The World of Tomorrows [REMAKE]

A remake of CastleGreifenghast's  The World of Tomorrows. This was originally an idea of mine that I discussed with vongreif: a world where as many -punk genres as possible coexist in one world. There may be one or two missing that you can think of, such as the new solarpunk genre, but that's why I'm making my own take on this as well. 


The British like to claim that they were the first to embrace modern technology, and in some ways, this was true. The Industrial Revolution began in Britain with coal-powered steam engines. This allowed the British to become the foremost technological power on Earth, cementing their status as the dominant global power. In 1870, the discovery of phlogiston in the North Sea allowed the British to advance their technology further. Phlogiston is a highly energetic material that combusts upon contact with air. More efficient than coal, phlogiston allowed British steam technology to advance further. The 19th and early 20th centuries saw the British Empire develop steam-powered technology that made the world tremble. The fearsome tripods replaced cavalry horses, great airships supplemented seaborne battleships, and heat-rays replaced rifles and cannon. By 1910 the Union Flag had been placed on the moon by British aethernauts. The British kept these gifts secret, particularly the location of the phlogiston fields. Phlogiston was found nowhere else on Earth, allowing the British to maintain a monopoly and effectively rule the entire planet. The British intervened on behalf of the Confederates during the American Civil War, reducing the Confederacy to a puppet state and the Union into an impoverished, highly militarized rump dependent on British markets. The British stayed out of European affairs, allowing the relatively primitive European powers to fight each other as the German Empire united and France declined in strength.

Yet even at the apex of its glory, the British Empire began to stagnate. She remained out of the Great War, content to allow the continental powers to destroy one another with their primitive machine guns, allowing Germany to become the paramount power of Europe. She merely watched as Japan absorbed all of East Asia, using technology vaguely emulating that of the British. The Germans developed technology in an attempt to rival the British, such as war zeppelins, but using Ottoman oil instead. The British took note, and countered the Germans at every turn. This "clanker" technology helped maintain German rule over the European continent, but they had rivals to the East.

The Russian Empire collapsed, the Tsars escaping to Alyeska, while the fearsome Directorate took control. The Directorate's Supreme Leader, or Vozhd, was dedicated to reforming Russia from the once-backward, agrarian, medieval state it was prior to the Great War. Emulating the British, the Vozhd's government turned to the one resource Russia had plenty of: oil. While less efficient than phlogiston, the sheer scale of Russian industry and engineering more than made up, allowing the Russians to field titanic super-tanks, massive cannons that could place high-explosive shells anywhere on Earth, and the fearsome war-zeppelins. In 1955, the Russians put a man in orbit, using a gigantic cannon modeled off the British cannons used to place British aethernauts throughout the Solar System. Russia continued its relentless industrial development under its brutal Vozhds. Massive train and subway networks criss-crossed the entire Directorate, useful for transporting supplies to Vladivostok or prisoners to the Siberian gulags. Massive factories and oil rigs popped up throughout Siberia and the Arctic, belching black smoke into the atmosphere. The Russians eventually developed an army of autonomous, diesel-powered machines, and used it to watch their frontier with the German Empire. The Directorate also brought the Iron Khanate of Mongolia into their thrall, by giving the Mongolian khan Baron Ungern von Sternberg functional immortality by placing his brain in a life support system. Of course, this system was flawed, which is why the Russian Vozhds preferred death to this immortality. Cut off from all senses, Ungern von Sternberg has lost even more of his sanity, doing things such as banning babies and the color blue.

In 1945, America perfected the atomic bomb, and shortly afterward all manner of atomic technologies. The Union had always been a poor state dependent on British exports, but the new technocratic government sought to win America back her independence. Instead of competing with the British on their terms, the Americans would develop technology along completely different lines. Harnessing the power of radioactive elements, which had been largely ignored by the British after the disastrous outbreak of mutations at the Royal Society, the Americans managed to create what the British had long desired: a single bomb that can destroy a city. The Americans were fortunate: just as phlogiston was found only in the North Sea, the proper isotopes of uranium and plutonium needed for their technology were found only in the Dakotas and portions of the Andes. After the development of the atomic bomb, atomic energy was developed, which quickly replaced the obsolete coal-fueled steam tech the Americans used. With atomic energy came grand engineering projects, such as the interstate highway system, the widespread use of electricity throughout the country, and eventually even civilian robot helpers. The military developed LASER weapons of all description, ranging from the pistol-sized ray gun to death rays that are mounted on massive battleships. Flying machines such as airborne aircraft carriers, ornithopters, and micro-copters became a major threat to British and Confederate airships. The Americans also reorganized their government along technocratic lines, creating thirteen "Commonwealths" out of the states to more efficiently govern the country. Corporations worked with the government to manage the massively expanding American economy. By the end of the shining 1950s, America was a world power to be reckoned with. They forged alliances throughout South America, particularly the military-capitalist regime in Chile. The Chileans embraced American technology, particularly as they had considerable reserves of uranium and plutonium. The Chileans have transformed much of their country with atomic technology, irrigating the Atacama and blasting massive tunnels, settlements and fortresses in the Andes.

