Alternate History

The genre of alternate history goes back, formally, to a story called "Sideways in Time" by Murray Leinster published in 1934. It tells the story of accidental explorers jumping between timelines (I have read it but too long ago). Of course, there were some stories before that, such as Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," and other time travel fantasies.

Currently there are four types of stories as follows:

1) A Point of Departure (POD) Story. This essentially consists in picking a pivotal or turning point in history and changing it. Rome loses the Second Punic War, say, or the South Wins the Civil War, or the Nazis win WWII, or the USSR overturns all antural law and proves (ha ha) Communism( ha ha ha ha) superior to (Oh, I can't go on!), and so on. The supply fr such stories is innexhaustible, even if you confine yourself to major turning points. If you include minor things, like who wins the presidency or even who gets elected to Congress, the supply is well-nigh infinite.

2) A consequence of the point of departure story. In these the POD is assumed, or shown or exhibited, and the consequences laid out. In turn these stories can be subdivided in two broad types:

2.1) Re-telling history in a different guise. Harry Turtledove does this in three series: The Great War, The American Empire, and The Settling Accounts series. IN essence the South wins the Civil War, therefore WWI is played out in North America, though with differences in outcome, and then there's an interwar period culminating with the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in the South, ending with WWII in North America complete with a Holocaust of black people in the South.

2.2) History turns out compeltely different. This is less common (!), and in some ways more obscure. I can't right now think of a good example, save Robert Silverberg's "Roma Eterna" stories, where the Roman Empire just goes on and on. It's a bit hard because Silverberg keeps to Roman dating, counting the years onwards from the Founding of Rome, and history seems to follow the same path, only in Roman guise. There's a Renaissance, a Revolution followed by a Terror, etc. But it feels different enough. And the story relating a failed Roman invasion of the Yucatan Peninsula is really worth reading.

This also brings me to a pet peeve. Many AH writers who change the history of the Roman Empire's fall, mostly so it doesn't fall, use dating systems the reader is unfamilair with. Silverberg as noted above, and Turtledove in his "Agent of Byzantium" series uses Byzantine dates. I appreciate trying to keep authenticity, but in fairness to the reader BC and AD dates should be supplied.

3) Alien Space Bats stories. Essentially these are stories where aliens come to Earth and change history. Most famous is Turtledove's sereis, I forget its name, where highly innept aliens invade the Earth early in 1942, rudely interrupting the progress of WWII.

4) compeltely differnet timelines. In this type, we're shown human worlds that are nothing like the world we know at all. The foremost exponent is probably H. beam Piper in his Paratime Police series. You might as well be reading Fantasy ro Science Fiction, really, except that it's set on Earth. Piper manages two blockbusting storeis, though. One, whose title I forget, about a timeline wher reincarnation is scientific fact. And another, "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen," about a Pensylvannia State Trooper who accidentally winds up in a different timeline, and who liberates the four rather primitive kingdoms of the Northeast by teaching them how to make gunpowder.

Few AH authors take the position that had Rome not fallen, or had the Library of Alexandria been preserved, human civilization would have advanced much faster.

It's really hard to say, really. Consider that Science, as a consistent discipline, depends less on actual scientific knowledge than on philosophy. That is, science depends for it's advances on a system we call the scientific method. Let's say you go back in time and tell the Ancient Greeks "Matter is Made of Atoms" (actually Asimov kind of does something like this in a non-AH story called "The Red Queen's Race.") Would that lead to some advance in science or not? I tend to think not. Consider that an Ancient Greek, Democritus, claimed just that 2,500 years ago or so, but it wasn't until very early in the XX AD that scientists found proof of the existence of atoms.

On the other hand, if you were to teach the Ancients how to gather data, how to correlate it, how to interpet it, how to formualte a hypothesis, how to test it, how to formualte a theory, how to validate a theory, and so on, then yuo might effect some serious change. The Ancients were just as human as we are, just as smart. Introduce science, and as important an easier system for math such as Indo-Arabic numerals, with a few choice examples of theories, and then you might effect some real change.

