Alternative History:What is Althistory?

Alternate History is the most frequently used term for the fictional genre which often presupposes a change of a minor historical event that producing an incredible series of changes in the world, diverging it from Our Timeline (OTL) and creating a new, alternate and parallel world.

In the scientific field, these Alternate Timelines and parallel worlds were theorized by physicists in the late-20th Century. They suggested that time has "branches" as a result of numerous points of divergence (POD) in the past. While some believe many branches occur in our universe, due to numerous departure points, others speculate further that all branches occur simultaneously, and perhaps in other universes. The changes would represent "alternate histories," differing in varying degrees from history as it unfolded in OTL.

This scientific knowledge has become inspiration to the literary world, and especially on the Internet, where Alternate Timelines began appearing in the mid- to late-1990s first on newsgroups, then on individual Webpages and most recently on Althistory Wikipedia.

In literature and in other media, especially film and television, Alternate History has often been used in conjunction with, and are often caused by, time travel. In the film series Back to the Future, a lead character, "Doc" Brown, explained the concepts of Alternate History, Alternate Timelines and points of departure, as well as time travel.

Alternate History have also been used as a literary device by historians to explore how social and political changes in the past may have affected events in OTL.

This is a brief summary of the Alternate History genre. For a more detailed description of Alternate History as a fictional genre, please visit Wikipedia.org

Important Points of Alt-Histories

Elements of Alternate History

There are certain elements which are common to all alternate histories, whether they deal with history on the micro-level (personal alternate histories) or the macro-level (world-changing events). These elements include:

• A point of change from the history of our world prior to the time at which the author is writing;
• A change which would alter history as it is known; and
• An examination of the ramifications of that change.

Alternate histories do not:

• Need to be set in the past;
• Need to spell out the point of divergence;
• Need to deal with world changing events; or
• Need to include famous people.

Also see

• Alternate Timelines
• Our Timeline (OTL)
• Points of Divergence (POD)