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Description
This is a world where the solar system resembles the fantasies of 1930s pulp writers -- there is steamy, jungle venus with dinosaurs along with a dry, desert mars that's ruled by an ancient and decadent civilization.
OF course, unlike the old SF writer's visions, technology and society evolved in a more logical way, albeit with changes like the 1960s as we know them being averted. i've added other changes that I see as logical followons.

There are of course extensive borrowing from B_Munro's 50s world scenario for inevitable reasons.

This scenario works with Stirling's original assumptions of Anglosphere, Eastbloc and Eurobloc. I may do one where Western Europe does the logical thing and sticks with the US eventually as B_Munro proposed on AH.com but not this time around.

Also, I removed the bit near the end of "in the courts of the crimson kings" involving the two portals to the new planet, and the dyson sphere because of lack of information by Stirling to extrapolate from, so it's just a modified Mars and Venus, along with the mention of other earthlike worlds in nearby stars.

**********************************************
Adding two extra habitable worlds didn't change the bulk of human history -- a more cloudy and green venus just reinforced it's image, and a living mars still had enough desert to end up named after the god of war.

The first visible differences come in the 1920s, when spectroscopy revealed that both Mars and Venus had atmospheres similar to earth, if with differences -- Venus's being thicker and Mars's being thinner.. Thankfully this butterflied out both International Style architecture and brutalism. Of course, Mid-Century architecture in this world became duller but it was something more clearly inspired by the futurisrts and not OTL's Brutalist nightmare.

Much as in our world, the second world war happened with much the same results.

The early cold war happened in a similar way, with the most visible differences being there being no Sino-Soviet split. The reason for this, was of course Mao's early death, combined with no Cuban missile crisis to cause Khrustchev to be removed.

Even though, on a cultural level the 1960s and 1970s were much quieter than in our world, there were shifts on a geopolitical level. First was the cold war's slow near-end 1950-1980, which began as detente but in time turned to hashing out west and eastbloc issues. Perhaps, triggered by the first came the second shift which was a left-wing western europe bitterly splitting with the United States and NATO being ended in 1975.

Following the European-Anglosphere split, the world settled into something like it's present form. There is the Anglosphere in the New world, along with bits and pieces retained from Britian's old empire. The Comintern, now renamed to the Eastbloc covered the greater part of Eurasia -- the entire area from East Germany to northern Indochina was communist-ruled. Meanwhile, the third faction was a left-wing alliance of Western Europe and India aimed at pushing a more humanist vision of the world as opposed to Anglosphere "cowboy capitalism" or Eastbloc "fascism in red pajamas".

The big reason international politics has frozen in amber and gotten rather less dangerous is twofold: 1) The open frontier to compete on, which makes things less zero sum 2) Resources from space(transporting goods between planets is uneconomical, but asteroid mining and orbital solar work just fine). People in this world tend to think that without Mars and Venus, that there would have been a third world war.

The world situation roughly being frozen in amber, is inherently unstable than last decade there were three big signs of change in the air. The first and most notable sign, was the legitimate heir to the Crimson Dynasty revealing themselves and, with the help of her American-born consort reuniting Mars by force. The second sign was a joint Pakistani-Saudi mission to successfully send a man to orbit. Thirdly and most recently, you have the completion of the first joint European-Indian nuclear-powered ship: the Phoenix

**********************************************
ANGLOSPHERE

The Anglosphere is an economic and military alliance formed out of part of what once was the old NATO alliance, combined with other cold war era alliances. It's less integrated than the European Union of either our world or this -- think of it as NATO plus something of a socioeconomic side along with a certain level of integration. In fact, you don't need passports to travel between more developed parts of the alliance like between the US and Cuba, or the US and Chile.

America is clean-cut, unified, looking to the stars and worried about the menace of Godless Communism. Don't think of this as 1950s America, but unbroken since there has been change in various attitudes even if more of the old forms survive. For example, there are no states with gay marriage but 22 states have some form of domestic partnerships. Race is less of an issue, due to the fact that civil rights came in stages and there was rather more bargaining, so that blacks are a swing voting block. Television has been kept cleaner, but unlike in our world there isn't our world's level of controversy or occasional rollbacks like what we saw last decade. Economic policy is more populist, as would be expected with a cohesive and united nation. Nonwestern immigration was opened up, but unlike in our world they're expected to Americanize fast.

