[Gibbon1]

I'm curious about using a hybrid system where you have multiple electric fans. For instance 2 turbines and 4 fans. Advantage is smaller diameter for the same mass flow. And more redundancy. A negative is the weight of the electric motors and generators. If you added a battery you have some other advantages. Less pucker when you lose an engine. And better throttle response.

[pedrocr]

Another advantage is you can place the fans all along the wing getting you better stall resistance as the flow doesn't detach as easily. There's already a prototype of a hybrid plane that does this:

https://www.electra.aero/

[jaggederest]

You can go one further and just mount a squirrel cage fan in place of or on the front or top of the wing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FanWing

Or go further and use rotating drums: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_airplane

Or you can use a horizontal-axis style helicopter rotor with variable pitch, and it gets you omnidirectional thrust (VTOL) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclogyro

There are a lot of interesting possible alternate histories (only requiring a few tweaks to physics) where fixed wings never really work and horizontal rotorcraft dominate, especially in a world where lighter-than-air craft are common - something like a hybrid between a zeppelin and a paddleboat.