<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

The underlying premise of the fictional sub-genre alternate history is that an action performed by a person or persons—at a pivotal moment in human events—changes the course away from what is accepted as genuine history. Vivid examples include stories in which the Confederate States of America win the American Civil War, JFK is not assassinated, or Nazi Germany wins World War II.

Alternate history novels often begin by leading up to the pivotal event, thus establishing that the premise had roots in “our” world. Once the pivotal event has occurred, the writer will follow the new course of history, often showing the results of the change in human terms. While many alternate histories focus on the results of war, there are other premises—for example, one in which the Beatles don’t break up. The thing that distinguishes alternate history from historical fiction is that the events of an alternate history clearly could not have occurred in the world as we know it.

While there have been earlier examples of fictional works that include fragments of alternate history speculation (Livy’s History of Rome from Its Foundation), the earliest published work that is entirely alternate history is Louis Napoleon Geoffroy-Château’s Napoléon et la conquête du monde (1836), in which Napoleon avoids the disastrous Moscow winter of 1812. A number of notable alternate histories appeared in the 1800s and early 1900s, including Castello Holford’s Aristopia (1895), Murray Leinster’s short story Sidewise in Time, and L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall.

Alternate history has been most frequently explored as an offshoot of science fiction, in novels such as Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1953), Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962), Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South (1992), Orson Scott Card’s Seventh Son (1987), Eric Flint’s 1632 (2000), John Birmingham’s Weapons of Choice (2004), and S. M. Stirling’s Island in the Sea of Time (1997). Often these stories involve a science fiction element, such as time travel or intervention by aliens, but many pivot on a simple event that takes history on a different course, such as Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004), in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the election of 1940. Other notable authors of alternate history include Vladimir Nabokov (Ada, 1969) and Robert Harris (Fatherland, 1992).

Alternate history has also been the subject of essays, some by major historians. An early example would be Sir John Squire’s If It had Happened Otherwise (1932) and, more recently, the well-received What If (1999), edited by Robert Cowley and Stephen E. Ambrose.

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