The United States of America maintains an economic and political alliance in the Americas called the Organization of American States. Latin America is more clearly within America's sphere of influence. It's wealthier and less democratic than in our world -- Latin America has recieved investment that went in OTL to India or China. Immigration was opened like in our world, and several nations have statehood parties. So far, only only a couple have succeeded.

Cuba is a partying place. Think of it as Miami Vice with a spanish accent.

The United Kingdom went from being America's partner, to now being one of several smaller allies. Compared to OTL, Britain is more right wing, more populist and significantly wealthier than in our world. Much like the future predicted by many Golden Age writers, Britain retains rather more cultural relevance in it's ex-colonies than in our world. Fortunately, this increased relevance happens in a world where Britain hasn't decayed enough to produce Chavs. Britain also retains a few, tiny islands or enclaves like Singapore. Besides these few extra direct holdings, the British commonwealth is a more cohesive international organization.

Britain's empire is gone, but unlike in our world they've managed to keep more of it in at least an economic union. The Karoo Union is pretty much just a larger botswana. The West Indies Federation styles intself as The Most British place in the world. The Nile Republic is gloriously corrupt under President Malik Agar.

Rhodesia and South Africa let blacks vote or run for offices, but for conservative candidates. The ANC and Rhodesia's ZAPU and ZANU all remain banned. Mandela died in prison in 2002. There are terrorism problems, but thankfully The Race War that was predicted by much old science fiction never erupted.

Ireland is wealthier and avoided the troubles. De Valera was butterflied out, so Ireland modernized early and thus has more people, since it remains more traditionalist. Think an Irish demographic pattern more like the US's.

Japan is wealthier than in our world, and has a more diversified industry. A united States facing a united Eurasia encouraged Japan to rebuild it's armed forces in the the 1950s. Japan is known for it's electronics, anime and high-quality military hardware. Japan is deeply involved in the Atomic Rocket program.

Israel managed to gain peace with it's neighbors in the 60s and 70s, but remains deeply militarized in case someone stirs up trouble.

South Korea is pretty recognizable, if a bit wealthier than in our world.

South Vietnam is an extra Asian tiger.

Cambodia is an amazingly corrupt monarchy, and the source of much of the world's opium supply. The economy is at OTL thai levels and the population is double ours without the pol pot interlude.

The Philippines never decided to sever ties with the United States's economy, and as a result has a standard of living that's at Mexican levels.

Ethiopia remains a monarchy and has a per capita GDP of $3000. There is a problem with rural guerillas and terrorism, though.

**********************************************
THE RED MENACE

The Restored Comintern, also called by most the "Eastbloc" is a joint Sino-Soviet operation ruling the area from Eastern Germany to Indochina. It's a military and economic alliance, which nowadays even includes a degree of immigration between bloc members. This mostly means Chinese immigration to the USSR or OTL warsaw pact.

The Soviet Union is technically the leader of the Eastbloc, and even has the largest economy in the bloc so far. After a round of economic troubles in the 1990s, the soviet economy has grown consistently for the past few decades and soviet citizens no longer have to eat food yeasts. At least the people outside the gulag don't have to eat them. In recent decades, there are lots of immigrants from other Eastbloc nations in the USSR -- you can get good Chinese food in Moscow. Soviets are a bit annoyed that the Chinese tail is increasingly wagging the Eastbloc dog. Central Asia and parts of Siberia are increasingly radioactive due to the whole using them for launching orion drive ships thing.

Moscow has a 1000 foot tall metal statue of Stalin that can move it's arms using animatronics. The energy needed to keep the statue's arms moving requires that a dedicated nuclear reactor be used for it.

