Counterfactual History

World War 1 is an archetypal case of multilevel failures in the realm of international relations. The individual level of analysis rested upon the familial connections between the descendants of the House of Habsburg, who ended up intertwined in the monarchies making up the sides of the Great War. The leaders, most of whom were connected through intermarriage or bloodline, could have resolved many of the causes prior to the outbreak of hostilities though obviously that did not happen. At the national level, international relations theory holds that realist ideology 1 foresaw an imbalance of power resulting from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Europe.

The article discusses two Polish alternate history novels: Orzeł bielszy niż gołębica (An Eagle Whiter than a Dove) by Konrad T. Lewandowski and Gambit Wielopolskiego (Wielopolski's Gambit) by Adam Przechrzta in the context of the politics of memory of the January Uprising of 1863. Politics of memory, according to Lech M. Nijakowski, can be defined as activities directed towards changing and shaping collective memory. Politics of memory is intentional, society orientated, and focused on achieving political objectives. In the first part of the article, the collective memory and politics of memory of the January Uprising is described. The second part analyses Gambit Wielopolskiego by Adam Przechrzta, its cultural context, and the fashion in which it depicts the uprising. In the third part, the same motifs are used in the reading of Orzeł bielszy niż gołębica by Konrad T. Lewandowski. The interpretation of the novels in this broad context allows for a deeper understanding of the ph...

This article explores representations of real and fictionalized history in Fallout 4 to illuminate how the gameworld makes provocative use of mid-century American aesthetics, culture, and topics in its presentation of a compelling and interactive narrative. In particular, I am interested in how Fallout 4 infuses a counterfactual rereading of the Cold War period into the game story, where the historical fear of Mutually Assured Destruction has become a reality, and the questions/challenges this raises for the player. The place of the counterfactual-which generally proposes a kind of 'what if' question in response to some historical event or actor (i.e. what if Hitler had launched a land invasion of Britain?), and proceeds to follow the thread that is generated-remains contested in academic history. However, I contend that the power of counterfactual history lies in its capacity to unravel assumptions about the static nature of historical events, and in its denial of a linear, logical, and progressive trajectory of history broadly. In essence, the counterfactual upends conventional and popular presentations of history and problematizes attempts to establish a 'narrative neatness' in representations of past events. Set in the post-apocalyptic landscape of Massachusetts, Fallout 4 unfolds in a variety of historical sites (Concord, Lexington, Boston), which serve to anchor the main story while simultaneously grounding a sense of optimism for the future in the tradition of 'the American spirit.' At the same time, these virtual-historical landmarks and storylines reveal the major tension at work in the game, between the hopeful optimism associated with forging a new path forward and utter despair at the devastated state of this virtual world. The story and virtual aesthetics then, serve as a critique of the dominant narrative of American supremacy triumphing over communist forces to present the player with a more nuanced interpretation of some of the internal and external tensions that came to define the Cold War period (i.e. cultural malaise, economic instability, the growth of a military-industrial complex). This conflicting presentation of histories both real and imagined provides an opportunity for the player to experience and interact with the game critically as a counterfactual reimagining of the Cold War era. Viewed in this way, the virtual world of Fallout 4 becomes a space where it may be possible for a player to reassess their own understanding of the period and, importantly, their ability to critique and interrogate historical content and knowledge more broadly.

Counterfactual history involves asking 'what if' developments had occurred differently and comparing that with what actually happened. Though common in works of popular history and science fiction, counterfactual history remains controversial within the academic discipline of history. It is often dismissed as a mere parlour game or as a work of science fiction rather than of history while other historians have seen it as a necessary corrective to historical accounts because it stresses contingency and helps to question causation and the benefit of highlight. Drawing upon this debate, this paper examines what counterfactual history is and the debates around it. It distils eight main rules of counterfactual historical analysis. It then explores how lawyers use counterfactual analysis and the advantages and disadvantages of using counterfactual history in a legal context. The paper introduces and explores a new concept: Counterfactual Legal History, to see how asking 'what if' question can shed light upon how law actually developed and how it could develop. It shows that by asking what could have been, Counterfactual Legal History highlights not only other possible futures (underlining the contingency of law) but it also emphasizes the importance of agency (showing that other futures are possible and can be achieved). A counterfactual approach provides an assault on a deterministic interpretation of law as being fixed. It provides an opportunity to question and indeed depart from the progress narrative of evolutionary functionalist accounts as identified by Robert Gordon.

