Online AH and AH Inspired Stories 1995-2026: A Catalogue

[Simon Darkshade]

I came up with the idea of putting together a bit of a catalogue or index of notable AH works that were originally written/posted online in that period, as we are at the stage where a lot of the older works have disappeared or slipped into memory for even those of us who were around.

The scope: I envisage collating stories from here, there, AH.com, the Warships1 Naval Fiction Board and other places; not actually posting them, but eventually including links to respect the rights of the author; and providing a very brief precis of each that goes for a couple of sentences.

The eventual format:
Title
Author
Link (If possible)
Precis

Initial stories/verses, without links, from memory, and not in order at this point:

Tarrantry: One of the grandfathers of online works, the Tarrantry stories focused on the modern history of a fictional island around the location of fantastical Lyonesse, and particularly the naval adventures of its heroic commanders in the World Wars.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050407163 ... /saga.html

America in World War II: Theodore Leverett's collected works are well written, detailed and combined politics and naval action
https://web.archive.org/web/20050410184 ... /wwii.html

Wake Relieved: A Pacific War based tale looking at the consequences of a successful relief of Wake Island in 1941/42 by Theodore Leverett. I believe this one has been published

Panay War: As the name says on the carton, an earlier Pacific War between the USA and the Empire of Japan

Shattered World: A story by Bobby Hardenbrook that started from a basically historical 1937 beginning, but then blew up into multiple world wars and extreme deeds by various states, with little to no logistics, but a lot of fun and explosions. Disappeared offline when it entered the world of self-published ebooks in ~ 2012, which is a step that apparently relatively few amateur AH authors have been able to fully ride to fortune and success

The Further Adventures of HMS Hood: Now largely disappeared from the readily accessible Internet, this story looked at the expansive war record of Hood after she survived the tussle with the Bismarck. Many parts, well written and balanced between action and exposition, this tale was an earlier work of noted horsey chap Jan Niemczyk

From the Scheldt to the Rhine: Operation Market Garden done right, along with naval flourishes. By the author of TLW and the Hoodverse

Convoy to Singers: The Battle of the South China Sea goes a bit differently, courtesy of the author of the previous two items

Andrew in the Coral Sea: Almost a direct follow up to 'Convoy', with the focus being in the title

Ambush at North Cape: Another Jan work, based around the latter part of the European part of WW2, and primarily navally based. A few common flourishes with its sister works, such as Hood surviving, some alternate RN construction and the Kriegsmarine getting a lot of their own tonnage in return

Teeth of the Tiger: HMS Tiger sticks around for WW2 service on convoy escort. A lot of common threads with the other JN tales

Letterstime: A WW1 German Navy 'celebration', based on the Naval Fiction Board, and still going after 25+ years, it is beloved by Imperial German aficionados and not hugely minded by most others.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050406185 ... _main.html

The Last War: Going since 2005, this WW3 story has now progressed almost two months and almost 400 chapters in 21 years. Great detail in what can be described as a host of vignettes and a few long-lasting storylines. A titan in its field

Against All Odds: The British Empire in WW2: Originally an AAR from some sort of HoI game, this became a very long running (2008-2018) example of the 'Britwank', written by the very nice trekaddict

The Big One/TBOverse: From ~ 2003 to 2020, the late Stuart Slade wrote a total of 10 published novels and quite a few other short stories in his TBOverse, along with quite a few other authors. From an initial scope of a WW2 PoD, the universe's concept grew over time to involve immortal 'daemons' guiding and manipulating a great deal of history, combined with continued American strategic polices of massive retaliation and a bomber based deterrent. The earlier works certainly read like online stories of their era, with all that entails, but Slade did develop as an author over the nearly two decades he worked on his universe and the detective stories of his later years are worth examining in their own right even for those somewhat cool on the setting

TIPOTS/Those In Peril on The Sea: USS Texas sinks the Bismarck, the USA enters WW2 a bit earlier, and things then go a bit differently, with armoured SS troops raiding the USA and an intense Cold War with the USSR following a bloodier WW2, replete with several hot wars and use of nuclear weapons

1948: Reece134 created an ephemerally brief but decently absorbing WW3 work which played rather rough and ready with logistics and mundane limitations in favour of a good old fashioned donnybrook on the high seas between the boosted Soviets and the Western Allies. Last worked on in 2005ish, it has now disappeared from the readily available internet, although it *might* be possible to search the old ezboard in question on the Wayback Machine