As far as I know, there's no AH story, novel or series which has undertaken something like this.

A series of four books of the POD genre is A Whale has Wings. There is even a forum dedicated to this genre.

An interesting area of research is the idea that some things in history happened almost by serendipity, or as a result of only a handful of people or because of a single man's decision.

I really think the most fascinating and far reaching crossroads in history, was the technical advances of the Chinese in seamanship.By A.D. 1050, Chinese navigators were using the float compass. In 1070 the Chinese developed dry docks. In the 1100s, Chinese junks reached the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. In the 13th century Chinese ships regularly ventured to India and occasionally to East Africa. Most remarkable were the seven voyages (1405-1433) led by the Muslim eunuch named Zheng He.

Only a year later, the Portuguese discovery of a passable route around Cape Bojador, in 1434 finally opened up the route to Sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa had things the Chinese wanted: ivory medicine, spices, exotic wood and exotic wildlife Beginning in the A.D. first century, when the Han Emperor Wang Mang was given a rhinoceros, the only gifts from the tributary states that really seemed to impress the Chinese emperor were animals. Zheng He brought back lions, orynxes, nilganias, zebras and ostriches from Africa, but the biggest commotion was caused when a giraffe was delivered as a tribute from a ruler in Bengal in 1414.

Ironically the first Chinese ship to round the Cape of Good Hope and arrive in Europe--160-foot-long, 750-ton teak junk that had journeyed to London from Hong Kong--didn't show up until 1848.



The stretch from Colicut India to Mogadishu Africa is 2200 miles of open ocean. While Columbus sailed roughly 3400 miles from the Canaries to Bahamas, some of the crossings such as Ireland to Southampton(1900 miles) and Cape Verde to Brazil (1700 miles) were shorter.

Quote: Nareed

On the other hand, if you were to teach the Ancients how to gather data, how to correlate it, how to interpet it, how to formualte a hypothesis, how to test it, how to formualte a theory, how to validate a theory, and so on, then yuo might effect some serious change. The Ancients were just as human as we are, just as smart. Introduce science, and as important an easier system for math such as Indo-Arabic numerals, with a few choice examples of theories, and then you might effect some real change.

History is bunk. Alternative history is alternative bunk.

By the way, the ancients seem to have done quite well in gathering data about astronomy, geography... and with all we know about a vortex, Homer still gives the best description for a small vessel to escape one.

I have an idea simmering an changing in the back burner:

1) A natural catastrophe will utterly destroy humanity in the future (say around the year 3200 CE or so). Say the Sun goes nova, which is impossible but would give you some time to act, say a decade or two. Next suppose a small(ish) black hole, maybe a couple of solar masses or less, is heading straight into the Sun. Something like that the point is it will destroy all life on Earth, but there are a few years to try to escape it.

2) the escape consists in travelling back in time to establish advanced science and technology then. That way humanity will have spread to the stars by the time the Sun undergoes a catastrophe.

How to do it? Aye, there lies the rub.

My original idea was for a few hundred people of the future to "land" in Sicily a few years ahead of the First Punic War. They'd establish trade relations with Rome, Carthage and Greece (including the post-Alexandrian kingdoms in Egypt, the Seleucid empire and so on). Wherever they go they bring highly advanced technology, for the era, like gunpowder, steel, steel tools, machine tools for making steel tools, electric motors and power generators (essentially the same thing), printing presses, paper, ink, coal, etc. They'd also establish schools, libraries and universities.

The notion was to combine the commercial power of Carthage with the military power of Rome, both with more advanced technologies.

The problem with such a scenario is not to overwhelm the natives, and to keep their identities and origins hidden at all times. This last is simply impossible, given the large numbers of people involved.

