Is there any non-US alternate history?

[Tower75]

Hi, all.

Just a quick question, after all, where better to ask than the collective knowledge of the Chroniclers?

I'm quite a fan of alternate history stories, well, the idea of them anyway. I've read quite a bit of Harry Turtledove an' and the like, but my main issue (without meaning to be xenophobic) is that most of the AH i've found is American.

A lot of it seems to stem from what would happen if: The American Revolution went this or that way, or what would happen if the British jumped into the US Civil War, or a different First World War, most of it includes the Americans spanking the British at every turn if they get a chance, even though in the 1860s, or 1910s for that matter, the British Empire would've given the very young United States a severe telling off indeed.

Is there anything out there that's slightly different, or ultimately British?

 

[Susan Boulton]

And all the Kings Men, by Gordon Stevens.

SS-GB by Len Deighton

Dominion by C.J Samson

The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik

 

[HareBrain]

SS-GB by Len Deighton

There must be a ton of books that posit the aftermath of a Nazi victory. Two I've read are Fatherland by Robert Harris, and Swastika Night by Katherine Burdekin.

The latter is remarkable in that it was written in 1937 (so I'm not sure if it qualifies as alternate history as such) but it paints vividly the culture that might have resulted from centuries of Nazi dominance, especially relating to the position of women. Quite chilling.

 

[Susan Boulton]

There must be a ton of books that posit the aftermath of a Nazi victory. Two I've read are Fatherland by Robert Harris, and Swastika Night by Katherine Burdekin.

The latter is remarkable in that it was written in 1937 (so I'm not sure if it qualifies as alternate history as such) but it paints vividly the culture that might have resulted from sixty years of Nazi dominance, especially relating to the position of women. Quite chilling.

Both, And all the King's Men and Dominion are on the same theme. My favourite is the former.

 

[Tower75]

Thank you, peeps. Some interesting books by the look o' thing.

You know what I think i'd love to see: a kind of early first world war/Victorian era setting. We're still wearing red and the allegiances for the first world war are altered, us and Prussia against France, or the US, or something. Written in the style of Harry Turtledove's American Front novels, or maybe John Birmingham's World War 2.0.

I write it myself if I wasn't so rubbish at historical research, or indeed, actually able to write a story.

 

[Toby Frost]

EDIT: I posted these before the previous post, so they may not be exactly what you're looking for.

In terms of books, how about:

WW2 and after
Fatherland - Robert Harris
1984 - George Orwell (which is sort-of alternate history)
Bitter Seeds - Ian Tregillis (an American, but with British setting and characters, and no American involvement at all*
Declare - Tim Powers (WW2 and after, involving the Special Operations Executive)

Victorian
The Difference Engine - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
The Peshawar Lancers - S M Sterling
and probably many more, of varying credibility and steampunkishness.

Mention should probably also go to Harry Harrison, who wrote alternate history in which Britain and America co-operate. I gather that Mr Turtledove does have the market cornered in "America defeats the foreigners", and that the foreigners are sometimes not British but some other kind of evildoers.


* This may sound a bit harsh, but frankly, aw, did you get written out of history? Diddums.

 

[Tower75]

Thank you, Toby. The Victorian suggestions look interesting. Never heard of them before, and I do like finding new and unheard of booksies.

 

[Fried Egg]

Might I recommend: The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories.

There might be a few stories in that collection that are set in the USA but most are not and the collection also shows the variety to be found in the sub-genre.

 

[chrispenycate]

Since 'what if?' is almost the defining question for speculative fiction, 'Alternate history' is a flourishing genre in its own right. (Winces. Why 'alternate', rather than 'alternative'? Does it switch back and forth between OTL (our time line) and the other reality?) Though a majority of the authors may be American, this just reflects the commercial dominance of the US in SF matters, and several American authors have written European Alternate Histories. Your Harry Turtledove wrote a Byzantine Roman Empire where Mohammet never developed Islam, and an Elizabethan England where the Armada was not destroyed and the Catholic church retook the land. Actually, Roberts' 'Pavane' had the same premise.

Flint (in his 1632 extravaganza) and Stirling (in Island in the sea of time) had American protagonists, but interacted with European society, while Kim Stanley Robinson's 'The Years of Rice and Salt' wipes out western European civilisation entirely with the fourteenth century great plague, not the seventeenth century one Londonians consider important. Cusp points all too far back? You need to go back a fair distance, or the American influence gets too great.

Even Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels investigate parallel (or some rather warped) timelines. I Googled, and got Popular Alternate History Books which, while not filtering out your American Civil War gives a number of alternatives…

 

[psikeyhackr]

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp

One of the oldest and most influential.

Lest Darkness Fall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Agent of Byzantium by Harry Turtledove

Agent of Byzantium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1632 by Eric Flint though that might be a kind of alternate US history.

1632 series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1632 by Eric Flint - Baen Books

psik

 

[JunkMonkey]

of the top of my head:

The Fall of French Steiner by Barrington Bayley was a 'Nazis win the war' story and John Brunner's Times Without Number in which the Spanish Armada lead to a successful invasion Spanish of Britain.

The Spanish had also defeated Elizabethans in Keith Roberts' Pavane (One of my all time favourite books.)

 

[Tower75]

Thanks, all. Some interesting sounding books there. I wonder why Nazis Win seems to be so popular in the genre, could it be that it's because it almost did happen?

 

[hitmouse]

The Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy by Michael Moorcock. High Victorian alternate worlds.

Pavane Keith Roberts. What if the reformation did not happen? Set in Dorset, Corfe Castle if I remember correctly.

 

[Mirannan]

Belisarius series by David Drake, in which a real-world historical figure (General Belisarius) in about 530 AD is faced with the threat of an aggressively expansionist empire in India.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Fatherland by Robert Harris

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp
Agent of Byzantium by Harry Turtledove

Some wonderful suggestions in this thread.

The first I can put on my Christmas list, but the latter two are only available on Kindle. As I'm in a reading slump at the moment, and these two books are cheap (Byzantine historical fiction!!) I'm going to have to treat myself.

 

[tinkerdan]

You would think that everything Steam-punk is alternate history although no attention to much believability.

 

[svalbard]

Ash by Mary Gentle tells the story of an alternate 15th century Europe where the Vandals survived in North Africa and invade Europe. A really good read.

 

[Tower75]

You would think that everything Steam-punk is alternate history although no attention to much believability.

A very good point. See, I'm torn with "steampunk", I really like the idea of alternate Victorian history, maybe with a steam-car, or Zeppelin thrown in, but a lot of "steam punk" nowadays seems to be nothing but tophats, goggles, and steampowered..., well, everything, pens and chairs and the like. It all just seems a bit tongue-in-cheek, as opposed to an alternate history story involving slightly "super" technology.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

My favourite, mentioned above, is Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years Of Rice & Salt.

 

[Foxbat]

Stephen, your own book, Hairy London, fits the bill (at least in my opinion).