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Description

A commission for daniusmaximus (daniusmaximus.deviantart.com ), based on the works of Mark Rosenfeld/Zompist, this scenario www.deviantart.com/users/outgo… with some modifications based on this later far-future scenario. www.deviantart.com/users/outgo…

This is a world diverging from ours in the 1980s (when it was first written), in which the Soviet Union fails to fall and the Global South finally starts to get its crap together in the 21st century, leading to something of a reaction by a US and other powers not willing to leave center stage peacefully.

The world has been going through a difficult Peak Oil transition, which combined with climate instability has shaken the former order badly. Economic shocks and the end of easy growth in China, combined with the fallout of increasing climate change, brought down the Communist party in China when their “get rich and stay politically uninvolved” bargain collapsed. Brazil has become the center of a new wave of world revolution, on a far more “distributed power” model than the old centralizing Soviets and their imitators.

The US having intervened (unsuccessfully) to prevent the success of the revolution, Brazil and the other “Armonista” nations have been anti-US from the start: also rather anti-Soviet, since the USSR, fearing the competition of a new left-wing ideology, tried to first take control of the revolution through the Brazilian Communist party, and when that bombed, tried by various means to undermine the revolution. The US is now in the midst of an anti-Armonista “red scare.”

The “Manila understanding”, a sort of US-Soviet Entente Cordial initially aimed at a China threatening to replace them both as Top Dog, which went somewhat into retreat with the Chinese Second Revolution, is now being revived as an arrangement aimed at the Brazilians and their allies. The rather fossilized and bureaucratic European Community is frightened by the prospect of change, but really doesn’t want an actually show-down with the Armonistas.

Japan and the US are mostly information societies in 2068, the continued move of manufacturing to the third world having continued, although reunited Korea continues to be a major manufacturing hub. A glut of service and information workers, combined with widespread weak-AI automation, has left the US with a terrible under-employment problem, with not enough living-wage jobs to keep nearly one-fifth of its population out of poverty (poverty by 2068 standards, but still). Africa and Latin America have joined Asia as centers of industrial development.

The current Global Forum is known as ANTA, the All Nations Treaty Agency, organized in the wake of the Central Asian Crisis. (The UN is still around, but increasingly vestigial).

Africa, after a period of severe turmoil and state fragmentation (and expansion, in some cases) when rising new middle classes and new nationalist consciousness collided with the rickety, authoritarian, ethnic hodge-podge post-colonial regimes, is now undergoing rapid economic growth, and is a major exporter of culture, fashion, and music as well as manufactured goods, with the major core areas of growth being west Africa and the East African federation and its growing customs zone. (Centuries hence, the customs zone will expand to become the closest thing to an all-humanity political forum, while its current territories will form the basis of a post-nationalist union covering half of sub-Saharan Africa. But that’s all in the future now, as will be the development of a unique form of African socialism which will both compete with and cross-fertilize with Brazilian ideas).

There are flying cars, but they’re not really _cars_. Post-Modernist Baroque has come and gone, leaving much of the globe littered with hideously overdecorated buildings that would make someone miss Brutalism if anyone remembered it. Super-strong ceramics are the latest construction craze. Colorful African-style clothes are popular with the young professionals of Europe and North America. There are a lot of legal entertainment drugs, and rather more illegal ones. Missing body parts can now be regenerated, and the increasing sophistication of genetic testing and modification has led to the rise of a “new eugenics” movement – some parts of it progressive, others post-humanist, and others as unpleasant as any of their 20th century counterparts. Unfortunately, one of those is the current US president.

Description

A commission for daniusmaximus (daniusmaximus.deviantart.com ), based on the works of Mark Rosenfeld/Zompist, this scenario www.deviantart.com/users/outgo… with some modifications based on this later far-future scenario. www.deviantart.com/users/outgo…

This is a world diverging from ours in the 1980s (when it was first written), in which the Soviet Union fails to fall and the Global South finally starts to get its crap together in the 21st century, leading to something of a reaction by a US and other powers not willing to leave center stage peacefully.

The world has been going through a difficult Peak Oil transition, which combined with climate instability has shaken the former order badly. Economic shocks and the end of easy growth in China, combined with the fallout of increasing climate change, brought down the Communist party in China when their “get rich and stay politically uninvolved” bargain collapsed. Brazil has become the center of a new wave of world revolution, on a far more “distributed power” model than the old centralizing Soviets and their imitators.

The US having intervened (unsuccessfully) to prevent the success of the revolution, Brazil and the other “Armonista” nations have been anti-US from the start: also rather anti-Soviet, since the USSR, fearing the competition of a new left-wing ideology, tried to first take control of the revolution through the Brazilian Communist party, and when that bombed, tried by various means to undermine the revolution. The US is now in the midst of an anti-Armonista “red scare.”

The “Manila understanding”, a sort of US-Soviet Entente Cordial initially aimed at a China threatening to replace them both as Top Dog, which went somewhat into retreat with the Chinese Second Revolution, is now being revived as an arrangement aimed at the Brazilians and their allies. The rather fossilized and bureaucratic European Community is frightened by the prospect of change, but really doesn’t want an actually show-down with the Armonistas.

Japan and the US are mostly information societies in 2068, the continued move of manufacturing to the third world having continued, although reunited Korea continues to be a major manufacturing hub. A glut of service and information workers, combined with widespread weak-AI automation, has left the US with a terrible under-employment problem, with not enough living-wage jobs to keep nearly one-fifth of its population out of poverty (poverty by 2068 standards, but still). Africa and Latin America have joined Asia as centers of industrial development.

The current Global Forum is known as ANTA, the All Nations Treaty Agency, organized in the wake of the Central Asian Crisis. (The UN is still around, but increasingly vestigial).

Africa, after a period of severe turmoil and state fragmentation (and expansion, in some cases) when rising new middle classes and new nationalist consciousness collided with the rickety, authoritarian, ethnic hodge-podge post-colonial regimes, is now undergoing rapid economic growth, and is a major exporter of culture, fashion, and music as well as manufactured goods, with the major core areas of growth being west Africa and the East African federation and its growing customs zone. (Centuries hence, the customs zone will expand to become the closest thing to an all-humanity political forum, while its current territories will form the basis of a post-nationalist union covering half of sub-Saharan Africa. But that’s all in the future now, as will be the development of a unique form of African socialism which will both compete with and cross-fertilize with Brazilian ideas).

There are flying cars, but they’re not really _cars_. Post-Modernist Baroque has come and gone, leaving much of the globe littered with hideously overdecorated buildings that would make someone miss Brutalism if anyone remembered it. Super-strong ceramics are the latest construction craze. Colorful African-style clothes are popular with the young professionals of Europe and North America. There are a lot of legal entertainment drugs, and rather more illegal ones. Missing body parts can now be regenerated, and the increasing sophistication of genetic testing and modification has led to the rise of a “new eugenics” movement – some parts of it progressive, others post-humanist, and others as unpleasant as any of their 20th century counterparts. Unfortunately, one of those is the current US president.