So instead I thought they should land, quite openly, in Old Kingdom Egypt at the height of Imhotep's popularity. Imhotep was a very early prototype of what we might call a "Renaissance man." he was well-versed in several disciplines, among which were medicine and architecture. He built the first pyramid in Egypt (the Step Pyramid at Sakkara), and in latter centuries was worshipped as a god of healing. He was also a person of influence at the court. Impress him, and you will impress the king and the nobility.

More later.

Well, you could tell "the real story" of Atlantis. A story with that new twist.

Of course, that means the people from the future failed and Earth is doomed.

Or it could be they succeeded but the effort destroyed them -- which would also be an interesting twist.

That is similar to the plot of Interstellar.

Quote: rxwine

Well, you could tell "the real story" of Atlantis. A story with that new twist.

Of course, that means the people from the future failed and Earth is doomed.

Asimov kind of did that in a story called "The Red Queen's Race." Someone sends a chemistry book, translated to ancient Greek, back into the distant past, and nothing changes.

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Or it could be they succeeded but the effort destroyed them -- which would also be an interesting twist.

I think the story should end when the expedition's leader dies.

One thing the natives would want to know, once they understand what advanced science can accomplish, is what happens after you die. The fact that the people from the future won't have an answer will be interesting.

This is a very long-term project, which will require a great deal of detailed research into the period. And a great deal of filling-in the blanks of the period. One thing that bothers me a bit in stories where a modern person travels to ancient times, is that things are as described in history books exactly, with not a single surprise in the scene. I can take it when the setting's been well documented, but not really otherwise.

Curiously Futurama did better in this regard. Twice at least we're shown reconstructions of the XX century which miss the mark by miles. The implication being our own reading of the past has errors like that (albeit not so grossly exaggerated).

Quote: Nareed

Asimov kind of did that in a story called "The Red Queen's Race." Someone sends a chemistry book, translated to ancient Greek, back into the distant past, and nothing changes.

But there was some human intervention. The man hired to do the translation decides to only translate the portions of the book that coincide with historical accounts of the ancient Greek understanding of chemistry.

The professor assuages the fears of a butterfly effect caused by the changes in time caused by the Ancient Greek transalation of the chemistry book.

Quote: Red Queen's Race by Asmov (1949)

“In Hellenistic times, Hero built a steam engine and weapons of war became almost mechanized. The period has been referred to as an abortive mechanical age, which came to nothing because, somehow, it neither grew out of nor fitted into its social and economic milieu. Alexandrian science was a queer and rather inexplicable phenomenon.

“Then one might mention the old Roman legend about the books of the Sibyl that contained mysterious information direct from the gods—

“In other words, gentlemen, while you are right that any change in the course of past events, however trifling, would have incalculable consequences, and while I also believe that you are right in supposing that any random change is much more likely to be for the worse than for the better, I must point out that you are nevertheless wrong in your final conclusions.

“Because THIS is the world in which the Greek chemistry text WAS sent back.

“This has been a Red Queen’s race, if you remember your ‘Through the Looking Glass.’ In the Red Queen’s country, one had to run as fast as one could merely to stay in the same place. And so it was in this case! Tywood may have thought he was creating a new world, but it was I whoprepared the translations, and I took care that only such passages as would account for the queer scraps of knowledge the ancients apparently got
from nowhere would be included.

“And my only intention, for all my racing, was to stay in the same place.”Three weeks passed; three months; three years. Nothing happened.

Quote: Pacomartin

But there was some human intervention.

well, yes. The book was incapable of either translating itself or sending itself back in time ;)

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The man hired to do the translation decides to only translate the portions of the book that coincide with historical accounts of the ancient Greek understanding of chemistry.

Oh, that. I'd forgotten about that.

I never much liked that story. It seemed much ado about nothing.

In any case, stories of time travelers who try to make changes and end up 1) ruining everything or 2) leaving everything as it is, are a dime a dozen.

I think Back to the Future worked well, in part, because Marty changes things for the better in the first movie, without quite realizing what he was doing.