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101-473: The Destroyermen series is a series of alternate history books, written by American writer and historian Taylor Anderson . The fifteen books in the series are Into the Storm , Crusade (both 2008), Maelstrom (2009), Distant Thunders (2010), Rising Tides , Firestorm (both 2011), Iron Gray Sea (2012), Storm Surge (2013), Deadly Shores (2014), Straits of Hell (2015), Blood in

202-527: A Megaduke and commander of its armies and manages to fight off the invading Ottoman armies of Mehmet II . He saves the city from Islamic conquest , and even chases the Turks deeper into lands they had previously conquered. 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

303-431: 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. In the 1930s, alternate history moved into a new arena. The December 1933 issue of Astounding published Nat Schachner 's "Ancestral Voices", which

404-459: A POD only to explain the existence and make no use of the concept, or may present the universe without explanation of its existence. 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

505-412: 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

606-464: 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 by Stephen Fry in which

707-469: 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). 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 sings

808-412: 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 ,

909-559: 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; Contro-passato prossimo ), wherein the static Alpine front line which divided Italy from Austria during that war collapses when the Germans and

1010-629: A different history. "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. 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

1111-797: 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 Amazon series of the same name . Vladimir Nabokov 's novel, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969),

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1212-533: A line to the grounded submarine or to reach her by boat until late on the evening of 14 January, when a party from the Nauset , Massachusetts, Coast Guard station succeeded in boarding. By the morning of 15 January, S-19 ' s crew had been safely brought to shore. After strenuous effort by Navy tugs and the Coast Guard cutters, S-19 was finally freed from the shoal . Repaired and returned to service with

1313-479: A nation. It assumes that by giving a nation an alternative history, alternative values can be made to grow." 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

1414-641: A ship from the British East India Company that was transported to this universe two centuries earlier. Fourth book in the series that was released in June 2010. This book introduces the appearance of the SS Santa Catalina , a pre-World War I cargo ship that came from an alternative timeline in which the ship had never undergone the conversion into a destroyer tender , with its cargo of Curtiss P-40 Warhawks . The fifth novel in

1515-664: 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. Since the late 1990s, Harry Turtledove has been the most prolific practitioner of alternate history and has been given

1616-592: 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 The Ifs of History [1907] and Charles Petrie 's If: A Jacobite Fantasy [1926]). 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

1717-629: A third. Robinson explores world history from that point in AD 1405 (807 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

1818-503: 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. While many justifications for alternate histories involve a multiverse , the "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

1919-540: A time that was the future for the writer, but now is the past for the reader, such as the novels 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke , 1984 (1949) by George Orwell and the movie 2012 (2009) because the authors did not alter the real history of the past when they wrote the stories. Similar to the genre of alternative history, there is also the genre of secret history - which can be either fictional or non-fictional - which documents events that might have occurred in history, but which had no effect upon

2020-411: 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. Time travel as

2121-427: 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

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2222-541: 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 . 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

2323-484: Is Herodotus 's Histories , which contains speculative material. 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

2424-683: Is a destroyer of the United States Asiatic Fleet , commanded by Lieutenant Commander Matthew Reddy. The Walker was a part of the surviving ABDACOM fleet, consisting of the Royal Navy cruiser HMS  Exeter , HMS Encounter , and the United States Navy destroyers Pope and Mahan , all of which were fleeing from Japanese naval forces. However, the Japanese forces closed range, and opened up on

2525-405: Is a story of incest that takes place within an alternate North America settled in part by 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 believe that the references to a counter-earth suggest that the world portrayed in Ada is a delusion in the mind of

2626-517: 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 Utopian society in North America . 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

2727-481: 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

2828-562: Is found in Livy 's 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 Rome if she had been engaged in a war with Alexander?" Livy concluded that the Romans would likely have defeated Alexander. An even earlier possibility

2929-575: Is half-mad. Third book in the series that was released in February 2009. By Maelstrom , Reddy, his crew, and their Lemurian allies, are fighting the Grik. By Distant Thunders , the tide is turning. This book introduces the USS S-19 (SS-124) , an S-class submarine from an alternative timeline in which the submarine was not scrapped, and initial contact with a society that was created by descendants of

3030-693: Is set in Europe following the Nazi victory. The 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. In the Mecha Samurai Empire series (2016), Peter Tieryas focuses on the Asian-American side of the alternate history, exploring an America ruled by