Red Dawn + 20: By this point, a quite long running online 'community' that has spanned a few forums, with a lot of side stories about a WW3 a la the 1984 motion picture, but nothing really fleshed out of the mainline narrative. A seemingly large number of SIs/in-universe identities are war heroes, dashing pilots, high ranking officers and the like; this is fine, but results in a slightly skewed view of the postwar world and a variation on the themes of 'every man is a hero in his own story' and 'no one makes the tea'

Drake's Drum/Dark Colossus: Nick Sumner's WW2 based storyline, initially known as Dark Colossus, had something of a similar character the RD+20verse above back in its day, in that the material published online was usually factfiles, ship lists and all of the great ancillary material that builds upon the central storyline. Subsequently, it has been published as Drake's Drum as an ebook and more which has presumably addressed that mainline absence

France Fights On: One of the other well known joint efforts of the 2000s, this WW2 based universe split in the mid to latter part of the decade due to creative and historical differences into a French team (who would later publish the extremely Francowank work in their native language) and a predominantly British Commonwealth/Anglophile one, whose unfortunately brief version of WW2 was known as APOD/A Point of Departure

The Whale Has Wings: An AH.com story which was subsequently published in ebook (and printed) form, it examines the consequences of reforms and improvements to the RN's carrier force and the FAA pre-WW2. It covered up until mid 1942ish before running out of steam, after having eliminated the German, Italian and Imperial Japanese Navies

The 'Pinaforeverse' : A collection of several non-connected naval and military based stories published on the Naval Fiction Board from late 2008-the end of 2013, encompassing Parthian Shot (RN submarine attack on Kido Butai coming back from the Indian Ocean Raid), Jutland, The Cuban War (1962), The World Turned Upside Down (HMS Eagle does a Final Countdown to the coast of Malaya on 6 December 1941), Sucker Punch, Trial by Ordeal (a worse Pearl Harbor), Castle Slayer, Bengal Bay, Battle for Point 107 (Crete 1941), The Battle of Bear Island, Showdown in the Med (1914 Goeben pursuit), The St.George’s Day Massacre (1965 Indonesia vs RAF), Carrier Strike (1965 Indonesia vs RN), Last Prowl of the Splendid Cats (1965), The Sea Wolves (1965), Death of a Giant (1941 Denmark Strait reverse), Twelve a Day in Samar Bay (1944), And let Slip the Dogs of War (Channel Dash), Duel in the Deep (1982), The Empire Strikes Back (1982), The Further Adventures of Rusty B (1982), Dire Straits (1988 Persian Gulf), Divine Wind - Operation Tan (1945 Japanese strike on Ulithi), The Setting Sun (RN strike on IJN in Brunei 1944), Operation Sealion (1941), Backs to the Wall (War of the Worlds 1902), and Norwegian Fiasco (1940). Usual procedure was the RN doing rather well, but covered a lot of different topics and times across 20th century naval and military history. They came to an abrupt end with Backs to the Wall just before Christmas in 2013, sadly.

Different Dutch War: A different Dutch war by Lordroel

Dark Earth (2007-) : Some idiot talking to himself; needs more dragons

A few I know of/remember, but cannot expand fully upon from memory alone:

Hartford World/The Housatonic Line: Some sort of separate New England + a later breakaway Confederacy involved in a subsequent 20th century war

The American World War: By NoOneFamous, the name on the tin does say it all

Palawan Pirates: Dick B's yarn about converted three piper USS Mallory's service as a torpedo gunboat off the Philippines in the 1930s c 2006

1916: Author Jeff Thomas

Rule Britannia: Author A.T. Mahan

Elysian Tales: Author Anton Savage

Prime Minister Francis Urquhart and 9/11: A relatively short work by Mark Whittington c. 2007

The Old War Wagon - NHBL

(Note 1: A whole lot more to come, and if others can think of some to add, post them up and it shall be collated)
(Note 2: I do intend to expand on the above brief captions eventually, but am getting some stuff down to begin with)

[jemhouston]

Thank you for doing this.

[Simon Darkshade]

No worries.

There is a lot of stuff out there that gets forgotten, and ideally shouldn’t be. If we get a bit of talk going, then we can end up preserving memories (and ideally links, even to Wayback stuff for the works which are online) of a wide range of material. Then, to ensure that the catalogue isn’t a ‘one hit species’, it will be posted on some other sites to allow for optimum survivability.

What got me to thinking about it is how much of the ‘older internet’ we have lost from the heyday of Geocities and all of the strange little forums and personal pages that are gone now, like electronic tears in online rain. That type of thing can be prevented for other stuff.

[gral]

I second the thanks.

