Sea Lion Press

Interviewing the AH Community: Bruce Munro Questions from Gary OswaldCounter factual and Alternate History discussion and fiction is a large and healthy online community. Sea Lion Press has always had the aim of providing a platform for Altern...

Bruce is so influential that a particular map style with innovative ideas and snarky comments became known as 'the B_Munroesque map' as its own genre. We ran an interview by @garyoswald.bsky.social with him here: www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/intervi...

Tales from Development Hell: John Carpenter’s Creature from the Black Lagoon By Ryan Fleming.In many respects, the monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s from Universal were the first film franchise as we understand them today. A stable of characters, sequels, spin-offs, crosso...

Ryan Fleming ( @ryanafwrites.bsky.social ) is back again with another tale from #DevelopmentHell - in this case a version of #CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon by #JohnCarpenter. #FilmHistory #Horror #Universal #MonsterPictures #ChevyChase www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/tales-f...

The Launchbox, PoD 5: Christmas Catastrophe - the Disaster of Apollo 8 By Andy CookeOn Christmas Day, 1968, Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit smoothly - the first manned spacecraft to reach the Moon.It was the moment that NASA truly recovered from the Fire, and the point wher...

With #NASA planning to launch the #Artemis II mission next year which resembles #Apollo 8, Andy Cooke looks at how that mission avoided disaster. #SpaceRace #ColdWar #SpaceHistory www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/the-lau...

Serial Sunday: The Galton Horror III By Charles E.P. Murphy.This time Gunnar didn’t get permission to leave for ‘trainspotting’, he just pretended to go to bed early and them snuck out the back door. He got a twinge of guilt about being ...

The third part of our #SundaySerial "The Galton Horror" by Charles EP Murphy ( @cepmurphy.bsky.social ) is now available to read! #Serial #Horror #HorrorFiction #Writing #WritingCommunity www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/serial-...

WELL MET BY STARLIGHT | Sea Lion Press

Yesterday we heard from Andy Cooke about his "Endeavour" #ScienceFiction series available through SLP; also check out Tom Anderson's "Well Met By Starlight", a tale of #FirstContact as you've never seen it before. #Writing #WritingCommunity www.sealionpress.co.uk/product-page...

Why I Wrote... The Endeavour Series By Andy Cooke.The editor asked me to write a short article on “Why I wrote…” any of my SLP books. Naturally, I turned in an article on an entire series. The Endeavour series began as a single book wit...

Andy Cooke discusses why he wrote the epic #ScienceFiction "Endeavour" series, concerning the end of the world and the quest to colonise another. #Apocalypse #PostApocalyptic #SpaceTracvel #Writing #WritingCommunity www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/why-i-w...

What If Turkey Had Entered World War II? By Dale CozortThis Scenario was originally posted on Dale's Website in 1998. Essays like this can be found in Dale's 'Space Bats and Butterflies' Collections.If you look at a map of Europe and the Mid...

#AlternateHistory veteran #author Dale Cozort considers the #WhatIf moments of #Turkey entering #WW2 much earlier than it did in the war we know. #Inonu #SecondWorldWar #Turkiye www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/what-if...

ignoring the lesson they had just taught losing Midway in part because Admiral Yamamoto stayed with the battleships which arrived too late to have any impact on the outcome of the battle. The battleship Yamato fired its guns ONCE and was irrelevant to the war, yet it gets an anime series about it.

(TA here) I actually wrote that article, and that was before I knew that much about the subject. The battleship obsession has got silly at times IRL - like Japan illustrating the preponderance of naval air power over battleships at Pearl Harbor and the Repulse, and then [1/2]

Africa during the Scramble: The Asian Empire By Gary OswaldThere were eight European Empires involved in the Scramble. Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the UK. The great losers of those 8 were the Ottoman Empire of Tu...

Gary Oswald ( @garyoswald.bsky.social ) looks at the #history of #Zanzibar, slaver colony of #Oman turned flashpoint in the #ScrambleForAfrica. #Tanzania #AFricanHistory #Mombasa #BritishEmpire #Slavery www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/africa-...

Vignette: The Human Sun in: Terror in the Donghai! By Roshita Narasimhan.Off in the distant red giant system of Arcturus, the planet of Xenon was a prosperous civilization, having eradicated hunger, disease, capitalism, and other vices, becoming a bur...

