Editing Alternate history (section)

==History of literature==
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===Antiquity and medieval===
[[File:Tirante el Blanco 1511.jpg|thumb|Title page of the first [[Spanish language|Spanish-language]] translation of [[Joanot Martorell]]'s ''[[Tirant lo Blanch]]'' (originally in Catalan)]]
The earliest example of alternate (or counterfactual) history is found in [[Livy]]'s ''[[Ab Urbe Condita Libri (Livy)|Ab Urbe Condita Libri]]'' (book IX, sections 17–19). Livy contemplated an alternative 4th century BC in which [[Alexander the Great]] had survived to attack Europe as he had planned; asking, "What would have been the results for [[Roman Empire|Rome]] if she had been engaged in a war with Alexander?"<ref name = Livy/><ref name="roads">{{cite book |last1=Dozois |first1=Gardner |author-link=Gardner Dozois |first2=Stanley |last2=Schmidt |title=Roads Not Taken: Tales of Alternate History |publisher=Del Rey |year=1998 |location=New York |pages=1–5 |isbn=0-345-42194-9|author2-link=Stanley Schmidt }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Turtledove |first1=Harry |author-link=Harry Turtledove |first2=Martin H. |last2=Greenberg |title=The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century |publisher=Del Rey |year=2001 |location=New York |pages=1–5 |isbn=978-0-345-43990-1 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/bestalternatehis00newy |author2-link=Martin H. Greenberg }}</ref> Livy concluded that the Romans would likely have defeated Alexander.<ref name = Livy>{{cite book |url=http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy09.html |author=Titus Livius (Livy) |title=The History of Rome, Book 9 |publisher=[[Marquette University]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070228233052/http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy09.html |archive-date=28 February 2007 |url-status=dead |author-link=Livy }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Ruth |last=Morello |title=Livy's Alexander Digression (9.17–19): Counterfactuals and Apologetics |journal=[[Journal of Roman Studies]] |volume=92 |year=2002 |pages=62–85 |doi=10.2307/3184860 |jstor=3184860 |s2cid=162588619 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Overtoom |first=Nikolaus |title=A Roman tradition of Alexander the Great counterfactual history |journal=Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae |volume=52 |issue=3 |year=2012 |pages=203–212 |doi=10.1556/AAnt.52.2012.3.2 }}</ref> An even earlier possibility is [[Herodotus]]'s ''[[Histories (Herodotus)|Histories]]'', which contains speculative material.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Geoffrey |last=Winthrop-Young |title=Fallacies and Thresholds: Notes on the Early Evolution of Alternate History |journal=[[Historical Social Research]] |year=2009 |volume=34 |issue=2 (128) |pages=99–117 |jstor=20762357 }}</ref>

Another example of counterfactual history was posited by cardinal and [[Doctor of the Church]] [[Peter Damian]] in the 11th century. In his famous work ''De Divina Omnipotentia'', a long letter in which he discusses [[God]]'s [[omnipotence]], he treats questions related to the limits of divine power, including the question of whether God can change the past,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/peter-damian/|title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|last=Holopainen|first=Toivo J.|chapter=Peter Damian |date=2016|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|edition=Winter 2016}}</ref> for example, bringing about that Rome was never founded:<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5503029m|title=Petrus Damianus|last=Migne|first=Jacques-Paul|work=Patrologia Latina|publisher=Ateliers catholiques du Petit-Montrouge|year=1853|volume=145|location=Paris|pages=595–622|language=la|chapter=De divina omnipotentia in reparatione, et factis infectis redendis|author-link=Jacques Paul Migne}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Lettre sur la toute-puissance divine. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes|last=Damien|first=Pierre|work=Sources chrétiennes|publisher=Les Éditions du Cerf|year=1972|volume=191|location=Paris|language=fr|translator-last=Cantin|translator-first=André|author-link=Peter Damian}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Letters of Peter Damian 91-120.|last=Damian|first=Pierre|date=2013|publisher=Catholic University of America Press|isbn=978-0813226392|series=The Fathers of the Church. Mediaeval Continuation|location=Washington, DC|pages=344–386|translator-last=Blum|translator-first=Owen J.|oclc=950930030|orig-year=1998}}</ref><blockquote>I see I must respond finally to what  many people, on the basis of your holiness's [own] judgment, raise as an objection on the topic of this dispute. For they say: If, as you assert, God is omnipotent in all things, can he manage this, that things that have been made were not  made? He can certainly destroy all things that have been made, so that they do not exist now. But it cannot be seen how he can bring it about that things that have been made were not made. To be sure, it can come about that from now on and hereafter Rome does not exist; for it can be destroyed. But no opinion can grasp how it can come about that it was not founded long ago...<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pvspade.com/Logic/docs/damian.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.pvspade.com/Logic/docs/damian.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|title=Selections from Peter Damian's Letter on Divine Omnipotence|last=Spade|first=Paul Vincent|date=1995}}</ref></blockquote>One early work of fiction detailing an alternate history is [[Joanot Martorell]]'s 1490 [[epic poetry|epic]] [[chivalric romance|romance]] ''[[Tirant lo Blanch]]'', which was written when the [[fall of Constantinople]] to the [[Ottoman Empire|Turks]] was still a recent and traumatic memory for [[Christianity in Europe|Christian Europe]]. It tells the story of the knight Tirant the White from Brittany who travels to the embattled remnants of the [[Byzantine Empire]]. He becomes a [[Megas doux|Megaduke]] and commander of its armies and manages to fight off the invading Ottoman armies of {{nowrap|[[Mehmed the Conqueror|Mehmet II]]}}. He saves the city from [[Fall of Constantinople|Islamic conquest]], and even chases the Turks deeper into lands they had previously conquered.

