What If? – The Long Tradition of Alternate History in Wargaming and Beyond (Part I)
There’s something irresistible about asking “What if?” It’s the spark behind countless late-night conversations between history buffs, the driving force of many great novels, and, for us at Wargame Design Studio, the question that fuels every scenario we build. Alternate history stories invite us to imagine how a single change — a general’s order delivered late, a storm that never came, a shot that missed its mark — could reshape the world. They’re not mere fantasies, but exercises in possibility, exploring the fine line between what was and what might have been. Long before computers rendered battles in hexes and pixels, writers were already conducting their own simulations on the page: testing ideas, turning points, and the fragile contingencies of history. Before we dive into how wargaming carries this tradition forward, let’s look at where it all began — in the realm of storytelling, where alternate history first took fire.
A First Taste of Alternate History
My own introduction to alternate history came not from an academic essay or a tabletop scenario but from a paperback on a bookshop shelf. Carl Amery’s 1979 novel An den Feuern der Leyermark grabbed my attention with its wild premise: in 1866, a re‑named Bavaria (“Leyermark”) hires a motley “Freye Amerikanische Legion” of former Confederate soldiers, Sioux warriors, and Mexican drifters to tilt the Austro‑Prussian War in its favour.
The plot unfolds in three parts, each named after a woman—gKall, dTeres, and bMaxi—and follows characters like ex‑revolutionary gunsmith Gottfried Schmitzke, who invents a twenty‑shot repeating rifle, and the scheming Ministerial‑Adjunkt von Kyburg, who bankrolls the escapade by selling shares in the legion. Amery peppers the story with Bavarian dialect, digs at nationalism, share‑flogging schemes, and gas explosions, culminating in a French invasion led by a Victor Hugo stand‑in and a festival of nations in Colmar that gives birth to a Central European confederation. It’s part love‑letter to a larger-than-life version of Bavaria, part baroque farce, and it showed me that a “what if” scenario could be both deeply researched and completely off‑the‑wall.
That sense of playful speculation is at the heart of alternate history in general—and of wargaming in particular. We ask: what would the world look like if one decision, one skirmish, or one invention had tipped the balance in another direction? From novels like Amery’s, Turtledove’s, and Dick’s to television shows, films, and video games, storytellers have long indulged in these thought experiments. In the following sections, we’ll explore how authors and creators craft convincing parallel timelines, why such stories resonate with our curiosity about cause and effect, and how this tradition has leapt from page and screen onto the maps and counters of our favourite wargames. Alternate history isn’t just an entertaining parlour game; it’s a way of thinking about history itself—and a reminder that, with the turn of a card or the roll of a die, the past might have played out very differently.
Alternate History in Literature: Three Divergent Classics
Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory series (Timeline-191) – Harry Turtledove is often dubbed the “master of alternate history,” and his Southern Victory saga shows why. This ambitious eleven-book series (published 1997–2007) begins with a single divergence: during the American Civil War, General Lee’s Special Order 191 – a lost dispatch containing Confederate battle plans – is not found by Union forces as it was in reality. Deprived of that intelligence, the Union army fails to stop Lee at Antietam in 1862. The result? The Confederate States achieve independence, forever altering the geopolitical landscape. Turtledove then carries this timeline forward through the decades: a defeated United States stews for revenge while a victorious Confederacy, emboldened by its survival, enters alliances with Britain and France. The series shows an alternate World War I with trench warfare not just in Europe but in North America, as U.S. armies clash with the Confederacy and its imperial allies. Later books depict the rise of a fascist Confederate leader in the 1940s and a second World War analog on American soil. Turtledove’s rich narrative is a case study in plausible historical divergence – he takes one small hinge event and methodically explores how the door swings differently. The novels are filled with historical figures and invented characters alike, all caught in the sweep of a history that echoes our own but veers down a more ominous path. What makes Southern Victory so compelling is the careful reasoning behind every turn: Turtledove, a historian by training, grounds the wild scenario in realistic considerations of economics, technology, and politics. The Confederate victory doesn’t lead to utopia or apocalypse overnight; instead, new rivalries form, old grudges fester, and the world develops in a way that feels disturbingly possible. By following cause and effect rigorously, Turtledove invites us to consider how easily our real 20th-century history could have looked very different – all from one lost piece of paper in 1862.Eric Flint’s 1632 (2000) takes a science‑fiction spin on alternate history and, in doing so, creates a unique collaborative model. In this novel, the small town of Grantville, West Virginia, is abruptly transported from the year 2000 to the middle of the Thirty Years’ War in 1631 Germany. 