On the one hand, Mao didn't survive the civil war and get to implement certain nuttier schemes, but on the other hand Mao never discredited the left. This has had positives like no destruction of traditional Chinese culture along with rather fewer famines than in our world. Without the destruction of chinese traditional culture, you get weirdness like religious cults idolizing the martyred mao, or various forms of militant apocalyptic pseudo-buddhism using marxian notions of class struggle to justify an apocalyptic People's War. The People's Republic of China is rather less reformed than in our world. Think more the late soviet union or 2013 Belarus, minus the secessionist issues from local minorities and with an economy that's still (slowly) chugging along. Yes, the economy is moving towards capitalism but it's been far more gradual and in stages. Unfortunately, the fact that economic reform has been delayed, combined with no one-child policy means that China's had to resort to feeding people with food yeasts or converting wood pulp or wheat stalks into edible mash.

The Warsaw pact is much like OTL in the 70s and 80s, if with the ability to get good chinese food. Something like 10-20% of the population of these nations consists of immigrants from elsewhere in the eastbloc like China, Burma or Korea.

North Korea is a brutal communist dictatorship, but merely a generic communist state and not under the Kims.

Burma is a generic communist dictatorship that's in the process of 'solving' it's minority issues by either relocating them to venus or 'encouraging' migration to the USSR.

Congo is a brutal left-wing dictatorship, that has the dubious distinction of being better at maintaining stability than OTL's Democratic Republic of Congo. Of course, given that Christian Weston Chandler could probably run a country better than OTL's Democratic Republic of congo's leadership this isn't exactly a compliment.

Nearly 70 years of soviet occupation have made Afghanistan as secular and as modern as 1950s Turkey. They are surprisingly ungrateful at recieving the gift of modernity. Afghanistan is pint-sized hell for Soviet and as of the last 20 years, Chinese troops.

The Republic of Free Azerbaidzhan is mini-Afghanistan. The soviet decision to permanently occupy the part of Iran with the most fundamentalists is now seen as something of a poor decision on the part of the leadership. At least, in that less clannish nation, the Soviets are better able to enforce order.

Nepal is a brutal nominally left-wing dictatorship. Oddly enough, the party's membership consists solely of representatives of higher castes. The government is authoritarian, hierarchical, feudal and caste-obsessed enough to gain a favorable reception from say someone like Julius Evola.

Algeria is psychotic, even by Eastbloc standards. Only around a third of it's total pre-independence population has survived the purges and brutality. The Algerian government's ideology of "Nihilist Bolshevism" makes 1984's Oceania look like New Hampshire in comparison.

**********************************************
THE EUROBLOC AND THE THIRD WORLD

Third and (so-far) least is the alliance between the Eurobloc and the 'third world', led by neutral, self-righteously pacifistic India. The main ideological glue for this alliance is a mix of 'humanist socialism', social democracy, concern for the environment and an opposition to both Eastbloc "fascism in red pajamas" and the soulless corporate capitalism of the Anglosphere. Thankfully part of this leads to an extreme opposition to both Eastbloc(Brutalism with neon and propaganda everywhere) and Anglosphere(unholy mix of Frank R. Paul's buildings and the international style) architectural styles.

Over the decades, the Eurobloc has actually federalized into something close to a state. It's not a confederation yet, but is more than a superstate. Compared to our world's European Union, the Eurobloc is well to the left. it's debatable whether or not this has to do with the fact that Germany and Italy both have higher birthrates than OTL. For the gap between the Anglosphere and Europe think an exaggerated version of the 50s Europe/US gap: Anglosphere is ahead in standard of living, high tech but is significantly more repressed on both sex and drugs while Europe is better at high culture, architecture, and general environmental maintinence.

Yugoslavia aligned itself with the Eurobloc decades ago, and is now even an associated member. There have been a few attempts to get full membership, but the soviets loudly object every time the subject comes up.

The second partner in this alliance is a leftier, more populist India. India is as rich as OTL despite the license raj continuing longer and being repealted alot less thanks to European subsidies of their industries and favorable trade deals. There is more smokestack industry and far fewer call centers.

The bulk of the middle east has aligned itself with the Europeans. This includes a couple of Arab union-style governments, an Iran under Mossadeq's heirs and a Jordan run by the the PLO as a revolutionary dictatorship.

Turkey isn't a member of the Eurobloc, but has negotiated good trade terms and isn't being strung along like in OTL, so there's better relations with the Europeans. It's also a rather more secular nation than our Turkish government. The military is firmly in charge.

