History Literature / TheFountainheadFilibusterTalesFromObjectivistKatanga

Long story short, this timeline diverges from our own when Rand decides to recreate the MarySuetopia described in her novel ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'' in RealLife. And what better place to do so than in the then chaotic landscape of the former Congo Free State, specifically, the southern Congolese historical region of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katanga_Province Katanga]]...

* MachiavelliWasWrong: Zigzagged. Rand uses her domineering personality and terror of setting off her HairTriggerTemper to keep people afraid of her, not to mention her itchy trigger finger. Unfortunately, Rand ignored one of the most important pieces of advice Machiavelli gave in ''Literature/ThePrince'', namely not to rely on mercenaries. Rand thinks that money is the best motivation for soldiers to fight, but when things go sour most of the mercenaries say ScrewThisImOuttaHere and run for their lives. As Bob Denard notes, they're willing to take their lives as their "severance pay."

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor : It's evident from the episodes set chronologically later in the timeline's story that Rand's dreams of founding a brilliantly working economic and social utopia gradually fall to pieces over the course of several years.
* [[BigDamnHeroes Big Damn Hero]] : Ernesto "Che" Guevara to Patrice Lumumba and indirectly, Dag Hammarskjöld.

* FromNobodyToNightmare: Much as in RealLife, Bob Denard used to be a washing machine salesman (though he did have some military experience before this).
** [[spoiler: Ayn herself grows from an eccentric writer, to deranged dictator within a few years]].

* InsistentTerminology : They're ''mundanes'', not [[spoiler:slaves]].

* PsychoForHire: Bob Denard arguably counts.

* ShoutOut: "My name is Ernesto Guevara. [[Film/TheTerminator Come with me if you want to live.]]"

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: The aforementioned Che Guevara comes off as a much nicer guy than he's generally regarded as by historians, [[ALighterShadeOfGrey though even the real Che would look good by comparison considering what he's up against]] and he's still shown to be rather nasty and violent compared to the more level-headed Patrice Lumumba. One thing that particularly stands out is how well he and the aforementioned Congolese political figure get along despite Che's well documented antipathy toward blacks, though spending time with the African resistance fighters may have caused him to have a change of heart.

** In a similar manner as to how communist states do: the logic of the ideology eventually has an end different then that it's creators thought it would.
** Both that, and that remaining true to armchair principles in a real world situation spiraling out of your control is essentially impossible, especially if your philosophy tends to invite people who'd help cause the situation to spiral out of control. If you took an Objectivist Utopia out of the controlled fantasy of Rand's novels and placed it into the real world mess up that was Katanga, under the control of the already unstable and hypocritical Rand herself, it shouldn't be a surprise that it might not live up to its ideals.

* StrawCharacter: Where to begin... Isn't one of the central tenets of UsefulNotes/{{Objectivism}} "[[Literature/AtlasShrugged I will never live for another man's sake, nor ask another man to live for mine]]"? Doesn't ''Literature/TheFountainhead'' call "the man who goes after power" the ''worst'' type of human being? How does one go from ''that'' to a dictatorship?

* FantasticDrug: Crystal Lites, which are amphetamine-laced cigarettes. And under the Objectivist regime, they're completely legal. Recollect that this was the era of EverybodySmokes, and Rand herself was a chain smoker (who died of lung cancer).

** Van Owen is a character borrowed from Creator/WarrenZevon's "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", a song about the real-life Congo Wars of the '60s.

A WebOriginal AlternateHistory series created by Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom member Linkwerk. Set in the late 1950s and 1960s, it features everyone's [[LoveItOrHateIt favourite/hated]] wacky founder of UsefulNotes/{{Objectivism}}, Creator/AynRand, and a lot of various {{Historical Domain Character}}s. All of them get involved in a rather peculiar game of geopolitics.

Read it [[http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=235733 here]]. A chapter guide can be found [[http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/timelines/the_fountainhead_fillibuster_-_tales_from_objectivist_katanga here]].