WHAT IF? THE ANTHOLOGY OF ALTERNATE HISTORY by Harry Turtledove and Others
Pressname: Paradox Books Copyright Š 2014 Paradox Interactive AB All rights reserved Authors: Harry Turtledove, Janice Gable Bashman, Lee Battersby, Luke Bean, Raymond Benson, Felix Cook, Aidan Darnell Hailes, Jordan Ellinger, James Erwin, Anders Fager, David Parish-Whittaker, Rod Rees, Aaron Rosenberg Editor: Tomas Härenstam Cover Art: Ola Larsson ISBN: 978-91-87687-50-1 www.paradoxplaza.com/books
CONTENTS Introduction – Troy Goodfellow ...................................1 Company – Luke Bean ....................................................4 The More it Changes – Harry Turtledove ................. 24 A Single Shot – Rod Rees ............................................ 43 The Buonapartes – Anders Fager ............................... 64 Let No Man Put Asunder – Aaron Rosenberg ......... 84 Roaring Girl – David Parish-Whittaker ................... 106 Defeat of the Invincible – Janice Gable Bashman . 132 Rising Sun – James Erwin .......................................... 153 Écureuils – Aidan Darnell Hailes .............................. 171 English Achilles – Jordan Ellinger ............................ 185 The Great Work – Felix Cook................................... 206 To Be Or Not To Be – Raymond Benson .............. 227 The Emperor Of Moscow – Lee Battersby ............. 249 Afterword ..................................................................... 268 Other Titles by Paradox Books ................................. 269
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION There is an ongoing debate in academic history about the value of what they call “counterfactual” history—the idea that we can learn about how we got where we are by asking ourselves how things might have changed if the past took a different road. The plague doesn’t get to Byzantium. The Germans do get across the Marne. China doesn’t stop the treasure fleets. These puzzles ask us to examine what we mean when say that an historical event was “caused” by one factor or another. Academic debate aside, alternate histories undoubtedly provide as much entertainment as they do illumination. Whether it’s a question of seeing how far a writer can push the “want of a horseshoe nail” or simply imagining how all of our lives would be different in a world where, say, Hitler stuck to art school, the possibilities generated by an infinite range of stories can tickle the imagination. This is not to say that writing a good alternate history is easy. You must have an interesting starting point, you must have plausible connections between 1
EUROPA UNIVERSALIS IV: ANTHOLOGY OF ALTERNATE HISTORY
events, and you must have an intuitive understanding of the motivations of men and women, great and small. Paradox grand strategy games are where history starts going off the rails the moment you press PLAY, and, for as long as we’ve made these games, fans have entertained us with After Action Reports (AARs); descriptions of their experiences in the game, sometimes with decisions up for community vote. An AAR can be either a straight summary of what happened on screen or a deeper meditation on what it is like to live in this new, computer-generated world, sometimes told from the perspective of a leader or citizen in this newly generated past. Both approaches have their advocates, but both are best done with a strong eye to how the past is always a foreign country. This anthology is a celebration of the story-telling power of our games, especially Europa Universalis, a series that launched Paradox Development Studio (and Paradox Interactive). Strategy games like ours make for good stories because there are never two experiences that are remotely identical to each other. Thuringia replaces Austria as the ruler of Central Europe in one game, in another France bulldozes through the Holy Roman Empire, and in a third Vienna pulls it all together to rebuild the empire of Charlemagne. Now imagine an alternate timeline where there is no Europa Universalis; a dark timeline where an experimental title did not find a global audience willing to embrace the uncertainties of history and the challenges of the greatest of men and women. There are still games, of course, and even strategy games. But they are likely both less grounded in our common love for our history and less celebratory of the wonderful improvisational nature of gamers. 2
INTRODUCTION
Enough sadness. We bring you stories—tales of great deeds, small heroisms and how everything could have been different. Troy Goodfellow Assistant Developer Paradox Interactive
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EUROPA UNIVERSALIS IV: ANTHOLOGY OF ALTERNATE HISTORY
COMPANY By Luke Bean I first met Duckie Wooler when I was sixteen. He had come to Mecklenburg to start a war, and I figured I could get a pack or two of cigarettes out of it. The idea of being invaded didn’t worry me much. War, as far as my town was concerned, was the natural state of affairs. Indeed, it was the idea that the invaders might bring peace that troubled the locals. So when this strange American showed up waving around a camera and talking of an age of peace to come, he found nothing but closed doors and pursed mouths. I took pity on this lonely man, and I do not think it is an exaggeration to say we saved each other’s lives. Today, of course, Silas “Duckie” Wooler is the New York Journal’s fabled international correspondent, the man who built the case for the Pacification of Germany. And though my name, Erich Kalb, is little remembered, I too am famous: I am the subject of Mr. Wooler’s most iconic photograph, “The Boy and the Banner.”
