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By Gary Oswald. The London Illustrated News depicting "General Sir George Colley at the Battle of Majuba Mountain Just Before He Was Killed". Defeat portrayed as a heroic stand - something the establishment would to want to rectify. Public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. William Ewart Gladstone, four-time Prime Minister of the UK, was an imperialist. He oversaw the largest empire to ever exist and that empire expanded during his time in charge. In particular he made the c

By Ryan Fleming . Alternate history anthologies focused on a single country were nothing new by the time we began work on The Scottish Anthology , nor were themed anthologies unknown in other genres, in alternate history, or even from Sea Lion Press by the time of those first nation-based anthologies. While this was my first effort as an editor of a fiction anthology, I had been proudly featured in anthologies edited by others in both alternate history and other genres. But w

By Charles E.P. Murphy "Chamberlaaaaiiiiin!" King Arthur strode through Commons like judgement, his face pale as the grave, his sword rusted and stained with the blood of Britain's enemies, his finger accusing the man at the bench. "You were warned that a pointless war with our Germanic brethren would bring the nation to ruin! Now--" His sword swung and the Prime Minister... ...ran away on all four legs barking. "Eh....?" And the four MPs on either side of Arthur suddenly ya

By Tom Anderson. Waiting to go at Launch Pad 39B, 17th Ja 2026. Picture public domain by NASA, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The 2000s Star Trek prequel series Enterprise had a controversial opening sequence; not so much for the imagery used (which shows technological progress in exploration from wooden sailing ships to aeroplanes to spacecraft) but for the poppy theme song ‘Faith of the Heart’, very different from the approach taken in previous series. Despite being poorly re

By Matthew Kresal. The 2016 edition. In the 1950s, the Golden Age of Comics gave way to the Silver Age. The real world changed and, with attention brought to the comics as a result, some old characters retired or evolved while a new generation of heroes came to the fore, culminating at DC with the creation of the Justice League. Suppose for a moment that there was an alternate history where the Golden and Silver Age characters existed in and interacted with the real world of

By Gary Oswald. Paul Dickov nine years after the inciting event. Photo copyright Wikipedia editor 'hst43077' but allowed for any purpose. On the 30th of May 1999 in Wembley Stadium, one of the most important moments in British sport happened. It was the 94th minute of a 90-minute Association Football game, with the score at 2-1. Five minutes had been awarded for stoppage time and so in desperation, with only a minute of the game left, the trailing team played a long ball forw

By Ryan Fleming. The trial didn't go well for him in this unmade film! Image courtesy Amazon marketplace. There are some films that are ahead of their time and perhaps not appreciated upon release. There are others that missed their moment and are dated on arrival. The same is true for films that are never made. Some scripts might not get a look in until the market is seemingly more receptive: Alien (1979) being one such example only picked up after the success of Star Wars

By Matthew Kresal. Image courtesy Big Finish website. The 1980s. A time of tensions related to all thing nuclear. A fear of nuclear weapons and nuclear war dramatized so ably in TV dramas such as Threads and The Day After . Also present was a fear of nuclear power, stemming out of the previous decade and heightened by events such as Chernobyl and the secrecy surrounding the industry as a whole, something brought to life in the classic BBC thriller Edge of Darkness . For a tim

By Charles E.P. Murphy. Two of the Overground lines at Gospel Oak station. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons, by Matt Brown . The London Overground is exactly what it sounds like, a regular train service like the Underground but not under the ground. Just like the Underground, it has expanded since it started, with branch lines across the Greater London area and its suburbs, spanning now from West Croydon up to Cheshunt, Stratford to Watford. Just like the Underground, it h

By Gary Oswald. Jessie wouldn't be so happy if Galyn Susman hadn't saved her characters models! Image courtesy Amazon marketplace. Toy Story 2 was the third feature film made by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, a sequel to their first film Toy Story . It was an even bigger commercial and critical hit, one of the best selling and most praised animated films ever made and probably the film that truly made Pixar. Their ability to make not only multiple original

