TAM One

While I'm very sorry to see the story end....   

it definitely went out with a bang.     

I was curious about the fate of Lt. Roddenberry.  I'm still curious about whether or not his (ahem) "trek" story ever saw the light of day -- though in OTL, IIRC, it appeared on NBC a year or so later than the end of this story.

Will we be seeing a sequel to this story?  All things considered, it fairly screams for one!   

What will this world look like in 2008?  Will they be on Mars by now?  Will a Texas Ranger named Edward W. Bear be wishing that the sleazy {censored} A. A. Milne had been a stillbirth?  Will Gokk have been able to return home?  Will the Chicago Cubs have won a pennant?

Enquiring minds want to know!     

Yes Steffen, I too am very much going to admit that "Roswell Texas" is one of my favorite stories.  L. Neil has a unique way of writing "escapeism" liiterature to seems to really appeal to me and to many other people as well.  It's too bad that more people haven't read his work and that it isn't as well known as say the Harry Potter series.  I think that it appeals at a gut level to many people who desire liberty and freedom which is becoming harder and harder to find on this world.          

Very true.  The dead-tree original version of The Probability Broach went very heavily into libertarian -- umm, "Propertarian" -- philosophy.  If you've read the online version here, I greatly recommend the original version, which I read when it first came out. 

I really couldn't wrap my mind around just how ugly Bealls was until I saw the online vesion here, but it fits.  It definitely fits.  Yuk.   

On a brighter note, I'd like to suggest one of H. Beam Piper's stories:  Lone Star Planet.  On the planet of New Texas, the killing of practicing politicians is not necessarily A Bad Thing. 

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20121/20121-h/20121-h.htm

I plucked Thrombley's sleeve.

"Isn't that a replica of the Alamo?"

He was shocked. "Oh, dear, Mr. Ambassador, don't let anybody hear you ask that. That's no replica. It is the Alamo. The Alamo."

I stood there a moment, looking at it. I was remembering, and finally understanding, what my psycho-history lessons about the "Romantic Freeze" had meant.

They had taken this little mission-fort down, brick by adobe brick, loaded it carefully into a spaceship, brought it here, forty two light-years away from Terra, and reverently set it up again. Then they had built a whole world and a whole social philosophy around it.

(snip)

"That wasn't murder. He just killed a politician. All the court could do was determine whether or not the politician needed it, and while I never heard about Maverick's income-tax proposition, I can't see how they could have brought in any other kind of a verdict. Of all the outrageous things!"

I was thoughtfully silent as we went out into the plaza, which was still a riot of noise and polychromatic costumes. And my thoughts were as weltered as the scene before me.

Apparently, on New Texas, killing a politician wasn't regarded as mallum in se, and was mallum prohibitorum only to the extent that what happened to the politician was in excess of what he deserved.

Heh.  Our kinda place, huh?   

They had taken this little mission-fort down, brick by adobe brick, loaded it carefully into a spaceship, brought it here, forty two light-years away from Terra, and reverently set it up again. Then they had built a whole world and a whole social philosophy around it.

I think I could like those people.

I didn't know Piper's stories were out of copyright.  Gutenberg has a bunch of them.

I was curious about the fate of Lt. Roddenberry.  I'm still curious about whether or not his (ahem) "trek" story ever saw the light of day -- though in OTL, IIRC, it appeared on NBC a year or so later than the end of this story.

Well, the Texans are great fans of the comic book genre. Perhaps Lt Roddenberry's yarns will end up as a graphic novel.

[Sounds like it'd be a great spinoff business for the Deef Smith Greeting Card Company, printing comics....]

Hmmm.  If they like comics, would they like manga?

Sailor Moon, Naruto, Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, Bleach, Macross, Tenchi Muyo. 

I can imagine the kind of audience those series would have in the Texican Commonwealth....   

Manga as we know it developed in Japan in the aftermath of WW II, when that country was largely impoverished and a demand for inexpensive entertainment developed. Television and even radios were quite costly in those days, but comic-books could be made, printed and distributed cheaply.

In the RT timeline, Japan was not defeated, merely held in check in part by Texas' nuclear weapons and in part by their erstwhile allies, the Third Reich (which now ruled Australia). I'll leave it to Rex to work out how Japanese politics and culture developed going forward from 1940s-RT.

I know that there's all kind of different interpertations of exactly how and why that the Japanese attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor and got us into WW2, but I thought that they most realistic one was that the Japanese were angry that an oil embargo of the Dutch East Indies had been put into place thanks in large part to FDR.  Without him in the oval office would the same situation have occurred?  If I remember my history correctly wasn't the Japanese on the same side as the American in WW1 and weren't the relations between the two countries fairly decent until Japan attacked China.  For example the cherry trees in Washington DC came from Japan didn't they? 