What follows isn’t a lone hero changing the past but an entire modern community grappling with survival in a pre‑industrial world. Flint deliberately makes the town itself the protagonist, reflecting his belief that historical change arises from the collective actions of many people rather than from a single great individual. Because the villagers bring modern technology and knowledge with them, their impact on the 17th‑century world feels plausible; they have libraries of history books, engineering manuals, and medical texts, as well as firearms and engines. The premise also explores cultural shock in reverse: down‑timers marvel at indoor plumbing and antibiotics, while up‑timers find themselves contending with plague and religious war.
What makes the 1632 universe remarkable, however, is what happened next. Flint didn’t initially plan a sequel, but readers clamoured for more. Rather than write everything himself, Flint invited other Baen authors—and eventually fans—to help build the universe. He encouraged cross‑fertilization of ideas: different writers would explore different regions or themes, coordinated through timelines and technology lists. This led to a proliferation of mainline novels, side‑thread novels, anthologies, and short stories. The Grantville Gazette, a professionally edited bi‑monthly magazine, became the home for much of this material. It published over a hundred issues of fiction and non‑fiction set in the 1632 world, paying contributors and subjecting their stories to rigorous continuity checks. After Flint died in 2022, the Gazette and its associated Ring of Fire Press closed, but a new company formed by his co‑authors launched Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond, a bimonthly electronic magazine that continues the tradition. A core team acts as showrunner for the universe, maintaining canonical rules (e.g., which modern technologies have been introduced) and inviting new writers to join. This open‑yet‑curated model has turned 1632 into an enduring phenomenon: a shared sandbox where professional authors and passionate fans collaboratively build an ever‑expanding alternate seventeenth century. Few other series have matched its scale or its embrace of community participation.
Note: The first novel of the Ring of Fire series, 1632, is available as a free eBook from baen.com (click the cover above to get to Baen's site, where you can download it) - Did I mention that I am a big fan?
In Dick’s vision, it’s the early 1960s, and the United States has been partitioned into occupied territories – the Nazis control the Eastern states, the Japanese have the West Coast, and a neutral buffer zone lies in the Rocky Mountains. This grim scenario is rendered in quietly haunting detail: everyday Americans adapt to life under totalitarian occupiers, from San Francisco antique dealers catering to Japanese officials, to a high-ranking SS officer plotting struggles within the Reich. What sets High Castle apart is how Dick layers the concept of alternate history within the story itself. One of his characters, a novelist named Hawthorne Abendsen (the titular “Man in the High Castle”), has written a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy – an alternate history within the alternate history, which imagines the Allies actually won the war. This “story within a story” is banned by the Nazi authorities, but it circulates underground and fascinates those who read it, offering a glimpse of a reality that might have been. As readers, we experience a strange doubling: we are reading Dick’s alternate history about an Axis victory, while his characters are reading an alternate history about an Allied victory. The effect is profound and unsettling. Dick uses this device to explore big questions about truth and perception – is there a “true” timeline, or are there many worlds? Can individuals sense that something is off about their reality? Amid the intrigue and political suspense (Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are in a Cold War of sorts in the novel, and plots are brewing on both sides), the characters grapple with faint hopes and existential dread. Dick’s portrayal of an Axis victory world is chillingly plausible on a surface level – he gets the details right, making it all feel real – yet he also introduces a touch of the surreal and metaphysical. By the end of the novel, we’re left pondering not only the narrow question of “what if the Allies lost?” but also the broader notion that history itself may be one big fragile contingency. The Man in the High Castle endures as a landmark in the genre because it combines internal logic (the world of 1962 feels fleshed out and logical, given the premise) with a willingness to question reality itself. It’s an alternate history that holds a mirror up to our own history’s moral choices, while also suggesting that even in a dark timeline, people will dream of a better world – perhaps even the world we know.The Appeal of “What If?” – Why Alternate History Captivates Us
Alternate History on Screen: Visualizing the What-If
While books were the home of alternate history for decades, the concept has made a dramatic leap to the screen in recent years. TV series and movies can bring what-if worlds to life in ways that text sometimes can’t, simply by showing us the startling visuals of a changed timeline. Seeing familiar city streets draped in unfamiliar flags or famous monuments subtly (or not so subtly) altered can send a shiver down anyone’s spine. Let’s look at two notable screen adaptations that have left a strong impression on audiences: Amazon’s series The Man in the High Castle and the HBO film Fatherland.
