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110-534: Harry Norman Turtledove (born June 14, 1949) is an American author who is best known for his work in the genres of alternate history , historical fiction , fantasy , science fiction , and mystery fiction . He is a student of history and completed his PhD in Byzantine history. His dissertation was on the period 565–582. He lives in Southern California . In addition to his birth name, Turtledove writes under

220-523: A Megaduke and commander of its armies and manages to fight off the invading Ottoman armies of Mehmet II . He saves the city from Islamic conquest , and even chases the Turks deeper into lands they had previously conquered. One of the earliest works of alternate history published in large quantities for the reception of a large audience may be Louis Geoffroy 's Histoire de la Monarchie universelle : Napoléon et la conquête du monde (1812–1832) (History of

330-431: A multiverse of alternative worlds, complete with the paratime travel machines that would later become popular with American pulp writers. However, since his hero experiences only a single alternate world, the story is not very different from conventional alternate history. In the 1930s, alternate history moved into a new arena. The December 1933 issue of Astounding published Nat Schachner 's "Ancestral Voices", which

440-434: A permanent Injunction prohibiting Kentucky Colonels International from using the "Kentucky Colonels ®" trademark. In 2023, The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels opened a new lawsuit against Kentucky Colonels International for "one count of civil contempt , four counts of various federal trademark infringement, one count anticybersquatting , and three counts of various common law trademark infringement ". In August 2023

550-455: A POD only to explain the existence and make no use of the concept, or may present the universe without explanation of its existence. Isaac Asimov 's short story " What If— " (1952) is about a couple who can explore alternate realities by means of a television-like device. This idea can also be found in Asimov's novel The End of Eternity (1955), in which the "Eternals" can change the realities of

660-412: A Pennsylvania State Police officer, who knows how to make gunpowder, is transported from our world to an alternate universe where the recipe for gunpowder is a tightly held secret and saves a country that is about to be conquered by its neighbors. The paratime patrol members are warned against going into the timelines immediately surrounding it, where the country will be overrun, but the book never depicts

770-460: A Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg. When a story's assumptions about the nature of time travel lead to the complete replacement of the visited time's future, rather than just the creation of an additional time line, the device of a "time patrol" is often used where guardians move through time to preserve the "correct" history. A more recent example is Making History by Stephen Fry in which

880-465: A bitter war with the "Spanish" in Mexico (the chief scientist at the laboratory where the experiment occurred is described as a Gnostic, and references to Christian Gnosticism appear repeatedly in the book). Although not dealing in physical time travel, in his alt-history novel Marx Returns , Jason Barker introduces anachronisms into the life and times of Karl Marx , such as when his wife Jenny sings

990-412: A certain drug, and the agent is constantly trying to maximize the consistency of behavior among his alternate selves, attempting to compensate for events and thoughts he experiences, he guesses are of low measure relative to those experienced by most of his other selves. Many writers—perhaps the majority—avoid the discussion entirely. In one novel of this type, H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen ,

1100-546: A character in Ada makes a long-distance call, all the toilets in the house flush at once to provide hydraulic power. Guido Morselli described the defeat of Italy (and subsequently France) in World War I in his novel, Past Conditional (1975; Contro-passato prossimo ), wherein the static Alpine front line which divided Italy from Austria during that war collapses when the Germans and

1210-618: A different history. "Sidewise in Time" has been described as "the point at which the alternate history narrative first enters science fiction as a plot device" and is the story for which the Sidewise Award for Alternate History is named. A somewhat similar approach was taken by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1941 novelette Elsewhen in which a professor trains his mind to move his body across timelines. He then hypnotizes his students so that they can explore more of them. Eventually, each settles into

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1320-764: A divided United States , in which the Empire of Japan takes the Pacific states, governing them as a puppet, Nazi Germany takes the East Coast of the United States and parts of the Midwest , with the remnants of the old United States' government as the Neutral Zone, a buffer state between the two superpowers. The book has inspired an Amazon series of the same name . Vladimir Nabokov 's novel, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969),

1430-400: A gracious existence in that country of content "where slower clocks strike happier hours". He stands in spirit on a tall-columned veranda, a hospitable glass in his hand, and he looks over the good and fertile earth, over ripening fields, over meadows of rippling bluegrass. The rounded note of a horn floats through the fragrant stillness. Afar, the sleek and shining flanks of a thoroughbred catch

1540-474: A nation. It assumes that by giving a nation an alternative history, alternative values can be made to grow." In the English language, the first known complete alternate history may be 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 long-dead famous people, such as