Well, a whole lotta history happened between 1750 and 1941.

In the late 19th Century Britain and the U.S. set up a "trade relationship" with China that was based on Anglo-American gunboats and highly profitable for Anglo-American trade companies. The Japanese government decided they wanted that action, and under the ideological cover of anti-Western Imperialism, grabbed Korea and began its conquest of China. This put the Japanese in direct opposition to Anglo-American interests, and Britain and the U.S. responded first with an oil embargo, then with an iron/steel embargo. The U.S. was also not-so-secretly giving direct aid to the Chinese resistance. As of mid-1941, the Japanese figured that they had 18 months to break the embargo or their economy would grind to a halt.

Since the embargo was being enforced largely by the U.S. Navy (supplemented by the British), the logical course for the Japanese was either to stop its advance in China and negotiate a settlement, or destroy the U.S. Navy. They pretended to attempt the former while actually doing the latter (after FDR provided a sweet opportunity for them by parking half the Navy at Pearl Harbor). And it almost worked.

I totally agree with the last part of your assessment.  It was pure luck that our carriers weren't docked in Pearl harbor that day.  History would have been very different if they had both been sunk since they figured so prominately at the Battle of midway which broke the back of the Japanese naval air arm.  They would have then probably been able to make attacks on the west coast of the United States and hit our aircraft factories and naval docks.

I totally agree with the last part of your assessment.  It was pure luck that our carriers weren't docked in Pearl harbor that day.  History would have been very different if they had both been sunk since they figured so prominately at the Battle of midway which broke the back of the Japanese naval air arm.  They would have then probably been able to make attacks on the west coast of the United States and hit our aircraft factories and naval docks.

The issue is that we got involved in the first place long before the conflict started as per the state-sponsored history books.  If we'd stayed neutral, there might've been a larger Japanese Empire, covering China and much of the region.  But our involvement in the Pacific was not as clean cut as people seem to believe.  They weren't particularly interested in conquering the states, that would've been suicidal.  They were responding to aggressive moves when they attacked, intending to cripple our interference in their internal conflict.  One that'd been raging back and forth for generations.

I was not aware that there is a story about The Amazing Meeting. The first one that is.

                                  $

Leviathan:  Your right, I was getting a little off the topic.  But let me say this.  A few years ago, I think it was on the History Channel it was revealed to the public that Adolph Hitler had actually written two books.  Besides "Mein Kampf" or in english "My struggle" that was written largely when he was in prison, he also wrote another book that was part prophecy and part economics.  He named the ultimate foe of his third reich as America.  My guess is that some generals in Japan had come to the same conclusion.  Admiral Yamamoto had come to a different conclusion having spent a good part of his time as a military attache in Washington D.C. where he was known as one hell of a poker player however some didn't in high Japanese circles didn't share his opinion

The issue is that we got involved in the first place long before the conflict started as per the state-sponsored history books.  If we'd stayed neutral, there might've been a larger Japanese Empire, covering China and much of the region.  But our involvement in the Pacific was not as clean cut as people seem to believe.  They weren't particularly interested in conquering the states, that would've been suicidal.  They were responding to aggressive moves when they attacked, intending to cripple our interference in their internal conflict.  One that'd been raging back and forth for generations.

You might be interested in reading a post I made sometime back regarding a movie in which an alternate history happened in which Japan and the U.S. were alklies during WWII.

http://forum.bigheadpress.com//index.php?topic=180.msg1532#msg1532

I totally agree with the last part of your assessment.  It was pure luck that our carriers weren't docked in Pearl harbor that day.  History would have been very different if they had both been sunk since they figured so prominately at the Battle of midway which broke the back of the Japanese naval air arm.  They would have then probably been able to make attacks on the west coast of the United States and hit our aircraft factories and naval docks.

In 1941 the aircraft carrier was not considered the weapon it is today.  It fact is was looked down on as merely support for infantry during landing operations.  It was the battleship that was then considerd the ultimate naval weapon.

After Pearl Harbor, admirals had to switch tactics and break rules. After all you can't commit a battleship you ain't got.  At Midway the carriers performed well and demonstrated they were a real force in naval warfare.  In fact the Japanese dropped plans for a third Yamato class battleship and began building carriers largely in response to that defeat.

IMO, it was really The Battle of Leyte Gulf that solidified the positon of the aircraft carrier as the new queen of naval battle tactics.  This position was punctuated by the sinking of the Yamato by carrier based aircraft assault alone as it raced to engaged the American forces at Okinanwa.