The Man in the High Castle (2015–2019 series) took Philip K. Dick’s novel and expanded it into a lavish, multi-season TV drama. The show had the difficult task of fleshing out Dick’s early-60s Axis-victorious world on screen – and it succeeded brilliantly in the realm of world-building. The very first episode opens with a sweeping panorama of an alternate Times Square in 1962, where the billboards and neon lights share space with giant swastikas and other Nazi insignia. 
It’s a jarring, unforgettable image: one of the most iconic American locations “perverted” by the aesthetics of a Nazi empire. Viewers instantly grasp the stakes of this alternate world without a word of dialogue – the visual storytelling does the heavy lifting. Throughout the series, details large and small reinforce the alternate reality. In New York (part of the Greater Nazi Reich), modernist skyscrapers wear the eagle emblems of the Reich, and stormtroopers patrol the streets in crisp uniforms as if it were Berlin. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, reimagined as the Japanese Pacific States, the atmosphere mixes 60s Americana with Japanese culture – think San Francisco with kanji on the shop signs and kempeitai military police in the background. Perhaps the most chilling is the show’s reimagining of American symbols: for instance, the Statue of Liberty is hinted to have been replaced by a grotesque Nazi monument called “The New Colossus” in this timeline. All these visual cues drive home the emotional impact of the scenario. It’s one thing to read about an occupied America; it’s another to see a version of the Stars and Stripes with a swastika in place of the stars. The series also leveraged its visual medium to underscore themes: a recurring element is the use of actual historical newsreels – but in the show, these become contraband films from alternate realities (our reality, essentially) that resistance members risk their lives to find. Watching characters literally watch footage of the Allies winning the war – footage that looks like real WWII newsreel film – creates a meta-layer of alternate history that is uniquely cinematic. In short, the High Castle series illustrated how screen adaptations can amplify alternate history by making it visceral. The sight of those what-if images lingers with the viewer, making the speculation feel hauntingly real.
Another standout example is Fatherland (1994), a made-for-TV movie based on Robert Harris’s bestselling novel. Fatherland is set in a world where Nazi Germany won a truncated World War II in Europe (defeating the USSR and forcing a peace with the U.S.), and by 1964 is locked in a Cold War against an isolationist America. The story is a noir-ish detective thriller – a Nazi police officer uncovers dark secrets on the eve of Adolf Hitler’s 75th birthday celebrations – but what many viewers remember is the film’s depiction of a very different Berlin. 
