In May 1942, with the Second World War at its height, an alien invasion fleet arrives to conquer Earth. The invaders expected to find a planet of knights on horseback. Instead, they find tanks, radar, and a species a few…
A single alternate history novel can ask “what if?” A series has room to answer it. Over several books, a changed battle becomes a changed border, then a changed economy, then a generation of people who have never heard of…
No war in American history has inspired more “what if” fiction than the Civil War. The conflict turned on a lost set of orders, a hill nobody thought to defend, a diplomatic crisis over two envoys seized from a British…
World War II is the single most written-about conflict in human history, and it is also the richest hunting ground for alternate history fiction. The stakes were absolute, the outcome was never guaranteed the way hindsight makes it feel, and…
The Southern Victory series is the most ambitious alternate history series ever written in the English language. Across eleven novels and nearly a decade of publishing, Harry Turtledove asks what would have happened if the Confederacy had won its independence…
The Temeraire series asks one of the best questions in alternate history: what would the Napoleonic Wars look like if every great power fought with an air force of dragons? Naomi Novik answers it across nine novels, published between 2006…
Alternate history asks the most irresistible question in fiction: what if? What if the Allies had lost the Second World War? What if the Confederacy had won at Gettysburg? What if one election, one battle or one lost set of…