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COMPANY – LUKE BEAN
In 1950, Mr. Wooler asked me to write a short foreword for the 20th anniversary edition of Duckie in Germany. (It is a fascinating work of journalism, and I strongly encourage you to read it.) I found it difficult to bottle my feelings on the topic. The story of my travels as Duckie’s translator meant little to me without the context of how I had arrived at that point in my life. Soon my short foreword had exploded into a hundred pages of anecdotes, arguments, and explanations. “If you want to make me look like an idiot,” Duckie eventually told me, “You can do it in your own damn book.” With all respect to Mr. Wooler, I believe there is an error at the heart of his reporting on Germany. My world was not divided into predatory mercenaries and innocent victims. The companies maintained their grip on Germany by making everyone an accomplice to their crimes. At some point, we had all housed them, fed them, traded with them, fought for them. Everyone knew their local company men, and counted family and friends among them. When a boy turned thirteen, Mecklenburg’s largest company, the Duke’s Rifles, would come to their door. “Fight with us,” the sergeant would say, “You’ll come home rich or you’ll come home in a box, but either way you’ll be a man.” They wouldn’t actually waste effort carrying your coffin home, but you understood. Duckie once asked me why people didn’t turn on the companies. The question made me laugh. Who was there to turn? We were the companies, every last one of us. 1. The Balloon One of my earliest memories is of a hot air balloon. I was in town with my mother when it appeared in the distance. She lifted me onto her shoulders to see. We 5
EUROPA UNIVERSALIS IV: ANTHOLOGY OF ALTERNATE HISTORY
walked around like that, Mother going about her business and me craning my neck to always keep an eye on the distant balloon, as if it was waiting for a chance to slip away. When the balloon came closer, Mother took me off her shoulders and told me not to look at it anymore, but I looked anyway, and she didn’t stop me. Three men dangled from nooses tied to the basket. Mother needn’t have worried about me. I thought they were just taking a ride. I still don’t understand this. It’s clear the hangman wanted everyone to see his handiwork. If it could be read as a threat, that I could accept. “This is what happens if you resist conscription!” “These men collaborated with Wehrwolves.” Cause and effect. But if the balloon knew who hung those men, or who they were, or what they did, then it wasn’t telling. Maybe someone just wanted death to remain familiar to us, so we would not recoil from its touch. 2. The Lübeck Watch I grew up near Grevesmühlen, on the very edge of company lands. To the east was Hansestadt Wismar, to the west Hansestadt Lübeck. The Hanseatic Cities were an object of fear and fascination for me, lands of unimaginable debauchery. It was held as unimpeachable fact at my school that the merchant princes of the Hansa considered the flesh of children a fine delicacy, and nearly everyone had a friend whose cousin had been sold to Lübeck to be devoured. But alongside the lurid stories, there was the recognition that these strangers were somehow like us. People from Russia or England or the United Kingdoms seemed unimaginably alien, but our wayward brothers talked like us and 6
COMPANY – LUKE BEAN
traded with us. They sung foreign tunes in our native tongue. This combination of strangeness and familiarity excited me. Lübeck was a wicked and dangerous place, and I wanted desperately to see it, to slouch between cinemas and cabarets and strangers’ bedrooms through streets foggy with cigar smoke. But nobody was allowed into the Hanseatic Cities. The Rifles didn’t want us getting seduced by their decadent ways. Thinking too much about the outside world was discouraged. We were told history had ended with Wallenstein, and outside Germany nothing of interest had happened ever again. When the Duke’s Rifles raided beyond Germany, they would target rich Dutch cities, weak Polish towns—some companies braver and more foolish than the Rifles even crossed west into the United Kingdoms before the wall went up—but the Hanseatic Cities were untouchable. They bought the companies’ plunder, processed our poppies, and made the money flow. We were expected to hate and fear them, but not to live without them. There was a lieutenant in the Rifles, Erich Gersten, who spent time with my mother. She often had men over; it kept her in good standing with the Rifles. Most of them ignored me, but Erich was kind to me, and I think Mother loved him a little bit for it. He acted like it was terribly significant that we had the same first name. “We Erichs have to stick together,” he would tell me. “Listen to your mother and fight bravely for your company and you’ll do our name proud.” Sometimes I liked to imagine he was my father, and I was named after him, but my mother said that wasn’t true. Erich was more pretty than handsome, and could have almost been mistaken for a woman without his sleek red beard. He often tried to keep his face from 7
EUROPA UNIVERSALIS IV: ANTHOLOGY OF ALTERNATE HISTORY
smiling, but it always found a way. I’d seen Mother get angry with him for laughing when she banged her head on a doorframe, things like that—he wasn’t a sadist, he just couldn’t help but find things funny. Erich loved boasting about his adventures, and I loved listening to him. He was proud to be a member of the Rifles. This gentle, happy man was surely responsible for more deaths than he could remember, but that was just part of the job. When he paced back and forth making up stories about daring raids and desperate escapes, I didn’t doubt for a moment that I was going to be a company man with the Rifles, and I was going to follow him into battle. One of Erich’s most sacred duties was the Lübeck Watch. Once a year he would gather together a band of fifteen trusted men from all over Mecklenburg. They would meet in the Hart’s Head Tavern and speak in whispers just loud enough to make sure everyone knew they had secret business. When night fell, they would buy everyone a round of drinks, swear them to secrecy, and march off towards Lübeck. They would return the next day, nodding grimly to each other. I could only imagine they were infiltrating Lübeck to some unknown (but presumably exciting) end. I couldn’t get Erich to tell me anything about the Lübeck Watch. “I was making sure Lübeck’s still there,” he said blandly. “It is.” When I was thirteen I was short for my age, with a young face. If I couldn’t look like a man, I was determined to at least act like one, which to my mind mostly involved fighting over imagined insults. The Rifles weren’t shy about wasting boys my age as cannon fodder, but I was regarded as officer material. I was just annoyed that it meant they would not take me with them into combat. So when Erich Gersten came to my 8