Regarding alternate history, I am just reading 'Fatherland' from Harris, heard about it long ago but never cared.
Now i got it accidentally from a friend, who had it from a library being given up.
Pretty strange to read this, but Harris seems to know his stuff from the 4-meter-gauge railroads to party internals.
This is about a fictional Germany that was not defeated during WW2 (indeed there was no WW, since England did not declare war, and France, Scandinavia, Greece, North Africa was never part of any war action, the USA being happy someone fights the communists).
Poland has been invaded, and it with parts of Russia now belong to Germany, up to the 'Moscow line'. The war against partisans and Russia is still on, in 1964.
What strikes me is how familiar some things look, when it comes to surveillance. The book is displaying the what-if in 1964
:
- Wars have always been fought for freedom
- uniforms everywhere, the military is considered as the most important thing and being admired as the best of the best, parades and commemoration days. Everyone liking real freedom and despising the good necessary wars is being looked down upon, or worse.
- people are kept under constant strain by reported and made-up terrorist attacks, and the wars being fought against rogue or villain nations allegedly supporting those terrorists. All who dare to not like the Fatherland are partisans and terrorists, the rest living in rogue states
- Security levels due to terrorist attacks in green/blue/black/red, the Security police (SiPo) running most of the surveillance in a central block, gathering information of all people via hearsay and electronic means of all kinds - certainly only few cameras and no computers to speak of in 1964
- Drones (if primitive) used for surveillance, and microphones placed everywhere (little did they know it would be even easier, with the internet)
- Angst and suspicion towards illegal aliens from the world over, acting as scapegoats for unemployment and criminal activity, thus masquerading the good old
Fremdenhass, at the same time promoting this feeling by the major media
- Public requests everywhere like 'Be vigilant at all times', 'Terrorists are everywhere', 'Attention, report suspicious packages at once!, 'Terrorist alert!'
- People reading certain books and talking about it publicly (criticizing the "free" republic and surveillance) are suspicious, their dossiers being kept for later inspection.
Have not finished it yet, i wonder what drove him to write this though in 1992.