By Thomas Anderson. Real people ready to go versus the fictional aliens. Original US paperback cover for Worldwar book 3, image courtesy Amazon marketplace. Alternate History fiction (or some of it at least) can be considered a specialised form of historical fiction. In particular, if one has set a story in a timeline not many years after the Point of Divergence (POD) then in theory everyone one meets in such a story should be a person who existed in real history. Of course,

By Alexander Rooksmoor. As Sea Lion Press regulars know, often it is the least likely alternatives which are the most favoured as the basis for novels. The classic is Nazi Germany winning the Second World War, something that would have required multiple divergences from what unfolded in our history. Yet I think I am safe in saying more books and dramatisations have used this rather than any other alternative history scenario. Despite this popularity, far more feasible are alt

By John A. Hopkins On the Sea Lion Press Forums , we run a monthly Vignette Challenge. Contributors are invited to write short stories on a specific theme (changed monthly). The theme for the 92nd contest was The Detective London, August 1949 “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man repeated. With a sigh, Detective Inspector Percy Tankard pushed his chair back and rested his forehead on his palms. “Why were you at the British Museum?” he asked the floor. “Visit

By Charles E.P. Murphy. Cover art by Keith Burns. 1993, the middle of the Third World War, the Asian Bloc and the Western Federation battling for the fate of Europe. Among WESTFED’s greatest assets are the multinational Harrier Squadron, piloting their state-of-the-art jump-jets against the ASBLOC menace. But what happens if there’s a shot at peace? Flight Lt. “Hob” Hogget wants to believe in an armistice but can’t quite trust that it can happen after all the bloodshed. And t

By Gary Oswald. Paperback cover, courtesy Amazon. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is the editor of the What Ifs of Jewish History   AH book and owner of the Counterfactual History Review , a blog that has been running for twelve years and covers the way counter-factual thinking has been used and viewed in the mainstream, in both fiction and analysis of the real world. He is also a prominent academic, who serves as President of the Center for Jewish History in New York City and Professor

By Ryan Fleming. This man doesn't know he'll be hired for Bogart Slept Here. De Niro in the Mean Streets trailer, image public domain and courtesy Wikipedia. The right role can make or break an actor’s career. Often too we hear about the roles an actor may have missed out on that they regret. If a missed role can carry a pang of regret, can the opposite hold true? Can an actor missing out on a role they were all lined up for in fact be a benefit? Not so much in the sense of d

By Matthew Kresal. Cover courtesy Big Finish site. What would Doctor Who be without its monsters? The Daleks secured the series’ hold with the public in its earliest days while the Cybermen have offered a glimpse of what humanity could become should it chose to overly embrace technology. There have been countless others introduced over the decades that have become recurring foes for the Doctor from the Ice Warriors of Mars to the Weeping Angels of Modern Who . Among those foe

By Thomas Anderson. That boy is our last hope...? Force Unleashed featured a few more Jedi and a whole other force-sensitive youth. Cover courtesy Amazon market. In this article, I will examine a phenomenon of writing in which stated absolutes become an unintended restriction on future storytelling. In many ways, this is a counterpart to an earlier article I wrote entitled “The Romulan Straitjacket” which focused on a similar facet but with a sense of time rather than space.

By Gary Oswald. The 2020 hardcover edition; image courtesy Amazon. Literary genres are a funny thing. On the one hand they are essentially advertising, 'did you like this book? Well, it's a fantasy book and here are 200 more fantasy books, you'll like them too, please buy them'. On the other hand, it's kind of a reader's guide, telling you, the consumer, what to expect and how to engage with the text. I will react differently to the introduction of a dark handsome neighbour i

By Alexander Rooksmoor. Quite often I have been inspired to write a short story or even a novel as a result of disliking how a story I have read or seen turns out. The Blood and The Ghost  was stimulated by me watching all 5 seasons of the TV series The Last Kingdom  (broadcast 2015-23). The series, based on the Saxon Stories  novels by Bernard Cornwell, is set in Wessex between 866-878 CE, the eponymous ‘Last Kingdom’ not under Danish rule. My main prompt for an alternative