What if...?

March 8, 2002 5:21 AM

What if...? Uchronia: The Alternate History List is an annotated bibliography of novels, stories, essays and other material involving the "what ifs" of history. Such texts may also be called as alternate histories, alternative histories, allohistories, uchronia, counterfeit worlds, counterfactuals, negative histories, etc. Alternative history is big on the web. See this alternative Russian Revolution example. For an exaustive AH list check out Uchronia's links pages. Are there any other favourite alternative history sites / books you have enjoyed?
posted by talos (9 comments total)

I enjoyed "Guns of the South" by Harry Turtledove, but it has been years since I read it. I intend to read some of his other alternate history books someday.
posted by allpaws at 6:02 AM on March 8, 2002

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick.
posted by Dean King at 6:45 AM on March 8, 2002

matthew white's surreal histories are great.
posted by kliuless at 7:08 AM on March 8, 2002

SS GB is pretty good. And Peter Dickinson has a couple of YA mysteries using the characters of an alternate British Royal Family (if the future George V had died), starring an altogether lively and appealing teenage princess. And they're not exactly alternate history so much as contemporary fiction, but I've quite enjoyed the Francis Urquhart mysteries -- he's an altogether venal British PM. (Hmm, unsure why I apparently enjoy alternate British history so much.) And I liked some of S.P. Somtow's Terra Novum fiction, where the Romans discovered the steam engine and conquered the Americas.
posted by dhartung at 8:13 AM on March 8, 2002

This is somewhat tangential, but I am utterly fascinated by Steampunk- victorian era, industrial age sci-fi. It's a parallell past where the future "arrived early", featuring steam-powered contraptions, top-hats, imperialist adventure, and so on...
::drool::

Sorry.
posted by kahboom at 8:14 AM on March 8, 2002

weird, i just noticed this steampunk thread on barbelith underground! there's also the comic, which was terrible. but hey chris bachalo :)

btw, dk2 #2 rocks.
posted by kliuless at 8:44 AM on March 8, 2002

My favorite is still Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds. Not quite an alternative history, but more of a story set in a China That Never Was (But Should Have Been). Charming as all get out.
posted by RakDaddy at 10:47 AM on March 8, 2002

What If? - rather obvious title - but a superb collection of essays from military historians debating how key events in history could have turned out otherwise. Worth reading for it's superb narrative on the battle of Salamis highlighting what an astonishing and providential victory it was.
posted by grahamwell at 11:09 AM on March 9, 2002

the big time by fritz leiber
posted by kliuless at 5:21 PM on March 10, 2002