Tien alternatieve, maar plausibele scenario’s over hoe de geschiedenis van België anders had kunnen lopen

Een team van academische historici is op zoek gegaan naar de historische wortels van enkele van de meest prangende kwesties waar België vandaag mee worstelt. Had België evengoed niet kunnen bestaan? Waarom is België het ‘lelijkste land ter wereld’? Kon Vlaanderen niet anders dan rechts en katholiek zijn? Had Kongo kunnen ontsnappen aan een genadeloze koloniale exploitatie? Hoe hebben de twee wereldoorlogen het uitzicht van België bepaald? Is Antwerpen werkelijk de navel van België? Wat heeft de monarchie België bijgebracht? Hoe zijn de communautaire geschillen zo intens geworden? Om deze vragen nieuw leven in te blazen, benadert dit boek ze vanuit een onverwachte hoek: Wat als?

Het land dat nooit was is een primeur: voor het eerst verschijnt er over België een counterfactual of tegenfeitelijke geschiedenis die even lezenswaardig als wetenschappelijk verantwoord is.

Modern economics tantalizes historians, promising them a set of simple verbal and mathematical formulas to explain and even retrospectively predict historical actions and choices. Colin P. Elliott challenges economic historians to rethink the way they use economic theory. Building upon the approaches of Max Weber, R. G. Collingwood, Ludwig von Mises and others, Elliott reconceptualizes economic theories such as the quantity theory of money and Gresham’s law as heuristic constructs – constructs which help historians identify and understand the unique modes of thought and embedding contexts which characterized economic action in the Roman Empire. The book offers novel analyses of key events in Roman monetary history, from Augustus’ triumph over Mark Antony and Cleopatra, to third-century AD coinage debasements. Roman history has long been a battleground for polarizing methodological debates, but this book’s accessible style and conciliatory tone invites historians, economists, sociologists and other scholars to use economic theory for understanding.

Компьютерное моделирование исторических процессов и явлений – одна из наиболее дискуссионных тем в обширном проблемном поле методологии истории. В XXI веке моделирование занимает более прочное  место в арсенале методов и технологий исторического исследования. Однако ряд вопросов по-прежнему остаются дискуссионными. Среди них, например, такие. В какой мере историк может доверять компьютерным реконструкциям исторических процессов, явлений, артефактов? Можно ли использовать компьютерное моделирование как инструмент анализа возможных альтернатив развития того или иного исторического процесса? Допустимо ли использовать построенные модели исторических процессов в целях прогнозирования? В какой мере можно допустить перенос моделей, созданных в смежных социальных науках и доказавших там свою полезность, в сферу исторических исследований? Ответы на эти и другие актуальные вопросы мы пытаемся найти в этой книге.

This essay evaluates the utility of examining antipopes — in this case, Anacletus II — through the lens of contrafactual history, inasmuch as these figures present an aspect of Church history in which we can see quite clearly the pitfalls of teleological interpretation. It then addresses some of the ways in which medieval political actors intervened in reality on the levels of projection, rhetoric, and propaganda, interventions that, while devoid of tangible results, were presented in their historical moment as if they had already taken effect.

In this Philological Conversation, Carlo Ginzburg reflects on the place of philology in his work and explores the connections between philology, microhistory, and casuistry. We talk about the people who inspired his early thinking, including his father Leone Ginzburg, his mother Natalia, and his grandfather, moving on to Erich Auerbach, Leo Spitzer, and Sebastiano Timpanaro. We discuss the ethical and political implications of his research and reflect on the power of philology to give voice to the marginalized and suppressed. The conversation, which was edited for readability, took place during the Corona pandemic over three meetings via Zoom on July 13, September 10, and September 17, 2021.

«I 'se...' non fanno la storia, ma possono essere di aiuto. A raccontare, a delineare le 'svolte', a soppesare il ruolo degli eventi. Ma anche a realizzare, come suggeriva Nietzsche, che nella storia 'la domanda: "Che cosa sarebbe accaduto se non fosse sopravvissuta questa o quest'altra cosa?" viene respinta quasi concordemente, e tuttavia è proprio la domanda cardinale, attraverso cui tutto si trasforma in qualcosa d'ironico.'»

