History Main / ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld

* What look airships with lateen sails roam the sky in ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagicaTheRebellionStory'' early in the film over Mitakihara. [[spoiler:To the audience this is one of the first indications that this isn't the real Mitakihara city, which has some near-futuristic technology, but not to that extent.]]

* A variation exists in ''Anime/AVisionOfEscaflowne'', in which [[CoolAirship lighter-than-air craft]] float not due to gasses but [[AppliedPhlebotinum "levistones"]] which [[{{Magitek}} decrease in mass]] when [[MagicAIsMagicA charged with an electrical current.]]

* A variation exists in ''Anime/VisionOfExcaflowne'', in which [[CoolAirship lighter-than-air craft]] float not due to gasses but [[AppliedPhlebotinum "levistones"]] which [[{{Magitek}} decrease in mass]] when [[MagicAIsMagicA charged with an electrical current.]]

* Jasper Fforde's ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' series features a world with zeppelins but no jet planes -- although small propeller aircraft do exist. Of course, there's little demand for high speed airliners with the gravtubes: London to Osaka in 42 minutes! At one point Thursday has the option of being hidden in a parallel Earth where there are jetliners -- presumably, from the sound of things, our world. She says such a thing as a jetliner is impossible.

* AaronAllston's novel ''DocSidhe'' is set on an alternate world where zeppelins and autogyros are still cutting edge aviation technology, and the climactic showdown takes place on board the major villain's airship.
* Creator/FritzLeiber's short story ''Catch That Zeppelin!'' is about an alternate universe where things turned out (mostly) much better than our own, It too includes zeppelins docking at the Empire State building, where a RealLife mooring mast was considered. Needless to say, they didn't use hydrogen to lift them.
* HarryTurtledove's novel ''TheTwoGeorges'' is about an alternate world where the United States never left the British Empire. The first chapter is set on an airship, where the protagonist sees a Air Force biplane fly past and echoes the general view that while such speed is useful for the military, there's just no need for it in civilian life.

* SMStirling's books are ''lousy'' with zeppelins.
* ''MortalEngines'' has a lot of Zeppelins, though it's a post-apocalyptic future version of this world rather than a parallel one. Heavier-than-air flight is reinvented over the course of the series.
* ''The War in the Air'' by HGWells is about the German Empire using giant zeppelins to attack the rest of the world, particularly the United States. While at the time it was written, it was a reasonable extrapolation of the current technology, it suffers from being set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture and so might now be considered an honorary alternate reality.

* ''TheWarAgainstTheChtorr''. Blimps are used for military and rescue operations, but nothing beats the ''Hieronymus Bosch'', a giant luxury airship (30% longer than the ''{{Hindenburg}}'') converted for the scientific expedition in "A Season for Slaughter".

* This turns up with the second ''word'' of ''TheHauntingOfAlaizabelCray'', a [[CosmicHorrorStory somewhat Lovecraftian novel]] set in an alternate late-Victorian London. For the record, the first word is "The". In our universe, when Queen Victoria died, Count von Zeppelin hadn't sold even one of his machines, but he had been banging on about them since 1874.
* The ''Literature/RedMarsTrilogy'' has a fleet of automated "air"ships used both for exploration and as part of the early {{Terraform}}ing effort (ultimately a failure but it turns out somewhat useful anyway), so they're Zeppelins ''on'' another world as well. Later (post-terraforming) a transforming high-tech sailboat turns into a blimp to escape rough seas.

* The novel ''AffinityBridge'', as a function of its SteamPunk setting.

* Creator/RudyardKipling's short story ''[[http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff1/night.htm With The Night Mail]]'' imagines a world where airships are the primary means of transatlantic flight - though when he wrote it, this looked like a probable future rather than an imaginary world.

* The evil aristocracy in ''TheKingdomsOfEvil'' employs gas-filled flying [[EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods squid]] as a means of transportation.

* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' by Phil and Kaja Foglio, also sold in book form, features really big zeppelins such as Castle Wulfenbach, the actual seat of government, apparently with apartments on top of the hull and not just confined to the lower interior decks, as usual.

* In the online graphic adaptation of ''The Probability Broach'' by L. Neil Smith, the protagonist is hurled into an advanced liberatrian North America [[http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=27 with the skies full of airships and strange flying vessels]], though what catches his eye is that everyone is armed to the teeth.

* In the online graphic adaptation of ''The Probability Broach'' by L. Neil Smith, the protagonist is hurled into an advanced liberatrian North America [[http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=27 with the skies full of airships and strange flying vessels]], though what catches his eye is that everyone is armed to the teeth.

