Science fiction

1.

2. ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

3.

Semenov: The subject of our report is alternative
history in science fiction. It s a genre of fiction
consisting of stories in which one or more
historical events occur differently from reality.

4.

Vika D.: These stories usually contain
"what if" scenarios at crucial points in
history and present an outcome of
events alternative to historical record.
The stories are the product of
conjecture, but are sometimes based
on scientific fact.
Vika P.: Alternate history can be
seen as a subgenre of literary fiction
, science fiction, and/or
historical fiction; different alternate
history works may use tropes from
any or all of these genres. Another
term occasionally used for the genre
is "allohistory"

5.

Semenov: Since the 1950s, this
type of fiction has, to a large
extent, merged with science
fiction tropes involving time
travel between alternate
histories, psychic awareness of
the existence of one universe by
the people in another, or time
travel that results in history
splitting into two or more
timelines. Cross-time, timesplitting, and alternate history
themes have become so closely
interwoven that it is impossible
to discuss them fully apart from
one another.
Vika D.: It is interesting to know in French,
Italian, Spanish, Catalan and German, the
genre of alternate history is called uchronie /
ucronia / ucronía / Uchronie, which has given
rise to the term Uchronia in English. This
neologism is based on the prefix ου- (which in
Ancient Greek means "not/not any/no") and
the ancient Greek χρόνος (chronos), meaning
"time." A uchronia means literally "(in) no
time."

6.

Vika P.: This term apparently
also inspired the name of the
alternate history book list,
uchronia.net. The
Collins English Dictionary
defines alternative history as
"a genre of fiction in which the
author speculates on how the
course of history might have
been altered if a particular
historical event had had a
different outcome."
Semenov: Several genres of fiction have been misidentified
as alternate history. Science fiction set in what was the
future but is now the past, like Arthur C. Clarke's
2001: A Space Odysseyor George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four, is not alternate history because the
author did not make the choice to change the past at the
time of writing.[6] Secret history, which can take the form
of fiction or nonfiction, documents events that may or may
not have happened historically but did not have an effect
on the overall outcome of history, and so is not to be
confused with alternate history.

7.

8.

Vika D.: Alternate history is related to, but distinct from,
counterfactual history. This term is used by some
professional historians to describe the practice of using
thoroughly researched and carefully reasoned speculations
on "what might have happened if..." as a tool of academic
historical research, as opposed to a literary device.
Vika P.: Now we’ll dwell on the history of alternative history
literature. The earliest example of alternate (or
counterfactual) history is found in Livy's
Ab Urbe Condita Libri (book IX, sections 17–19). Livy
contemplated an alternative 4th century BC in which
Alexander the Great had expanded his empire westward
instead of eastward.
Semenov: he asked, "What would have been the results for
Rome if she had been engaged in war with Alexander?"[9][10]
[11] Livy concluded that the Romans would likely have
defeated Alexander. There were some other examples of
alternative fiction works in medieval age, of course.

9.

Vika D.: One of the earliest works of alternate history published in large quantities for the
reception of a large audience may be Louis Geoffroy'sHistoire de la Monarchie universelle:
Napoléon et la conquête du monde (1812–1832) (History of the Universal Monarchy:
Napoleon And The Conquest Of The World) (1836), which imagines Napoleon's
First French Empire emerging victorious in the French invasion of Russia in 1811 and in an
invasion of England in 1814, later unifying the world under Bonaparte's ruleVika P.: In the
English language, the first known complete alternate history is Nathaniel Hawthorne's
short story "P.'s Correspondence," published in 1845. It recounts the tale of a man who is
considered "a madman" due to his perceptions of a different 1845, a reality in which longdead famous people, such as the poets Burns, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, the actor
Edmund Kean, the British politician George Canning, and even Napoleon Bonaparte, are
still alive
Semenov: The late 1980s and the 1990s saw a boom in popular-fiction versions of alternate
history, fueled by the emergence of the prolific alternate history author Harry Turtledove,
as well as the development of the steampunk genre and two series of anthologies—the
What Might Have Been series edited by Gregory Benford and the Alternate ... series edited
by Mike Resnick., Howard Waldrop, and others.
Vika D.: This period also saw alternate history works by S. M. Stirling,
Kim Stanley Robinson, Harry Harrison.

10. Vika P.: Today we’re going to deepen into the alternative fiction world by dwelling on the

11. Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick (Philip K. Dick) It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years

Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick
(Philip K. Dick)
It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few
Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San
Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages.
All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a
war, and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and
Japan.
This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that
established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction
while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the
serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of
history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to
awake.

12. Life in this novel is a totalitarian, fascist imperial world. World War 2 extended to 1947 and was won by the Axis powers (Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi German). The story is set 15 years after the War's end, and one of the main plot elements is

Life in this novel is a totalitarian, fascist imperial world. World War 2 extended to 1947
and was won by the Axis powers (Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi German). The
story is set 15 years after the War's end, and one of the main plot elements is centered
on a pre-emptive Nazi nuclear strike against the Japanese Home Islands. The Nazis
develop extremely quick air travel and colonize the moon, Venus, and Mars. The novel
begins with Hitler's successor, Fuhrer Bormann dying (Hitler dies of syphilis in this
world), after draining the Mediterranean Sea and converting it to farmland. Joseph
Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, and Herman Goring battle to become the new
Reichskanzler (Imperial Chancellor).
The novel deals with themes of the interpretation and confusion of true and false
realities, justice, cultural inferiority and identity, and the effects of fascism and racism
on culture.

13.

Published in 1962, the novel takes place in an alternate reality where
the Axis powers have won World War II. Instead of focusing on the
machinations of the new Nazi regime, “The Man in the High Castle” is
more interested in a handful of unremarkable Americans — an
antiques store owner, a wayward judo instructor — whose lives would
most likely be as mundane and lonely had the Allies been victorious.
All these characters suspect that history was not meant to unfold this
way, and cannot bring themselves to engage in a world where time’s
arrow consistently points to their insignificance. “Why struggle,
then?” Dick writes. “Why choose? If all alternatives are the same. ...”
He teases and torments his characters with intimations of an
artificial America where superficial appearances say nothing about
the underlying truth of a thing, or a person; where a Swedish plastics
salesman is really a German spy; where a Mickey Mouse watch is
really a priceless artifact; and where “the word ‘fake’ meant nothing
really, since the word ‘authentic’ meant nothing really.” And when
guilt cannot be eradicated from the human soul, it can be channeled
into new and better forms — even items as modest as pieces of
jewelry one character calls “the new life of my country.”

14.

Some characters appear to wonder if they’re
actually participating in a work of science
fiction, but Dick is way ahead of them; he
seems to know he has written one of America’s
enduring expressionist novels of alienation and
disillusionment, whose environs are no more
far-fetched than the West Egg mansion of an
ersatz millionaire or the newspaper offices of a
wretched advice columnist with a Jesus
complex.