Cosa hanno in comune le mitiche vicende di Romolo, di Lucrezia e delle oche del Campidoglio, la precoce morte di Alessandro «il Grande», la titubanza di Annibale Barca dopo la clamorosa vittoria di Canne, la straordinaria vita di Gaio Giulio Cesare e il suo feroce assassinio, le decisive battaglie di Filippi, Azio, Teutoburgo, ponte Milvio e Adrianopoli?
Si tratta di personaggi ed eventi, leggendari o reali, che hanno segnato vere e proprie svolte nella storia di Roma antica e che – per importanza e, spesso, imprevedibilità – hanno suggerito, già tra i contemporanei, interrogativi sui destini dell’uomo e del mondo, ispirando riflessioni ucroniche e controfattuali. Insomma, hanno generato quei famigerati «se» con i quali, ci è sempre stato insegnato, non bisognerebbe mai fare la storia.
Ma quando a porseli sono uomini che la storia l’hanno fatta in prima persona, come Cesare, Napoleone o il generale Montgomery, o grandi intellettuali, quali Livio, Plutarco, Gibbon, Burckhardt o Toynbee, forse un’eccezione la meritano. Ne è convinto lo storico Luca Fezzi il quale, esplorando una dozzina di questi «se» – tutti rigorosamente «di autore» –, ci guida lungo il corso delle millenarie vicissitudini dell’Urbe, città «eterna»
ma mai immobile, anzi, sempre «in bilico» tra scenari alternativi, spesso opposti. Potremo così chiederci, con la dovuta cognizione di causa, se quanto avvenuto era già scritto, o se sussistevano invece, per Roma, altre possibilità e quali sarebbero state le eventuali conseguenze: per esempio, non nascere, non diventare repubblica, venire abbandonata per la vicina Veio, scontrarsi con Alessandro o soccombere ad Annibale, non conoscere le imprese di Cesare, le riforme di Augusto e di Costantino, resistere più a lungo alle pressioni dei popoli germanici.
Con lo stesso spirito e grazie a una profonda conoscenza delle fonti, in questo percorso poco ortodosso ma assai intrigante tra momenti epocali della vicenda di Roma e del suo impero, l’autore ridà voce al controcanto delle narrazioni e testimonianze dissonanti, minoritarie, talvolta improbabili, eco lontane del perenne contrasto tra un passato irrevocabilmente unico e l’universo dei suoi infiniti ma irrealizzati possibili.

This paper critically reviews the current status of the concept of distance in human geography in order to argue that recent experimentally-driven work in construal-level theory offers ample opportunities for recasting distance as a key geographical trope. After analysing the four entangled dimensions of distance revealed by construal-level theory (spatial distance; temporal distance; social distance; and hypothetical distance), the paper articulates this research program from experimental psychology with geographical work on non-representational theory, geographical imaginations/imaginative geographies, learning as a geographical process, TimeSpace theorizing, and ontogenetic understandings of space. It is argued that the subjective understanding of distance afforded by construal-level theory can rescue distance from its entrenched association with positivistic geography and spatial analysis. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.07.018

This paper presents a comparative analysis of six dicta testium from the Tuscia from 1177 to 1237, highlighting fascinating elements of political language and discourse. For instance, the study of a particular theme (violent conflict) and several particularly gravid words (guerra, exercitus, cavalcata, oste) indicate the existence of several groups or communities of memoria in the territories documented in the inquisitiones. The contraposition of these groups within the judicial vertices prompted them to manipulate the record through the use of particularly sophisticated and well-chosen language. Indeed, among the principal characteristics of the dicta is the fact that their memoria cannot be reduced to the linear, pacified, coherent thread that emerges from other types of source, for example libri iurium and statutory codes, making them an ideal record for the purposes of counterfactual historical research.

Nicht-realistische Erzählformen sind in der Gegenwart überaus populär, haben aber nicht selten den Verdacht des politischen Eskapismus auf sich gezogen. Michael Navratils Studie, die eine grundlegende fiktionstheoretische Modellierung der Kontrafaktik unternimmt, zeigt demgegenüber die hohe Affinität des kontrafaktischen Erzählens zum politischen Schreiben auf. Umfassende Analysen der kontrafaktischen Werke von Christian Kracht, Kathrin Röggla, Juli Zeh und Leif Randt demonstrieren die Bandbreite und Relevanz politischer Realitätsvariationen in der Gegenwartsliteratur.

