EC. Still the Germans have managed to make their decentralised economy and government surprisingly efficient and have continued to follow the technocratic ideals of the old Collective. A new kaiser rules over the Confederation, selected from a distant descendant of the formerly exiled Hapsburg family. The monarchy is constitutional and one of the requirements for its existence is that they explicitly remain uninvolved in religious disputes. Germany went through a religious revival of sorts that almost left Germany as confused a mess as it had been before the revolution but secularism has recovered once again.
The EC as a whole is a very loose organisation with the only real direction being whatever example France wants to set (which the British in turn set for France). In theory the entire institution is supposed to become progressively federalised into a more coherent organisation but push-back from the stronger members keeps the EC parliament from enacting too intrusive measures. The open borders and economic privileges seem to be some of the few issues that every member state can agree on and even those draw some criticism.
The opposing bloc in the Cold War are the nationalist powers. Whilst just as technologically progressive as the integrationists these nations oppose the imperialist socialist methods that the European empires now employ. At the same time they are more socially regressive with a greater focus on independent business practice and more emphasis on self- determination and national identity. This has translated into mild incidents of cultural xenophobia and discrimination in several states. Fear of socialist infiltration has calmed down but right wing economic and political ideals are considered a centre of the bloc's identity. Ideas that are considered socialist are unofficially forbidden and the possibility of harbouring socialist sympathies can lead to dire social and political consequences in many nationalist states.
The United States of America leads the charge for nationalist politics. Despite the Steam Castle Incident most scientific progress in the US remained in the hands of private corporations. In fact the O'Hara Foundation set a precedent since they exhibited just how successful scientific research and development could be in the aftermath of the incident.
Whilst being far from a corporate state the US gives a lot of power to private business. The government is expected to leave business alone to conduct itself as it sees fit. Though some legislation enforcing regulations has been enacted and some workers unions have been created they are no that strong and still leave the majority of decision making power in the hands of the corporations. Welfare programs and government support networks are strictly illegal unless they are religious in nature. This has created a wealth disparity and left most political power in the hands a small minority of wealthy elites. The middle class used to be much larger but a recent economic depression has reduced them in numbers and expanded the numbers of poverty stricken and unemployed citizens.
America is even more right-wing than OTL though the connection between right-wing politics and religious conservatism was never created. Women have universal suffrage but social attitudes towards gender roles are still very conservative. The Civil Rights Movement of this world also wasn't as effective in America. American nationalist ideals still paint the USA as a rightfully white nation, relegating Blacks, Amerindians and other non-white members of the population to lower classes of citizenry. Funnily enough they have suffered less from the recent depression in comparison to the white working class but that is largely because they are already given the worst jobs and therefore are already suffering from higher degrees of poverty and homelessness.
Russia, the other major nationalist power, is a more controversial state. Their inclusion in the nationalist bloc is pure realpolitik as they are still an empire. They justify their place in the bloc by trying to convert their entire population to Russian culture instead of embracing a sort of pan-national identity like the integrationists.
Russia is still officially an absolute monarchy but in reality the Tsar is little more than a figure head for the collection of military personnel, industrial oligarchs and high ranking clergymen that now runt he government. A puppet Duma also exists but Russian democracy is essentially a one-party system with the government determining everything. Social mobility is possible but very difficult, something the government enforces. A large surveillance state helps maintain the governments control over the rest of the state. The police state this system supports can arrest people on any charge and will often detain people for doing anything but the least criticism. The educational system and the church help reinforce these systems by indoctrinating the population to consider such a state of affairs as acceptable.
Russia has been trying to assimilate the other demographics of their empire for decades now. Their place in the nationalist bloc is almost dependent on these programs and has been a useful excuse to suppress the people of their imperial territories. The worst years where martial law had to be declared and conversion missions were violently forceful are thankfully over but things in could always fall back into more extreme authoritarianism.
Most of the other nationalist states are usually puppet states of the two major powers. America does try to be light-handed with their intervention, mostly using indirect methods of control such as economic dominance and gunboat diplomacy. Of course most of them are still genuine allies that believe in the nationalist self-determination that the US promotes. Russia's puppets are more tightly controlled with military garrisons maintaining order and keeping the puppet governments in place. Russia's acquisition of the former socialist states of Eastern Europe led to the formation of the League of Warsaw which has a little more freedom than Russia's other puppets but are still under very close observation. Russia keeps a strong grip on their economies and maintain large garrisons. Unfortunately this has led to the development of a number of resistance movements including a new socialist movement that the Russians are working to suppress.
The Cold War hasn't been that intense for a few decades now and has even been moving closer to an Entente. The nationalists have even been abandoning the revolutionary groups they were supporting in the integrationist states. However the situations in Europe and the Middle East could always easily break down and the spectre of religious extremism is starting to emerge in West Asia and North Africa.