All hell broke lose with the Indian revolt of 1969, when an American-backed utopian movement succeed in splitting the subcontinent from the British Empire. With the aid of American entrepreneurs, the Indians reorganized their country along the same, technocratic lines as the Americans, but with a more utopian twist. The Indians focused their technological might on eliminating poverty from their country through major modernization programs. This succeeded in transforming India's cities from shantytowns into gleaming examples of progress, but at the cost of the rural areas. Major engineering programs, particularly the hydroelectric dams needed to power atomic-poor India, destroyed farms and large swaths of India's ecosystem. While the people in the cities lived well in their planned communities and skytowers, tended to by robotic servants and zipping around in flying cars, the rural areas languished, the soil itself sucked up to feed the cities their nutrient pills. The Indians also took technocracy further than the Americans, their government taking control of all economic activity in the country. While this was done in the name of efficiency and equality, the end result was that the country's wealth were placed into the hands of the technocratic elite. Conformity and uniformity became enforced, and India's rich cultural heritage was erased in favor of a new "scientific national consciousness." India's smugly transendant leaders had their utopia, but it was only a utopia for them.

When British scientists unlocked the secrets of the genome, their findings were hidden by the British government. The once-lauded Dr. Moreau had taken horrific extremes with his experiments in British Madagascar, and the entire science was discredited. The rest of the world rejected biotechnology on similar grounds, or on the perception that it was not an effective means of challenging British power. One exception is the Brazilian government, which embraced gene manipulation with interesting consequences. Brazil was poor in most energy-bearing resources, but rich in biodiversity and biomass. Before long, the Brazilians and their allies in South America eschewed "mechanical" technology for bio-engineered beasts and machines made of organic parts. Brazilian cars ate sugarcane and walked on four or six legs; Brazilian aircraft hummed through the air on gigantic, avian or bat-like wings. Even their weapons were biological, spitting out acids, toxins, barbs, and even hives of weaponized insects at the enemy. Before long, Brazil's biotechnology became an ideological point. Forging the Ecologists' Union, the Brazilians made a point that replacing "wasteful" technology with genetically engineered beasts was the only way to save the Earth from environmental catastrophe. Madagascar, Dr. Moreau's former domain, joined the Brazilians, and have taken genetic engineering one step further. The upper classes of Madagascar, mostly foreign in origin, have taken to modifying the local population into various servant castes, emulating ant societies, with themselves as the leaders. Locals are impregnated with modified sperm to produce workers or soldiers, and each successive generation becomes more obedient and less human.

Isolated Japan, for centuries a medieval state, broke out of its shell in the late 19th century. At first, it attempted to emulate the British, but without a decent source of phlogiston, it could not replicate the success of the British Empire. During the Great War, the Japanese joined the Germans and went on a rampage throughout East Asia, conquering the Philippines and Indochina from the German-occupied Spanish and French. The Japanese also seized portions of the Russian Empire. Their goal was to find a phlogiston source and thus challenge British and German domination of the world. They could not find one, so the Japanese looked instead to making their technology more efficient. The Japanese rejected steam in favor of nuclear fusion; while less powerful and efficient than American fission technology, it was the best they could do. Fusion technology was then integrated with the electronic computer, a more efficient Japanese version of British difference engines. These computers allowed Japan's powerful megacorporations to efficiently manage their affairs, while at the same time assisting in the development of new technology. In the 1980s, the Infoweb changed everything: now, the entire Japanese Empire's computer networks were interconnected, and information could be shared nearly instantaneously for free. Japanese cities became an incredible morass of skyscrapers, their citizens always on the Infoweb and rarely seen in reality. The Japanese bolstered their forces with machine soldiers, many of which were stationed on the Moon, ready to strike anywhere on Earth. The British were in panic, but the Japanese Empire grew too quickly for them to mount an appropriate response. By the time the British resolved to do something about the Japanese menace, it was too late. The Japanese already forged the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, an alliance with themselves at the center. The Japanese divided China, "liberating" the Manchus from the Chinese, only to transform it into their primary source of cheap labor.

