Editing Counterfactual history (section)

===Differences from alternate history===
Counterfactual history is neither [[historical revisionism]] nor [[alternate history]].

Counterfactual history distinguishes itself through its interest in the very incident that is being negated by the counterfactual, thus seeking to evaluate the event's relative historical importance. Historians produce arguments subsequent changes in history, outlining each in broad terms only, since the main focus is on the importance and impact of the negated event.

An alternate history writer, on the other hand, is interested precisely in the hypothetical scenarios that flow from the negated incident or event. A fiction writer is thus free to invent very specific events and characters in the imagined history.

An example of a counterfactual question would be: "What if the [[Pearl Harbor attack]] did not happen?"; whereas an alternate history writer would focus on a possible series of events arising therefrom.

The line is sometimes blurred as historians may invent more detailed timelines as illustrations of their ideas about the types of changes that might have occurred. But it is usually clear what general types of consequences the author thinks are reasonable to suppose would have been likely to occur, and what specific details are included in an imagined timeline only for illustrative purposes.

The line is further blurred by novelists such as [[Kim Stanley Robinson]], whose alternate-history novel ''[[The Years of Rice and Salt]]'' has a character talking of historians' use of counterfactuals, within the novel's alternate history. He dismisses this as "a useless exercise".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brooke |first=Keith |date=16 February 2002 |title=Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt – an infinity plus review |url=http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/riceandsalt.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220403204929/http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/riceandsalt.htm |archive-date=3 April 2022 |website=[[Infinity Plus]]}}</ref>