**********************************************
OTHER RESIDENTS OF THE GLORIOUS FUTURE

In recent decades several muslim nations in the middle east and Africa have been taken over by fanatics. Think more the mad mullah of pulp SF as the model for these states, instead of current stereotypes of islamists -- they're fundamentalist but yet well-disciplined and willing to use modern technology to fulfill their purposes.

Finland is finlandized.

Austria is Extremely Neutral and the setting of many spy movies set in it's old castles.

The swiss continue to help with tax evasion.

**********************************************
THE PLANETS AND SPACE

Asteroid mining is starting to get going as of the last few years. Yes, an earlier attempt at it back in the 1980s failed but this time is actually working.

The EuroBloc really doesn't appreciate the fact that Venus remains divided among the US and USSR, but neither power particularly cares what the Europeans think. There are secret arrangements between Moscow/Beijing and Washington to nuke any suspected unauthorized colonies on Venus from the EuroBloc or the muslims. As of yet, the only European settlements permitted on venus have been a few people allowed to take US citizenship and live in America's settlement. This is a big point of friction between the eurobloc and the other two factions.

Venus is the new frontier, a steamy tropical world of dinosaurs and cavemen. Unsurprisingly, this means that not that many soviets will go to their colonies, which means that the Eastbloc part of Venus is mostly Chinese in population. The same sort of dynamic, if not quite as extreme (look at sunbelt settlement in the US) applies to Anglosphere portions of venus but Spanish and portuguese are still more commonly heard in the Anglosphere's colonies than English.

The Crimson dynasty runs mars, reunified once again after millenia of disunity thanks to the fact that once again there is a ruler who has the Invisible Crown. The new emperor and her American-born consort are in the early stages of a massive modernizatin program. Thankfully, the traditional Martian ruthless rationality means that Meiji Japan-style efforts will be an easier sell than they'd be to earth humans since Martians may be quite conservative and hard to convince but they will be convinced if you give them enough proof. The goal is to finish at setting up orbital energy to allow for high-energy projects such as getting water out of the ice caps, back into both the Northern Ocean and the sea of Hellas to avert the emerging dry age and restore agricultural productivity to areas that are now desert.(Stirling's notion of having Mars's atmosphere be slowly draining off was just a little _too_ cliche for me). While Terra's great powers won't give mars technical aid, out of a rational sense of not trusting martians with nukes or kinetic kill weapons, Mars' academics have been trying their best to reverse engineer everything based off of old Earth books.

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Colonialism is mostly gone, but a few bits and pieces remain even to the present such as the US State of Puerto Rico, British Honduras, French Madagascar or Britain's protectorate of Kuwait. Other places remained run by European governmnents until the 1970s or 1980s such as Rhodesia, Ghana or the West Indies Federation.

Pseudoarcheologists like Von Daniken are FAR more credible than in our world due to proof of some outside force taking earth humans to venus, along with archaic humans to mars at some points. The fact that the humans on venus speak an indo-european language is just even more evidence in the mind of these people. This doesn't just have influences on mainstream archeology, but also on popular culture -- the post-apocalyptic genre of OTL's niche has been filled by

In a world, where there are both neanderthals living in savagery and highly civilized martians, differences between earth(and venusian) humans have been put into perspective. Skin color matters visibly less in western nations. There have been a few embarassing incidents, when martians notice the differing wealth levels between nations and openly wonder about the local population's melanin levels, though. To be fair, martians consider terrans as a whole to be barbaric monkeys from the wild so it's not like they're any more racist towards any particular group.

Technology is significantly more advanced than OTL, but there's a curious mix. You have networks that make our internet look like nothing along with orion drives zipping around the solar system but on the other hand biotechnology is surprisingly less advanced than you'd think. For biotechnology, it's roughly 5 or 10 years ahead depending on the area with a few like pills being more advanced. Medicine has doen particularly well thanks to the drugs and spices of mars now being part of earth's technological toolkit -- the program to adapt martian longetivity treatments for human is getting billions of dollars in funding from the FDA along with consortiums of both Anglosphere and Eurobloc drug companies. The planet is at least cleaner thanks to martian technology allowing for production of hydrocarbons using algae.