===19th century===
One of the earliest works of alternate history published in large quantities for the reception of a large audience may be [[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), which imagines [[Napoleon]]'s [[First French Empire]] emerging victorious in the [[French invasion of Russia]] in 1812 and in an invasion of England in 1814, later unifying the world under Bonaparte's rule.<ref name="roads" />
[[File:The Glorious Appearing of Jesus to the Nephites by William Armitage.PNG|thumb|220x220px|''The Glorious Appearing of [[Jesus]] to the [[Nephites]]'' by William Armitage]]
''[[The Book of Mormon]]'' (published 1830) is described as an "alternative history" by [[Richard Lyman Bushman]], a biographer of [[Joseph Smith]]. Smith claimed to have translated the document from golden plates, which told the story of a Jewish group who migrated from Israel to the Americas and inhabited the region from about 600 B.C. to 400 A.D., becoming the ancestors of [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]]. In the 2005 biography ''[[Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling]]'', Bushman wrote that the ''Book of Mormon'' "turned American history upside down [and] works on the premise that a history—a book—can reconstitute a nation. It assumes that by giving a nation an alternative history, alternative values can be made to grow."<ref>Richard Lyman Bushman. Knopf, ISBN 1-4000-4270-4, p. 104</ref>

In the English language, the first known complete alternate history may be [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]]'s [[short story]] "[[P.'s Correspondence]]", published in 1845. It recounts the tale of a man who is considered "a madman" due to his perceptions of a different 1845, a reality in which long-dead famous people, such as the poets [[Robert Burns]], [[Lord Byron]], [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]], and [[John Keats]], the actor [[Edmund Kean]], the British politician [[George Canning]], and [[Napoleon|Napoleon Bonaparte]], are still alive.

The first novel-length alternate history in English would seem to be [[Castello Holford]]'s ''[[Aristopia]]'' (1895). While not as nationalistic as Geoffroy's ''Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812–1823'', ''Aristopia'' is another attempt to portray a Utopian society. In ''Aristopia'', the earliest settlers in [[Virginia]] discover a reef made of solid [[gold]] and are able to build a [[Utopia]]n society in [[North America]].

===Early 20th century and the era of the pulps===
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, the plot serving mainly as a vehicle to expound 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 then are finally 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 ''[[s:The Ifs of History|The Ifs of History]]'' [1907] and [[Charles Petrie (historian)|Charles Petrie]]'s ''If: A Jacobite Fantasy'' [1926]).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Petrie |first=Charles |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IMhXyZxSRd8C |title=The Stuart Pretenders: A History of the Jacobite Movement, [1688-1807] |date=1934 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |pages=Appendix VI |language=en}}</ref> 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 [[Confederate States of America|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".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=674 |title=If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg - The Churchill Centre |date=6 December 2006 |access-date=26 January 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061206031128/http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=674 |archive-date=6 December 2006 }}</ref> Churchill's essay was one of the influences behind [[Ward Moore]]'s alternate history novel ''[[Bring the Jubilee]]''{{citation needed|date=January 2013}} 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<!--Southron, with two ''o''s is the word used in the novel, not a misspelling.--> 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 (American Civil War)|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 'If Napoleon Had Escaped to America'. This is the fourth".

Another example of alternate history from this period (and arguably<ref>{{cite web|title=Vaughan, Herbert M|website=SFE: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction|url=http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/vaughan_herbert_m}} [[Herbert Millingchamp Vaughan]]'s ''The Dial of Ahaz'' (1917) posits a multiverse filled with alternate versions of planet Earth.</ref> the first that explicitly posited [[Time travel in fiction|cross-time travel]] from one universe to another as anything more than a visionary experience) is [[H.G. Wells]]' ''[[Men Like Gods]]'' (1923) in which the [[London]]-based [[journalist]] Mr. Barnstable, along with two cars and their passengers, is mysteriously teleported into "another world", which the "Earthlings" call Utopia. Being far more advanced than Earth, Utopia is some 3000 years ahead of humanity in its development. Wells describes a [[multiverse]] of alternative worlds, complete with the paratime travel machines that would later become popular with American pulp writers. However, since his hero experiences only a single alternate world, the story is not very different from conventional alternate history.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200221.txt |title=Men Like Gods |publisher=Gutenberg.net.au |access-date=|date = 1923|first = H.G.|last = Wells}}</ref>

In the 1930s, alternate history moved into a new arena. The December 1933 issue of ''[[Analog Science Fiction and Fact|Astounding]]'' published [[Nat Schachner]]'s "Ancestral Voices", which was quickly followed by [[Murray Leinster]]'s "[[Sidewise in Time]]" (1934). While earlier alternate histories examined reasonably-straightforward divergences, Leinster attempted something completely different. In his "World gone mad", pieces of Earth traded places with their analogs from different timelines. The story follows Professor Minott and his students from a fictitious Robinson College as they wander through analogues of worlds that followed a different history.{{Citation needed|reason=Unsourced |date=February 2024}} "Sidewise in Time" has been described as "the point at which the alternate history narrative first enters science fiction as a plot device" and is the story for which the [[Sidewise Award for Alternate History]] is named.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Morgan |first1=Glyn |last2=Palmer-Patel |first2=Charul  |date= 2019-10-31 |title=Sideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/sideways-in-time/introduction/9C1C3D0467694F48AAC94A164173111C |location=Cambridge, England |publisher=Liverpool University Press |pages=11–28 |isbn=978-1789620139}}</ref><ref name="Chris 2022 e410">{{cite web | title=Civilizations by Laurent Binet Wins the 2021 Sidewise Award | website=Eisenhower Public Library | date=September 21, 2022 | url=https://eisenhowerlibrary.org/civilizations-by-laurent-binet-wins-the-2021-sidewise-award/ | access-date=February 19, 2024 | last1=Marketing | first1=Chris }}{{Dead link|date=May 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

[[File:Fatherland.png|thumb |right | 300px|The world in 1964 in the novel ''[[Fatherland (novel)|Fatherland]]'' in which the Nazis won [[World War II]]]]
A somewhat similar approach was taken by [[Robert A. Heinlein]] in his 1941 novelette ''[[Elsewhen]]'' in which a professor trains his mind to move his body across timelines. He then hypnotizes his students so that they can explore more of them. Eventually, each settles into the reality that is most suitable for him or her. Some of the worlds they visit are mundane, some are very odd, and others follow science fiction or fantasy conventions.

[[World War II]] produced alternate history for [[propaganda]]: both British and American<ref>{{cite book|last1=Rosenfeld|first1=Gavriel D.|title=The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism|date=2005|publisher=Cambridge Univ. Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=0-521-84706-0|pages=39, 97–99|edition=1. publ.}}</ref> authors wrote works depicting Nazi invasions of their respective countries as cautionary tales.