3131-494: 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. 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

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3232-663: The Crosstime Traffic series for teenagers featuring a variant of H. Beam Piper's paratime trading empire. 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 (1958); followed by Richard C. Meredith 's Timeliner trilogy in the 1970s, Michael McCollum 's A Greater Infinity (1982) and John Barnes' Timeline Wars trilogy in

3333-617: The Electric Boat Company in New York City on subcontract to Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation 's Fore River Shipyard in Quincy , Massachusetts . She was launched on 21 June 1920, sponsored by Miss Genevieve Kittinger (daughter of Commander T. A. Kittinger, U.S. Navy inspector of ordnance), and commissioned on 24 August 1921. After preliminary shakedown operations, S-19 was decommissioned and returned to

3434-472: 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 depicts a failed US government experiment which transports a small American town into an alternative version of the US run by Gnostics , who are engaged in

3535-672: The French submarine Surcouf , the French Bretagne-class battleship Savoie , the Italian Leone-class destroyer Leopardo , and the Spanish Alsedo-class destroyer Antúnez along with a German Junkers Ju 52 trimotor transport aircraft and a squadron of Italian license-built Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aircraft. The frequently mentioned mysterious German submarine was later revealed to be

3636-745: The Type XI U-boat U-112 in the next novel, River of Bones . Penguin Random House published River of Bones , the thirteenth book in the series, in July 2018 to generally favorable reviews. The machinations of the League of Tripoli continue as do the wars against the Grik and the Doms. Matthew Reddy is forced to command a new ship, as the Walker is too badly damaged. More details are given about

3737-787: The Worldwar series , in which aliens invaded Earth during World War II . 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 , in which the Nazis won World War II; and Ruled Britannia , in which the Spanish Armada succeeded in conquering England in the Elizabethan era , with William Shakespeare being given

3838-586: 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),

3939-529: 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

4040-551: The 1920s. 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 , in which the US defeated Japan but not Germany in World War II, resulting in a Cold War with Germany rather than

4141-414: 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 timestreams . Often described as a subgenre of science fiction , alternative history is a genre of fiction wherein

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4242-484: 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. Kurland's 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. Harry Turtledove has launched

4343-472: 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

4444-521: The American Civil War (named the "War of Southron 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 instead. The American humorist author James Thurber parodied alternate history stories about

4545-412: 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

4646-745: 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

4747-785: The Eastern Front in the battle against the Dominion. Book 9 was published in May 2014. It deals with the Alliance invasion of the heart of the Grik Empire. Book 10 was published in May 2015. It dealt with the Alliance's attempts to keep the Grik from reconquering the Lemurians' ancestral home of Madagascar, battles against the Dominion on land and at sea, introduction of the League of Tripoli and various other plot points. Book 11 of

4848-635: The Grik for a year and are now winning. Walker , in the past year, has been rebuilt, and is now part of the Little class. This book introduces the a human-Lemarian culture called the Republic of Real People in what would be South Africa. Also introduced in this book is the German ocean liner SMS Amerika that was transported from a different timeline. It was later revealed in Deadly Seas that Amerika

4949-637: The Hawaiian Islands. 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; while in others, there is a Nazi/Japanese Cold War comparable to the US/Soviet equivalent in 'our' timeline. Fatherland (1992), by Robert Harris ,

5050-621: The Imperium is one of the earliest alternate history novels; it was published by 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

5151-450: The Japanese Empire while integrating elements of Asian pop culture like mechas and videogames. Several writers have posited points of departure for such a world but then have injected time splitters from the future. For instance 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

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5252-413: 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). The late 1980s and the 1990s saw a boom in popular-fiction versions of alternate history, fueled by

5353-425: The Lemurian leadership, and forms an alliance with them to fight the other race, the Grik, who are at war with the Lemurians. The Grik are possible descendants of the dinosaur genus Velociraptor . Second book in the series that was released in October 2008. In the second book, Crusade , Reddy, and the crew of Walker , are training the Lemurians how to fight. The Amagi is now under Grik control, and her captain

5454-418: 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

5555-420: 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

5656-434: 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

5757-449: 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. 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

5858-410: The Water (2016), Devil's Due (2017), River of Bones (2018), Pass of Fire (2019), and Winds of Wrath (2020). The books chronicle the adventures of the crews of the destroyer USS  Walker  (DD-163) and the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi , in the early stages of the War in the Pacific during World War II , being transported to an alternate Earth . This Earth is relatively

