"'California is – and must always be – a refuge of justice and opportunity for people of all walks, talks, ages and aspirations – regardless of how you look, where you live, what language you speak, or who you love.' While the country around us has changed drastically overnight, our values as Californians have not changed, and we will defend those values."
—Jerry Brown
A Golden Island to the West is a timeline and novel posted on AlternateHistory.com and written by Crunch Buttsteak. The premise of the story is about Alien Space Bats sending a California that’s 20 Minutes into the Future back in time to 1850, the day that California originally joined the Union, right after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed and when the chain of events leading to the Civil War started.
The story can be found on AlternateHistory.com right here
or here if you don’t have an AH.com account.
A Golden Island to the West provides examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The story starts out on Election Night 2018 before the Mass Teleportation event occurs.
- Alien Space Bats: the entire premise of the story was that the titular ASB’s whisked California away from 2018 to 1850 at the start of the story.
- Crapsack World: The United States that California left behind is heavily implied to be this, with the Trump Administration's first year being worse than our future.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The Imperial County Sheriff’s Department vs the remnants of JC Morehead’s Gila River expedition.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Slavery. Modern Day California has a big problem with Slavery, to the point where they would rather vote for secession twice than be in a country that allows slavery.
- Divided States of America: At the start of the story, California voted to secede from the union. Later chapters hint that California will become an independent country.
- Epic Fail: The sad case of Trump City, the response of a few diehard right-wing fanatics living in California. Basically, they tried to move and settle in Oregon, but a string of idiotic choices and lack of foresight and planning (and the author's TDS) led to the whole thing collapsing.
- Fee Fi Faux Pas: Averted by California Airlines by deciding to paint their planes sky blue rather than gold as not to offend China's Emperor when they start air service to China.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Several people from the 1850’s who come to modern day California, most notably John C. Frémont and Jessie Benton Frémont.
- For Want Of A Nail: The introduction of California all but destroys the downtime United States' path to dominance. With a powerful anti-slavery state backing the formation of a unified Native American bloc, the race to the Pacific is lost and the Monroe Doctrine fails, shattering the illusions of wealth the downtime youth had come to expect and making them face the reality of the society that built expectations around ideas that were ultimately proven false. The issue of slavery leads to a different road to the Civil War, starting with a more aggressive United States in far worse diplomatic ground with everyone.
- The ruling family of Korea is informed about their future division into North and South, and upon insisting on being told the names of the conspirators against his dynasty has them arrested.
- The Czar looks to be somewhat averting this, as while he has been informed about the fall of the Romanov dynasty and the rise of communism and is taking steps to eliminate all threats to his family, the manner in which he is doing so note makes him look even more unhinged and a number of his powerful allies to start turning against him. There might not be a 'communist' coup in the future, but it looks like there will be 'a' coup because of his paranoia.
- Gambit Pileup: The story is setting itself up to be one of these.
- Gold Fever: To the people coming in to California in 1850, the one thing on their mind is gold.
- Also, when Chevron starts buying up land in Pennsylvania, people rush to claim land, believing that there is a treasure there.
- Historical Domain Character: Par for the course for an alternate history story
- Make It Look Like an Accident: The Californians, once it became clear that the US wanted to blockade them, dispatched a submarine to Cape Horn to destroy the fleet and invoke this trope. While Matthew Perry's fleet instead chooses to traverse the Strait of Magellan, the sub ambushes him there and fires a single torpedo at them. The ensuing Disaster Dominoes destroy six of the seven ships.
- Mass Teleportation: How 2018 California ended up in 1850.
- Morton's Fork: Initially, the Californians make a good amount of effort to remain in the United States, fearing what would happen if their own secession legitimized the cause of the Southern states as the Civil War looms. Eventually, however, the secession is completed to the detriment of the United States.
- No Endor Holocaust: Several scheduled airline flights left California shortly after the event unaware of what had happened. Fortunately, all of them turned around after failing to get a hold of air traffic control before they no longer had enough fuel to make it back to an airport in California.
- Noodle Incident: The phantom hangover John C Fremont recounts.
- Precrime Arrest: Using the records of the lost history, the Tsar starts having people arrested and executed for crimes they haven't committed yet and due to ripples might never commit. Though it comes off as less pragmatic and more insane considering many of those on the list wouldn't commit their 'crime' for decades. Pyotyr Kropotkin is taken for writing a seditious book in the future, despite only being 'eight' now. The daughter of governor Vasily Perovsky is also on the list to be arrested for plotting to kill the tsar, and she hasn't even been 'born' yet.
- Self-Insert: Some characters are this, especially if they have appeared on its Discord RP channel at some point.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Several people and groups are trying to fix what they perceive as mistakes made in history, some of these goals are outright contradictory.
- Shout-Out: Several people show up:
- Gabriel Reyes appears as a CHP officer checking on a group of caravans entering California.
- Angela Ziegler shows up as one of the medical staff of the UNSN Mercy, dispensing vaccines to the native Hawai'ian population.
- Tom Calvert, Colin Wallis, Cheryl Bailey and Hana Bashur appear having dinner at the Barstow In-N-Out and discussing their jobs.
- Dr. Saeko Mizuno is posted aboard the CNS Carl Vinson's infirmary.
- Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility: Type X at the start due to the time shift, Type I after that.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome : While California was in survival mode after the ISOT, ensuring what was left of the NTSB had proper equipment to do air crash investigations was not high a priority. It becomes a minor issue after the Maryland State Militia shoot down a civilian airliner.
- Underground Railroad: The trope namer appears in the snippet of the same name, and has expanded to smuggling escaped slaves onto airplanes bound for California.
- Wiki Walk: Happens to both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster in The Devil’s Bargain.
- Wham Episode: While relations between California and the United States have been going downhill throughout the story, Chapter 41 dramatically raises the stakes by having the Maryland State Militia manage to shoot down a civilian airliner.