Taking inspiration from Albert Speer’s architectural plans, Fatherland shows us a monumental, redesigned Berlin as the capital of a victorious Reich. There are shots of massive fascist architecture dominating the skyline – at one point, we glimpse a towering dome structure (the Great Hall) that Hitler had intended to build in real life but never could. The cityscape is draped in red banners for a Nazi Victory Day parade, complete with rows of black-uniformed SS men and a gigantic portrait of Hitler looming over the festivities. It’s both grand and grotesque. Because this is the 1960s, the film also has fun imagining the pop culture of an extended Nazi era: there’s a brief scene showing a television advert for a kitschy musical romance film about Hitler’s youth – a creepy bit of propaganda programming that feels entirely plausible in this timeline. And yet, for all the spectacle, Fatherland stays grounded and even subtle in parts. Much of the film is two characters (Rutger Hauer as the German detective and Miranda Richardson as an American journalist) sneaking around trying to uncover evidence of the Holocaust, which in this world has been successfully hidden from public knowledge. The tension comes from how normal much of this 1964 society seems on the surface – people go to work, have families, listen to music – and how horrific the truth is beneath that surface. That contrast hits hard when visualized: an outwardly modern, prosperous Berlin with efficient Volkswagens and tidy suburbs… built on a foundation of lies and murder. Fatherland shows that alternate history on screen can use visual irony to great effect, juxtaposing the ordinary and the unthinkable. The film’s final image (spoiler alert) of the detective standing alone in a grey, drizzly Berlin – having learned the terrible truth about what his country did, but failing to expose it – leaves the audience with a heavy heart and a head full of questions about how things might have been. It underlines how even a fictional alternate timeline can speak to real historical truths: in this case, the moral gulf between what the Third Reich tried to project and what it really was. Seeing that gap represented in alternate 1960s newsreels, cityscapes, and ceremonies etches the lesson in our minds more indelibly than words alone could.
These screen adaptations demonstrate the unique power of film and television to make alternate history tangible. Through set design, costumes, CGI, and all the tools of visual storytelling, they immerse us in a fully realized parallel world. For fans of the genre, it’s a thrill to catch the small details (“Look, the flag has 48 stars, meaning two more states seceded!” or “That U-Boat movie poster in the background implies a different cultural timeline”). And for newcomers, a strong visual can be the hook that sparks curiosity about the whole concept of alternate history. It’s safe to say that shows like The Man in the High Castle have introduced many people to what-if scenarios for the first time – leaving them eager to explore more, perhaps even in interactive forms.
Alternate History in Video Games: Interactive What-If Worlds
If books let us imagine alternate histories and movies let us see them, video games let us step into them. In the past decade, alternate history has become a popular theme in gaming, providing rich backdrops for action and strategy alike. What’s more, games allow for a special twist: they often hand the reins to the player, letting you shape how the alternate timeline unfolds. This interactive element makes games a natural home for “what-if” exploration. Let’s look at two different ways games tackle alternate history: one through a tightly scripted narrative shooter, and another through an open-ended grand strategy sandbox.
Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014) (together with is prequel and sequel, Old Blood and New Colossus) is a prime example of using alternate history as a stage for blockbuster action. This first-person shooter boldly posits an alternate 1960s in which Nazi Germany won World War II – a premise that, by now, is almost a sub-genre of its own. But The New Order cranks up the pulp adventure dial to eleven. The game’s story follows B.J. Blazkowicz, a former Allied soldier, as he awakens in 1960 to find the world unrecognizable: the Nazis have conquered the globe, crushing all opposition with the aid of astonishing technological advances. Visually and thematically, Wolfenstein takes full advantage of the setting. Players battle Panzerhund robot dogs on the streets of a conquered London, infiltrate a fortress that used to be the London Nautica science museum (now repurposed for evil experiments), and even launch a desperate mission to the Moon, where – of course – the Reich has a secret base.
