Heartwarming / Overheaven

• India successfully recovering from a national-scale Trauma Conga Line. They suffer a nuclear war in 2009 which leaves much of the country destroyed or irradiated, and the following decade is one of political upheaval, general chaos, poverty, refugee crises, terrorist uprisings, dubiously-ethical medical experimentation on a desperate populace, and governance that is often Necessarily Evil at best. But Ryzov points out that while India's tarot card - the Hanged Man - represents predicaments beyond one's control, it also represents the patience and strength of character needed to get out of that predicament. And by 2022, that's exactly what India's doing. The standard of living is increasing, and the death of many elderly has paved the way for younger, more driven generations to take the reins, choosing to move past the tragedy. The recently elected president - no less a figure than Shah Rukh Khan - is exactly the kind of positive influence India needs, and the country is entering what Ryzov outright calls an "economic miracle." Out of all the nations that suffered in the nuclear war, India is the one that earns its happy ending, and by 2150 they're a world-class superpower to rival the USA.
• The story of Tsuru Yashima. She was a 25-year-old Japanese woman in 2001 who found out she had a terminal cancer that would kill her in less than a year. In desperation, she volunteered to be the first test subject of Project Chrysalis, an experiment by a joint Japanese-Russian laboratory to remove a human brain, intact, from the body and implant it into a full-body prosthetic. Yashima's only chance to keep living rests on this procedure - and it works. She experiences considerable dysphoria at first, and it's a few years before she's comfortable enough to appear in public again, but the Chrysalis scientists succeed in saving Tsuru Yashima's life by making her the world's first Full-Conversion Cyborg. In 2006, five years after Yashima would otherwise have died, she's gained enough confidence to appear, with an upgraded prosthetic body, on the cover of TIME, alongside the second person to undergo the "Yashima Procedure" - Christopher Reeve, now freed from his paralysis. What's more, it's mentioned that Yashima's experiences helped Reeve with his own post-transplantation dysphoria, possibly implying an Intergenerational Friendship between the two.
• Many countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America, that fell to dictators and/or have been stuck in poverty OTL have done well for themselves ITTL, often thanks to the technological and social changes brought on by the Space Boom. While there are undeniably bad patches along the way, Ryzov repeatedly describes the world of OVRHVN as being one of "techno-optimism," where The Future Will Be Better is conventional wisdom.
  • Speaking of Africa and Latin America, millions of people there who died OTL are alive ITTL for one simple reason - scientists in OVRHVN found an effective cure for AIDS.
• The Barsu. A new religious movement with undeniably kooky beliefs (in a hard sci-fi setting, no less), it would have been easy to portray them as a Corrupt Church, a Scam Religion or an outright Cult. But instead, they're precisely the opposite. It's mentioned that their "prophet," Aelita, would welcome pilgrims (often people with various mental problems) to her compound, listen to their struggles and help them overcome some trauma or problem of theirs. The visitor would then be inducted into the Barsu faith, provided with the welcoming and accepting community they often badly needed, and declared worthy to start their new life on Mars. The Barsu, both in the alternate present and in the future, are consistently portrayed as, for the most part, a friendly, environmentally-conscious and tolerant group who don't try to bring religion into politics, and those on Earth do what they can to make it a better place before they leave for their "homeland."
• In spite of all the atrocities that the Second Korean War produced, something good did come of it. Japan is drawn into the war by North Korean missile attacks, and now that the JSDF is Neutral No Longer, they turn Martial Pacifist into an art form. Japanese search-and-rescue specialists pull people out of bombed cities, Japanese medics save thousands of South Korean and American lives, and Japanese civilians do whatever they can to help, from volunteering at refugee camps to providing enormous amounts of donated blood and synthetic blood substitute (which Japan is Asia's only supplier of). Japan provides so much aid to South Korea during the war (without ever technically fighting save via volunteers) that it's credited with easing the longstanding animosity between Japan and Korea.
  • The JSDF keeps it up after the Second Korean War, too - as well as taking part in UN peacekeeping missions, they start launching humanitarian aid missions all over Asia in the wake of various disasters. Most famously, after the Punjab War goes nuclear, Japan devotes massive amounts of resources and manpower to helping the devastated nation of India. After all, they've been through that suffering too.