The Fountainhead Fillibuster: Tales from Objectivist Katanga

A Web Original Alternate History series created by AlternateHistory.com member Linkwerk. Set in the late 1950s and 1960s, it features everyone's favourite/hated wacky founder of Objectivism, Ayn Rand, and a lot of various Historical Domain Characters. All of them get involved in a rather peculiar game of geopolitics.

Long story short, this timeline diverges from our own when Rand decides to recreate the Mary Suetopia described in her novel Atlas Shrugged in Real Life. And what better place to do so than in the then chaotic landscape of the former Kongo Free State, specifically, the southern Kongolese historical region of Katanga...

She convinces various businessmen and sympathizers to aid her in the construction of the supposedly utopian artificial town of Galtville, run along the principles of her infamous and polarizing Objectivist philosophy. And let's just say that the timeline starts getting weirder and weirder from there on...

Read it here.


 * Alternate History : A pretty unusual one, set during the height of the early Cold War, referencing a lot of the changing geopolitics (the decolonisation of Africa and the conflicts it spawned, etc.).
 * Allohistorical Allusion : The military and diplomatic doctrine of Rand's African regime grows eeriely similar to that of the unrecognized Republic of Rhodesia, which appeared a few years later in our own history. Linkwerk has confirmed the parallels and said he's deliberately aiming for some overlap of historical patterns in this area.
 * Anachronic Order : All of the episodes so far have been of this variety. Hell, the first episode of the series is set in what looks like the beggining of the end of Rand's regime-building experiment.
 * Ayn Rand : Well, duh. Pretty much the Villain Protagonist of the series. She starts out as a relatively reasonable (if kooky) writer, philosopher and investor. But as the installments set in the mid-60s reveal, she eventually overgoes severe Sanity Slippage and becomes Not So Harmless.
 * The Baroness: Rand becomes one (Rosa Klebb-variant) in Katanga.
 * Be Careful What You Wish For : It's evident from the episodes set chronologically later in the timeline's story that Rand's dreams of founding a brilliantly working economic and social utopia gradually fall to pieces over the course of several years.
 * Big Damn Hero : Ernesto "Che" Guevara to Patrice Lumumba and indirectly, Dag Hammarskjöld.
 * Cool Plane : Rand secretly purchases all of the and has them smuggled to Katanga via freighter and then river barge. Soon after that, the planes become the core of the . Also, the SAAB Tunnans and other 1950s and 1960s planes flown by UN peacekeepers in the Kongo.
 * Crossover : None so far, but several AH.com members who read the series suggested doing one with Mad Men.
 * Egopolis : Rand's aptly named "Galtville" (after John Galt from Atlas Shrugged), formerly known as the Katangan town of Kolwezi. In a slight subversion, it's less about celebrating her and more about celebrating the ideology of Objectivism she created. An in-universe Shout-Out to the aforementioned novel is the statue of Atlas on the main square.
 * The Evils of Free Will : An unusual variation - kind of an inversion, really - since Rand's new utopian community in Katanga objects to communal activities done in groups, even common group sports like football/soccer ! There is also little to no welfare and a POV character African worker notes that everything in shops is overpriced and sold along ruthlessly capitalist lines. Galtville and its surroundings take the whole "run according to Objectivist principles" thing very seriously.
 * For Want of a Nail : The start of the whole mess is a controversial sci-fi writer and a very cunning con artist recognising Rand in a bar and giving her some tips on strategy, inadvertently giving her the idea to 'start her own' (country). His name ? L. Ron freaking Hubbard !
 * Herr Doktor : Kurt Tank, though he is a tame and realistic example of this, being a highly skilled Real Life aviation engineer. He is eccentric and a bit full of himself, but is far from a Mad Scientist.
 * Hired Guns : The famous mercenary Bob Denard and his crew, who become the backbone of Rand's security forces.
 * Historical Domain Character : Most of the cast are historical personalities from that era. Rand, Kurt Tank, L. Ron Hubbard, Dag Hammarskjold, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Bob Denard, etc. There are surprisingly few fictional characters when compared to other AH.com timelines and stories.
 * Insistent Terminology : They're mundanes, not.
 * The Leader : Rand is literally referred to by this title in the mid-60s episodes.
 * People's Republic of Tyranny : Rand's supposedly utopian mini-country has some of these traits from the get go, but it seems to have gone pretty much full blown in the installments set chronologically later - of which we've only seen a few glimpses so far. Still, the very first episode blatantly shows that by 1966, Rand's utopia has morphed into an.
 * Psycho for Hire : L. Ron Hubbard as Rand's Dragon definitely counts, and in some cases, Bob Denard arguably counts too.
 * Space Brasilia / Zeerust : Galtville's architecture in a nutshell. Linkwerk even lampshades the name of the first trope by noting that some buildings in Galtville were designed by the same architect that worked on Brazil's new capital city.
 * Start My Own : Essentially, Rand wants to start her own utopian city project in a resource rich African backwater and then.
 * X Meets Y : BioShock (series), but without the science fantasy elements and  IN COLD WAR ERA AFRICA !