The Long Earth series by Pratchett and Baxter is an excellent series to read and dealing with a lot of possible issues in finding easy-ish access to many more Earths through "Stepping". Highly recommend it and remember your potato.
Hi, Hello and Greetings from the twin island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in the Southern Caribbean. I really enjoyed this episode on Alternate Mars. Especially your including War of The Worlds, War of The Worlds Goliath and Scarlet Traces. There is another War of the Worlds type spinoff by John Rust and Mark Gardner, " War of The Worlds: Retribution." This story centers around an allied expediationary force of ships, troops and walkers from The British Empire, France, Imperial Germany, The Soviet Union, the United States of America etc. Launching an invasion of Mars, featuring famous military officers such as Patton, De Gaule, Rommel and Zhukov faceing off against Martin forces. It's most definately worth a read. Keep up the great work.
For Anime fans, a good Mars alternate history I enjoyed was Aldnoah.Zero. The basic storyline goes that in 1972, the Apollo 17 Mission discovered ancient alien technology on the moon called the Hypergate, which was used to jumpstart the colonization of Mars. Upon the discovery of more alien technology called Aldnoah, the colonists found the Vers Empire. The Vers Empire is technologically superior to Earth, but covets the resources of Earth. This leads to the First Earth-Mars War, which ends in 1999 after Heaven's Fall, where the Hypergate goes out of control and destroys the moon. The series takes place in 2014 with the start of the Second Earth-Mars War.
I guess that because they were short stories and set in the future Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" and "Valley of Dream" didn't qualify as alternate history. On a side note the GURPS RPG has a Mars supplement (GURPS Mars) which generalizes many of the various versions of Mars.
So I was wrong to say Mars was our closest planetary neighbor. Surprisingly its Mercury: www.popularmechanics.com/space/solar-system/a26839314/closest-planet-to-earth-on-average/. Sorry about that misinformation. Also people keep asking why I didn't mention Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. The answer is simple: it isn't alternate history. They are both set in the future of when they are written. As far as I know no past historical events were changed/altered to create the setting. So they aren't relevant to a video about alternate history works regarding Mars.
Yeah, Harry Turtledove doesn't have a good understanding of Marxism. Historically, governments that operated under Marxist assumptions were, themselves, formerly feudal states that instantly jumped to a socialist state. I think Turtledove looked at a basic timeliness of how Marxists view history and saw that "Feudalism leads to Capitalism which leads to Socialism" as well as some Marxist explanation of the benefits of Capitalism when compared to Feudalism. Then Turtledove just left it there without going further.
Mars isn't our closest planetary neighbor; Venus comes the closest to us of any planet at the closest part of our orbits, and is closer to us than Mars at both the closest and farthest parts of its orbit, and Mercury is technically closest to us on average (because it orbits much faster and is closer to the sun, meaning it passes close to us more regularly and is less far away when it's on the opposite side of the sun than Venus is). Unless you mean closest in terms of how similar it is to us, in which case... also Venus, which is MUCH closer to us in size (the gravity is only about 10% lower, while on Mars it's closer to 60% lower) and while its atmospheric makeup and density and the resulting heat would make it impossible for humans to reach its surface (even making it difficult to land rovers on the surface for more than a brief window of time), Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere made up almost entirely of Co2, and as a result has a frigid surface, so it's equally distinct from ours in the opposite direction.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Kim Stanley Robinson's Red, Green & Blue Mars trilogy from the 90s. Also of note is the short story anthology "Medieval Mars" about a partially terraformed Mars whose human settlers regress to mediaeval technology after an unspecified disaster on Earth.
Robinson's series isn't an alternate history. As far as I understand he didn't change past historical events to create what is basically a straightforward SF story set in the future. As for Medieval Mars, I never heard of it and it didn't come up in any of my research, but I will try to check it out later.
The sandwich story is a myth. There's a Smithsonian article that addresses it. The route was known and whether or not Princip had food is in no contemporary source.
Yes yes yes. You are not the first person to correct me. See the pinned comment. Also apparently Mercury is our closest neighbor by certain measurements.
@@TheAlternateHistorian It's Mercury occasionally, when Venus is in opposition and Mercury is in conjunction. But on average it's Venus. Sorry I didn't see the pinned comment, for some reason it's not at the top.
I'm a little bit stunned that you missed 2 of the 3 most important Mars series in SF. ie Kim Stanley Robinson and Ray Bradbury. Lucky you are young and you have time to catch up.
I've read Bradbury, but never got past Red Mars with Robinson (just didn't enjoy it). As for "stunned", why did you think I would mention them in a video covering alternate history works of Mars? Neither are alternate histories since they do not change past events and are rather set in the future of when they were written.