A new #AlternateHistory #vignette (ultra #shortstory) from Roshita Narasimhan, exploring the idea of the #Superman archetype transposed into the context of #India and her neighbours. #WhatIf #Elseworlds #DCComics #Asia #MingDynasty #MughalEmpire www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/vignett...

Consequences in Alternate History: Across the Wild Wood By Tom AndersonHow a Scotsman’s Alcoholism and an Englishman’s Bad Aim Created Modern Children’s Literature Kenneth Grahame was, as one biographical sketch put it, ‘a big, shy Scot’. He was born in Ed...

Tom Anderson looks at the unlikely set of circumstances that led to #KennethGrahame writing #TheWindInTheWillows and its cultural impact on other writers. #ChildrensFiction #Writing #WritingCommunity #Disney #Discworld www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/consequ...

Serial Sunday: The Galton Horror II School was doing a trip to Galton Spaceport on Monday. Dr Barrington himself was going to show the Year 11 classes around the Shackleton 3 probe. And because he’d been out too late, Gunnar’s parents k...

Our latest #SerialSunday, "The Galton #Horror" by Charles EP Murphy ( @cepmurphy.bsky.social ) continues with part 2. #Serial #ScienceFiction #Writing #WritingCommunity www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/serial-...

CHAMBERLAIN RESIGNS AND OTHER THINGS THAT DID NOT HAPPEN | Sea Lion Press

You know those books of so-called #WhatIf #AlternateHistory essays where stuffy historians decide actually, nothing would have changed in the long run? Read @cepmurphy.bsky.social 's ingenious parody written from another #timeline 's #WW2 perspective... www.sealionpress.co.uk/product-page...

Alternate Religions: Antonianism By Gary Oswald.The Kingdom of Kongo was one of the largest and most powerful pre-colonial states in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its capital was in modern Angola and it dominated the mouth of the Congo river f...

New: Gary Oswald ( @garyoswald.bsky.social ) looks at the #syncretic #religion of #Antonianism which arose in the #Congo or #Kongo Empire in the 18th century. #AfricanHistory #Angola #Catholicism www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/alterna...

Prequel Problems: Young Montalbano By Tom AndersonIn a previous article in this series, I discussed the Inspector Morse franchise; how it developed from a series of novels written by Colin Dexter from 1975 onwards to an iconic TV serie...

Tom Anderson's #PrequelProblems series looks at #IlGiovaneMontalbano ( #YoungMontalbano ), the #prequel to the highly successful #IlCommissarioMontalbano ( #InspectorMontalbano ) Italian TV series. #Montalbano #Sicily #Sicilia #Camilleri www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/prequel...

Late Qing Catastrophes: The Taiping and the West By Tyler ParsonsThis is a series of articles about the Taiping Rebellion, the first summed up the Military campaign, the second the internal problems of the rebels and the third the simultaneous Secon...

Tyler Parsons looks at the #Taiping #rebellion against the #QingDynasty and its relations with Western powers, including the #WhatIf moments of #History. www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/late-qi...

Consequences in Alternate History: The Garibaldi Problem By Tom Anderson I recently mentioned on social media that on this day (then November 4th) Túpac Amaru II had launched his uprising in Peru against Spanish rule in 1780. I mentioned this because in my ...

And speaking of #Tupac, if you haven't seen it before, here's Tom Anderson's older article looking at how he (and #Garibaldi biscuits) are cases of someone trying to honour a past figure through a namesake but end up overwriting them instead. www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/consequ...

Tales From Development Hell: Live 2 Tell By Ryan Fleming.Musicians dabbling in acting was nothing new by the 1990s. Sometimes the musician didn’t even need to have any acting ability whatsoever and the roles would be written around them, as ...

Ryan Fleming ( @ryanafwrites.bsky.social ) returns with another tale from #DevelopmentHell, this featuring #Tupac 's acting career. Did you know he could have been #MaceWindu instead of #SamuelLJackson? #WhatIf #FilmHistory #AlternateHistory www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/tales-f...

'Ruled Britannia' review By Alexander WallaceShakespeare can be hard to parse nowadays; he is often taught in such a manner that is antithetical to the spirit of his oeuvre. His works are plays, designed to be watched and per...