====Time travel to create historical divergences====
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The period around World War II also saw the publication of the [[time travel]] novel ''[[Lest Darkness Fall]]'' by [[L. Sprague de Camp]] in which an American academic travels to [[Italy]] at the time of the Byzantine invasion of the [[Ostrogoths]]. De Camp's time traveler, Martin Padway, is depicted as making permanent historical changes and implicitly forming a new time branch, thereby making the work an alternate history.

In [[William Tenn]]'s short story ''Brooklyn Project'' (1948), a tyrannical US Government brushes aside the warnings of scientists about the dangers of time travel and goes on with a planned experiment - with the result that minor changes to the prehistoric past cause Humanity to never have existed, its place taken by tentacled underwater intelligent creatures - who also have a tyrannical government which also insists on experimenting with time-travel.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Jonas |first1=Gerald |title=William Tenn, Science Fiction Author, Is Dead at 89 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/books/14tenn.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220101/https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/books/14tenn.html |archive-date=1 January 2022 |url-access=limited |website=[[The New York Times]] |accessdate=5 April 2020 |date=13 February 2010}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

In [[Ray Bradbury]]'s classic short story "[[A Sound of Thunder]]" (1952) a group of hunters travel to the [[Late Cretaceous]] to hunt dinosaurs whose death would not be considered consequential as they are about to die a natural death within two minutes of the encounter. To minimize risking  changes history they are told to stay on a levitating antigravity path that touches nothing. However one of the hunters stumbles off the path, inadvertently crushing a butterfly. When the group returns they find that history became significantly harsher and a fascist is now President.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Vandermeer |editor-first=Ann and Jeff |date=Mar 18, 2014 |title=The Time Travelers Almanac  |location= |publisher=TORDOTCOM |page= |isbn=978-0765374240 }}</ref>

Time travel as the cause of a [[point of divergence]] (POD), which can denote either the bifurcation of a historical timeline or a simple replacement of the future that existed before the time-travelling event, has continued to be a popular theme. In [[Ward Moore]]'s ''[[Bring the Jubilee]]'' (1953), the protagonist lives in an alternate history in which the Confederacy has won the American Civil War. He travels backward through time and brings about a Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg.

When a story's assumptions about the nature of time travel lead to the complete replacement of the visited time's future, rather than just the creation of an additional time line, the device of a "time patrol" is often used where guardians move through time to preserve the "correct" history.

A more recent example is ''[[Making History (novel)|Making History]]'' by [[Stephen Fry]] in which a time machine is used to alter history so that [[Adolf Hitler]] was never born. That ironically results in a more competent leader of [[Nazi Germany]] and results in the country's ascendancy and longevity in the altered timeline.

====Quantum theory of many worlds====
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While many justifications for alternate histories involve a [[multiverse]], the [[Many-worlds interpretation|"many world" theory]] would naturally involve many worlds, in fact a continually exploding array of universes. In quantum theory, new worlds would proliferate with every quantum event, and even if the writer uses human decisions, every decision that could be made differently would result in a different timeline. A writer's fictional multiverse may, in fact, preclude some decisions as humanly impossible, as when, in ''[[Night Watch (Discworld)|Night Watch]]'', [[Terry Pratchett]] depicts a character informing Vimes that while anything that can happen, has happened, nevertheless there is no history whatsoever in which Vimes has ever murdered his wife. When the writer explicitly maintains that ''all'' possible decisions are made in all possible ways, one possible conclusion is that the characters were neither brave, nor clever, nor skilled, but simply lucky enough to happen on the universe in which they did not choose the cowardly route, take the stupid action, fumble the crucial activity, etc.; few writers focus on this idea, although it has been explored in stories such as [[Larry Niven]]'s story ''[[All the Myriad Ways#story|All the Myriad Ways]]'', where the reality of all possible universes leads to an epidemic of suicide and crime because people conclude their choices have no moral import.

In any case, even if it is true that every possible outcome occurs in some world, it can still be argued that traits such as bravery and intelligence might still affect the relative frequency of worlds in which better or worse outcomes occurred (even if the total number of worlds with each type of outcome is infinite, it is still possible to assign a different [[Measure (mathematics)|measure]] to different infinite sets). The physicist [[David Deutsch]], a strong advocate of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, has argued along these lines, saying that "By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives. When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kurzweilai.net/taming-the-multiverse |title=Taming the Multiverse |publisher=KurzweilAI |access-date=|first = Marcus|last = Chown|date = 7 August 2001}}</ref> This view is perhaps somewhat too abstract to be explored directly in science fiction stories, but a few writers have tried, such as [[Greg Egan]] in his short story ''The Infinite Assassin'', where an agent is trying to contain reality-scrambling "whirlpools" that form around users of a certain drug, and the agent is constantly trying to maximize the consistency of behavior among his alternate selves, attempting to compensate for events and thoughts he experiences, he guesses are of low measure relative to those experienced by most of his other selves.

Many writers—perhaps the majority—avoid the discussion entirely. In one novel of this type, H. Beam Piper's ''[[Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen]]'', a Pennsylvania State Police officer, who knows how to make gunpowder, is transported from our world to an alternate universe where the recipe for gunpowder is a tightly held secret and saves a country that is about to be conquered by its neighbors. The paratime patrol members are warned against going into the timelines immediately surrounding it, where the country ''will'' be overrun, but the book never depicts the slaughter of the innocent thus entailed, remaining solely in the timeline where the country is saved.

The cross-time theme was further developed in the 1960s by [[Keith Laumer]] in the first three volumes of his ''Imperium'' sequence, which would be completed in ''Zone Yellow'' (1990). Piper's politically more sophisticated variant was adopted and adapted by [[Michael Kurland]] and [[Jack Chalker]] in the 1980s; Chalker's ''[[G.O.D. Inc]]'' trilogy (1987–89), featuring paratime detectives Sam and Brandy Horowitz, marks the first attempt at merging the paratime thriller with the police procedural.{{Citation needed|date=July 2008}} Kurland's ''[[Perchance (novel)|Perchance]]'' (1988), the first volume of the never-completed "Chronicles of Elsewhen", presents a multiverse of secretive cross-time societies that utilize a variety of means for cross-time travel, ranging from high-tech capsules to mutant powers. [[Crosstime Traffic]] is a 6-book series written by [[Harry Turtledove]] aimed at teenagers featuring a variant of H. Beam Piper's paratime trading empire. While the home timeline appears to be the same in each of the books there is no overlap in characters or repetition of the alternative worlds.

