More Words, Deeper Hole

My default assumption about alternate history these days is that it's reactionary war-porn that will probably make no sense unless you are interested in historical great battles (joined starting in the 1990s by sad, nostalgic stories about how the history of human space travel would have gone just like old science fiction if only X had happened). Of course this isn't always true, and I appreciate that somebody is willing to look for things that don't fit the pattern.