Alternate History

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"For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail."

– Old proverb

In another world...

Alternate History is a form of Setting Aesthetics and a genre of speculative fiction based on asking the question of "what if history went differently?". Nominally independent from Science Fiction and Fantasy, but often overlapping one or the other. There are plenty of historical events which could have gone differently (if certain decisions were made or factors were slightly different), and if they had it would have drastic consequences on subsequent events.

Exploring the implications of various scenarios where history happens differently, and how the Butterfly Effect creates different worlds from our own, is an exciting narrative exercise which often creates compelling settings for books, movies, TV shows, and games.

Alternate History settings are often described by their "point of divergence' - the event(s) that cause the setting to become different from our world.

Weird Wars is a particularly-popular subgenre of alternate history, especially World War II. Adding magic to WWII is practically a cliche at this point.

For example:

"A struggling, embittered artist and war veteran named Adolf Hitler has a chance encounter which leads him to fall in love with and marry the daughter of an Italian chef. Having found personal contentment, Hitler chooses to remain a private citizen for the rest of his life. Without Hitler, the Nazi Party becomes a minor footnote in history and National Socialism does not rise to power during the Antebellum years. Without the ideology of Nazism, Germany remains at peace with its neighbors, and the Holocaust does not occur."

Does the USSR start WWII decades later by annexing surrounding countries, without the deterrent of nuclear weapons? Does the Western world actually become peaceful? Could some other form of fascism rise in Germany, one which (for example) has no beef with Judaism and does not kick out prominent nuclear physicists? (Which is extremely possible since the Italian school of fascism with Italo Balbo was not racist but statist) While Hitler's existence and qualities are a very famous and well-trodden alternate history question, it still has a myriad of possibilities. The answers that authors give to these kinds of questions, for any scenario, can underpin some very interesting settings.

Common Alternate History scenarios

There are a few Alternate History scenarios which are more common than most. Mostly this has to do with history which is, at least in the broad strokes, common knowledge.

• What if the Nazis won WWII? Probably THE most discussed Alternate History scenario.
  • In particular, if you've ever heard the phrase "Alien Space Bats" in relation to Alternate History to refer to something implausible, the term was originally used in relationship to one of the more implausible such scenarios, Operation Sealion (short version: the proposed German invasion of Britain; widely considered completely implausible because (1) invasions by sea are already so goddamn hard, (2) they'd have to defeat the Royal Air Force before even considering it, (3) also needing to defeat the British Royal Navy before even considering it, (4) also needing to remove British Submarines as a consideration before even considering it, (5) did we mention sea invasions are goddamn hard? Because they really are, and (6) many, many other reasons).
• What if the Confederates won the US Civil War?
• What if the Soviets won the Cold War?
• What if the Cold War went Hot?
• What if the US Became a Fascist Dictatorship?
• What if the US had a Communist Revolution?
• What if the British won the War of Independence?
• What if Napoleon won the Napoleonic Wars?
• What if the French Revolution never happened?
• What if Imperial Germany won the Great War?
• What if the Roman Empire did not fall and survived to the current day?
• What if the Space Race unfolded differently (Soviets got to the moon first, Nazis fled to the Moon after WWII, the British Empire got men into orbit in 1886 using some steampunk super-tech, etc)
• What if Aliens showed up in WWII, the Cold War, the Wild West, etc?
• What if Vampires and Wizards and Werewolves and stuff appeared in WWII, the Cold War, the Wild West, etc?
• What if the Cretaceous Paleogene Extinction Event did not happen and Non-Avian Dinosaurs survived?

Hard AH and Weird History

Another way to break down Alternate History is in regards to if they aim for plausibility or a fantastic worlds. If the English won the American Revolutionary War because of military decisions and the death of George Washington, such an occurrence is entirely plausible given the information of the time period in question. The same could not be said if the Confederates raised an army of Vampires and Werewolves to win the Civil War.

Paratime

A subset of Alternate History which leans into sci-fi and goes off the Infinite Universes model. There are a bunch of different worlds where history has gone differently. Moreover it's possible to travel from world to world. You can build a portal machine and go to a world where the Brits won the American Revolution, adjust the dial and you can go to one where the Nazis won WWII. But the problem is that if you can do it, so can they. So you might have to worry about Nazis coming to our world to cause trouble.

TL/DR: think Sliders.

Islands in the Sea of Time

Another spin on the basic AH settup. A group of people in a town or on a ship or something are doing their normal daily routine when some day for some reason they are cast back in time to the Middle Ages or something. To survive they will have to adapt, make deals with the locals and build a new life for themselves.

Tickover AH

Here for completion's sake. What Sci-Fi gradually turns into after a while. Nineteen Eighty-Four was written in 1948 and published in '49 written from the perspective of Orwell looking forward with an eye of satire and fear, but history thankfully did not take that course and the 80s had more cheesy pop music and neon clothes than telescreens or thought police officers. If you write a story set 10 years in the future, you'll likely see it turn into AH while Dune and Warhammer 40,000 are insulated against this pretty well.

/tg/ Alternate History Games:

• GURPS has written up dozens of alternate histories, some with very obscure points of divergence.
• Deadlands is an alternate Wild West, the point of divergence is the American Civil War continuing due to the reintroduction of magic.
• Bolt Action has the Konflikt 47 spin-off game where WWII ground on for long enough that the various powers started employing wacky gonzo forces.
• Team Yankee is an alt-history wargame, the point of divergence being a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe in 1985.
• Crimson Skies is a skirmish game, with a more severe Spanish Flu eventually leading to the breakup of the USA.
• BattleTech, though you have to look for it. The Cold War ends with a Civil War in the USSR and GM cracks Nuclear Fusion in 2020.
• The Cyberpunk games (Cyberpunk 2020, Cyberpunk 2077: Instead of being the era of Pogs, the Simpsons and Nirvana the 1990s is defined by the FBI, CIA, NSA and DEA Royally Screwing the Pooch resulting in the downfall of America. Also the Soviet Union is still about.
• All Quiet on the Martian Front

/v/ Alternate History Games:

• The Command & Conquer: Red Alert series has a time-travelling Albert Einstein assassinating Hitler as the point of divergence. Allied victory leads to the Red Alert canon timeline, while Soviet victory leads to mainline CnC timeline.
• The MachineGames Wolfenstein history (Starting with Wolf09 and leading to the Bethesda games) lead to the very grimdark future where the Nazis employ sci-fi shit to win WWII, leading to a nightmarish world where the Allies are reduced to literal homeless rebels hiding in ghettos while the victors develop insane things like giant robots and a colony on the moon.

See Also

• Alternate History.com Forums, for all your AH need