====Rival paratime worlds====
{{Unreferenced section|date=October 2023}}
The concept of a cross-time version of a world war, involving rival paratime empires, was developed in [[Fritz Leiber]]'s Change War series, starting with the [[Hugo Award]] winning ''[[The Big Time (novel)|The Big Time]]'' (1958); followed by [[Richard C. Meredith]]'s ''Timeliner'' trilogy in the 1970s, [[Michael McCollum]]'s ''A Greater Infinity'' (1982) and [[John Barnes (author)|John Barnes']] ''Timeline Wars'' trilogy in the 1990s.

Such "paratime" stories may include speculation that the laws of nature can vary from one universe to the next, providing a science fictional explanation—or veneer—for what is normally fantasy. [[Aaron Allston]]'s ''Doc Sidhe'' and ''Sidhe Devil'' take place between our world, the "grim world" and an alternate "fair world" where the Sidhe retreated to. Although technology is clearly present in both worlds, and the "fair world" parallels our history, about fifty years out of step, there is functional magic in the fair world. Even with such explanation, the more explicitly the alternate world resembles a normal fantasy world, the more likely the story is to be labelled fantasy, as in Poul Anderson's "House Rule" and "Loser's Night". In both science fiction and fantasy, whether a given parallel universe is an alternate history may not be clear. The writer might allude to a POD only to explain the existence and make no use of the concept, or may present the universe without explanation of its existence.

===Major writers explore alternate histories===
{{Unreferenced section|date=October 2023}}
[[Isaac Asimov]]'s short story "[[What If—]]" (1952) is about a couple who can explore alternate realities by means of a television-like device. This idea can also be found in Asimov's novel ''[[The End of Eternity]]'' (1955), in which the "Eternals" can change the realities of the world, without people being aware of it.  [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''[[Time Patrol]]'' stories feature conflicts between forces intent on changing history and the Patrol who work to preserve it.  One story, [[Delenda Est]], describes a world in which [[Carthage]] triumphed over the Roman Republic.  ''[[The Big Time (novel)|The Big Time]]'', by [[Fritz Leiber]], describes a Change War ranging across all of history.

Keith Laumer's ''[[Worlds of the Imperium]]'' is one of the earliest alternate history novels; it was published by ''[[Fantastic (magazine)|Fantastic Stories of the Imagination]]'' in 1961, in magazine form, and reprinted by [[Ace Books]] in 1962 as one half of an [[Ace Double]]. Besides our world, Laumer describes a world ruled by an Imperial aristocracy formed by the merger of European empires, in which the [[American Revolution]] never happened, and a third world in post-war chaos ruled by the protagonist's doppelganger.

[[File:Man High Castle (TV Series) map.svg|thumb|A map of the United States as depicted in [[The Man in the High Castle (TV series)|''The Man in the High Castle'']] TV series, based on [[Philip K. Dick]]'s ''[[The Man in the High Castle]]'']]

[[Philip K. Dick]]'s novel, ''[[The Man in the High Castle]]'' (1962), is an alternate history in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won World War II. This book contains an example of "alternate-alternate" history, in that one of its characters authored a book depicting a reality in which the Allies won the war, itself divergent from real-world history in several aspects. The several characters live within a divided [[United States]], in which the [[Empire of Japan]] takes the Pacific states, governing them as a puppet, [[Nazi Germany]] takes the [[East Coast of the United States]] and parts of the [[Midwest]], with the remnants of the old United States' government as the Neutral Zone, a [[buffer state]] between the two superpowers. The book has inspired an [[The Man in the High Castle (TV series)|Amazon series of the same name]].

[[Vladimir Nabokov]]'s novel, ''[[Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle]]'' (1969), is a story of [[incest]] that takes place within an alternate North America settled in part by [[Russian Empire|Czarist Russia]] and that borrows from Dick's idea of "alternate-alternate" history (the world of Nabokov's hero is wracked by rumors of a "counter-earth" that apparently is ours). Some critics{{who|date=January 2019}} believe that the references to a counter-earth suggest that the world portrayed in ''Ada'' is a delusion in the mind of the hero (another favorite theme of Dick's novels{{Citation needed|date=January 2019}}). Strikingly, the characters in ''Ada'' seem to acknowledge their own world as the copy or negative version, calling it "Anti-Terra", while its mythical twin is the real "Terra". Like history, science has followed a divergent path on Anti-Terra: it boasts all the same technology as our world, but all based on water instead of [[electricity]]; e.g., when a character in ''Ada'' makes a long-distance call, all the toilets in the house flush at once to provide hydraulic power.

[[Guido Morselli]] described the defeat of Italy (and subsequently France) in World War I in his novel, ''Past Conditional'' (1975; {{lang|it|Contro-passato prossimo}}), wherein the static [[Italian Front (World War I)|Alpine front]] line which divided Italy from Austria during that war collapses when the Germans and the Austrians forsake trench warfare and adopt blitzkrieg twenty years in advance.

[[Kingsley Amis]] set his novel, ''[[The Alteration]]'' (1976), in the 20th century, but major events in the Reformation did not take place, and Protestantism is limited to the breakaway Republic of New England. [[Martin Luther]] was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church and later became Pope Germanian I.

In [[Nick Hancock]] and [[Chris England]]'s 1997 book ''What Didn't Happen Next: An Alternative History of Football'' it is suggested that, had [[Gordon Banks]] been fit to play in the [[1970 FIFA World Cup]] quarter-final, there would have been no [[Thatcherism]] and the [[post-war consensus]] would have continued indefinitely.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hancock|first1=Nick|last2=England|first2=Chris|title=What Didn't Happen Next: Nick Hancock's Alternative History of Football|date=1997|publisher=Chameleon|location=London|isbn=023399291X}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=August 2016}}

[[Kim Stanley Robinson]]'s novel, ''[[The Years of Rice and Salt]]'' (2002), starts at the point of divergence with [[Timur]] turning his army away from Europe, and the [[Black Death]] has killed 99% of Europe's population, instead of only a third. Robinson explores world history from that point in [[Anno Domini|AD]] 1405 (807 [[Islamic calendar|AH]]) to about AD 2045 (1467 AH). Rather than following the [[great man theory]] of history, focusing on leaders, wars, and major events, Robinson writes more about [[social history]], similar to the [[Annales School]] of history theory and [[Marxist historiography]], focusing on the lives of ordinary people living in their time and place.

