Alternate history, also called alternative history, allohistory, althist, or A.H., is a type of speculative fiction where one or more events from real history happen in a different way. These stories imagine "what if?" questions about important moments in history and show how the world might change if those events had turned out differently. They usually include a point where history changes from what actually happened, called a point of divergence (POD), and then describe the effects of that change. Some alternate history stories are grouped under science fiction or historical fiction. Since the 1950s, many stories in this genre have used ideas like traveling through time between different timelines, sensing other worlds, or showing history split into separate time lines.
Definition
Alternate history, also known as alternative history, is a type of fiction that imagines how history might have changed if certain events had happened differently. This genre often asks questions like, "What if a major event in history had turned out another way?"
To be considered alternate history, a story must meet three key conditions:
Some stories set in the past or present, written before those time periods, such as the book 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke, the book 1984 (1949) by George Orwell, or the film 2012 (2009), are sometimes wrongly called alternate history. These works do not change the facts of history as people understood them at the time they were created.
Alternate history is similar to, but different from, secret history. Secret history can be real or fictional and describes events that may have happened but did not influence the history we know. It is also related to, but not the same as, counterfactual history. Counterfactual history is a method of studying history that explores what might have happened to help explain why events actually unfolded the way they did.
History of literature
Speculative and counterfactual thinking about historical events appears in some of the earliest works of Western historical writing. One of the earliest known examples is found in the Roman historian Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita Libri (Book IX, sections 17–19). Livy imagined an alternative 4th century BC in which Alexander the Great had survived to invade Europe as planned. He asked what would have happened if Rome had faced Alexander in war and concluded that the Romans would likely have defeated him.
An even earlier example of speculative material appears in Herodotus’s Histories.
In the 11th century, the theologian and respected religious leader Peter Damian explored a philosophical form of counterfactual speculation in his work De Divina Omnipotentia. While discussing the limits of God’s power, he considered whether God could change past events, such as making it so that Rome had never been founded.
One of the earliest works of fiction with clear alternate-history elements is Joanot Martorell’s 1490 epic romance Tirant lo Blanch. Written when the fall of Constantinople to the Turks was still a recent and traumatic memory for Christian Europe, the novel depicts a Breton knight, Tirant, who helps the remnants of the Byzantine Empire and successfully repels the invading Ottoman forces of Mehmet II, preventing the city’s fall to Islamic conquest.
One of the earliest works of alternate history to reach a large audience was Louis Geoffroy’s Histoire de la Monarchie universelle: Napoléon et la conquête du monde (1812–1832) (History of the Universal Monarchy: Napoleon and the Conquest of the World) (1836). The novel imagines Napoleon’s First French Empire victorious in the French invasion of Russia (1812) and in an invasion of England in 1814, eventually unifying the world under Bonaparte’s rule.
The Book of Mormon (published 1830) has been described as an "alternative history" by historian Richard Lyman Bushman, biographer of Joseph Smith. The text presents itself as a translation of golden plates recounting the story of a Jewish group that migrated from Israel to the Americas around 600 B.C., becoming the ancestors of Native Americans. Bushman notes that the work "turned American history upside down" by offering an alternative national narrative that could foster alternative values.
In English, the first known complete alternate history is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story "P.’s Correspondence," published in 1845. It depicts a man deemed mad for perceiving a different 1845 in which long-dead figures, including poets Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats, actor Edmund Kean, British politician George Canning, and Napoleon, are still alive.
The first novel-length alternate history in English is Castello Holford’s Aristopia (1895). Unlike the nationalistic tone of Geoffroy’s work, Aristopia portrays a utopian society: the earliest settlers in Virginia discover a reef of solid gold and are able to build a utopian society in North America.
In 1905, H.G. Wells published A Modern Utopia. As explicitly noted in the book itself, Wells’s main aim in writing it was to set out his social and political ideas, with the plot serving mainly as a vehicle to explain them. This book introduced the idea of a person being transported from a point in our familiar world to the precise geographical equivalent point in an alternate world in which history had gone differently. The protagonists undergo various adventures in the alternate world and are then transported back to our world, again to the precise geographical equivalent point. Since then, that has become a staple of the alternate history genre.
A number of alternate history stories and novels appeared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see, for example, Joseph Edgar Chamberlin’s The Ifs of History [1907] and Charles Petrie’s If: A Jacobite Fantasy [1926]). In 1931, British historian Sir John Squire collected a series of essays from some of the leading historians of the period for his anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise. In that work, scholars from major universities, as well as important non-academic authors, turned their attention to such questions as "If the Moors in Spain Had Won" and "If Louis XVI Had Had an Atom of Firmness." The essays range from serious scholarly efforts to Hendrik Willem van Loon’s fanciful and satiric portrayal of an independent 20th-century New Amsterdam, a Dutch city-state on the island of Manhattan. Among the authors included were Hilaire Belloc, André Maurois, and Winston Churchill.
One of the entries in Squire’s volume was Churchill’s "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg," written from the viewpoint of a historian in a world in which the Confederacy had won the American Civil War. The entry considers what would have happened if the North had been victorious (in other words, a character from an alternate world imagines a world more like the real one we live in, although it is not identical in every detail). Speculative work that narrates from the point of view of an alternate history is variously known as "recursive alternate history," a "double-blind what-if," or an "alternate-alternate history." Churchill’s essay was one of the influences behind Ward Moore’s alternate history novel Bring the Jubilee, in which General Robert E. Lee won the Battle of Gettysburg and paved the way for the eventual victory of the Confederacy in the American Civil War (named the "War of Southron Independence" in this timeline). The protagonist, the autodidact Hodgins Backmaker, travels back to the aforementioned battle and inadvertently changes history, which results in the emergence of our own timeline and the consequent victory of the Union instead.