5959-569: The author speculates upon how the course of history might have been altered if a particular historical event had an outcome different from the real life outcome. An alternate history requires three conditions: (i) A point of divergence from the historical record, before the time in which the author is writing; (ii) A change that would alter known history; and (iii) An examination of the ramifications of that alteration to history. Occasionally, some types of genre fiction are misidentified as alternative history , specifically science fiction stories set in

6060-431: 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

6161-401: The contractor on 8 March 1922 for further work to remedy defects revealed in her first weeks of operation. Upon her return to the United States Navy , S-19 recommissioned at Groton , Connecticut , on 6 January 1923. S-19 operated off the northeastern coast of the United States from 1923 to 1930, taking part in fleet exercises off Panama in the early months of each year. This routine

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6262-435: 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." 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

6363-485: 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. 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

6464-420: 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 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

6565-440: 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 , Howard Waldrop , Peter Tieryas , and others. In 1986,

6666-470: The first that explicitly posited 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

6767-460: The fleet, S-19 continued her Atlantic operations until 22 October 1930, when she departed New London for the Pacific Ocean . The submarine arrived at Pearl Harbor , Hawaii , on 7 December 1930, and for the next three years operated from there. She was decommissioned at Pearl Harbor on 10 February 1934. S-19 was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 12 December 1936. She was towed to sea and scuttled on 18 December 1938 in accordance with

6868-403: The fourteenth book in the series. As the Allied army under Captain Reddy marches towards the Grik capital of Sofesshk in Africa, General Shinya and his Army of the Sisters prepare to battle the Dominion at El Paso del Fuego in South America. The fifteenth and final book in the series, Winds of Wrath , was released by Penguin Random House in June 2020. After capturing the Grik capital in Africa in

6969-466: The group of people calling themselves the New United States , the descendants of American soldiers who were originally being transported in 1847 on oceanic vessels across the Gulf of Mexico as part of the amphibious assault on Veracruz during the Mexican–American War . This event is detailed far more extensively in Taylor's subsequent series, " Artillerymen ", beginning with Purgatory's Shore . In June 2019, Penguin Random House released Pass of Fire ,

7070-402: The hero (another favorite theme of Dick's novels ). 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

7171-456: The last book, Allied armies march upon the increasingly desperate remnants of the Grik army commanded by First General Esshk. In the Caribbean, the Allies marshall their "modern" warships - including Captain Reddy's Walker , the captured super-dreadnought Savoie , and even newly built vessels from the Union, Empire and Republic—against a mighty armada of League battleships for a climactic duel of fire and flashes. Alternate history Since

7272-484: The novel's anachronisms, the latter was not published until 1932. By contrast, the novel's timeline ends in 1871. USS S-19 (SS-124) USS S-19 (SS-124) was a first-group ( S-1 or "Holland") S-class submarine of the United States Navy . She was in commission from 1921 to 1922 and from 1923 to 1934 and served in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans . S-19 ′s keel was laid down on 15 August 1918 by

7373-746: The pair of destroyers to stage a torpedo attack, which sank an accompanying destroyer, and badly damaged the battlecruiser, before the ships were enveloped in a freak squall, and transported to an alternate world, where humans never evolved, apparently because the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (specifically the Chicxulub asteroid impact ) never occurred. There are two races. One, the Lemurians, who evolved from giant lemurs from Madagascar , are peaceful farmers and fishermen, and live on huge oceangoing houseboats called Homes. Walker ' s captain, Lieutenant Commander Matthew Reddy, meets with

7474-701: The past, for example, bringing about that Rome was never founded: 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

7575-465: The poets Robert Burns , Lord Byron , Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats , the actor Edmund Kean , the British politician George Canning , and 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 Louis Geoffroy 's Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812–1823 , Aristopia

7676-509: 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". Churchill's essay was one of the influences behind Ward Moore 's alternate history novel Bring the Jubilee in which General Robert E. Lee won the Battle of Gettysburg and paved the way for the eventual victory of the Confederacy in

7777-553: The protagonist's doppelganger. 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

7878-415: 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 authors wrote works depicting Nazi invasions of their respective countries as cautionary tales. The period around World War II also saw the publication of