Letterstime is still going? Is it going on the Naval Fiction Board?

[Simon Darkshade]

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/warship ... 54243.html

Last chapter posted 6 days ago.

[gral]

Yeah, just seen it. Holy crap, I'll have a lot to go through.

[Belushi TD]

I enjoyed the early Letterstime, but after getting married in 2005 and spending a lot of time away from the internet due to honeymoon and then lots of work trips, I lost the thread, and have never gotten back into it. I've tried a couple times, but its one of those things that needs to be consistently followed, and I just have never had the time to get back into it.

I'd add to Jeff Thomas's list 1910 and 1912, both of which are available in dead tree versions. The entire series is called The second American civil war, and can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089GW2D8J?bi ... 370&sr=8-1

Drake's Drum series is also available in dead tree. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GQ8VT7P?bi ... 472&sr=1-2

Wake Relieved is also available in dead tree. Wake is only available from a second hand store, and they want 64 bucks for it, but anyway.... https://www.amazon.com/Wake-Relieved-Th ... 103&sr=1-1


For the works that we have links to, can we post them? And for works that have dead tree versions now, can we also post them? Maybe one post that has all the dead tree links, and another post, maybe the first one in this thread, with the online links as people find them?

Belushi TD

[Simon Darkshade]

I'll be honest that I've never given LT more than a partial look, as Kaiserreich-wanks didn't appeal to me whatsoever in the early 2000s and certainly don't now that I'm old and sordid like King Osric. There is a lot of work put into it over the years, but the original concept and PoD just didn't work for me. It does appear to have a steady audience of Americans who bear an apparent fondness for aspects of WW1 Germany, so more power to them.

I'll add in the stuff for Jeff and the published works; some of the stuff has been added when I was editing as you were posting.

Posting links to works would be fine, and for the published works as well. I do intend to clean this up nicely and format it so that it is bright and shiny and easy to use.

[Lordroel]

Different Dutch War: A different Dutch war by Lordroel

Nice for listing it here, it began my journey into AH.

[Rocket J Squrriel]

Old one that was great.

For All Time by President Chester B Arthur (or Mike Davis)

A dystopian post-WWII scenario resulting from the death of Roosevelt shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, featuring horrific three-way race riots in the United States between white, black and Jewish gangs, and frequent usage of nuclear weapons around the world.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/foralltime/

[Belushi TD]

At some point, if it continues to develop, could we sticky either this thread or the new version of it?

Also, might be worth putting a link to the TBO verse list as well.

Belushi TD

[Lordroel]

I have located some of Theodore C. Leverett, America in the Second World War: An Alternate History stories that could find using the Waybackmachine.

[clancyphile]

I came up with the idea of putting together a bit of a catalogue or index of notable AH works that were originally written/posted online in that period, as we are at the stage where a lot of the older works have disappeared or slipped into memory for even those of us who were around.

The scope: I envisage collating stories from here, there, AH.com, the Warships1 Naval Fiction Board and other places; not actually posting them, but eventually including links to respect the rights of the author; and providing a very brief precis of each that goes for a couple of sentences.

The eventual format:
Title
Author
Link (If possible)
Precis

Initial stories/verses, without links, from memory, and not in order at this point:

The Further Adventures of HMS Hood: Now largely disappeared from the readily accessible Internet, this story looked at the expansive war record of Hood after she survived the tussle with the Bismarck. Many parts, well written and balanced between action and exposition, this tale was an earlier work of noted horsey chap Jan Niemczyk

From the Scheldt to the Rhine: Operation Market Garden done right, along with naval flourishes. By the author of TLW and the Hoodverse

Ambush at North Cape: Another Jan work, based around the latter part of the European part of WW2, and primarily navally based. A few common flourishes with its sister works, such as Hood surviving, some alternate RN construction and the Kriegsmarine getting a lot of their own tonnage in return

I have both Further Adventures of HMS Hood and Ambush at North Cape in Word documents from long ago. Can kick `em over to Jan Niemczyk, if that will help.

[Simon Darkshade]

I’ve got all of his stuff of that era, including the very short stories and factfiles, but not sure if they are wanted/needed until such time as he says so.

[Bernard Woolley]

Have to say that I am very glad to hear they do survive! Thanks, guys. I may ask you to send them across at some point. However, right now I'm snowed under as it is!

[Simon Darkshade]

That’s more than fine, Bernard. In the absence of a major fire, the files aren’t going anywhere.

I do mean to get back to this archival indexing project; busyness seems to be a global problem. I might have another little TLW related present for you in time.