A story by RCTFI of AlternateHistory.com, Dystopic Return of Magic is...well, just look at the title.
The premise is that in an alternate 1950's humanity is fighting a desperate war against the Fae, who invaded Earth in the late 19th Century. And God, how things suck.
Can be found here
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The story provides examples of:
- Alien Space Bats: The Fae had once lived on Earth and hunted humanity's ancestors millions of years ago before departing into another dimension, until they made a comeback in the last month of 1898.
- Allohistorical Allusion: There is a story from a science-fiction magazine about a world without the Fae and sets in around the present day after Germany was coxed by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire into fighting a war it lost to England and France, and it's eager for revenge and under some maniacal dictator. The reader laughs off the latter idea and the thought of a major war that could cost the lives of millions of people as being unrealistic. Justified that every nations now have weapons such as the machinegun that could be put into deadly use against the Fae and couldn't imagine anyone would use it on their fellow human beings instead, and considering how the Fae had already mounted an aggressive warfare that surpassed humanity since 1898.
- Alternate History: Not a remotely nice one.
- Church Militant: The Catholic Church calls for a new Crusade against the Fae, in which Spain and much of southern Europe gladly have their military following under the church.
- Crapsack World: The very title claims this.
- Enemy Mine: All past animosity between human nations have long been and somewhat diminished after the Fae came.
- The Fair Folk: About the most frightening version ever written.
- Fantastic Slurs: The Fae are called elves by the Americans.
- Fate Worse than Death: What will happen to you if the Fae take you alive.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Invoked by Louis Spaller when he sees how his fellow soldiers dealt with wounded Fae and are no different from what they are fighting against. This is pretty much applied to the rest of humanity.
- Hopeless War: Humanity and the Fae had been waging war for over 45 years.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: The Fae can't understand how human society works.
- Kryptonite Factor: The Fae are fairly weak to being expose to iron.
- Low Culture, High Tech: Despite humanity have already constructed monoplanes and the atomic bomb with the absences of the First and Second World Wars, according to the author, human culture and society lags considerably. This includes: overlong travels that depends on coal-burning trains as civilian cars and commercial air travel are non-existent, and nor do the basic family having a bicycle, as the smelting of the metal to make one makes it too expensive; "cinemas" are extremely uncommon; clothing trend are based out of surplus uniform fabric, as cloth are becoming scarce; engineers and applied scientists are much more common than historically, but very few universities bother much with history, art or literature programs; cultural arts are practically dead except for propaganda pieces; and the life of an average citizen is comparable to what is like living in East Germany.
- The Magic Versus Technology War: World War I-II-era human technology against the medieval-style, magic-using Fae.
- Monumental Damage: The Statue of Liberty was reduced to a molten slag due to a Fae raid and now serves as a monument of hate for the Fae.
- Nuke 'em: A common human tactic.
- To Serve Man: The Fae sees humanity as common cattle.
- The Squadette: Some human nations allowed women to fill in for the lack of manpower in the military and industry given that the world had been pressed hard against the Fae and losing a chunk of the human population.
- We Have Reserves: Another common human tactic.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Given from what the Fae had done for humanity, humanity return them in the same favor.