[[Philip Roth]]'s novel, ''[[The Plot Against America]]'' (2004), looks at an America where [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] is defeated in 1940 in his bid for a third term as President of the United States, and [[Charles Lindbergh]] is elected, leading to a US that features increasing fascism and anti-Semitism.

[[Michael Chabon]], occasionally an author of speculative fiction, contributed to the genre with his novel ''[[The Yiddish Policemen's Union]]'' (2007), which explores a world in which the [[State of Israel]] was destroyed in its infancy and many of the world's Jews instead live in a small strip of Alaska set aside by the US government for Jewish settlement. The story follows a Jewish detective solving a murder case in the Yiddish-speaking semi-autonomous city state of [[Sitka, Alaska|Sitka]]. Stylistically, Chabon borrows heavily from the [[noir fiction|noir]] and detective fiction genres, while exploring social issues related to Jewish history and culture. Apart from the alternate history of the Jews and Israel, Chabon also plays with other common tropes of alternate history fiction; in the book, Germany actually loses the war even ''harder'' than they did in reality, getting hit with a nuclear bomb instead of just simply losing a ground war (subverting the common "what if Germany won WWII?" trope).

===Contemporary alternate history in popular literature===
{{More citations needed section|date=October 2023}}
[[File:Draka42.png|thumb|The world of 1942, as depicted at the start of [[S. M. Stirling]]'s ''[[The Domination]]'' series]]
[[File:Timeline-191 WWI.png|thumb|World War I from [[Harry Turtledove]]'s [[Southern Victory]] ("Timeline 191") series]]
The late 1980s and the 1990s saw a boom in popular-fiction versions of alternate history, fueled by the emergence of the prolific alternate history author [[Harry Turtledove]], as well as the development of the [[steampunk]] genre and two series of anthologies—the ''What Might Have Been'' series edited by [[Gregory Benford]] and the ''Alternate ...'' series edited by [[Mike Resnick]]. This period also saw alternate history works by [[S. M. Stirling]], Kim Stanley Robinson, [[Harry Harrison (writer)|Harry Harrison]], [[Howard Waldrop]], [[Peter Tieryas]],<ref>{{Cite web|last=Liptak|first=Andrew|title=The United States of Japan Shows What Happens When Ideology Crumbles|url=https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-united-states-of-japan-shows-what-happens-when-ideo-1770928957|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160417153208/http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-united-states-of-japan-shows-what-happens-when-ideo-1770928957|url-status=dead|archive-date=April 17, 2016|access-date=3 December 2020|website=io9|date=16 April 2016|language=en-us}}</ref> and others.

In 1986, a sixteen-part epic comic book series called ''[[Captain Confederacy]]'' began examining a world where the [[Confederate States of America]] won the [[American Civil War]]. In the series, the Captain and others heroes are staged government propaganda events featuring the feats of these superheroes.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://captainconfederacy.blogspot.com/|title=The posts that were at this blog...|first=Will|last=Shetterly|date=15 September 2016|access-date=10 October 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060202045828/http://captainconfederacy.blogspot.com/|archive-date=2 February 2006|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Since the late 1990s, Harry Turtledove has been the most prolific practitioner of alternate history and has been given the title "Master of Alternate History" by some.<ref>{{cite web|author=» MORE |url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6548135.html |title=Master of Alternate History - 4/7/2008 - Publishers Weekly |access-date=26 January 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080518203009/http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6548135.html |archive-date=18 May 2008 }}</ref> His books include those of [[Southern Victory|Timeline 191]] (a.k.a. Southern Victory, also known as TL-191), in which, while the [[Confederate States of America]] won the [[American Civil War]], the Union and [[German Empire|Imperial Germany]] defeat the Entente Powers in the two "Great War"s of the 1910s and 1940s (with a Nazi-esque Confederate government attempting to exterminate its black population), and the [[Worldwar series]], in which aliens invaded Earth during [[World War II]].{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}} Other stories by Turtledove include ''[[A Different Flesh]]'', in which the [[Americas]] were not populated from [[Asia]] during the last [[ice age]]; ''[[In the Presence of Mine Enemies (2003 novel)|In the Presence of Mine Enemies]]'', in which the [[Nazi Germany|Nazis]] won World War II;{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}} and ''[[Ruled Britannia]]'', in which the [[Spanish Armada]] succeeded in conquering [[Kingdom of England|England]] in the [[Elizabethan era]], with [[William Shakespeare]] being given the task of writing the play that will motivate the Britons to rise up against their [[Habsburg Spain|Spanish]] conquerors.{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}} He also co-authored a book with actor [[Richard Dreyfuss]], ''[[The Two Georges]]'', in which the United Kingdom retained the American colonies, with [[George Washington]] and King [[George III of the United Kingdom|George III]] making peace.{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}} He did a two-volume series in which the Japanese not only [[Attack on Pearl Harbor|bombed Pearl Harbor]] but also invaded and occupied the Hawaiian Islands.{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}}

Perhaps the most incessantly explored theme in popular alternate history focuses on the aftermath of an [[Axis victory in World War II]]. In some versions, the Nazis and/or [[Axis Powers]] win; or in others, they conquer most of the world but a "Fortress America" exists under siege;{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}} while in others,{{specify|date=October 2023}} there is a Nazi/Japanese [[Cold War]] comparable to the US/Soviet equivalent in 'our' timeline.{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}} ''[[Fatherland (novel)|Fatherland]]'' (1992), by [[Robert Harris (novelist)|Robert Harris]], is set in Europe following the Nazi victory. The novel ''[[Dominion (Sansom novel)|Dominion]]'' by [[C.J. Sansom]] (2012) is similar in concept but is set in England, with Churchill the leader of an anti-German Resistance and other historic persons in various fictional roles.<ref>{{cite news|last=Lawson|first=Mark|date=6 December 2012|title=Dominion by CJ Sansom – review|language=en-GB|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/dec/06/dominion-cj-sansom-review|issn=0261-3077}}</ref> In the [[Mecha Samurai Empire series]] (2016), [[Peter Tieryas]] focuses on the Asian-American side of the alternate history, exploring an America ruled by the Japanese Empire while integrating elements of Asian pop culture like mechas and videogames.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Liptak|first=Andrew|date=1 February 2018|title=Mecha Samurai Empire imagines that America lost WWII — also there are giant robots|url=https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16934424/peter-tieryas-mecha-samurai-empire-alternate-history-science-fiction-book-q-and-a|access-date=3 December 2020|website=The Verge|language=en}}</ref>

