Alternate History: Playing with Contingency and Necessity by Kathleen Singles

Alternate History: Playing with Contingency and Necessity by Kathleen Singles

1 Introduction 
1.1 Contexts: Alternate Histories and Future Narratives 
 The purpose of this study is to investigate a corpus of texts known as ‘alternate 
history’ in the cooperative pursuit of defining a new field of narratology, future 
narratives (FNs). No less important is the endeavour to offer insights into the 
nature of alternate history to enrich an already existing, dynamic field of scholar-

ship. Since the objectives presented here should be understood in the framework 
of the umbrella project Narrating Futures (hereafter: “ NAFU ”), it is fitting to begin 
with some contextualization. 
 Alternate history is a recognizable term, not only for scholars of literature, but 
also for many readers in general. Especially since the 1960s, alternate histories 
have steadily gained popular status as the ‘what-if’ tales of history. Among the 
most well-known examples are Philip Dick ’s classic The Man in the High Castle , 
in which Nazi Germany and Japan are victorious in World War II, or Michael Cha-

bon ’s novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union , in which a temporary settlement for 
Jewish refugees is set up in Alaska after Israel’s collapse in 1948. Such works have 
become veritable pop-cultural phenomena, along with countless other literary 
explorations of the question ‘what if?’. Nowadays, readers can even search on 
websites like www.uchronia. net for an alternate history of their choice – not only 
by author, language or date of publication, but also by ‘divergence’, or the histori-

cal period and/or event chosen as the focus of the alternate history –, or discuss 
their favourite alternate histories online with enthusiasts on www.alternatehis-tory.com .

Personal websites of amateur alternate-history authors have begun to 
populate the web as well, including “Black Shuck’s Alternate History Page”, run 
by a former history major, or “The Tony Jones Alternate History Page”, branded 
by a translated quote from Konrad Adenauer: “History is the sum total [sic] of 
things that might have been avoided” (R. Brown; T. Jones). The daily blog “Today 
in Alternate History” collects the best of alternate-history journal-style articles 
from the web, and readers can follow the latest posts on Twitter. Several years 
ago, in 1995, a kind of critical promotion of the genre was instituted as well: The 

Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were created to recognize “the best allohis-

torical genre publications of the year”. 
 That alternate history has achieved a degree of respect among readers outside 
of a specialized fan base is evidenced, for example, by the fact that Philip Roth ’s 
alternate-history novel The Plot against America made bestseller lists in the United 
States in 2004 and has since been translated into Danish, French, German, Italian 
and Spanish, or that many more recently published alternate histories are adver-

tised as such (for example the works of Harry Turtledove , who has made a career 
for himself as the “master” of alternate history (Castro)). Stephen King ’s newest 
book, 11/23/63 , in which a teacher travels back in time to prevent the assassina-

tion of John F. Kennedy, is also an example of alternate history in high profile. 
Outside of alternate history ‘proper’, examples of the ‘what-if?’ concept abound 
in popular culture, from Star Trek to The Fantastic Four . 
 Those less familiar with alternate history as pop literature or its widespread 
presence on the internet, in television, film, and books, may have heard of the 
closely-related concept of ‘ counterfactual history ’, promoted and practiced by 
high-profile historians such as Niall Ferguson or Robert Cowley (cf. Ferguson; 
Cowley). As we shall see, history and historiography are fields in which counter-

factual thinking is prominent, even if its validity as a part of historical method 
is still a matter of avid debate. Counterfactual history and counterfactuality are 
treated in the fields of cognitive science, philosophy, political science, and even 
geography, too, and scholars in various disciplines have contributed to our 
understanding of the uses, problems, and paradoxes of postulating alternative 
outcomes to past events. The underlying ‘what-if?’ concept in its most funda-

mental form should be familiar to just about everyone, not limited to any given 
readership: the cognitive process of calculating alternative possibilities is neces-

sary for decision-making in general. The fact that the counterfactual principle of

Alternate History: Playing with Contingency and Necessity by Kathleen Singles