So you ’ve snapped up Michael Chabon’sNebula Award winning novel The Yiddish Policeman ’s Union , and now you require more serious-minded alternate histories to fill your brain and bookshelf . While there are literally one C of alternate history out there ( many of them written by various Michael Moorcocks and Harry Turtledoves in different timelines ) , a few standouts will help you get into the writing style and guide you down the happy path to historic mindfuckery . mark off out our our suggestions for some brilliant alternate history interpretation .
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A classic of the writing style is Philip K. Dick’sMan in the High Castle , an early-1960s novel about what happens to the United States after Japan and Germany win World War II . The West Coast has conk out Nipponese , while the South is full of Germans and the Midwest is still its own independent country . Meanwhile , a mysterious “ serviceman in the high-pitched castle ” has write a book about an alternate United States which won World War II . Dick ’s mind - bending and tragic novel pep up a whole host of “ what if the Nazis won ” novels , including the critically - acclaimedFatherland . Vladimir Nabokov also picked up on the approximation of an alternate account novel - within - an alternate history novel for his bookAda or Ardor , about what would have happen if the U.S. had been colonized by Czarist Russia .
Another cracking smell at an alternate United States comes in Philip Roth’sThe Plot Against America , which is about what might have happened if Charles Lindbergh had defeated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for president in the early forties , and the res publica had slid into fascism .
Several British alternate histories focus on the Napoleonic Wars . Susanna Clark’sJonathan Strange & Mr. Norrelltakes place in an alternating nineteenth one C England where magic is a recognized scholarly pursuit like skill . In fact , in Clark ’s England , one of the nation ’s knightly kings was a sorcerer , but the applied use of thaumaturgy has fallen out of party favour . The novel ’s two eponymous champion become the first practician of trick in England for two centuries , and aid the government in the warfare . Naomi Novik ’s popular serial beginning withHis Majesty ’s Dragonposits a Napoleonic War fought in part with dragons .
Jacqueline Carey ’s mammothKushielseries is about what would have happened to Europe if Christianity had not become the dominant organized religion , and instead pagan religion reigned . One result of this situation , at least in the region we know as France , is that prostitutes are venerate like holy royal family . And in Kim Stanley Robinson ’s novelThe Years of Rice and Salt , Christianity ’s march across Europe is halted due to the Black Plague and Islam becomes the prevalent world religion instead .
Even cyber-terrorist has its alt.histories : The Difference Engine , by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling , kick off the steampunk craze with its tale of what would have happened if the computer had been invented in the nineteenth hundred .
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