Description
This is a world where the solar system resembles the fantasies of 1930s pulp writers -- there is steamy, jungle venus with dinosaurs along with a dry, desert mars that's ruled by an ancient and decadent civilization.
OF course, unlike the old SF writer's visions, technology and society evolved in a more logical way, albeit with changes like the 1960s as we know them being averted. i've added other changes that I see as logical followons.

There are of course extensive borrowing from B_Munro's 50s world scenario for inevitable reasons.

This scenario works with Stirling's original assumptions of Anglosphere, Eastbloc and Eurobloc. I may do one where Western Europe does the logical thing and sticks with the US eventually as B_Munro proposed on AH.com but not this time around.

Also, I removed the bit near the end of "in the courts of the crimson kings" involving the two portals to the new planet, and the dyson sphere because of lack of information by Stirling to extrapolate from, so it's just a modified Mars and Venus, along with the mention of other earthlike worlds in nearby stars.

**********************************************
Adding two extra habitable worlds didn't change the bulk of human history -- a more cloudy and green venus just reinforced it's image, and a living mars still had enough desert to end up named after the god of war.

The first visible differences come in the 1920s, when spectroscopy revealed that both Mars and Venus had atmospheres similar to earth, if with differences -- Venus's being thicker and Mars's being thinner.. Thankfully this butterflied out both International Style architecture and brutalism. Of course, Mid-Century architecture in this world became duller but it was something more clearly inspired by the futurisrts and not OTL's Brutalist nightmare.

Much as in our world, the second world war happened with much the same results.

The early cold war happened in a similar way, with the most visible differences being there being no Sino-Soviet split. The reason for this, was of course Mao's early death, combined with no Cuban missile crisis to cause Khrustchev to be removed.

Even though, on a cultural level the 1960s and 1970s were much quieter than in our world, there were shifts on a geopolitical level. First was the cold war's slow near-end 1950-1980, which began as detente but in time turned to hashing out west and eastbloc issues. Perhaps, triggered by the first came the second shift which was a left-wing western europe bitterly splitting with the United States and NATO being ended in 1975.

Following the European-Anglosphere split, the world settled into something like it's present form. There is the Anglosphere in the New world, along with bits and pieces retained from Britian's old empire. The Comintern, now renamed to the Eastbloc covered the greater part of Eurasia -- the entire area from East Germany to northern Indochina was communist-ruled. Meanwhile, the third faction was a left-wing alliance of Western Europe and India aimed at pushing a more humanist vision of the world as opposed to Anglosphere "cowboy capitalism" or Eastbloc "fascism in red pajamas".

The big reason international politics has frozen in amber and gotten rather less dangerous is twofold: 1) The open frontier to compete on, which makes things less zero sum 2) Resources from space(transporting goods between planets is uneconomical, but asteroid mining and orbital solar work just fine). People in this world tend to think that without Mars and Venus, that there would have been a third world war.

The world situation roughly being frozen in amber, is inherently unstable than last decade there were three big signs of change in the air. The first and most notable sign, was the legitimate heir to the Crimson Dynasty revealing themselves and, with the help of her American-born consort reuniting Mars by force. The second sign was a joint Pakistani-Saudi mission to successfully send a man to orbit. Thirdly and most recently, you have the completion of the first joint European-Indian nuclear-powered ship: the Phoenix

**********************************************
ANGLOSPHERE

The Anglosphere is an economic and military alliance formed out of part of what once was the old NATO alliance, combined with other cold war era alliances. It's less integrated than the European Union of either our world or this -- think of it as NATO plus something of a socioeconomic side along with a certain level of integration. In fact, you don't need passports to travel between more developed parts of the alliance like between the US and Cuba, or the US and Chile.

America is clean-cut, unified, looking to the stars and worried about the menace of Godless Communism. Don't think of this as 1950s America, but unbroken since there has been change in various attitudes even if more of the old forms survive. For example, there are no states with gay marriage but 22 states have some form of domestic partnerships. Race is less of an issue, due to the fact that civil rights came in stages and there was rather more bargaining, so that blacks are a swing voting block. Television has been kept cleaner, but unlike in our world there isn't our world's level of controversy or occasional rollbacks like what we saw last decade. Economic policy is more populist, as would be expected with a cohesive and united nation. Nonwestern immigration was opened up, but unlike in our world they're expected to Americanize fast.

