Editing Alternate history (section)

{{Short description|Genre of speculative fiction, where one or more historical events occur differently}}
{{Distinguish|Counterfactual history|Pseudohistory}}
[[File:1920 - before the storm.jpg|thumb|right|260px|A painting by [[Jakub Różalski]] depicts an alternate history of the 1920s in [[Iron Harvest]], in which rural peasants must contend with giant mechanical walking tanks.]]
{{Alternate history sidebar}}
{{Speculative fiction sidebar|cTopic=Alternate history}}
'''Alternate history''' (also referred to as '''alternative history''', '''allohistory''',<ref name="allohistory">{{cite web |date=4 May 2002 |title=Allohistory |url=http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-all1.htm |access-date=25 November 2012 |publisher=World Wide Words}}</ref> '''althist''', or simply '''A.H.''') is a [[subgenre]] of [[speculative fiction]] in which one or more [[historical events]] have occurred but are resolved differently than in actual history.<ref name=Collins/><ref>''[[Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction]]'' (Oxford University Press, 2007) notes the preferred usage is "Alternate History", which was coined in 1954; "Alternative History" was first used in 1977, pp. 4–5.</ref><ref>{{Cite news|title=Alternative history (AH/althist) handout|url=http://alison-morton.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Alternative-history-handout.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://alison-morton.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Alternative-history-handout.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|last=Morton|first=Alison|date=2014|work=alison-morton.com/}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/Alternate+History+(fiction+genre) |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130203202248/http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/Alternate+History+(fiction+genre) |url-status=dead |archive-date=3 February 2013 |title=AH |access-date=2 January 2009 |publisher=The Free Dictionary }}</ref> As conjecture based upon historical fact, alternate history stories propose '''''What if?''''' scenarios about crucial events in [[human history]], and present outcomes very different from the historical record. Some alternate histories are considered a subgenre of [[science fiction]], or [[historical fiction]].

Since the 1950s, as a subgenre of science fiction, some alternative history stories have featured the tropes of [[time travel]] between histories, the psychic awareness of the existence of an alternative universe by the inhabitants of a given universe, and time travel that divides history into various [[timestream]]s.<ref>{{cite web |date=21 May 2020 |title=Time Travel, Alternate Histories, & Parallel Universes |url=https://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/reading-and-viewing/book-lists/time-travel-alternate-histories-parallel-universes |access-date=6 September 2023 |website=Madison Public Library |language=en}}</ref>