Great potential in this thread so far.
I've only read a few mainstream alternate histories but they've toed the line to 'hard' science fiction enough to keep my interest. While not read directly the idea of an 'anti-matter America' as envisioned in S.M. Stirling's 'Draka' series shows how different things can be if a few key events and people were swapped around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DrakaIn the FMG/BE/Amazon angle the most realized contemporary setting has to have been the set of nightmare alternatives in Mark Newman's (Marknew's) Alt Universe. With computers and gadgets taking a backseat to the expanding capacities of the increasingly fortified female gender.
For near future forecasts I can't recommend Heck's 'Prototype' series enough. Really well thought out and fun example of super strength in a frighteningly plausible future. Just don't click on the freaking Epilogue since the web formatting has placed it first amongst the descending chapters at Diana's.
http://www.thevalkyrie.com/stories/heck/index.htmAlan Moore's comic series "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" used the legends and assumptions of past fiction to make a compelling archaic world. This got me thinking what if Charlotte Perkins Gilman's fictional amazonian country of 'Herland' were to have remained, aside from the events in the book, undiscovered until later on in the 20th century. What of the Herlander's attempts to avoid the fires of WW2 or their possible ascendancy in the competition to gain atomic weaponry? Might those asexually reproducing females bolster their population into some sort of secret society slowly 'feminizing' the planet into a more 'peaceful' iteration?
While a sociological fable I can't seem to keep myself from thinking What Would Indiana Jones Do? Hell what would E.E.Smith do?
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/GilHerl.htmlFor a 'harder' look at what a future setting may bring to having plausible renditions of my innermost lust triggers Transhumanism seems the answer.
When does humanity stop being that from it's dependence on and bodily intregration of technology? Ray Kurzwiel provides some interesting looks at what may happen to society and mankind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_KurzweilCryogenics or some sort of substantial conversion of a person into recorded data that can be later regrown into a decent enough copy to still have early 21st century viewpoints allows there to be both the context and the contrast that makes fantastical femmes so potent in my imagination.
As far as my own plot ideas it's mostly the horrific meets the horny. There's an idea where someone gets grown from scratch assembled from the 'best' traits of a range of individuals using a plot device so contrived and weird it's basically magic. The plausibility from the situation's fall out would be it's only real saving grace. Seeing how some being could reconcile it's many donated memories and data into a cohesive independent individual is fascinating to me.
Also in the homage/rip-off category is a riff on John W. Campbell's novel "Who Goes There?" called "Who Grows There?". Growing out of clothing is twice as exciting when it's deadly to do so from either the vacuum of space or howling arctic death. Essentially an excuse for a lass to experience radical physical change that results in her becoming an indirect threat to the small antarctic research station's community. Her growth is fueled by calories and there's only so much in the larder. Things could reach a very frightening boiling point as days are checked off before she can either be airlifted the hell out of there or more food brought in. Shouldn't descend into cannibalism but the FEAR of that happening would set the tension nicely.
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Highrise/3756/jc/who/bonusid.htmThat's all out of me for now. Thanks for the mental sustenance folks and big kudos to MuskelGrothe for getting the ball rolling.
