Alternative history (fiction)

Alternative history or alternate history is fiction that is set in a world in which history has diverged from history as it is generally known; more simply put, alternate history asks the question, "What If history had developed differently?" Most works that employ this rubric are set in factful historical contexts, yet feature several social, geopolitical or industrial circumstances that developed differently or at a different pace from our own, sometimes as a result of progress in technological or social paradigms that were accomplished via the understanding already present in the given zeitgeist. While to some extent all fiction can be described as alternative history, the genre proper comprises fiction in which a change happens that causes history to diverge from our own. For a variety of reasons, alternate history is generally classified as a subcategory of speculative fiction. Secret history, which gives an account of history at odds with our general understanding, presenting its own account as having been lost or forgotten, is not alternate history.

Published alternative histories

Literally thousands of alternative history stories and novels have been published. Following is a somewhat random sampling:

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• ' by John Birmingham, which is part Alternate History, part Science Fiction. It's point of divergence is 2021 when an American led UN Multinational Force is dragged through a wormhole back to 1942.
• ' by Orson Scott Card, in which scientists from the future travel back to the 15th century to prevent the European colonisation of the Americas.
• Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore, in which the South was not defeated in the American Civil War because it won the Battle of Gettysburg.
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick set in a world where the Axis powers won World War II.
• Fatherland by Robert Harris is also set in the 1960s in a Germany which won World War II.
• In "The Forfeited Birthright of the Abortive Far Western Christian Civilization," Arnold J. Toynbee describes a world in which the Franks lost to the Muslims at the Battle of Tours in 732.
• SS-GB by Len Deighton is a detective novel set in 1941 Britain in which the Germans have successfully occupied the country.
• If Hitler Had Invaded England, by C.S. Forester, found in his collection of published short stories, Gold from Crete. The story is a fictionalized account of a German invasion of Britain in 1940, based on what Forester saw as realistic projections of German and British capabilities. The German invasion fails short of reaching London due to continued British supremacy at sea and in the air. The resulting lack of river transport capability leads to an Allied victory.
• Pavane, by Keith Roberts, assumes that Queen Elizabeth I of England was assassinated, and in the ensuing disorder, the Spanish Armada was successful in suppressing Protestantism; the novel (actually a series of shorter pieces) is set in a 20th century where technology has advanced less than in our world, and where the Inquisition still has power.
• "The Last Article" is a short story by Harry Turtledove, in which Mohandas Gandhi attempts to use non-violent resistance against India's Nazi occupiers.
• The Alteration by Kingsley Amis is set in a world very similar to that of Pavane. In this world, Martin Luther, rather than beginning the Protestant Reformation, became pope. The novel concerns the attempt to prevent a young boy with a perfect singing voice from being recruited to the Vatican's eunuch choir. There are a number of in-jokes, where famous works of fantasy and science fiction appear, under slightly different titles: 'The Wind in the Cloisters' and 'The Lord of the Chalices' for example.
• The "Lord Darcy" fantasy series by Randall Garrett; a number of short stories and one novel (Too Many Magicians) based on the premise that King Richard I of England returned safely from France and that Roger Bacon had systematised the laws of magic. The stories are a series of traditional detective fiction-style murder mysteries with forensic magic being used in the investigation.
• GURPS Alternate Earths (ISBN 1-55634-318-3) and GURPS Alternate Earths II (ISBN 1-55634-399-X) a pair of "What might have been" supplements for the Third Edition of the GURPS role-playing game. Includes a world with a surviving Confederacy, a Nazi/Japanese Empire world, an Aztecs-rule-America scenario, a Viking empire and a unique "Gernsback" world in which the dreams of mad scientists and Doc Savage have become reality. The conflict between the Infinity Patrol and Centrum across the multiplicity of parallel Earths detailed in these supplements (and originating in GURPS Time Travel) was made central to the Fourth Edition of GURPS as the default setting in the Basic Set and in the supplement GURPS Infinite Worlds.
• The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling is a steampunk novel which deals with a Victorian society in which Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine takes on the roles of modern computers a century early.
• ', edited by Mark Shainblum and John Dupuis features stories by Eric Choi, Dave Duncan, Glenn Grant, Paula Johanson, Nancy Kilpatrick, Laurent McAllister, the late Keith Scott, Shane Simmons, Michael Skeet, Edo van Belkom and Allan Weiss. The collection garnered a Aurora Award in the "Best Other Work in English" category, while Edo van Belkom's short story "Hockey's Night in Canada" captured another for "Best Short-Form Work in English."
• Ong's Hat by Ong's Hat, New Jersey is an Internet legend that deals with a group of renegade scientists from Princeton that developed a means of travel to parallel universes and fled this Universe to found a colony in another world.
• How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove is set twenty years after a Southern victory in the American Civil War established the Confederate States of America. This novel is followed by the Great War trilogy, set in the 1910s, the American Empire trilogy, taking the timeline up through the 1920s and 30s, and the Settling Accounts trilogy, detailing an alternate World War II.