The United States of America maintains an economic and political alliance in the Americas called the Organization of American States. Latin America is more clearly within America's sphere of influence. It's wealthier and less democratic than in our world -- Latin America has recieved investment that went in OTL to India or China. Immigration was opened like in our world, and several nations have statehood parties. So far, only only a couple have succeeded.

Cuba is a partying place. Think of it as Miami Vice with a spanish accent.

The United Kingdom went from being America's partner, to now being one of several smaller allies. Compared to OTL, Britain is more right wing, more populist and significantly wealthier than in our world. Much like the future predicted by many Golden Age writers, Britain retains rather more cultural relevance in it's ex-colonies than in our world. Fortunately, this increased relevance happens in a world where Britain hasn't decayed enough to produce Chavs. Britain also retains a few, tiny islands or enclaves like Singapore. Besides these few extra direct holdings, the British commonwealth is a more cohesive international organization.

Britain's empire is gone, but unlike in our world they've managed to keep more of it in at least an economic union. The Karoo Union is pretty much just a larger botswana. The West Indies Federation styles intself as The Most British place in the world. The Nile Republic is gloriously corrupt under President Malik Agar.

Rhodesia and South Africa let blacks vote or run for offices, but for conservative candidates. The ANC and Rhodesia's ZAPU and ZANU all remain banned. Mandela died in prison in 2002. There are terrorism problems, but thankfully The Race War that was predicted by much old science fiction never erupted.

Ireland is wealthier and avoided the troubles. De Valera was butterflied out, so Ireland modernized early and thus has more people, since it remains more traditionalist. Think an Irish demographic pattern more like the US's.

Japan is wealthier than in our world, and has a more diversified industry. A united States facing a united Eurasia encouraged Japan to rebuild it's armed forces in the the 1950s. Japan is known for it's electronics, anime and high-quality military hardware. Japan is deeply involved in the Atomic Rocket program.

Israel managed to gain peace with it's neighbors in the 60s and 70s, but remains deeply militarized in case someone stirs up trouble.

South Korea is pretty recognizable, if a bit wealthier than in our world.

South Vietnam is an extra Asian tiger.

Cambodia is an amazingly corrupt monarchy, and the source of much of the world's opium supply. The economy is at OTL thai levels and the population is double ours without the pol pot interlude.

The Philippines never decided to sever ties with the United States's economy, and as a result has a standard of living that's at Mexican levels.

Ethiopia remains a monarchy and has a per capita GDP of $3000. There is a problem with rural guerillas and terrorism, though.

**********************************************
THE RED MENACE

The Restored Comintern, also called by most the "Eastbloc" is a joint Sino-Soviet operation ruling the area from Eastern Germany to Indochina. It's a military and economic alliance, which nowadays even includes a degree of immigration between bloc members. This mostly means Chinese immigration to the USSR or OTL warsaw pact.

The Soviet Union is technically the leader of the Eastbloc, and even has the largest economy in the bloc so far. After a round of economic troubles in the 1990s, the soviet economy has grown consistently for the past few decades and soviet citizens no longer have to eat food yeasts. At least the people outside the gulag don't have to eat them. In recent decades, there are lots of immigrants from other Eastbloc nations in the USSR -- you can get good Chinese food in Moscow. Soviets are a bit annoyed that the Chinese tail is increasingly wagging the Eastbloc dog. Central Asia and parts of Siberia are increasingly radioactive due to the whole using them for launching orion drive ships thing.

Moscow has a 1000 foot tall metal statue of Stalin that can move it's arms using animatronics. The energy needed to keep the statue's arms moving requires that a dedicated nuclear reactor be used for it.