Several writers{{who|date=October 2023}} have posited points of departure for such a world but then have injected time splitters from the future. For instance [[James P. Hogan (writer)|James P. Hogan]]'s ''[[The Proteus Operation]]''. [[Norman Spinrad]] wrote ''[[The Iron Dream]]'' in 1972, which is intended to be a science fiction novel written by [[Adolf Hitler]] after fleeing from Europe to North America in the 1920s.<ref>{{cite web |title=Book Review: The Iron Dream, Norman Spinrad (1972) |url=https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2013/05/18/book-review-the-iron-dream-norman-spinrad-1972/ |website=Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations |access-date=28 December 2023 |language=en |date=18 May 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Spinrad |first1=Norman |last2=Whipple |first2=Homer |title=The iron dream: Adolf Hitler's Hugo award winning SF Classic |date=2013 |publisher=ReAnimus Press |location=Golden, Colorado |isbn=9781490439457 |edition=First ReAnimus Press print}}</ref>

In [[Jo Walton]]'s "Small Change" series, the United Kingdom made peace with Hitler before the involvement of the United States in World War II, and slowly collapses due to severe economic depression. Former House Speaker [[Newt Gingrich]] and [[William R. Forstchen]] have written a novel, ''[[1945 (Gingrich novel)|1945]]'', in which the US defeated [[Empire of Japan|Japan]] but not [[Nazi Germany|Germany]] in World War II, resulting in a Cold War with Germany rather than the Soviet Union. Gingrich and Forstchen neglected to write the promised sequel; instead, they wrote a trilogy about the American Civil War, starting with ''[[Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War]]'', in which the Confederates win a victory at the [[Battle of Gettysburg]] - however, after Lincoln responds by bringing Grant and his forces to the eastern theater, the Army of Northern Virginia is soon trapped and destroyed in Maryland, and the war ends within weeks.{{full citation needed|date=October 2023}}

While World War II has been a common point of divergence in alternate history literature, several works have been based on other points of divergence.  For example, [[Martin Cruz Smith]], in his first novel, posited an independent American Indian nation following the defeat of Custer in ''The Indians Won'' (1970).<ref>{{cite news|first=Nicholas|last=Wroe |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/mar/26/featuresreviews.guardianreview15 |title=Profile: Martin Cruz Smith &#124; Books |newspaper=The Guardian |access-date=14 November 2015}}</ref>  Beginning with ''[[The Probability Broach]]'' in 1980, [[L. Neil Smith]] wrote [[North American Confederacy|several novels]] that postulated the disintegration of the US Federal Government after [[Albert Gallatin]] joins the [[Whiskey Rebellion]] in 1794 and eventually leads to the creation of a libertarian utopia.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Brown|first=Alan|date=27 September 2018|title=Throw Out the Rules: The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith|url=https://www.tor.com/2018/09/27/throw-out-the-rules-the-probability-broach-by-l-neil-smith/|access-date=3 December 2020|website=Tor.com|language=en-US}}</ref>  In the 2022 novel ''Poutine and Gin'' by Steve Rhinelander, the point of divergence is the Battle of the Plains of Abraham of the French and Indian War.  That novel is a mystery set in 1940 of that time line.

A recent time traveling splitter variant involves entire communities being shifted elsewhere to become the unwitting creators of new time branches. These communities are transported from the present (or the near-future) to the past or to another timeline via a natural disaster, the action of technologically advanced aliens, or a human experiment gone wrong. [[S. M. Stirling]] wrote the ''[[Island in the Sea of Time]]'' trilogy, in which [[Nantucket]] Island and all its modern inhabitants are transported to [[Bronze Age]] times to become the world's first superpower. In [[Eric Flint]]'s [[1632 series|''1632'' series]], a small town in [[West Virginia]] is transported to 17th century central Europe and drastically changes the course of the [[Thirty Years' War]], which was then underway. [[John Birmingham]]'s ''[[Axis of Time]]'' trilogy deals with the culture shock when a United Nations naval task force from 2021 finds itself back in 1942 helping the Allies against the [[Empire of Japan]] and the Germans (and doing almost as much harm as good in spite of its advanced weapons). The series also explores the cultural impacts of people with 2021 ideals interacting with 1940s culture. Similarly, [[Robert Charles Wilson]]'s ''[[Mysterium (novel)|Mysterium]]'' depicts a failed US government experiment which transports a small American town into an alternative version of the US run by [[Gnosticism|Gnostics]], who are engaged in a bitter war with the "Spanish" in Mexico (the chief scientist at the laboratory where the experiment occurred is described as a Gnostic, and references to Christian Gnosticism appear repeatedly in the book).<ref>{{Cite web|last=Wagner|first=Thomas W.|title=SF REVIEWS.NET: Mysterium / Robert Charles Wilson ☆☆☆½|url=http://www.sfreviews.net/mysterium.html|access-date=3 December 2020|website=www.sfreviews.net}}</ref>{{additional citation needed|date=October 2023}}

Although not dealing in physical time travel, in his alt-history novel ''[[Marx Returns]]'', [[Jason Barker]] introduces anachronisms into the life and times of [[Karl Marx]], such as when his wife [[Jenny von Westphalen|Jenny]] sings a verse from the [[Sex Pistols]]'s song "[[Anarchy in the U.K.]]", or in the games of chess she plays with the Marxes' housekeeper [[Helene Demuth]], which on one occasion involves a [[Caro–Kann Defence]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Jason |title=Marx Returns |publisher=Zero Books |year=2018 |location=Winchester, UK |pages=19 & 165 |isbn=978-1-78535-660-5 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/bestalternatehis00newy }}</ref> In her review of the novel, Nina Power writes of "Jenny's 'utopian' desire for an end to time", an attitude which, according to Power, is inspired by her husband's co-authored book ''[[The German Ideology]]''. However, in keeping with the novel's anachronisms, the latter was not published until 1932.<ref>{{Cite news|url= https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/time-and-freedom-in-jason-barkers-marx-returns/|title=Time and Freedom in Jason Barker's 'Marx Returns'|last=Power|first=Nina|date=16 March 2018|work=Los Angeles Review of Books|access-date=30 November 2020|language=en-US}}</ref> By contrast, the novel's timeline ends in 1871.

