04-03-2020, 12:21 PM
I don't know if I'll ever end up writing anything for this, but a tweet put this idea into my head and now it's stuck. Over on twitter someone commented that Comstar was basically the, "Future Of The 80s!" Bell monopoly writ large. Which had me thinking, the breakup of Bell had its seeds all the way back in the 70s and took place in the 80s, so why not a more Bell-like Comstar breakup. Not a clean and simple two way civil war between Word of Blakists and "But we just want to be phone company monopolists." This post isn't yet a plan but rather me thinking in written form.
With no Star League (unless the breakup is pushed late, but not too late into the setting) they're obviously not getting broken up by the Federal Government Of The Future Of The 80s. I'd also like to see something more like the real life Bell + Seven Baby Bells. That said, if Comstar breaks cleanly on the political boundaries of the successor states what's stopping them from just swallowing up the Baby Comstars? I'll have to dig into what history we have for them and look for some late 2800s early 2900s crisis points where a nice firm push could screw things up.
My biggest thoughts so far:
And now I'm wanting to play around with the other AU ideas I've had.
*For those who don't know, US West was so bad it was the only newborn Baby Bell to have it's own consumer rights group facing it (a national telephone consumers group formed a splinter group when they realized roughly a third of the complaints they were handling came from US West territory). Hey, I live here, I got to laugh when reading a business column about Qwest buying up US West that had a line about hoping Qwest didn't ruin US West (closest I've ever come from falling out of a chair due to laughing). Sadly post merger Qwest management kept hold of the US West management instead of cleaning house.
With no Star League (unless the breakup is pushed late, but not too late into the setting) they're obviously not getting broken up by the Federal Government Of The Future Of The 80s. I'd also like to see something more like the real life Bell + Seven Baby Bells. That said, if Comstar breaks cleanly on the political boundaries of the successor states what's stopping them from just swallowing up the Baby Comstars? I'll have to dig into what history we have for them and look for some late 2800s early 2900s crisis points where a nice firm push could screw things up.
My biggest thoughts so far:
- I want more than two factions
- I am terribly amused by the idea of the Federated Suns network and Taurian Concordat network being run largely by the same splinter faction just for the ulcers that will give the Taurians, said faction, and those in the Suns who wonder if things are about to go boom.
- A chunk of the courier service and explorer corp go independent doing a combination of continuing exploration, serving as a go-between shipping stuff between other factions, and trying to cozy up with the Sol belters after having broken away from Earth control.
- Earth based Comstar has largely turtled up having realized it has little chance of re-controlling the rest any time soon. Ground and orbital defenses are being rebuilt to ward off outside attack -- while the long sidelined non-Comstar powers of Earth are starting to get ideas.
- Whatever Comstar faction controls the most 'west' end of the map gets to play the role of US West of the Future Of The 80s.*
And now I'm wanting to play around with the other AU ideas I've had.
*For those who don't know, US West was so bad it was the only newborn Baby Bell to have it's own consumer rights group facing it (a national telephone consumers group formed a splinter group when they realized roughly a third of the complaints they were handling came from US West territory). Hey, I live here, I got to laugh when reading a business column about Qwest buying up US West that had a line about hoping Qwest didn't ruin US West (closest I've ever come from falling out of a chair due to laughing). Sadly post merger Qwest management kept hold of the US West management instead of cleaning house.