Editing Alternate history (section)

===Major writers explore alternate histories===
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[[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).