In the 2022 novel ''Hydrogen Wars: Atomic Sunrise'' by R.M. Christianson, a small change in [[post-war]] Japanese history leads to the election of [[Douglas MacArthur|General Douglas MacArthur]] as [[President of the United States]]. This minor change ultimately leads to all-out [[atomic war]] between the major [[Cold War]] powers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hydrogenwars.com/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221020183252/https://www.hydrogenwars.com/|url-status=dead|archive-date=October 20, 2022|title=Home|website=Hydrogen Wars|accessdate=6 April 2023}}</ref>

Through crowdfunding on [[Kickstarter]], Alan Jenkins and Gan Golan produced a graphic novel series called ''1/6'' depicting a [[dystopian]] alternate reality in which the [[January 6 United States Capitol attack]] was successful. What follows is the burning down of the Capitol building and the hanging of Vice President [[Mike Pence]]. Under [[Donald Trump's]] second term as president, a solid gold statue of him is erected and armed thugs patrol the streets of [[Washington DC]] suppressing civilian resistance with brutal violence under the banner of the Confederate flag.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://theconversation.com/what-if-the-january-6-insurrection-at-the-us-capitol-had-succeeded-a-graphic-novel-is-uniquely-placed-to-answer-197330 | title=What if the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol had succeeded? A graphic novel is uniquely placed to answer | date=6 January 2023 }}</ref>

===In fantasy genre===
{{Original research|section|date=October 2023}}
[[File:Henry II, Plantagenet Empire.png|thumb|The [[Angevin Empire]] in 1172, before the [[point of divergence]] of [[Randall Garrett]]'s [[Lord Darcy (character)|Lord Darcy]] series]]
Many works of straight [[fantasy]] and [[science fantasy]] take place in historical settings, though with the addition of, for example, [[magic (fantasy)|magic]] or [[mythological beast]]s. Some present a secret history in which the modern day world no longer believes that these elements ever existed. Many ambiguous alternate/secret histories are set in Renaissance or pre-Renaissance times, and may explicitly include a "retreat" from the world, which would explain the current absence of such phenomena. Other stories make plan a divergence of some kind.

In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''[[Three Hearts and Three Lions]]'' in which the [[Matter of France]] is history and the [[fairy folk]] are real and powerful. The same author's ''[[A Midsummer Tempest]]'' occurs in a world in which the [[plays of William Shakespeare|plays of]] [[William Shakespeare]] (called here "the Great Historian"), presented the literal truth in every instance. The novel itself takes place in the era of [[Oliver Cromwell]] and [[Charles I of England|Charles I]]. Here, the [[English Civil War]] had a different outcome, and the [[Industrial Revolution]] has occurred early.

[[Randall Garrett]]'s "[[Lord Darcy (character)|Lord Darcy]]" series presents a point of divergence: a monk systemizes magic rather than science, so the use of [[digitalis|foxglove]] to treat heart disease is regarded as [[superstition]]. Another point of divergence occurs in 1199, when [[Richard I of England|Richard the Lionheart]] survives the [[Château de Châlus-Chabrol|Siege of Chaluz]] and returns to England and makes the [[Angevin Empire]] so strong that it survives into the 20th century.

''[[Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell]]'' by [[Susanna Clarke]] takes place in an England where a separate Kingdom ruled by the Raven King and founded on magic existed in Northumbria for over 300 years. In [[Patricia Wrede]]'s Regency fantasies, Great Britain has a Royal Society of Wizards.

''[[The Tales of Alvin Maker]]'' series by [[Orson Scott Card]] (a parallel to the life of [[Joseph Smith]], founder of the [[Latter Day Saint movement]]) takes place in an alternate America, beginning in the early 19th century. Prior to that time, a POD occurred: England, under the [[Commonwealth of England|rule]] of [[Oliver Cromwell]], had banished "makers", or anyone else demonstrating "knacks" (an ability to perform seemingly supernatural feats) to the North American continent. Thus the early American colonists embraced these gifts as perfectly ordinary, and counted on them as a part of their daily lives. The political division of the continent is considerably altered, with two large English colonies bookending a smaller "American" nation, one aligned with England, and the other governed by exiled [[Cavaliers]]. Actual historical figures are seen in a much different light: Ben Franklin is revered as the continent's finest "maker", George Washington was executed after being captured, and [[Thomas Jefferson|"Tom" Jefferson]] is the first president of "Appalachia", the result of a compromise between the Continentals and the [[Monarchy of the United Kingdom|British Crown]].{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}

On the other hand, when the "Old Ones" (fairies) still manifest themselves in England in [[Keith Roberts]]'s ''[[Pavane (novel)|Pavane]]'', which takes place in a technologically backward world after a Spanish assassination of [[Elizabeth I]] allowed the [[Spanish Armada]] to conquer England, the possibility that the fairies were real but retreated from modern advances makes the POD possible: the fairies really were present all along, in a secret history.

Again, in the English Renaissance fantasy ''Armor of Light'' by [[Melissa Scott (writer)|Melissa Scott]] and Lisa A. Barnett, the magic used in the book, by Dr. [[John Dee (mathematician)|John Dee]] and others, actually was practiced in the Renaissance; positing a secret history of effective magic makes this an alternate history with a point of departure. Sir [[Philip Sidney]] survives the [[Battle of Zutphen]] in 1586, and shortly thereafter saving the life of [[Christopher Marlowe]].

When the magical version of our world's history is set in contemporary times, the distinction becomes clear between alternate history on the one hand and [[contemporary fantasy]], using in effect a form of secret history (as when [[Josepha Sherman]]'s ''Son of Darkness'' has an elf living in New York City, in disguise) on the other. In works such as [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''Magic, Incorporated'' where a construction company can use magic to rig up stands at a sporting event and Poul Anderson's ''[[Operation Chaos (novel)|Operation Chaos]]'' and its sequel ''[[Operation Luna]]'', where djinns are serious weapons of war—with atomic bombs—the use of magic throughout the United States and other modern countries makes it clear that this is not secret history—although references in ''Operation Chaos'' to [[degaussing]] the effects of cold iron make it possible that it is the result of a POD. The sequel clarifies this as the result of a collaboration of Einstein and Planck in 1901, resulting in the theory of "rhea tics". [[Henry Moseley]] applies this theory to "degauss the effects of cold iron and release the goetic forces." This results in the suppression of [[ferromagnetism]] and the re-emergence of magic and magical creatures.

