''The Second Renaissance''
is a future timeline created by Sean McKnight, aka Ynot1989, which currently consists of a wiki and a number of maps on his DeviantArt account. The timeline is largely inspired by George Friedman's 2009 book The Next 100 Years: A Forecast For The 21st Century, but includes several alterations made to reflect changes that have occurred since the book was published (as well as instances of pure artistic license on the part of the writer). Broadly speaking, the timeline begins in the mid-to-late 2020s with the loss of the southern tip of the Greenland Ice Sheet and subsequent sea level rise which contributes to the collapse of Russia and China into a number of smaller countries. This leaves the new major players in Eurasia as Poland, Turkey, and Japan. At first the United States is on friendly terms with all of these countries, but by the 2040s Japan and Turkey develop superpower ambitions of their own, putting them at odds with the United States. This results in a third World War in the 2050s, which the United States and its allies win, leaving the United States as the world's sole remaining superpower. . . or so it seems.
In fact, all of this is only the prelude to the biggest challenge the United States faces in the second half of the 21st century. During this time, Mexico has also been developing as a world power, and wants to reclaim the territory the United States took from it. Allying themselves with Poland, the eventually go to war with the United States. The timeline is supplemented by maps, biographies, and even articles on contemporary popular culture from the various periods that it covers.
Not to be confused with the second segment from The Animatrix, also called "The Second Renaissance".
Tropes
The Second Renaissance contains the following tropes:
- Absent Aliens: Not so much absent as just not important. There are intelligent aliens in the setting, but none of them are on par with humanity in terms of technology and they don't figure a great deal into the timeline.
- America Takes Over the World: More or less the premise, just as it was in Friedman’s book.
- Asshole Victim: Oscar Lachman is a thoroughly despicable President, authorizing the deportation of millions of Hispanic citizens from the United States in a bid to improve the economy, and in so doing kicking off hostilities between the US and Mexico. It's hard to feel sorry for him when he becomes the first president since John F. Kennedy to be assassinated.
- Balkanize Me: Happens to a lot of countries in the 2020s, most notably Russia and China.
- The Battlestar: The US develops military space stations by the 2040s.
- Butt-Monkey: Russia. They spend pretty much the whole time line being broken up, fought over, invaded, you name it.
- China Takes Over the World: Zigzagged. China starts out as a major rival to America during the Little Cold War, but suffers a severe economic downturn in the 2020s. They don't really recover until the 2050s, by which point they're under a new government allied to the United States.
- Cool Plane: McKnight is an aerospace engineer, and plenty of detail is given to the aircraft in the timeline. Probably the coolest is the F-51 Mustang II drone fighter from the Third Mexican-American War.
- Cool Starship: The Zeus-class dreadnoughts. Also Pluto's moon Hydra, which is hollowed out and turned into a starship!
- Eagleland: Mixed, trending towards Type 1. America is essentially the protagonist of Second Renaissance. They're hardly perfect and have had some questionable episodes, but they are, on the whole, a force for good.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Humanity, arguably. It takes a century and a half of global wars and depressions on a scale never seen before, but the timeline ends with Earth unified at last—and looking likely to stay that way.
- Easily Forgiven: Less than a decade after fighting the US in the World War III, Japan and Turkey are in the American sphere of alliance again.
- Expanded States of America: By the end of the timeline, the United States covers more or less the entire Anglosphere, plus all the territory seized from Mexico during the Third Mexican-American War.
- Repressive, but Efficient: AOC forcibly seizes property from farmers and religious groups she dislikes, subjecting them to violence and ethnic cleansing. The southern states with fewer whites than minority populations also implement a vast slave trading infrastructure overnight with nearly no pushback.
- Failed Future Forecast: This has hit the timeline rather hard, given the events of the early 2020s.
- First Contact: Happens later on, between humanity and an alien species called the K'lerin.