On the one hand, Mao didn't survive the civil war and get to implement certain nuttier schemes, but on the other hand Mao never discredited the left. This has had positives like no destruction of traditional Chinese culture along with rather fewer famines than in our world. Without the destruction of chinese traditional culture, you get weirdness like religious cults idolizing the martyred mao, or various forms of militant apocalyptic pseudo-buddhism using marxian notions of class struggle to justify an apocalyptic People's War. The People's Republic of China is rather less reformed than in our world. Think more the late soviet union or 2013 Belarus, minus the secessionist issues from local minorities and with an economy that's still (slowly) chugging along. Yes, the economy is moving towards capitalism but it's been far more gradual and in stages. Unfortunately, the fact that economic reform has been delayed, combined with no one-child policy means that China's had to resort to feeding people with food yeasts or converting wood pulp or wheat stalks into edible mash.

The Warsaw pact is much like OTL in the 70s and 80s, if with the ability to get good chinese food. Something like 10-20% of the population of these nations consists of immigrants from elsewhere in the eastbloc like China, Burma or Korea.

North Korea is a brutal communist dictatorship, but merely a generic communist state and not under the Kims.

Burma is a generic communist dictatorship that's in the process of 'solving' it's minority issues by either relocating them to venus or 'encouraging' migration to the USSR.

Congo is a brutal left-wing dictatorship, that has the dubious distinction of being better at maintaining stability than OTL's Democratic Republic of Congo. Of course, given that Christian Weston Chandler could probably run a country better than OTL's Democratic Republic of congo's leadership this isn't exactly a compliment.

Nearly 70 years of soviet occupation have made Afghanistan as secular and as modern as 1950s Turkey. They are surprisingly ungrateful at recieving the gift of modernity. Afghanistan is pint-sized hell for Soviet and as of the last 20 years, Chinese troops.

The Republic of Free Azerbaidzhan is mini-Afghanistan. The soviet decision to permanently occupy the part of Iran with the most fundamentalists is now seen as something of a poor decision on the part of the leadership. At least, in that less clannish nation, the Soviets are better able to enforce order.

Nepal is a brutal nominally left-wing dictatorship. Oddly enough, the party's membership consists solely of representatives of higher castes. The government is authoritarian, hierarchical, feudal and caste-obsessed enough to gain a favorable reception from say someone like Julius Evola.

Algeria is psychotic, even by Eastbloc standards. Only around a third of it's total pre-independence population has survived the purges and brutality. The Algerian government's ideology of "Nihilist Bolshevism" makes 1984's Oceania look like New Hampshire in comparison.

**********************************************
THE EUROBLOC AND THE THIRD WORLD

Third and (so-far) least is the alliance between the Eurobloc and the 'third world', led by neutral, self-righteously pacifistic India. The main ideological glue for this alliance is a mix of 'humanist socialism', social democracy, concern for the environment and an opposition to both Eastbloc "fascism in red pajamas" and the soulless corporate capitalism of the Anglosphere. Thankfully part of this leads to an extreme opposition to both Eastbloc(Brutalism with neon and propaganda everywhere) and Anglosphere(unholy mix of Frank R. Paul's buildings and the international style) architectural styles.

Over the decades, the Eurobloc has actually federalized into something close to a state. It's not a confederation yet, but is more than a superstate. Compared to our world's European Union, the Eurobloc is well to the left. it's debatable whether or not this has to do with the fact that Germany and Italy both have higher birthrates than OTL. For the gap between the Anglosphere and Europe think an exaggerated version of the 50s Europe/US gap: Anglosphere is ahead in standard of living, high tech but is significantly more repressed on both sex and drugs while Europe is better at high culture, architecture, and general environmental maintinence.

Yugoslavia aligned itself with the Eurobloc decades ago, and is now even an associated member. There have been a few attempts to get full membership, but the soviets loudly object every time the subject comes up.

The second partner in this alliance is a leftier, more populist India. India is as rich as OTL despite the license raj continuing longer and being repealted alot less thanks to European subsidies of their industries and favorable trade deals. There is more smokestack industry and far fewer call centers.

The bulk of the middle east has aligned itself with the Europeans. This includes a couple of Arab union-style governments, an Iran under Mossadeq's heirs and a Jordan run by the the PLO as a revolutionary dictatorship.

Turkey isn't a member of the Eurobloc, but has negotiated good trade terms and isn't being strung along like in OTL, so there's better relations with the Europeans. It's also a rather more secular nation than our Turkish government. The military is firmly in charge.

