Alternative history is a subgenre of speculative fiction that explores what would happen if one detail in history was changed. It can be realistic or include unrealistic plot devices. Historical fantasy, steampunk, future history, and time travel stories are related genres. Alternate history forces a re-examination of our world and satisfies our urge for adventure and discovery.
Alternative history is usually classified as a subgenre within the larger genre of speculative fiction. In its strictest sense, an alternative history is set on our earth, with the same laws of causality and physics. No magical or fantastical elements intrude on the workings of our real world. No inappropriate technological advances peep like wristwatches on Roman soldiers in the movie Spartacus or airplane shadows on the hills of Rhett Butler’s Civil War plantation. For an alternative history purist like Harry Harrison, only one detail has changed. It could be small, like the nail for lack of which a war was lost, or it could be huge, like the popular trope “What if the Germans win WWII?”
Regardless of how big or small the departure from our timeline was, like the butterfly effect, it has world-changing and plot-driving consequences. Determine the boundaries and new configurations of our parallel world in history. Harry Harrison’s Stars and Stripes trilogy hinges on an unrewritten letter, ultimately leading to an early end to the Civil War with a North and a South battling a British invasion. Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union explores what might have happened if a Jewish homeland had been created in Alaska. Philip Roth’s Plot Against America is an alternate history that hinges on Charles Lindbergh defeating Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election.
Taking a less strict view of narrow historical possibility and realism, there are hundreds of other stories that fall under the alternate history umbrella, but make use of impossible or unrealistic plot devices. Want to know what would have happened if an alien invasion shortened WW2 and the defeated aliens remained part of the civil rights movement and 1960s counterculture? Check out Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar and Colonization series. Is magic more your thing? Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker novels about a frontier America where folk magic worked might be just the thing.
There are certain types of stories that appear to be alternative stories, but they don’t quite fit this model. A brief clarification is needed. Historical fantasy is very similar to alternate history in that it makes significant use of a historical time, place, and culture. But in historical fantasy, history usually forms the backdrop to what history is really about: romance, sorcery, cryptids, and advanced technology. Advanced technology brings steampunk sci-fi into the fray. Steampunk is a sub-genre most often set in the Victorian era, but with the science fiction miracles of Jules Vernesian made real.
Future history attempts to predict what will happen. Most often they are written from the perspective of hundreds of years into our future and describe the ebb and flow of a fictional story over the next few years, often including scandalous new inventions, discoveries and social trends. The last category of fiction that tends to be a kissed cousin to alternate history is time travel stories. These tales depend on a character escaping his own place and time and the adventures that follow in those other times, with varying degrees of historical accuracy.
Alternate histories are the ultimate “what if?” Like any other kind of speculative fiction, alternative history, when done right, forces a re-examination of our place and time, while grating our natural human urge for adventure, exploration, and discovery. Alternate history is perhaps the most apt subgenre to show us the wonder of the world around us and how it came to be as it is.
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