7979-442: The recorded historical outcome. Alternative history also is thematically related to, but distinct from, counterfactual history , which is a form of historiography that explores historical events in an extrapolated timeline in which key historical events either did not occur or had an outcome different from the historical record, in order to understand what did happen. The earliest example of alternate (or counterfactual) history

8080-603: The same geographically as the one they left, but evolution took a different turn eons ago. The series ends with the fifteenth book of the series, Winds of Wrath , which was released in June 2020, while a prequel series, Artillerymen , began publication in September 2021 with Purgatory's Shore . In Into the Storm , the story begins during the Second Battle of the Java Sea . The USS  Walker  (DD-163)

8181-457: The series was released in February 2011. Firestorm is book 6 of the series was released in October 2011. The sixth volume in the series follows the growing threat from the "Dominion", a Grik / Japanese superweapon, and the arrival of more ships through the "squall", including a Japanese Kagerō-class destroyer called Hidoiame (which translate as Terrible Rain ). Book 7, Iron Gray Sea ,

8282-486: The series was released in June 2016 The twelfth book in the series was released in June 2017. The Alliance begins a more active fight against the League of Tripoli, a military coalition that was led by the Parti Populaire Français from a different alternative timeline in which France, instead of Germany, became the dominant fascist power in Europe. Some of the vessels that were brought over included

8383-459: 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

8484-611: The small Allied fleet. The Exeter took a major hit, and ordered the remaining four destroyers to leave the crippled cruiser. The destroyers were systematically sunk, starting with the Encounter , followed by the Pope shortly thereafter just as happened in the real naval battle. The surviving destroyers, Walker and Mahan , then encountered the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi . Seeing no other option, Lieutenant Commander Reddy commanded

8585-529: The task of writing the play that will motivate the Britons to rise up against their Spanish conquerors. 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 making peace. He did a two-volume series in which the Japanese not only bombed Pearl Harbor but also invaded and occupied

8686-606: The terms of the Second London Naval Treaty . In Taylor Anderson 's Destroyermen series, S-19 remains in service into World War II and is transported to an alternate Earth along with several other vessels, including the destroyers USS  Walker and USS  Mahan . S-19 was featured in the Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth campaign Raid on Innsmouth . List of submarine classes of

8787-539: The title "Master of Alternate History" by some. His books include those of 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 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

8888-445: The total number of worlds with each type of outcome is infinite, it is still possible to assign a different 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

8989-529: 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

9090-572: The war ends within weeks. 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). Beginning with The Probability Broach in 1980, L. Neil Smith wrote several novels that postulated

9191-488: 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 . Stylistically, Chabon borrows heavily from the noir and detective fiction genres, while exploring social issues related to Jewish history and culture. Apart from the alternate history of

9292-526: The world's first superpower. In Eric Flint 's 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

9393-525: 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 , by Fritz Leiber , describes a Change War ranging across all of history. Keith Laumer's Worlds of

9494-451: 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

9595-493: 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 , 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

9696-553: 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 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

9797-727: Was converted to an armed merchant cruiser during the First World War when it was transported to the alternate universe just after battling the British armed merchant cruiser RMS Mauretania in the South Atlantic instead of being stuck in an American port in the world the USS Walker came from. Book 8 was released on July 2, 2013. The eighth book in the series picks up with the desperate situation in Grik India from Book 7, as well as covering some new developments on

9898-647: Was interrupted in the foggy, early hours of 13 January 1925, when the submarine ran aground off Chatham , Massachusetts, on the southern coast of Cape Cod , after strong winds and unusually heavy seas had pushed her far from her course. She had departed Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery , Maine , the previous afternoon after overhaul, and was en route to New London , Connecticut. The United States Coast Guard cutters Tampa and Acushnet came to S-19 ' s assistance, as did life-saving crews from two nearby Coast Guard stations. Heavy seas made it impossible to pass

9999-594: Was not founded long ago... One early work of fiction detailing an alternate history is Joanot Martorell 's 1490 epic romance Tirant lo Blanch , which was written when the fall of Constantinople to the Turks was still a recent and traumatic memory for 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

10100-450: 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

10201-455: Was released in July 2012. Many new developments but also picks up some older story lines that had previously taken a sideline. Lieutenant Commander Matthew Reddy, Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces and the captain of USS Walker , marries Nurse Lieutenant Sandra Tucker. The Grand Alliance is taking the war to the Grik and the Japanese. The Lemurians, Walker ' s allies, have been fighting

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