With the new millennium came the war. The change of year caused the computer programs which controlled the Japanese military to malfunction. The Millennium Bug caused the German-Japanese War, as Japanese drones attacked German positions. The Japanese had set their drones to watch over their British and German rivals, and to launch automatic attacks against either of them if Tokyo ever fell. The Millennium Bug fooled Japanese computers into thinking that German shells were traversing the atmosphere to collide with Tokyo at any moment. In "retaliation," the Japanese drones automatically attacked, bombarding Germany with telephone pole-sized slugs of dense ferrous titanium from their orbital magnetic accelerators. Germany responded with her fleets of mighty war zeppelins, bombing Japanese positions throughout Asia. The Japanese government, figuring that they may as well get the most out of the war, responded with their modest nuclear arsenal. At the war's end the German Empire was utterly destroyed, and Japan had been driven from China by an uprising resulting from the destruction of Japanese forces stationed there. The Japanese Empire proper, however, was untouched. The Millennium Bug continued its dark work, and the remnants of the Japanese robot military formed their own state on the Moon, violently repelling human explorers. Chaos and violently struggling warlords emerged across much of the former German World-Empire. The Russians, French and Austrians took advantage, with the Russians seizing their old territories and securing a rump German Reich as a buffer state.

Older states emerged from the wreckage, following their own ancient forms of technology. Austria, which had remained neutral, soon dominated the Balkans using its mastery of the occult arts and enthusiastic recruitment of "the children of the night" to resist Russia. The Austrians had long kept these dark arts secret, knowing that the Germans would crush them if they were ever revealed. Austrian sciences are rumored to be supernatural, in truth they are based on the knowledge gleaned by Austrian spies from other states, and the assistance of prodigies such as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who was exiled from his native Switzerland due to the inhuman nature of his experiments with corpses. Shambling monstrosities were created in Austrian labs, using a dark fusion of Brazilian genetic engineering, German technology and the "galvanic sciences." The monsters of myth were made real: werewolves, vampires, and shambling corpses of various description, were used as soldiers to fight against the Russians. The Romanians in particular liked vampires, and to defend themselves against the Russians, reinstated impaling. This practice has disquieted even the Austrians, but they do not complain whenever the Romanians are around.

France secured Western Europe, adopting German technology, but with a twist. Its League of Nations is a rapture of art and culture, defended by mercenary "Sky Captains" and dotted with massive hive-cities. Much of France and the rest of Europe that survived were nonetheless devastated by the Japanese "rods from the gods," so people moved to the cities. These cities have become massive edifices of technology, reaching nearly a mile into the skies. At the top, rich socialites enjoy life, while poor laborers slave away in the lower levels. The French have also adopted aspects of British steam technology, such as with their automated steam-powered drones, and Brazilian biotechnology, such as their large, cyborg supersoldiers and their use of stem cells to grant people limited "superpowers," if they could afford it. The French government has taken a very small government bent, like the Japanese believing that the market does best when it is left alone. This has led to the French gaining tremendous riches very quickly, but at the cost of social stability. French culture is constantly evolving and in flux, with new debaucheries becoming prudish within a generation, but the French don't care. A little partying never hurt anybody, after all.

Italy remained neutral during the German-Japanese War, despite being a German ally. After the war, Italy's blackshirts took over, hoping to secure a new Roman Empire in the aftermath of the conflict. In Rome, the lost vault of Da Vinci was uncovered, and the Italian government were soon in thrall to the ancient clockwork consciousness in the depths of that vault. This mechanical abomination was contained at the order of the Papacy centuries ago, lest it dominate the Earth with its insane ambition and inhuman intelligence. This being was smarter than any Japanese computer or British difference engine, and challenged in intelligence only by the machine mind on Luna. Sharing the blackshirts' ambition for a new Roman Empire, the Grand Cogitator has made a black pact with the Russian Vozhds, agreeing to divide Europe between themselves. To facilitate this, the Grand Cogitator has revealed the rest of Da Vinci's secret designs. Efficient and effective, particularly with modern diesel fuel, these clockwork monstrosities have given the Italians military and societal competency unseen since the days of the Caesars. Clockwork monstrosities do menial labor from Venice to Sicily, while also keeping an eye on the population on behalf of the Grand Cogitator and its human handlers. The Italian military has been equipped with revived designs, such as clockwork tanks and helicopters, that can operate in unison under the Grand Cogitator's command.

What was once the heart of the German Empire is now a blasted wasteland. Devastated by Japanese weaponry, this wasteland is filled with mutants, raiders, bandits and stalkers of all description. Industrial pollution has run rampant throughout the former German Empire, as old containment systems failed, killing the local ecosystem or twisting it into new, hostile forms. The survivors quickly built domes around their cities, particularly those states of the Mitteleuropan Combine. This union of communist republics, with the German People's Republic at the center, were relatively unscathed after the war, and now they hope to spread world revolution. This claim is met with laughs from the rest of the world, as even the Chinese communists have largely abandoned their ideology, and the German communists must wear gas masks just to go to work every morning.