The American humorist author James Thurber parodied alternate history stories about the American Civil War in his 1930 story "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox," which he accompanied with this very brief introduction: "Scribner’s magazine is publishing a series of three articles: 'If Booth Had Missed Lincoln,' 'If Lee Had Won the Battle of Gettysburg,' and
Television
1983 is set in a world where the Iron Curtain never fell and the Cold War continues until 2003.
An Englishman's Castle tells the story of a soap opera writer in 1970s England, a country that lost World War II. England is ruled by a government that works with the enemy but tries to keep British life looking normal. Over time, the writer discovers the truth about the situation.
In the Community episode "Remedial Chaos Theory," six members of a study group roll a die to decide who must go downstairs to accept a pizza delivery. This creates six different versions of the world. Characters from the worst version, called the "darkest timeline," later appear in the main version of the story.
Confederate was a planned HBO series set in a world where the South won the US Civil War. Social media criticism during its planning led to the series being canceled before any episodes were made.
Counterpart follows a United Nations agency that monitors movement between different worlds. Two of these worlds, Alpha and Prime, are in a Cold War.
The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer is a 1977 telemovie where George Custer survives the Battle of Little Bighorn and faces a court-martial for his poor performance.
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America presents itself as a British TV documentary that reveals dark secrets of the Confederacy in a world where the South won the US Civil War.
Dark Skies describes how much of history since the 1940s has been shaped by a secret government deal with aliens. One alien race can control humans, while others who are immune fight back.
In Doctor Who, the main character visits two alternate worlds in the TV show and several others in related media. The Third Doctor visits a world where fascist Great Britain is close to destruction in Inferno. The Tenth Doctor visits a Britain with a president and blimps as common transportation, facing Cybermen in Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel. The Seventh Doctor deals with a threat from an alternate world in Battlefield, where magic is real, and an alternate version of the Doctor is hinted to be Merlin.
Fallout is set in a 1950s-style world that suffered a global nuclear war, destroying much of the Earth.
Fatherland is a TV movie set in a 1960s alternate world where US President Joseph Kennedy and Adolf Hitler meet to end their Cold War 15 years after the Axis victory in World War II. An American reporter discovers proof of the Final Solution, threatening the meeting.
The anime Fena: Pirate Princess features an alternate 18th century.
For All Mankind shows an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union lands on the Moon before the US Apollo program, leading to a more intense Space Race.
Fringe involves a character who crosses into another reality to steal a version of his son after the son dies. The second world has a slightly different history, including only one Carolina and Upper Michigan as a state. The 9/11 attack damaged the White House instead of the Twin Towers, and major DC Comics events differ, such as Superman not dying in Crisis on Infinite Earths. The action harms the second world, but the two realities eventually work together to fix the damage.
The Man in the High Castle is an adaptation of a novel showing a world where Axis Powers won World War II.
Motherland: Fort Salem explores a female-dominated world where witchcraft is real. This world diverged from ours when the Salem witch trials ended with an agreement between witches and non-magical humans.
Noughts + Crosses is a British TV show set in a world where a powerful West African empire colonized Europe 700 years before the series begins.
Parallels was a planned TV show whose pilot was later released as a Netflix movie. The story follows a building that shifts between realities every 36 hours.
The Plot Against America is an HBO miniseries where Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 US presidential election as an anti-war candidate, leading the country toward fascism.
Primal features characters from the Prehistoric era encountering Ancient Egypt and Vikings. In one episode, Charles Darwin is alive in 1890 instead of 1882.
Sliders explores different alternate realities by having the protagonist "slide" into various parallel dimensions of Earth.
The Great Martian War 1913-1917 is an alternate history mockumentary where giant Martians invade Earth during World War I, causing technological advances and the Allied and Central Powers fighting together.
SS-GB shows a world where the Axis Powers quickly win World War II, killing Churchill and installing a puppet government. British resistance fights back.
In Star Trek TV shows and related media, a Mirror Universe is shown where Earth has an empire that rules other planets. Doppelgängers of the main characters appear in that reality.
Watchmen is set 34 years after the events of the comic book, in a world where costumed heroes were initially welcomed but later banned.
The Loki series (2021 & 2023) on Disney+ shows an agency that prevents changes to the timeline. Alternate versions of Loki from different universes appear.
The What If…? series (2021–2024) on Disney+ explores alternate universes where different events from the Marvel Cinematic Universe films occurred.
Online
Fans of alternate history have used the internet since the early days to share their work and help others find information about alternate history. At first, they used mailing lists and Usenet groups. Later, they used web databases and online forums. The "Usenet Alternate History List" was first shared on April 11, 1991, in the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf-lovers. In May 1995, a new newsgroup called soc.history.what-if was created to share and discuss alternate history ideas. Its popularity decreased as people moved from unmoderated Usenet groups to moderated web forums. One popular forum was AlternateHistory.com, which calls itself the "largest gathering of alternate history fans on the internet" and has more than 10,000 active members.
In addition to these forums, in 1997, Uchronia: The Alternate History List was created as an online collection. It now includes over 2,900 alternate history books, stories, essays, and other written works in many languages. Uchronia was chosen twice as the Sci Fi Channel's "Sci Fi Site of the Week."
Uchronia
In Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, and Galician, the words uchronie, ucronia, and ucronía are native terms for alternate history. These words are the source of the English word uchronia, which was borrowed from another language. The English term uchronia is a new word that sometimes means the same thing as alternate history. However, it can also now describe a larger category of fiction that includes alternate history, stories about parallel universes, and stories set in futuristic or non-time-based settings.