Alien Space Bats (also known as ASBs) is a term coined by Alison Brooks. The term is used to describe alternate history that involve around PODs that are fantastical or immpossible. They cover changing the physical laws of nature, introducing magic into the world, aliens, etc. S.M. Stirling in the Acknowledgements to Dies the Fire claims to have stolen the phrase.
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| - Alien Space Bats (also known as ASBs) is a term coined by Alison Brooks. The term is used to describe alternate history that involve around PODs that are fantastical or immpossible. They cover changing the physical laws of nature, introducing magic into the world, aliens, etc. S.M. Stirling in the Acknowledgements to Dies the Fire claims to have stolen the phrase.
- An Alternate History trope dealing with the divergence of a timeline. The phrase is widely used on Alternate History websites. If the point of divergence is an extraordinary or supernatural phenomenon, Alien Space Bats are responsible. If history changed due to historical happenstance it was just For Want of a Nail. The trope may also apply when the point of divergence isn't actually supernatural, but so wildly implausible that it might as well be that A Wizard Did It. Note that Tropes Are Not Bad: this can and does lead to some excellent yarns. Examples of Alien Space Bats include:
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| - An Alternate History trope dealing with the divergence of a timeline. The phrase is widely used on Alternate History websites. If the point of divergence is an extraordinary or supernatural phenomenon, Alien Space Bats are responsible. If history changed due to historical happenstance it was just For Want of a Nail. Alien Space Bats is in a sense the opposite of Deus Ex Machina: where Deus Ex Machina is the introduction of an implausible element outside of the context of the narrative to resolve a plot conflict, Alien Space Bats are an implausible element outside the context of the narrative introduced in order to set up the main plot conflict or setting of the story. The phrase was originally coined by the late Alison Brooks as a sarcastic comment on ridiculous Alternate History timelines with no realistic chance of happening without some sort of Deus Ex Machina as implausibly contrived as bringing in a bunch of Sufficiently Advanced Alien bats. (The definitive example of a plan whose success would be hopelessly implausible without something like alien space bats is Operation Sealion.) It was only later that it came to mean "explicitly magical or science-fiction what-ifs." The trope may also apply when the point of divergence isn't actually supernatural, but so wildly implausible that it might as well be that A Wizard Did It. Note that Tropes Are Not Bad: this can and does lead to some excellent yarns. A frequent mechanism by which Alien Space Bats intervene in human history is Mass Teleportation. When on a small scale, their intervention may leave people Trapped in the Past. See also Never Was This Universe. Not to be confused with Goddamn Bats. Or an alien Batman Now a verifiable wiki article! That cites this very page on This Very Wiki! Examples of Alien Space Bats include:
- Alien Space Bats (also known as ASBs) is a term coined by Alison Brooks. The term is used to describe alternate history that involve around PODs that are fantastical or immpossible. They cover changing the physical laws of nature, introducing magic into the world, aliens, etc. S.M. Stirling in the Acknowledgements to Dies the Fire claims to have stolen the phrase.
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