What is an ASB, you will probably ask yourselves. The answer is Alien Space Bat, a term that is used when the point of divergence for an alternative history is way too surreal to have happened normally, or a supernatural event.
The origin of this phrase can be found in soc.history.what-if, an Usenet group in which, as you can imagine, the possibilities of the changes that could have taken place in certain historical moments are discussed. One of its members, Alison Brooks, as she discussed how ridiculous some alternative history suggestions were, made this comment:
1865 - Alien bats from outer space bring the fruits of their technology to their brothers, because they have heard Elvis Presley on the radio, and think that the south should indeed be free. It ranks slightly higher than a '63 CSA victory. Indeed, I think I will call it "Bats of the South" and make it into a four book trilogy.The "Bats of the South" comment is a take that against one of Harry Turtledove's books, "Guns of the South", which I will speak about at a later point.
Returning to the matter in question, originally the ASB term was only used when talking about direct influence of extraterrestrial beings in the history of humanity, but at some point later, it began to be used to point out that a point of divergence would have never happened if the situation was normal, whether it was due to magic, aliens, or just because the author wanted it to happen that way.
We shall put apart the histories in which a person, a group of people, a city or even an entire country travels back or forward in time (or even towards other dimensions), all of which fit better as part of the ISOT group (which I will speak about some time soon), there are many stories that can be considered of the ASB kind.
One example can be found in Alan Moore's masterwork Watchmen (named by Time one of the best 100 novels written since 1923. Not graphic novels, actual novels). The history of Watchmen diverges in the 1930s, after the publishing of Superman's first comics, which inspire certain people to become masked vigilantes. One of them, Edward Blake, nicknamed "The Comedian", even becomes a war hero during World War II, although it becomes clear to anyone that meets him that he is a bit touched on the head (which appears in the form of flashbacks, as Watchmen begins with Blake's murder). The greatest changes, though, is brought when scientist Jon Osterman suffers a lab accident in the 1950s that turns him into Doctor Manhattan, a blue being with superpowers that disturbs the balance of power during the Cold War in favor of the United States, with the result that tensions between both sides are greater, and any spark can start World War III.
We also have the Wild Cards series by George R. R. Martin (he who has yet to finish writing the A Song of Ice and Fire novels), which begins when a strange virus appears in New York in 1946. 90% of the infected people die horribly, 9% suffer easy-to-see mutations, and the remaining 1% manages to acquire superpowers. This has great effects in history: the Arab-Israeli Conflict is avoided thanks to a treaty between Jews and Arabs, people like Mahatma Gandhi, Marilyn Monroe or Buddy Holly manage to survive beyond the moment they died in our history, Liz Taylor is the one that dies in a car accident instead of James Dean, and the Cuban Revolution becomes a failure, at least in part because Fidel Castro is a professional baseball player.
A third example is the video game trilogy Resistance, all of its games being for PS3 (save for two spin-offs for PSP). The point of divergence is that Spain declares war on the United States before the USS Maine explodes in the Havana Harbor, but the actual change happens when it turns out that the meteorite that fell in Tunguska in 1908 carries strange, horrible aliens called Chimeras, which invade Russia first, then an united Europe in 1949, to then do the same with the United Kingdom in 1951 and the United States in 1955, with the result that they end up controlling the whole world in the 1960s. The first two games' main character is an American soldier that turns out to be nearly immune to the virus the Chimeras use to turn human bodies in future soldiers, and who embarks in a mission to stop them before it becomes too late, although unfortunately he fails (humanity does end up winning the war thanks to the third game's main character, but only after enormous effort and the deaths of millions of people.
And these three examples are not the only possibilities I could have spoken about: there is also Draka, Shadowrun, Deadlands... any of these, and many more, could have been included in this list, but in the end it was not possible (not to mention that I might pick any of them for future posts!)
Right now, I just hope that you have liked this, and that you will come back to read this blog's next posts. See you!
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