Alternate history shades off into other [[fantasy subgenres]] when the use of actual, though altered, history and geography decreases, although a culture may still be clearly the original source; [[Barry Hughart]]'s ''[[Bridge of Birds]]'' and its sequels take place in a [[fantasy world]], albeit one clearly based on China, and with allusions to actual Chinese history, such as [[Empress Wu of Zhou|the Empress Wu]]. [[Richard Garfinkle]]'s ''[[Celestial Matters]]'' incorporates ancient Chinese physics and Greek [[Aristotelian physics]], using them as if factual.

Alternate history has long been a staple of Japanese speculative fiction with such authors as [[Futaro Yamada]] and [[Ryō Hanmura]] writing novels set in recognizable historical settings with added supernatural or science fiction elements. Ryō Hanmura's 1973 ''[[Musubi no Yama Hiroku]]'' which recreated 400 years of Japan's history from the perspective of a secret magical family with psychic abilities. The novel has since come to be recognized as a masterpiece of Japanese speculative fiction.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sfwa.org/2011/09/top-ten-japan-all-time-best-sf-novels/ |title=Top Ten Japan All Time Best SF Novels |publisher=SFWA |date=17 September 2011 |access-date=|first = Nick|last = Mamatas}}</ref> Twelve years later, author [[Hiroshi Aramata]] wrote the groundbreaking ''[[Teito Monogatari]]'' which reimagined the history of [[Tokyo]] across the 20th century in a world heavily influenced by the supernatural.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Clute |first1=John |last2=Grant |first2=John |last3=Ashley |first3=Mike |last4=Hartwell |first4=David G. |last5=Westfahl |first5= Gary |title=The Encyclopedia of Fantasy |date=1999 |publisher=St. Martin's Griffin |location=New York |isbn=0312198698 |page=515 }}</ref>

[[The Walt Disney Company|Disney]]'s [[Pirates of the Caribbean (film series)|''Pirates of the Caribbean'' series]] takes place in an alternate history. The filmmakers of ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl|The Curse of the Black Pearl]]'' made no secret about taking liberties with the time period in which their story takes place. Producer [[Jerry Bruckheimer]] explained that the film is a fantasy, but did want to be true to the overall feel of the era, paying particular attention to the years between 1720 and 1750 "in an effort to find an approximation." Director [[Gore Verbinski]] asserted that it takes place "roughly at the tail end of the [[Golden Age of Piracy]], when the Morgans lived. Maybe the late 1720s." The crew went to great lengths to maintain authenticity, such as Jack Sparrow's sword being an original that dates from the 1750s.<ref>[http://www.keeptothecode.com/pdf/POTCprodnotes1.pdf ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' presskit] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928020320/http://www.keeptothecode.com/pdf/POTCprodnotes1.pdf |date=September 28, 2007}}, accessed December 9, 2006</ref> [[Ann C. Crispin]] knew about the Pirates universe being an alternate history writing the prequel novel ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom|The Price of Freedom]]'',<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0bxfIb4KLc A. C. Crispin interview – The Price of Freedom – Fast Forward: Contemporary Science Fiction – YouTube]</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://michaelaventrella.com/2011/07/01/interview-with-author-a-c-crispin/ | title=Interview with author A. C. Crispin | date=July 2011 }}</ref> with Disney's instructions for Crispin being to "stick to historical fact, unless it conflicts with established Pirates of the Caribbean continuity." Crispin made a faithful effort to do this, having done plenty of research, with ''Under the Black Flag'' by [[David Cordingly]] being one of the four pirate-related books she found herself using the most consistently.<ref>Crispin, A. C. (2011). Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom</ref> According to production designer [[John Myhre]], the filmmakers of the fourth film, ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides|On Stranger Tides]]'', picked the date of 1750, or in the range of the mid-1700s.<ref name="OST ComingSoon Set Visit 1">[http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=73513 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Set Visit! - ComingSoon.net - Part 1] - [https://web.archive.org/web/20110206080655/http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=73513 Archived]</ref><ref name="OST ComingSoon Set Visit 2">[http://www.comingsoon.net/news/interviewsnews.php?id=73740 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Set Visit! - ComingSoon.net - Part 2] - [https://web.archive.org/web/20110208003010/http://www.comingsoon.net/news/interviewsnews.php?id=73740 Archived]</ref> The film also featured [[Blackbeard]], based on the historical figure and an element retained from the novel ''[[On Stranger Tides]]'' by [[Tim Powers]].<ref name="IGN">{{cite web|url=http://movies.ign.com/dor/objects/859550/pirates-of-the-caribbean-4/videos/pop_jb_pirates4.html |title=Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Movie Interview – Bruckheimer on Pirates of the Caribbean 4 |website=IGN |date=May 24, 2010 |access-date=July 5, 2010 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100704183835/http://movies.ign.com/dor/objects/859550/pirates-of-the-caribbean-4/videos/pop_jb_pirates4.html |archive-date=July 4, 2010 |quote=IGN: So he won’t be a Blackbeard back from the dead. He’s going to be a living Blackbeard from history.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.festival-cannes.fr/assets/Image/Direct/040664.pdf |title=Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides production notes |publisher=[[Walt Disney Pictures]] |access-date=July 29, 2011 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121212060008/http://www.festival-cannes.fr/assets/Image/Direct/040664.pdf |archive-date=December 12, 2012 }}</ref> The history prior to ''On Stranger Tides'' is also slightly different from real-world history, with Blackbeard's death at Ocracoke Inlet in 1718 was considered a legend in the film, with Jack Sparrow saying he was beheaded, and that his headless body swam three times around his ship before climbing back on board.<ref>{{cite video | people = [[Rob Marshall]] (director) | title = [[Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides]] | type = Film | publisher=[[Walt Disney Pictures]] |year=2011}}</ref> The fifth film, ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales|Dead Men Tell No Tales]]'', also took place in the 1750s, with an early draft taking place sometime the [[Seven Years' War]].<ref>[http://www.wordplayer.com/archives/PIRATES5.cover.html PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES by Terry Rossio - Wordplayer.com]</ref>