The art designers had a field day extrapolating a Nazi retro-futurism, complete with hulking mechanized soldiers, laser weapons, and propaganda broadcasts in multiple languages. One moment you might be marveling (between gunfights) at a Beatles-esque rock music track rewritten to praise the Führer, and the next you’re scanning the horizon at a skyline dominated by brutalist superscrapers and zeppelins. It’s over-the-top in the best way. Crucially, though, The New Order keeps a foot in plausibility – at least within its sci-fi parameters. The game explains that the Nazis’ wunder-tech came from discoveries of a secret ancient society (a fictional twist), and because they won the war early, they had 20 years to develop everything from cybernetic troops to space travel. It’s internally consistent: given the crazy premise, the world holds together logically. And what truly engages players is the chance to change that world. As Blazkowicz, you join a scrappy resistance movement, turning the tide bit by bit. There’s even a subtle branching in the storyline – a choice early on lets you experience one of two timelines where some characters live or die – adding a layer of personal what-if within the larger alternate history. By the end of the game, as you fight a climactic battle in a towering castle, you feel the catharsis of actively undoing an awful alternate past. Wolfenstein’s alternate history works so well in a game format because it gives the player agency to push back against the dark scenario. Beyond just observing a what-if, games let us participate in them, making the exploration that much more dynamic and personal.
On the other end of the spectrum is Hearts of Iron IV (2016), a grand strategy game that serves as a vast sandbox for World War II alternate histories. Unlike a linear shooter or scripted narrative, Hearts of Iron IV (HOI4) doesn’t tell a fixed story. Instead, it hands you the reins of any nation in 1936 (or 1939) and says, “History is in your hands now.” You can replay the war as it really happened, but the game’s true appeal lies in its capacity for divergence. Through its system of national focus trees and player choices, HOI4 enables an impressive range of plausible what-if scenarios. As Germany, you can overthrow Hitler and restore the Kaiser or embrace democracy; as the United States, you might keep Charles Lindbergh’s America First movement alive and steer the country toward isolationism—or even alliance with the Axis; as the Soviet Union, you might purge Stalin and see how a different leader reshapes events.
Even the AI nations can chart alternate paths when “historical mode” is disabled, producing unexpected yet credible outcomes—perhaps a Communist Britain or a Fascist America entering the fray. Each playthrough becomes its own timeline: one game might see Spain joining the Allies to help liberate Europe; another might drag the war into the 1950s with nuclear stalemates. Because the game models industry, research, logistics, and diplomacy in great depth, these results feel logical and earned—you see how and why history diverges, because you made the decisions that caused it.
That said, Paradox deliberately sets boundaries to keep these worlds believable. As one of the designers explained in a development diary, "the main thing here is to stay as true to real events as possible while still allowing for plausible divergence.” The team fine-tunes AI behavior, events, and balance to ensure that while history may unfold differently, it still does so recognizably—no Spain joining the Allies in 1939 on a whim, no American civil war erupting mid-conflict.
This philosophy of plausible divergence resonates with how we approach design in our own titles. Many of our scenarios come in two versions: a purely historical setup that reflects the exact situation—say, at 6:00 a.m. on the first day of battle—and a carefully constructed “what if” variant. The latter might imagine a single credible change: an allied corps arriving two hours early, or a subordinate general taking unauthorized initiative. Each serves as a self-contained thought experiment, exploring how one altered decision could shift the outcome. Crucially, we never rewrite the logic of the conflict or the capabilities of the armies—only the conditions at the margins where history might plausibly have turned.
In this way, both Hearts of Iron IV and our own scenario design operate on the same principle: alternate history works best when it feels earned, when every divergence follows a believable chain of cause and effect. The fun lies not only in winning, but in witnessing the unfolding story of a world that never was—but could have been—shaped in part by your own hand.
Wargaming: A Vehicle for Alternate History
For those who love history and games, wargaming is more than a pastime – it’s a way of thinking about the past. Every good wargame is, at heart, a counterfactual experiment. Once you sit down at a table or boot up a simulation and begin making decisions, you are creating an alternate timeline. Will you hold the high ground this time, or withdraw? Will you launch a bold flanking manoeuvre, or dig in and hope the enemy breaks against your lines? The answers to those questions diverge from the record, and the results play out across the map. Wargaming encourages us not just to learn what happened, but to ask why it happened and whether it might have been otherwise. That spirit of questioning lies at the centre of alternate history, and it’s why wargamers have long been enthusiastic explorers of “what if” scenarios.