**********************************************
OTHER RESIDENTS OF THE GLORIOUS FUTURE

In recent decades several muslim nations in the middle east and Africa have been taken over by fanatics. Think more the mad mullah of pulp SF as the model for these states, instead of current stereotypes of islamists -- they're fundamentalist but yet well-disciplined and willing to use modern technology to fulfill their purposes.

Finland is finlandized.

Austria is Extremely Neutral and the setting of many spy movies set in it's old castles.

The swiss continue to help with tax evasion.

**********************************************
THE PLANETS AND SPACE

Asteroid mining is starting to get going as of the last few years. Yes, an earlier attempt at it back in the 1980s failed but this time is actually working.

The EuroBloc really doesn't appreciate the fact that Venus remains divided among the US and USSR, but neither power particularly cares what the Europeans think. There are secret arrangements between Moscow/Beijing and Washington to nuke any suspected unauthorized colonies on Venus from the EuroBloc or the muslims. As of yet, the only European settlements permitted on venus have been a few people allowed to take US citizenship and live in America's settlement. This is a big point of friction between the eurobloc and the other two factions.

Venus is the new frontier, a steamy tropical world of dinosaurs and cavemen. Unsurprisingly, this means that not that many soviets will go to their colonies, which means that the Eastbloc part of Venus is mostly Chinese in population. The same sort of dynamic, if not quite as extreme (look at sunbelt settlement in the US) applies to Anglosphere portions of venus but Spanish and portuguese are still more commonly heard in the Anglosphere's colonies than English.

The Crimson dynasty runs mars, reunified once again after millenia of disunity thanks to the fact that once again there is a ruler who has the Invisible Crown. The new emperor and her American-born consort are in the early stages of a massive modernizatin program. Thankfully, the traditional Martian ruthless rationality means that Meiji Japan-style efforts will be an easier sell than they'd be to earth humans since Martians may be quite conservative and hard to convince but they will be convinced if you give them enough proof. The goal is to finish at setting up orbital energy to allow for high-energy projects such as getting water out of the ice caps, back into both the Northern Ocean and the sea of Hellas to avert the emerging dry age and restore agricultural productivity to areas that are now desert.(Stirling's notion of having Mars's atmosphere be slowly draining off was just a little _too_ cliche for me). While Terra's great powers won't give mars technical aid, out of a rational sense of not trusting martians with nukes or kinetic kill weapons, Mars' academics have been trying their best to reverse engineer everything based off of old Earth books.

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Colonialism is mostly gone, but a few bits and pieces remain even to the present such as the US State of Puerto Rico, British Honduras, French Madagascar or Britain's protectorate of Kuwait. Other places remained run by European governmnents until the 1970s or 1980s such as Rhodesia, Ghana or the West Indies Federation.

Pseudoarcheologists like Von Daniken are FAR more credible than in our world due to proof of some outside force taking earth humans to venus, along with archaic humans to mars at some points. The fact that the humans on venus speak an indo-european language is just even more evidence in the mind of these people. This doesn't just have influences on mainstream archeology, but also on popular culture -- the post-apocalyptic genre of OTL's niche has been filled by

In a world, where there are both neanderthals living in savagery and highly civilized martians, differences between earth(and venusian) humans have been put into perspective. Skin color matters visibly less in western nations. There have been a few embarassing incidents, when martians notice the differing wealth levels between nations and openly wonder about the local population's melanin levels, though. To be fair, martians consider terrans as a whole to be barbaric monkeys from the wild so it's not like they're any more racist towards any particular group.

Technology is significantly more advanced than OTL, but there's a curious mix. You have networks that make our internet look like nothing along with orion drives zipping around the solar system but on the other hand biotechnology is surprisingly less advanced than you'd think. For biotechnology, it's roughly 5 or 10 years ahead depending on the area with a few like pills being more advanced. Medicine has doen particularly well thanks to the drugs and spices of mars now being part of earth's technological toolkit -- the program to adapt martian longetivity treatments for human is getting billions of dollars in funding from the FDA along with consortiums of both Anglosphere and Eurobloc drug companies. The planet is at least cleaner thanks to martian technology allowing for production of hydrocarbons using algae.