In Peru, the Shining Cult of Akator overran the government, reestablishing their own ancient empire. For years, the Shining Cult operated deep in the Inca ruins, commanded by the crystal skulls. These skulls are the remains of ancient alien colonists, but their consciousness lives on and can control pliable human minds that are exposed to them. With the chaos at the turn of the millennium, the Akatorians have made their move, taking over the Peruvian government and mobilizing their buried technology. Akatorian technology was once unstoppable, but now it seems weak compared to the technological terrors mankind made in just the past two hundred years. Akatorian flying saucers, mothballed for millennia, can hardly outperform American jet fighters, Brazilian bioships or Argentinian aetherships. The Akatorians were too late to take over the world, so they're starting with South America and taking things from there.

From the dark heart of Germany's colonial Empire Tir'zan emerged. The Tir'zan were never conquered by the Germans, for their mastery of ancient technology could always defeat the Germans in the jungle. The Tir'zan are a creative people, using the primordial creatures in their domain as impromptu machines and weapons. Little the Germans could field in the Congolese rainforest can stop a charging mokele-mbembe. After the fall of the German World-Empire, the Tir'zan soon dominated the center of the continent with their trained dinosaurs and tools of stone. Trained ape and lizard warriors fought alongside their human commanders, using their natural strength and knowledge of the jungle to dominate.

The People's Republic of China swiftly developed becoming a center of consumer products export and a shining example of modernity. The Chinese Communist Party triumphed over the Nationalists after the Japanese retreated, and while they spent some time trying to burn everything and rebuild it according to the will of the Eternal Chairman, eventually sense triumphed and the Chinese decided to beat the Japanese at their own game. Japanese computer technology was improved upon, focusing on miniaturization. Soon, the Chinese had access to more advanced drones than the Japanese, along with smartphones, smartcars, and smart everything. Even Chinese eyeglasses have built-in computers. The Japanese only have superiority in the Infoweb, which remains underdeveloped due to fears of censorship. Of course, the Chinese have used their Infoweb to further their surveillance. By developing their "social media," the Chinese have encouraged their people to post their locations, friends, and most intimate thoughts online, for everyone to see. This narcissism has given the Chinese Ministry of Security all of the information it needs to crack down on dissidents. China is now the richest country in the world, as its products are purchased by everyone, including their Japanese rivals. In the cities, everyone is doing well, but the countryside is a bit different. The countryside remains just as backward and destitute as it had been under Japanese rule, but the peasants can rest easy knowing that now it is the Chinese they slave away for.

The Moon has been taken over by the Machine Empire, and has expelled all human colonies on the lunar surface. The Machines have been relentlessly advancing their technology, although the extent of their technological capability today is unknown. The Machines are sending probes deep into the Solar System and, some even say, into other star systems. The Machines are hunting down the last human outposts on Mars, and are building a space elevator in the Tanganiyka Exclusion Zone, for reasons unknown. Machine satellites and starships orbit Earth, watching it, and waiting for something.

In the ruins of Arabia, a new threat has risen. The Islamic State of Assyria is a brutal regime following a fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni Islam. Using their vast oil reserves to fund and power their new caliphate, the ISA rampage through the post- war Middle East in their technicals and cobbled-together war machines. The ISA have made enemies of every power in the region, but at the moment only the Russians are sending bombers to attack the ISA.

Off the Somali coast, the Somalians have become rich through pirating British vessels. The Royal Navy, overstretched as it is, no longer has the force projection it once did, and the Somalis have taken advantage. By stealing British phlogiston and ships, they have managed to recreate the classical Age of Sail off the Gulf of Aden. Massive, phlogiston-powered vessels fire full broadsides against British and Russian tankers, hoping to sink them and then use their divers to recover the goods. Walking the plank and terrible Cornish accents are optional, but cybernetic limbs are a must.

To the south, the Mexicans attempt to hold on to what's left of their old empire. Once capable of playing the Americans and Confederates off one another, the Mexicans have stagnated technologically, dependent on British cast-offs that have been outdated for decades. However, the Mexicans have modified this technology to be more effective, particularly in the harsh deserts of the northern portions of the country. Phlogiston railways criss-cross the north, now mostly to ensure that the Americans think twice before launching another invasion. The Mexicans have also unearthed some Akatorian artifacts from the southern portions of the country, and have integrated that into their own technology. 

It is 2100, and the world is an endless dance of fantastical regimes, wholly different forms of science duel for supremacy. And, still a great power, but only one amongst the many, stick to their steam. The British do not enjoy the dominance they once did. Their Confederate allies have a lot of problems with organized crime, racial violence and political violence. The mixed diesel/steam economy is not doing well, particularly as petroleum becomes more expensive. The Portuguese are dependent on British phlogiston, and are losing control of their African colonies. The Argentines, at least, are back in the British camp. After modernizing with British help, the Argentines went to war with them over the Falklands, but rejoined after losing a war with Brazil. These allies are starting to become more important to overall British strategy, which London sees as a sign of weakness. Who knows what London will do to secure its slipping relevance? Hopefully nothing too stupid....