Chapter VI (115)

Livy’s Digression on Alexander (115)

Alexander the Lucky? (118)

The Sole Alexander versus the Multitude of Rome (120)

Eastern Inferiority? (122)

The Old Alexander as Darius III and Rome as a Young Alexander (126)

Livy’s Hostility toward Easterners in the Digression (128)

Roman Military Superiority over Macedon (129)

Final Thoughts on the Digression (130)

Chapter VII (132)

General Conclusion (132)

Sideways in Time is an Alternate History Conference to be held at the University of Liverpool - in association with Lancaster University. This interdisciplinary conferences will bring together scholarship in science fiction, fantasy, historical and literary fictions, as well as historians and counterfactual thought-experiments, to discuss those fictional narratives that deals with alternate histories and parallel worlds.

We are pleased to announce Karen Hellekson, Adam Roberts, and Stephen Baxter as our keynote speakers. Karen Hellekson is a leading authority on alternate history fiction (The Alternate History: Refiguring Historical Time, 2001). Professor Adam Roberts is a leading science fiction critic and also an award-winning author who employs alternate history elements into some of his fiction (most notably Swiftly, shortlisted for the 2009 Sidewise Award). Stephen Baxter is currently a judge of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, as well as being one of the former winners (“Brigantia’s Angels”, Voyage).

Despite a long and diverse history, alternate history has attracted surprisingly little scholarship. This conference will attempt to establish lines of communication which will rectify this deficit. It is hoped a selection of the essays presented at the conference will be made available as part of a published collection.

We are interested in papers analysing specific alternate history texts from all mediums including novels, cinema, comics and beyond. We also welcome broader papers on the various periods, subgenres, movements and modes of alternate history including steampunk, retro-futurism and more. Papers can be based on, amongst other things, theory, texts, cultural surveys, philosophy, and media studies.

Please submit a 300 word abstract to [email protected] along with a 50 word bionote by December 15, 2014.
http://sidewaysintime.wordpress.com/

With its strange blend of philosophical argument and intimate revelation, William Godwin’s Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft has long occupied a notorious place in literary history. Less attention, however, has been paid to the more subtle—yet equally crucial—fractures in the text that result from what is, in essence, a task of impossible representation. Godwin, whose presence in Wollstonecraft’s life was a relatively recent development, sets out to chronicle the life of his beloved, yet struggles to reconcile the woman and the author. Unable fully to bridge the aporia between “Mary” and “Wollstonecraft,” but committed to a faithful rendering of her often contradictory subject positions, Godwin creates a text riven by instabilities of time and reference that are themselves the result of his fidelity to his subject.

Counterfactual thought experiments in history have become increasingly popular in the last two decades, and a new and controversial branch of history has originated from their use: counterfactual history, also known as virtual history. Despite its popularity amongst the general public, most academic historians consider historical counterfactuals as having little epistemic value. This paper investigates three alleged uses of counterfactual thinking in historical explanations: (1) the claim that counterfactual thinking gives historians useful insights; (2) that it is a useful tool to evaluate an event’s causal significance; (3) that it shows much of history to be essentially ‘chaotic’. I argue that only (2) convincingly justifies the use of counterfactual thought experiments in history, as it allows historians to illustrate how they perceive events’ degrees of sensitivity to changes to their causal history, being an important part of providing a causal explanation.

At the turn of the 21st century, a new genre in German popular literature is in the process of developing into increasing complexity. It is the so-called ‚Dichter-und-Denker-Mantel-und-Degen' novel (something like a 'swashbuckler' novel about 'poets and thinkers'), a hybrid of historical novel, adventure novel and fictional biography of poets. The heroes of this new hybrid genre are famous German poets of the past. The plots are freely invented, obviously fictive, but nonetheless interwoven with well-known or at least verifiable historical and biographical facts.

In Baltasar and Blimunda, by José Saramago, intelligence, creativity and fantasy are present in two ways: 1) in the creation of the novel, visible in the way of telling, in style, in the wide range of knowledge presented, in the plot, in the situations and the most powerful characters; 2) in the content of the novel, through reflection, action, especially the construction of the Passarola and the construction of the Convent, and characters, like Bartolomeu Lourenço and Domenico Scarlatti.
However, according to historiographic metafiction and postmodern historical fiction, Saramago adds to the presence of these faculties and the results they produce in the novel a questioning in the way of Brecht's poem "Questions From a Worker Who Reads", bringing to the forefront the anonymous workers.