Historically, some of the earliest alternate‑history wargames were conducted by professional militaries. In 1974, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst ran a staff wargame to explore Operation Sea Lion – the German invasion of Britain that never happened. Officers and historians played British and German commanders to see whether the Wehrmacht might have crossed the Channel successfully. The umpires concluded the invasion would have been a devastating defeat for Germany, but the exercise itself showed how wargaming can test plausible alternative outcomes. Even decades after the fact, such simulations reveal strengths and weaknesses in historical plans and spark debate about contingency.
Commercial board wargames quickly embraced the same idea. One early example was Operation Olympic: The Invasion of Japan (SPI, 1974), a solitaire game that simulates the planned Allied invasion of Kyushu in November 1945. Players choose landing beaches and juggle logistics while the Japanese AI tries to blunt the assault. Because Operation Olympic was never executed, the game offers one of the few ways to explore how it might have unfolded. Other board games followed suit. Even board games that mix alternate history with supernatural elements are available. Werwolf: Insurgency in Occupied Germany 1945–1948 (2025) imagines a bitter guerrilla war erupting after Nazi Germany’s defeat, with Allied, Soviet, Edelweiss, and Werwolf factions vying for control of a devastated country. Players must recruit partisans, secure scientists, and defend key cities – challenges a real post‑war insurgency could have presented. Hypothetical invasion games such as Sealion and miniatures campaigns like Bolt Action: Campaign – Sea Lion take the idea of a German invasion of Britain and turn it into linked scenarios, inviting players to test invasion plans and British countermeasures. These games aren’t fantasy; they’re rooted in real operational plans and bring to life the alternate paths history might have taken.
Not all alternate‑history wargames rely on post‑1945 scenarios. Board wargames abound that ask whether Stonewall Jackson could have changed the outcome at Gettysburg or whether Napoleon might have triumphed at Waterloo if his corps had arrived earlier. Others explore unbuilt naval programs or hypothetical Cold War crises. What unites them is the way they open a window onto contingent history. By trying different strategies and seeing their consequences, players gain insight into the factors that constrained real commanders.
The digital era has expanded these possibilities without eclipsing them. On a computer, designers can model entire campaigns and even global conflicts with a level of detail impractical on a tabletop. Many digital wargames include optional scenarios that deliberately change one or two variables to see what happens.
What these examples show is that wargaming serves as a bridge between history and speculation. Whether on cardboard maps or computer screens, wargames treat the past not as a static story but as a web of choices and consequences. They make the contingencies of history tangible by letting us explore them ourselves – and they remind us that, for every event that happened, countless other possibilities were considered, attempted or averted. For a community steeped in history, there is no more natural home for alternate history than the wargame table.
As we conclude Part I, we’ve journeyed from novels to Netflix to the digital screen, seeing how alternate history has grown into a rich tradition across media. The enduring appeal lies in that mix of curiosity, analysis, and imagination we discussed – and nowhere do those combine more vividly than in wargaming. In Part B, we’ll turn our focus squarely to the tabletop and the computer simulation of a battlefield. We’ll dig into how Wargame Design Studio builds plausible divergence into its scenarios, from large‑scale operations that never happened – such as the planned invasions of Britain and Japan or the renewed Axis drive on Moscow – to the branching campaign structures in its early‑modern titles. We’ll explore how games like Sealion ’40, Japan ’45, Japan ’46, and others give you the keys to an alternate war, and how pre‑20th‑century campaigns invite you to make strategic choices that ripple through a war’s outcome. If you’ve ever finished a scenario and thought, “Now let’s try it again, but what if …,” you’ll feel right at home. Stay tuned for Part II, where we celebrate the creative design and freedom that make historical wargaming a playground for alternate history.
