Hypotheticals and Counterfactuals: Alternative History   Tags: alternative_history, history  

What is an "alternative history?" This is a genre of historical fiction based on a simple premise - what if? What if history had taken another turn? What would happen if things had gone the other way? Alternative histories are sometimes lumped in with science fiction, but they are really speculative fiction. And they can open our minds to new ways to look at history. They tell us that sometimes the fate of peoples and societies can turn on a dime - that what we have inherited could just as easily been lost to something much worse. What if Pickett's Confederate charge over Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg had carried the day; would there still be the unbearable burden of slavery? What if Goering's Luftwaffe had bombed the RAF airfields for 5 more days in the summer of 1940, instead of switching to London; would Britain and Europe now be under Nazi tyranny? What if Kennedy had bent his head at the precise moment at Dallas; would Vietnam have been a mere footnote in history? This set of resources, reviews, and links outlines some of the best books and authors in this burgeoning field of literature.

CSA: The Confederate States of America [dvd]

• "The film presents an alternative, speculative history to the outcome of the Civil War: What if the South had carried the day? Fast forward to the present, and we are the privileged viewers of a British-made "documentary" about the ensuing course of events. The results follow an insane logic that is stark, Swiftian and deeply, deeply disturbing. Another reviewer has pointed out that the film is an amazing indictment of slavery, although it may not be convincing as a speculative history. I wholeheartedly agree on this point. Putting aside the film's plausibility or lack thereof, the viewer can be in no doubt about the film's views on slavery and racism. I am very impressed by the audacity of the writers and film makers, to present an obviously divisive subject in such a bald-faced fashion, or to the inhuman ends it might lead. Personally, I did not find the outcomes here implausible, if one is willing to follow the logic to its awful conclusion. Rather, it convinced me further still that to look at people as objects in any way, shape or form will ultimately rob everyone of their humanity..." Amazon review.

Uchronia: the alternate history list

• "An annotated bibliography of novels, stories, essays and other material involving the "what ifs" of history. Such texts may also be called alternate histories, alternative histories, allohistories, uchronia, counterfeit worlds, counterfactuals, negative histories, etc. In an alternate history, one or more past events are changed and the subsequent effects on history somehow described. This description may comprise the entire plotline of a novel, or it may just provide a brief background to a short story. Perhaps the most common themes in alternate history are - What if the Nazis won World War II? and What if the Confederacy won the Civil War?"

'What If' literature: Kim Stanley Robinson's The years of rice and salt.

• an NPR radio interview with the author by Neda Ulaby.

Check our copy of The years of rice and salt.

"This vast, magisterial novel is Robinson's most ambitious effort at alternate history, a work on a scale as large as Harry Turtledove employs. The premise is that a mutating, hypervirulent strain of the fourteenth-century Black Death has wiped out nearly the entire population of Europe, and Islam has moved into Europe, China into North America, and South Asia holds the balance between them, thanks to high military skills and energy. All three parties compete for Africa. The resulting alternate history is recognizably that of the last 650 years in our world ... Robinson presents several characters as successive reincarnations of other, earlier ones, which accords with a wheel of karma deriving from both Buddhism and Hinduism. Brilliantly conceived, the book may challenge readers less historically versed, particularly in non-Western cultures, than its author. And perhaps even the historically literate at this moment aren't going to be in the best frame of mind to contemplate a global Islamic superpower." Reviewed in Booklist.

Virtual history edited by Niall Ferguson.

• England without Cromwell : what if Charles I had avoided the Civil War
• British America : what if there had been no American Revolution
• British Ireland : what if home rule had been enacted in 1912
• The Kaiser's European Union : what if Britain had "stood aside" in August 1914
• Hitler's England : what if Nazi Germany had invaded Britain in May 1940
• Nazi Europe : what if Nazi Germany had defeated the Soviet Union
• Stalin's war or peace : what if the Cold War had been avoided
• Camelot continued : what if John F. Kennedy had lived
• 1989 without Gorbachev : what if Communism had not collapsed?

• "What if the colonies had ironed out their differences with the crown and there'd been no American Revolution? What if the blitzkrieging German forces had pushed on in '40, cut off the escape from Dunkirk, and shortly thereafter invaded Britain? What if the bullets had missed JFK? These sorts of hypotheticals quicken the pulse of amateur historians... but the professionals have generally tended to scoff at the "what if" game...for them, only what was could ever have been. Niall Ferguson has assembled a team of young historians who see the past as richer than that in unrealized but plausible alternatives ... in the eleven substantial essays collected here, they venture down various roads not taken, on a series of separate voyages into 'imaginary time,' to explore the plausibility of alternatives and counterfactuals." "Nine intricate 'what if' scenarios are explored in depth including the three I've cited above and two others worth singling out: what if the Cold War had been avoided? and, what if Communism hadn't collapsed? Electrifyingly thought-provoking, learnedly pyrotechnic, this is an involving, entertaining volume." Reviewed by James Mustich A Common Reader 181 (1999).

Plausible worlds : possibility and understanding in history and the social sciences by Geoffrey Hawthorne.

The way it wasn't: great science fiction stories of alternate history edited by Martin Greenberg.