The article discusses two Polish alternate history novels: Orzeł bielszy niż gołębica (An Eagle Whiter than a Dove) by Konrad T. Lewandowski and Gambit Wielopolskiego (Wielopolski’s Gambit) by Adam Przechrzta in the context of the politics of memory of the January Uprising of 1863. Politics of memory, according to Lech M. Nijakowski, can be defined as activities directed towards changing and shaping collective memory. Politics of memory is intentional, society orientated, and focused on achieving political objectives. In the first part of the article, the collective memory and politics of memory of the January Uprising is described. The second part analyses Gambit Wielopolskiego by Adam Przechrzta, its cultural context, and the fashion in which it depicts the uprising. In the third part, the same motifs are used in the reading of Orzeł bielszy niż gołębica by Konrad T. Lewandowski. The interpretation of the novels in this broad context allows for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of the collective memory of the January Uprising.

This is a counterfactual (What if?) discussion of one possible outcome during the fateful days of the Philippine People Power Revolution of February 1986. The article argues in favor of a reverse counterfactual: Corazon Aquino still heads the new Philippine government but without the goodwill established by People Power. The article was serialized in two parts (with a modified title) in the Filipino-Australian Bayanihan News issue of March and April 2014.

Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy is a historical fantasy set against the backdrop of a Renaissance-like world. However, in Carey’s world, Christianity never conquered Roman paganism, and so the spread of Christianity was halted, and his son, Blessed Elua walked the lands instead. He settled in Terre d’Ange, where the people, his angelic companions, passed on his legacy. This paper will explore the religious beliefs of Terre d’Ange, the home of Carey’s heroine Phèdre, while also seeking to uncover the historical and mythological origins for the counterfactually realized Renaissance Europe in which the action of the trilogy takes place.

Nell'ambito di un concorso letterario per istituti superiori, un gruppo di ragazze di un liceo delle scienze umane si cimenta, sotto la direzione del loro prof. di filosofia e storia, nella redazione di una miscellanea di contributi ipotetici relativi a una parte della storia del Rinascimento italiano che prende una strada un po' diversa da quella realmente tracciata dagli eventi a noi noti… Al fondo del documento, una nota metodologica ed esplicativa.

Mehrsprachigkeit und das Alternate History-Genre haben etwas gemeinsam: Beide Phänomene basieren wesentlich auf der Bildung von Alternativen, im Falle der Mehrsprachigkeit den Alternativen zwischen verschiedenen Sprachen und Sprachsystemen, im Falle der Alternate History den Alternativen zwischen Fakten der realen Welt und ihrer Variation innerhalb einer fiktionalen Welt. Der vorliegende Aufsatz widmet sich der Verbindung dieser beiden Formen des Altemativendenkens in Quentin Tarantinos kontrafaktischem 'Kriegsfilm lnglourious Basterds' (2009) und Christian Krachts Alternate History-Roman "Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschtin und im Schatten" (2008). Es soll dabei gezeigt werden, dass die Auseinandersetzung mit Sprachalternativen in den genannten Werken zur Genrereflexion der Alternate History selbst beiträgt und dabei zugleich eine politische Dimension entfaltet: Mehrsprachigkeit erfüllt bei Tarantino und Kracht eine ideologiekritische Funktion, insofern sie dazu beiträgt, die politische Problematik eines starren Alternativendenkens herauszustellen. Am Schluss des Artikels wird für eine stärkere Berücksichtigung möglicher Verbindungen zwischen Fiktionstheorie und literarischer Mehrsprachigkeit in der Forschung plädiert.

During the 1970s, military planners east and west of the "Iron Curtain" continued to prepare for a potential "hot" conflict between the two opposing military alliances, the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Then-divided Germany—called the Central Region by NATO—would have been the main battleground of such a conflict. But how would that Third World War and especially its conventional side be fought? In NATO's realm, this question did not only occupy the thinking of military headquarters and national defense ministries but also that of other military "experts." This produced an often international textual discourse that ranged from military doctrine to newspaper articles to future histories, mirroring not only the strategy change to "flexible response" but also intra-alliance issues such as equitable sharing of the military burden and the influence of latest weapons technology developments on strategy and tactics. And while World War III between the Warsaw Pact and the Atlantic Alliance never materialized, both sides spend billions on materiel and stationed millions of soldiers in preparations for a war that never happened—and that continues to stimulate the imagination up to this day.