• The Two Georges by Harry Turtledove and actor Richard Dreyfuss is set in modern times under the assumption that King George III of Great Britain and George Washington reached a settlement where the 13 Colonies remained within the British Empire with increased autonomy and virtually all of their grievances redressed. The book follows two Royal American Mounted Police officers attempting to recover the famous painting of the meeting between the Two Georges by Thomas Gainsborough after it had been stolen by anti-British terrorists. The painting had become a national treasure and the principal symbol of the unification between Britain and America.
• Making History (1996) by British actor, comedian and novelist Stephen Fry is set in a parallel world in which Adolf Hitler was never conceived, let alone born.
• For Want of a Nail (ISBN 1853675040) - an alternative history of North America by Robert Sobel, details a world in which the American Revolution failed. The British colonies become the Confederation of North America (CNA), while the defeated rebels go into exile in Spanish Tejas, eventually founding the United States of Mexico (USM) - a bitter rival to the CNA. The gigantic multinational corporation Kramer Associates, originally from Mexico but later based in Taiwan, is the third world power, and the first power to detonate an atomic bomb.
• The Domination by S. M. Stirling - after the United States conquers Canada in the War of 1812, the Loyalists move to South Africa, where they join with the Boers to set up a slavery-based empire called the Domination of the Draka. The story tells of the struggle between the Domination and the free world. As the Draka come to dominate the world, they create a superhuman race.
• Conquistador by S.M. Stirling - an interdimensional gateway is discovered in California, which gives access to an alternative Earth in which the empire of Alexander the Great flourished, and where Europeans never discovered America.
• Wild Cards edited by George R. R. Martin - A series of collaborations based on the premise that an alien race released a virus just after the WWII that gave some people superpowers and others terrible deformities.
• 1632 by Eric Flint - (found online at the Baen Books free library in various ebook formats.) Its sequels, starting with 1633 are available for sale. A series based on the premise that an entire modern West Virginia town is transported in time and space to Germany during the Thirty Years War.
• Rivers of War by Eric Flint is an alternative history of the American frontier. It posits that Sam Houston was not injured at the beginning of the War of 1812, and substantially revises the history of the Trail of Tears.
• 1945 by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen assumes that the Germans perfected long-range jet aircraft by the end of World War II and conducted successful raids in North America against the US nuclear program.
• The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith One single word in the Declaration of Independence differs and the US becomes the North American Confederation, a libertarian society. In the present some scientist will invent the Probability Broach and make contact with other universes.
• The Venus Belt
• Their Majesties' Bucketeers
• The Nagasaki Vector
• Tom Paine Maru
• The Gallatin Divergence
• The Indians Won (ISBN 0843910127) by Martin Cruz Smith: What if the Native Americans had won the Indian wars and kept their land? How would Indian and Anglo governments cooperate? What other things would be different?
• The Coming of the Demons by Gwenyth Hood: What if the execution of Conradin Hohenstaufen in Naples on October 29, 1268 was averted by the arrival of the Pelezitereans, exiled alien wanderers from another galaxy, seeking an uninhabited planet on which to reestablish their advanced culture?
• Mamoru Oshii's manga Kerebos, a.k.a Hellhounds Panzer Cops in the United States, and the film , both of which take place in a 1960's Japan that was defeated and occupied by the Germans.
• Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt imagines a world in which the Black Death of the 14th century kills 99% of the people in Europe. Over the next seven centuries, China and the Islamic world come to dominate the planet as they colonize a North America whose native peoples have all united in the Hodenosaunee League under the Iroquois, clash in India (a place of many scientific innovations), and the Muslims resettle a depopulated Europe.
• Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna is set in a world where the Red Sea did not part before Moses. As a result, the Roman Empire grew and prospered without the influence of Christianity. The novel is a series of short stories set in the same alternate history, up to 2753 AUC.
• Terry Pratchett's Strata is set in a world where Remus won the right to name the city and not Romulus. As a result, the Roman Empire is known as the Remen empire. Other changes result from this.
• John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting is set in a europe where Emperor Constantine did not adopt Christianity.
• The Shadow of the Lion and This Rough Magic, a collaboration between Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer, is set in a renaissance Europe where the Library of Alexandria was not destroyed by a Christian mob and the now sainted Hypatia of Alexandria and John Chrysostom shaped religious thought, significantly altering how the Church developed. The novels center around the Republic of Venice.
• The Belisarius series of novels by David Drake and Eric Flint take place when opposing factions from the future influence early times through intermediaries for their own purposes; the 'good' side operating through the Byzantine general Belisarius and the 'evil' side operating through the Indian state of Malwa.