• Infectious alternatives: The plague that saved Jerusalem, 701 BC
• No glory that was Greece: The Persians win at Salamis, 480 BC
• The premature death of Alexander the Great
• Furor teutonicus: the Teutoburg Forest, AD 9
• The Dark Ages made lighter: The consequences of two defeats
• The death that saved Europe: The Mongols turn back, 1242
• If only it had not been such a wet summer: The critical decade of the 1520s
• The immolation of Herman Cortes: Tenochtitlan, June 30, 1521
• The repulse of the English fireships: The Spanish Armada triumphs, August 8, 1588
• Unlikely victory: Thirteen ways the Americans could have lost the revolution
• If the lost order hadn't been lost: Robert E. Lee humbles the Union, 1862
• A Confederate Cannae and other scenarios: How the civil war might have turned out differently
• The what ifs of 1914: The world war that should never have been
• How Hitler could have won the war: The drive for the middle east, 1941; What a taxi driver wrought; Triumph of the dictators
• Our Midway disaster: Japan springs a trap, June 4, 1942
• D-day fails: Atomic alternatives in Europe
• The Soviet invasion of Japan
• Funeral in Berlin: The cold war turns hot
• China without tears: If Chiang Kai-shek hadn't gambled in 1946

"Counterfactuals - what-if scenarios - fueled countless bull sessions in smoke-filled dorm rooms in the 1960s. What if Sitting Bull had had a machine gun at Little Big Horn? What if Attila the Hun had had a time machine? What if Columbus had landed in India after all? Some of those dorm-room speculators grew up to be historians, and their generation (along with a few younger and older scholars) makes a strong showing in this anthology of essays, in which the what-ifs are substantially more plausible. What if Hitler had not attacked Russia when he did? He might have moved into the Middle East and secured the oil supplies the Third Reich so badly needed, helping it retain its power in Europe. What if D-Day had been a failure? The Soviet Union might have controlled all of Europe. What if Sennacherib had pressed the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.? Then the nascent, monotheistic Jewish religion might never have taken hold among the people of Judah - and the daughter religions of Christianity and Islam would never have been born."

"So suggest some of the many first-rate contributors to this collection, which grew from a special issue of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. One of them is classicist Josiah Ober, who suggests that if Alexander the Great had died at the age of 21 instead of 32, Greece would have been swallowed up by Persia and Rome, and the modern Western world would have a much different sensibility - and probably little idea of democratic government. Still other contributors are Stephen E. Ambrose, Caleb Carr, John Keegan, David McCullough, and James McPherson, who examine a range of scenarios populated by dozens of historical figures, including Sir Walter Raleigh, Chiang Kai-shek, Robert E. Lee, Benito Mussolini, and Themistocles. The result is a fascinating exercise in historical speculation, one that emphasizes the importance of accident and of roads not taken in the evolution of human societies across time."

Reviewed by Gregory McNamee.

Alternate Gettysburgs edited by Brian Thomsen.

Alternative histories : eleven stories of the world as it might have been edited by Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg.

• Joseph escapes from the Midianites
  "Hands Off" by Edward Everett Hale
  
  
• Carthage defeats Rome
  "Delenda Est" by Poul Anderson
  
  
• The Moors defeat the Franks at Tours
  "The Wheels of If" by L. Sprague de Camp
  
  
• Amerinds discover medieval Europe
  "In the Circle of Nowhere" by Irving E. Cox, Jr.
  
  
• Queen Elizabeth is assassinated
  "The Lady Margaret" by Keith Roberts
  
  
• England wins the American Revolution
  "He Walked Around the Horses" by H. Beam Piper
  
  
• Benjamin Franklin invents the internal combustion engine
  "Custer's Last Jump" by Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop
  
  
• The French Revolution has a different conclusion
  "The Curfew Tolls" by Stephen Vincent Benet
  
  
• The South wins the Civil War
  "Hush My Mouth" by Suzette Haden Elgin
  
  
• The automobile fails to catch on
  "Interurban Queen" by R.A. Lafferty
  
  
• The atom bomb is not dropped on Hiroshima
  "The Lucky Strike" by Kim Stanley Robinson
  
  
• "Afterword: Allohistory in Science Fiction" by Gordon B. Chamberlain
  
  
• "Pasts That Might Have Been: A Revised Bibliography of Alternative History" by Barton C. Hacker and Gordon B. Chamberlain

The best alternate history stories of the 20th century edited by Harry Turtledove.

• "Several of the subgenre's best-known writers are represented in this collection of 12 short stories and two novellas originally published between 1952 and 2000. Some pieces are concerned with time travel or alternate realities, while others are straightforward short stories set during historical times (including our own altered present)."
  
  "Selections range from Ward Moore's classic "Bring the Jubilee," a picaresque tale set in a defeated post-Civil War North, to Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner's "Mozart in Mirrorshades," a cheeky clashing of myriad futures. Themes often reflect a concern with ethics, individual responsibility, and the consequences of decisions - and, of course, the nature of history. Few readers are likely to enjoy all stories equally well, but most should discover something that is to their taste; for many libraries, Kim Stanley Robinson's stunning "The Lucky Strike," a soldier's story of the atom bomb and Hiroshima, would, on its own, justify the price of the book."
  
  Reviewed by Christine C. Menefee School Library Journal March 2002: 261.

What if?: The world's foremost military historians imagine what might have been by Robert Cowley.

Search for various alternative histories at the University of Oregon Library.

Search for various alternative histories in libraries worldwide.