This paper will aim to illustrate the post-medieval reception of medieval heresies and the birth and development of an “heretical mithology” from the end of XIX century to present day. After a brief historiographical introduction, it will consider the misinterprations of the message of two of the most famous Italian heresiarchs. I will focus my attention on post-medieval reception of Arnold of Brescia and Fra Dolcino. The first, considered as a liberal icon in the Italian “Risorgimento”, has been used in an anticlerical and nationalist way by romantic thinkers. Dolcino, on the countrary, has been mainly used by socialist propaganda between XIX and XX century.

The advent of the 21 st century has brought with it a more complex and contradictory society. The progressive integration of consumer society, mass media, technological innovations in the field of communications, internet and social media has created an extremely visual and hyper-narrative society that can be framed as the storytelling society in the American driven West. This hyper-narrativity has degenerated into what has been termed "infodemic" or informative pandemic, merged with older concepts like fake news, conspiracy theory and post-truth. I suggest, as filter of or counterpower to this hyper-narrativity, the concept of "credibility." Departing from Niklas Luhmann's "trust-confidence" theory, the "credibility" theory reflects our "liquid" 21st-century society-in which modernist concepts like "truth," "fake," "false" and "veracity" have loosened their meanings-by proposing a "credibility factor" that is closely related to the experience of the receiver and defined by its relationship to the sender through the mass and social media sphere.

Counterfactualism is a useful thought experiment for historians because it offers grounds to challenge an unfortunate contemporary historical mindset of assumed, deterministic certainty. This article suggests that the methodological value of counterfactualism may be understood in terms of the three categories of common ahistorical errors that it may help to prevent: the assumptions of indispensability, causality, and inevitability. To support this claim, I survey a series of key counterfactual works and reflections on counterfactualism, arguing that the practice of counterfactualism evolved as both cause and product of an evolving popular assumption of the plasticity of history and the importance of human agency within it. For these reasons, counterfactualism is of particular importance both historically and politically. I conclude that it is time for a methodological re-assessment of the uses of such thought-experiments in history, particularly in light of counterfactualism's developmental relatedness to cultural, technological, and analytical modernity.

This paper has a twofold purpose. First, it aims at highlighting one difference (albeit in degree and not in kind) in how counterfactuals work in general history, on the one hand, and in history of the natural sciences, on the other hand. As we show, both in general history and in history of science good counterfactual narratives need to be plausible, where plausibility is construed as appropriate continuity of both the antecedent and the consequent of the counterfactual with what we know about the world. However, in general history it is often possible to imagine a consequent dramatically different from the actual historical development, and yet plausible; in history of science, due to plausibility concerns, imagining a consequent far removed from the results of actual science seems more complicated. The second aim of the paper is to assess whether and to what degree counterfactual histories of science can advance the cause of the so-called " contingency thesis, " namely, the claim that history of science might have followed a path leading to alternative, non-equivalent theories, as successful as the ones that we currently embrace. We distinguish various versions of the contingency thesis and argue that counterfactual histories of science support weak versions of the thesis.

A theory of causation suitable for historiography must accommodate the many types of causal claims historians make. In this paper, I examine the advantages of applying D. K. Lewis's counterfactual theory of causation to the philosophy of historiography. I contend that Lewis's possible world semantics offers a superior framework for making sense of historical causation, and that it lays the foundation for historians to look at history as causal series of events, remaining agnostic as to whether there may be historical regularities or laws. Lewis's theory can also accommodate important notions often used by historians, such as absences as causes, historical necessity and contingency, and the role they play in the formulation of historical counterfactuals.

Keywords: historical counterfactuals, causation, necessity and contingency

Within the broad category of literary works known as “speculative fiction” there exists a subgenre of works that inherently directs the category’s omnipresent “what if?” question backwards in terms of history instead of engaging in the more familiar practice of conjecturing about the future. Such works of so-called “alternate history” (also sometimes called “counterfactual history,” “parahistory,” or “alternative history”) change one or more foundational premises of history as it is understood in their creators’ time and reassemble the subsequent timeline from the point of alteration forward. We will read and/or watch several works from within this subgenre with an eye towards uncovering the wide range of possible motives for such a rewriting of the otherwise unalterable past and the lessons that such works can impart to readers about the future(s) yet to come.