Selected Alternate History works mentioned
- Carl Amery – An den Feuern der Leyermark (1979)
- Harry Turtledove – Southern Victory/Timeline-191 series (1997–2007) (American Front and pre- & sequels)
- Eric Flint – 1632 (2000) and the extended 1632/Ring of Fire series
- Philip K. Dick – The Man in the High Castle (1962)
- The Man in the High Castle – Amazon Prime Video series (2015–2019)
- Wolfenstein: The New Order – Video game (MachineGames/Bethesda Softworks, 2014)
...and here are some more books I can recommend if you like the genre
Note: Clicking the cover brings you to Amazon
Len Deighton – SS-GB
In Nazi-occupied Britain, a weary detective investigates murder and espionage amid an uneasy collaborationist regime — a taut spy thriller that captures the moral fog of a conquered nation.
Norman Spinrad – The Iron Dream
A razor-sharp satire masquerading as a pulp sci-fi novel “written” by a disillusioned Adolf Hitler, who had emigrated to the US, exposing the fascist undercurrents of heroic adventure and the seductive aesthetics of power.
Ward Moore – Bring the Jubilee
A haunting meditation on defeat: in a world where the Confederacy triumphed, a historian from the impoverished Union travels back in time to witness Gettysburg — and accidentally changes everything.
Kingsley Amis – The Alteration
A Europe without the Reformation: science is suppressed, art is sacred, and a gifted choirboy’s fate could upend centuries of religious dominance. A masterwork of quiet, speculative menace.
Jo Walton – Farthing
The first of Walton’s Small Change trilogy depicts a polite fascism creeping into post-war Britain after an early peace with Nazi Germany — a country-house mystery masking deep political dread.
Stephen Baxter – Voyage
An alternate space race told with documentary realism: instead of the Moon, NASA sets its sights on Mars, charting a plausible path history might have taken if ambition had outpaced caution.
Robert Silverberg – Roma Eterna
What if the Roman Empire never fell? Silverberg imagines fifteen centuries of continuous imperial rule — from Caesar’s heirs to astronauts in togas — in a sweeping chronicle of civilization without collapse.
Michael Moorcock – Behold the Man
A modern man obsessed with faith travels back to first-century Judea to meet Jesus — only to discover that destiny has a darker twist. A bold fusion of theology, paradox, and counterfactual history.
Keith Roberts – Pavane
Queen Elizabeth I is assassinated, leading to a Catholic-dominated England under the Pope’s rule.
Philip Roth – The Plot Against America
Charles Lindbergh becomes U.S. president and steers the country toward fascism and anti-Semitism.
I have been a big fan of alternative history books for many years. To me, Turtledove’s “Guns of the South” is not really alternative history because bad guys from our time go back to the Civil War era to arm the Confederates with modern weapons. It was sort of a dark twist to the notion that there is a “correct” history that must be protected or established. Alternative history is when the “history”flows naturally from a different event or circumstance. One interesting book that was not mentioned that can show how messing with history can go very wrong is “Making History” by Stephen Fry. Modern scientists figure out a way to introduce a contraceptive to Hitler’s father. Hitler is never born. However, there is still a Nazi Party and World War II is fought by smarter, more competent people. Again, technically not alternative history but thought-provoking.
This is a great post. I love alternative history. I started with Turtledove (Guns of the South) and really enjoyed his early books but his later work became too repetitive, sometimes the same phrase repeated over and over like he just need to pad out the work so I finally gave him up because of that.
Moorecocks Behold the Man is a classic, loved it. Not much in line with war gaming, but still an excellent read.
I had just seen someone post about 1632 in the forums here and so I got it and put in the queue before I saw this blog. Its an interesting premise and I hope it will be a good read.
Thanks for a fascinating blog post!!
Absolutely blown away by this article. Great stuff. Thank you
I have a degree in history and still read a lot of history. I also enjoy alternate history very much and it recently occurred to me why that is. Reading history you know how the story ends – not so in alternate history!
Spot on analysis! Personal favorites include anthologies and works by Tsouris and Hackett. ‘Seven Deadly Scenarios’ is also worth a look.
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