alternative histories

Reimagined past events

Alternative histories are fictional narratives that imagine how events might have unfolded if history had taken a different course.

The genre typically hinges on a single divergence point: What if the South had won the Civil War?

What if the Nazis had conquered Britain?

Also called alternate histories or counterfactuals, these works explore how small changes might cascade into radically different worlds.

Related

steampunk · dieselpunk · Confederate · assassination · branching · fork in the road · speculative · revisionist · divergent · multiverse · sliding doors moment · time-travel · paradox · reimagined · worldbuilding

Opposites
factuality

alternative historiesrecorded history

Past preserved through documentation

academic history · historical record · historiography · primary sources · chronicles

speculative vs. established narrative

alternative historiesofficial history

Government-endorsed version of events

temporal orientation

alternative historiesspeculative fiction

Genre of imagined realities

futurism · science fiction · prophecy · prognostication · futurology

Family

alternative, alternatives, alternatively, alter, alteration, alterations, altered, altering, alternate

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Used worldwide · Timeless · Abstract · Rated G