* Neil Steaphenson's ''Literature/TheDiamondAge'' features a very well justified abundance of airships. With ubiquitous nano-tech it's so simple to create objects that are lighter than air but stronger than steel that it's the law you have to add weight to things to make sure the atmosphere isn't filled with lighter-than-air-stronger-than-steel grocery bags clogging engines. As to the airships, when you can create these materials you don't have to fill the envelope with anything at all. Vacuum is lighter than everything and thanks to nanopumps cheap to create. Airships are so economical they replace shipping as the bulk transit of choice.
* IainMBanks' ''Literature/{{Transition}}'' invokes this -- a man who frequently travels between universes at one point looks up at the sky when arriving in a new one, searching for zeppelins. As he says, he 'likes it when there's zeppelins'.
* In MichaelMoorcock's ''Warlord of the Air'', the alternate-timeline Earth is still using zeppelins in 1974, and has never developed heavier-than-air flight technology. The title character [[spoiler:whose people have just invented heavier-than-air vehicles,]] claims that the imperialism of the Great Powers has stifled innovation.
* ''The Hubris'' in ''MoreInformationThanYouRequire'', a massive zeppelin that the author buys from Emo Philips. Counts as another world because according to this book, Thomas Jefferson was friends with the mole men, axolotls have magical powers, and Enrico Fermi was an alien.

* Zeppelins are present in the post-apocalyptic version of the AgeOfApocalypse timeline that ''Uncanny {{X-Force}}'' visit in search of a MacGuffin.

* ''[[http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/wings-keeton-and-the-airship-of-doom Wings Keeton and The Airship of Doom]]'' mini-RPG. It's [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin right in the name]].

* In Creator/AlastairReynolds' ''Literature/TerminalWorld'', Swarm is a entire mobile city of zepplins, zepplins being safest and most practical way to travel on the planet due to higher technology not functioning on most of it.

** HayaoMiyazaki adores this trope so much, he has been credited as the inspiration for the presence of airships in works like Pixar's Up, Franchise/AvatarTheLastAirbender, and FinalFantasy.

* In AlastairReynolds' ''Literature/TerminalWorld'', Swarm is a entire mobile city of zepplins, zepplins being safest and most practical way to travel on the planet due to higher technology not functioning on most of it.

* The opening story in Elizabeth Bear's ''NewAmsterdam'' is a murder mystery set on a zeppelin. With vampires.

* Lampshaded and parodied in ''AHDotComTheSeries'' due to its playing with AlternateHistory tropes. The very first episode features a timeline full of airships, and the entire crew seems to have an obsession with them bordering on a fetish. Also appears in later episodes, for example the WholePlotReference ''[[SnakesOnAPlane Sealions On An Airship]]''.

** HayaoMiyazaki adores this trope so much, he has been credited as the inspiration for the presence of airships in works like Pixar's Up, AvatarTheLastAirbender, and FinalFantasy.

* The parallel world that takes up the majority of PhilipPullman's ''HisDarkMaterials'' series features giant zeppelins as a mode of transport. Interestingly, they are handled much more realistically in the books than in the movie.

In our world Zeppelins and other airships lost popularity in the late 1930s in part due to a series of catastrophic crashes (culminating in the the fiery ''{{Hindenburg}}'' disaster) but mostly because advances in other aircraft technologies had rendered them obsolete. More recently, airships have made a bit of a comeback for niches such as advertising, [[http://www.zeppelinflug.de/zeppelin-nt-main-en.html pleasure cruising]], humanitarian aid, [[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/28/p791_ordered_for_canadian_oilsands/ cargo hauling]], law enforcement, [[http://www.as.northropgrumman.com/products/lemv/ military surveillance]], photography, and scientific research where airships' strengths in vertical flight, payload capacity, cheap cost, fuel efficiency, loiter time and relative silence outweigh their disadvantages in speed and bulk.

Zeppelins aren't just the fastest way to indicate that you've found yourself in an AlternateUniverse setting, they're quite often a striking symbol of dystopia. Like SpySatellites, Zeppelins can be used to survey the populace, [[PowerPerversionPotential only hundreds of times cheaper and more effectively,]] with next to unlimited endurance[[note]]Provided they do not encounter a storm, which would deprive them of solar power or cause them to use up fuel to keep up with the winds[[/note]]. They are also much more visible than a satellite, obviously, often leading to their use as a PropagandaMachine, acting like BigBrother's evil Goodyear Blimp.

[[quoteright:360:[[TheGoldenCompass http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/GoldenCompassZeppelin.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:360:Oxford: the city of [[JustForPun docking spires]].]]

-->-- ''{{GURPS}} InfiniteWorlds''

Zeppelins aren't just the fastest way to indicate that you've found yourself in an AlternateUniverse setting, they're quite often a striking symbol of dystopia. Like SpySatellites, Zeppelins can be used to survey the populace, [[PowerPerversionPotential only hundreds of times cheaper and more effectively,]] with next to unlimited endurance [[hottip:*: Provided they do not encounter a storm, which would deprive them of solar power or cause them to use up fuel to keep up with the winds]]. They are also much more visible than a satellite, obviously, often leading to their use as a PropagandaMachine, acting like BigBrother's evil Goodyear Blimp.

** Which is funny, considering that the Nazis were actually the faction that ''[[RealityIsUnrealistic didn't]]'' use military or civilian airships whatsoever, scraping them and turning them all into planes. It was the Americans that actually fielded over 170 airships during the war, to spectacular effect on Allied convoys.