The Twilight's Last Gleaming is an Alternate History timeline by Thomas "Thande" Anderson, originally published here
on AlternateHistory.com, and now available from Sea Lion Press.
The premise is that on April 19, 1886, a meteor impacts the Earth in the Indian Ocean... on the exact opposite side of Earth from a certain national park, triggering a minor geologic event. But while the Indian Ocean is devastated, and the Northern Hemisphere is faced with a new ice age, surely if the human race pulled together as one, it could easily triumph for the good of the planet as a whole.
…
…have you ever met the human race?
Historical characters who appear or are referenced in the timeline:
- Grover Cleveland: President of the United States, trying to cope with the worst natural disaster in American (or world) history.
- Theodore Roosevelt: Still years away from his OTL political career, Teddy leads a large group of survivors out of Montana, but does nothing else particularly remarkable...
- Queen Victoria: Has a nightmare which leads her to consider the long-term impact of the Yellowstone eruption.
Tropes demonstrated in The Twilight's Last Gleaming:
- Apocalypse Anarchy: Strongly averted on the individual level. There is civil strife in the US, but that's because the response to the Chicago fire (demolishing poor neighborhoods to create firebreaks) provoked a Communist uprising in the Midwest.
- The actions of nations, on the other hand, play this a little straighter, what with Western Europe invading South America to grab that fertile farmland.
- The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: Zig-zagged. On the one hand, plenty of people rise to the challenges posed by the twin disasters. On the other hand, others display the worst traits of humanity... and some of those are world leaders.
- Apocalypse How: Global societal disruption, regional societal collapse in the American West and Canada.
- Artistic License – Physics: Invoked - the author deliberately creates an unusual meteor to justify the effects of the impact, knowing it wouldn't be realistic for a conventional asteroid or meteor.
- Comet of Doom: An odd one - the impactor is a fragment of the icy dwarf planet Makemake wrapped around a shard of the metallic asteroid Psyche, and is described as an iron needle 500 meters long.
- Godzilla Threshold: Facing the prospect of a new ice age, the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany cross two. The first is working together when they were previously rivals. The second is launching an unprovoked invasion of South America to resettle their populations in a fertile land that isn't about to become a frozen tundra.
- Oh, Crap!: A common reaction to the events, both in the actual story and in the thread. Especially when people work out what the antipode of the impact site is...
- Shown Their Work: It's Thande. What do you expect?