Alex Wallace reviews #RuledBritannia by #HarryTurtledove, an #AlternateHistory #novel in which the #SpanishArmada successfully conquered #England in 1588, starring #WilliamShakespeare and #LopeDeVega. #WhatIf #BookReview www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/ruled-b...

Serial Sunday: The Galton Horror I By Charles EP Murphy.A mere handful of people in Britain watched the Shackleton 1 probe launch into space back in 1996. Gunnar Glass had been twelve, portly and mousy-haired and learning to avoid the ...

A new #SerialSunday, this one by @cepmurphy.bsky.social - #AlternateHistory #horror at the dawn of #TonyBlair and #NewLabour in 1997. #Fiction #WritingCommunity www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/serial-...

REID IN BRAID | Sea Lion Press

In today's #SaturdayShowcase of past SLP #AlternateHistory #books, it's Ryan Fleming's ( @ryanafwrites.bsky.social ) "Reid in Braid" - a lost #WW1 leads to a #Communist #Scotland... www.sealionpress.co.uk/product-page...

Dreams from the Dark Years: Strange Defeat By Paul Hynes.In the early hours of Wednesday the 15th of May, 1940, Winston Churchill was awoken to a nightmare. It came in the form of a phone call from his French counterpart, Prime Minister Paul R...

Paul Hynes returns with a new #WW2 #WhatIf series looking at the many ways in which the #FallOfFrance could have gone differently. #BattleOfFrance #FallGelb #CharlesDeGaulle #BatailleDeFrance www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/dreams-...

Tales from Development Hell: Superman Lives By Ryan FlemingIn popular culture there are some works that have managed to become famous despite never happening at all. Projects can be delayed, radically changed, or just straight abandoned for man...

Ryan Fleming ( @ryanafwrites.bsky.social ) looks at a tale from #DevelopmentHell, the planned return of the #Superman #film franchise in the 1990s with the never-made #SupermanLives. #DCComics #FilmHistory www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/tales-f...

Comics Part 3: Judge Meant - The Early Unpublished Dredds By Charles EP MurphyComic's favourite fascist in an iconic moment.Picture courtesy GamesRadar+.He spent fifteen years in the academy – and was like no cadet they’d ever seen! A man so hard, his veins ...

#Comics historian Charles EP Murphy ( @cepmurphy.bsky.social ) looks at the iconic #JudgeDredd from #2000AD and how his first adventures could've been very different. #WhatIf #ComicsHistory #BritishComics www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/comics-...

Non-Trek Worldbuilding. Part 5: The Orville By Tom Anderson.It’s been quite a while since I last penned an article in this series, for reasons I will make clear. To briefly recap what ‘Non-Trek Worldbuilding’ is all about, this is an article se...

Tom Anderson returns to look at examples of #worldbuilding in #television #sciencefiction shows that aren't #StarTrek, with one that many saw as more authentic Trek than the Trek itself coming out at the time - #TheOrville. #SethMacfarlane #SciFi #Orville www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/non-tre...

Chains of Consequences: How British Wartime Evacuation Created Top Gear By Tom AndersonAs the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British government knew that it would become necessary to evacuate much of the civilian population, especially children, to esca...

What chain of historical consequences links #WW2, #PaddingtonBear and #TopGear? Tom Anderson investigates. #History #UKHistory #Paddington www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/chains-...

The fourth and final part of our latest #SerialSunday, "The Return of #KingArthur" by David Flin, concludes the #story. www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/serial-...

Today's #SaturdayShowcase of past SLP #AlternateHistory #books: the #USCivilWar is over and the South has won. But what happens to #BleedingKansas? Mark Ciccone tells the tale of of an ordinary cavalryman who just wants to go home. #Kansas #CivilWar www.sealionpress.co.uk/product-page...

The Death of Samora Machel By David Love.Epilogue"He's dead." My sister stood in my doorway.It was the evening of the 20th October, 1986. Earlier that day, around lunchtime, my mother had come to school and told us the news tha...

Some recent #AfricanHistory from David Love, exploring the death of #SamoraMachel and the consequences it had for #SouthAfrica , #Mozambique and #Zimbabwe, including the later career of #NelsonMandela. #Africa #Frelimo www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/the-dea...