- Flying Car: They're called "podcopters" here, and are pretty much an improvement of modern-day "drone taxi" concepts.
- Giant Flyer: Thanks to Mars's low gravity, a number of giant birds and flying reptiles have been genetically engineered to live there. The biggest of them have wingspans of over 40 feet.
- The Great Flood: It's not global and not caused (as far as we know) by any angry gods, but The Flood, which is what the melting of the world's icecaps in the 2020s and 2030s is called, definitely fits this trope in spirit.
- Human Subspecies: Several arise as a result of genetic engineering and colonization of the alien environments of other planets.
- Humans Are Special: The philosophy of Postnaturalism, which advocates things like geo-engineering and de-extinction as solutions to environmental problems as opposed to "just letting nature be".
- Japan Takes Over the World: One of the major forces opposing the US in World War III.
- Make the Bear Angry Again: Along with China, a resurgent Russia is one of America' chief rivals in the beginning of the timeline.
- Memetic Badass: Liza Maheswaran, a soldier from World War III, is an in-universe example.
- Mexico Called; They Want Texas Back: This is ultimately the driving force behind the second half of the timeline.
- Middle Eastern Coalition: The other force opposing the US in World War III. Unusually for this trope, it's led by Turkey.
- Not So Extinct: Starting in the 2020s, cloning extinct animals becomes possible. Only as far back as the late Pleistocene, though.
- Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Averted. Nuclear weapons get used in several conflicts, mostly later on in the timeline.
- Octopoid Aliens: The Tel'bn
- Our Presidents Are Different: From the mid-21st century onwards, the Presidents of the United States become a lot more diverse. By the end of the timeline, several women, non-whites, and non-Christians have assumed the office.
- Powered Armor: One of the most important tools in the militaries of the 21st and 22nd centuries.
- President Action: Leo Halvidar, the first President born on Mars. He served in the Planetary Guard before he went into politics, and when the Mexicans invade DC, he dons his old Powered Armor once more and becomes the first president since James Madison to command his country's troops on the field.
- President Evil: Might be debatable who should be called a "villain" here, but Oscar Lachman has shades of this trope. He deports millions of Mexicans out of the Southwestern United States, all in the name of bringing jobs back during an economic downturn, which ultimately leads to not one but two wars with Mexico.
- Punny Name: Political cartoonist Manuel Tiperiter.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: The timeline had to be changed considerably following the election of Donald Trump, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Rock Beats Laser: A fairly literal example. The American space battle stations are taken out at the beginning of the Third World War by a barrage of rocks launched from the moon.
- Second American Civil War: The White Tide, a nationwide uprising by white supremacist terrorist groups in the late 2020s that results in several state capitals being overrun.
- Shout-Out:
- Two American military spacecraft are named Heinlein's Light and Tolkein's Quill.
- The page on "virtuals"—basically VR video games— is nothing but Shout-Outs.
- There's even one to Tetrapod Zoology, of all things. There's an in-universe book about how sapient aliens have an overwhelming tendency to be four-limbed, and it's mentioned that one of the people who read it had the last name Naish.
- Space Is an Ocean: Averted. Some spacecraft still have naval names, though.
- Starfish Aliens: Most of the intelligent alien life contacted is of this variety. Some of them have four limbs like vertebrates on Earth, but any similarity ends there.
- United Space of America: What the United States eventually becomes after the Second Mexican-American War, controlling most of the Earth and having extra-terrestrial territories as commonwealths.
- We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies: One's been written. It covers the timeline from the 2016 election to the Third Mexican-American War.
- World War Whatever: There are three possible "world wars" in the timeline, but only one is named as such.
- Writer on Board: Sean Mc Knight does not like Russia, and of all the major countries involved in the timeline, they are put through by far the most humiliating fate.
- Zerg Rush: The Japanese attack on the American space battle stations in 2051 is basically this—they send a barrage of moon rocks to knock out the American orbiting battle stations.