1650-540: A number of pen names : Eric Iverson, H. N. Turteltaub, Dan Chernenko, and Mark Gordian. He began publishing novels in the realm of fantasy starting in 1979 and continues to write in the 2020s. Turtledove was born in Los Angeles , California, on June 14, 1949, and grew up in Gardena, California . His paternal grandparents, who were Romanian Jews , had first emigrated to Winnipeg , Manitoba , before they moved to California in

1760-456: A person receives a commission from the governor they automatically become an honorary lifetime member of the organization and, via donation to and participation in the HOKC's charitable efforts throughout the state they can be considered an active member. In 1936, New York advertising agency owner, Kentucky colonel Arthur Kudner, wrote a toast to Kentucky colonels. The toast was quickly adopted by

1870-467: A political lobby. The Kentucky Colonel has always been most notorious for drinking bourbon, making moonshine liquor, storytelling and dueling over their honor starting in the 19th century. Likewise the Kentucky colonel has been portrayed in a number of films, cartoons, movies, books and featured in newspapers since as early as the 1850s. Those who have received a Kentucky colonelcy commission have often used

1980-637: A sixteen-part epic comic book series called Captain Confederacy began examining a world where the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War . In the series, the Captain and others heroes are staged government propaganda events featuring the feats of these superheroes. Since the late 1990s, Harry Turtledove has been the most prolific practitioner of alternate history and has been given

2090-592: A staple of the alternate history genre. A number of alternate history stories and novels appeared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see, for example, Joseph Edgar Chamberlin 's The Ifs of History [1907] and Charles Petrie 's If: A Jacobite Fantasy [1926]). In 1931, British historian Sir John Squire collected a series of essays from some of the leading historians of the period for his anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise . In that work, scholars from major universities, as well as important non-academic authors, turned their attention to such questions as "If

2200-470: A subgenre of science fiction , alternative history is a genre of fiction wherein the author speculates upon how the course of history might have been altered if a particular historical event had an outcome different from the real life outcome. An alternate history requires three conditions: (i) A point of divergence from the historical record, before the time in which the author is writing; (ii) A change that would alter known history; and (iii) An examination of

2310-619: A third. Robinson explores world history from that point in AD 1405 (807 AH ) to about AD 2045 (1467 AH). Rather than following the great man theory of history, focusing on leaders, wars, and major events, Robinson writes more about social history , similar to the Annales School of history theory and Marxist historiography , focusing on the lives of ordinary people living in their time and place. Philip Roth 's novel, The Plot Against America (2004), looks at an America where Franklin D. Roosevelt

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2420-503: A time machine is used to alter history so that Adolf Hitler was never born. That ironically results in a more competent leader of Nazi Germany and results in the country's ascendancy and longevity in the altered timeline. While many justifications for alternate histories involve a multiverse , the "many world" theory would naturally involve many worlds, in fact a continually exploding array of universes. In quantum theory, new worlds would proliferate with every quantum event, and even if

2530-411: A tyrannical US Government brushes aside the warnings of scientists about the dangers of time travel and goes on with a planned experiment - with the result that minor changes to the prehistoric past cause Humanity to never have existed, its place taken by tentacled underwater intelligent creatures - who also have a tyrannical government which also insists on experimenting with time-travel. Time travel as

2640-427: A vehicle to expound them. This book introduced the idea of a person being transported from a point in our familiar world to the precise geographical equivalent point in an alternate world in which history had gone differently. The protagonists undergo various adventures in the alternate world, and then are finally transported back to our world, again to the precise geographical equivalent point. Since then, that has become

2750-531: A verse from the Sex Pistols 's song " Anarchy in the U.K. ", or in the games of chess she plays with the Marxes' housekeeper Helene Demuth , which on one occasion involves a Caro–Kann Defence . In her review of the novel, Nina Power writes of "Jenny's 'utopian' desire for an end to time", an attitude which, according to Power, is inspired by her husband's co-authored book The German Ideology . However, in keeping with

2860-416: A very different view on the distinction of a Kentucky colonel commission and only issued about a dozen new commissions annually, on Derby Day . Governor Keen Johnson followed Governor Chandler's lead during his time in office from 1939 to 1943, commissioning only those select individuals who were deemed to have exhibited exceptionally noteworthy accomplishments and outstanding service to a community, state or

2970-491: Is a form of historiography that explores historical events in an extrapolated timeline in which key historical events either did not occur or had an outcome different from the historical record, in order to understand what did happen. 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

3080-405: Is a story of incest that takes place within an alternate North America settled in part by Czarist Russia and that borrows from Dick's idea of "alternate-alternate" history (the world of Nabokov's hero is wracked by rumors of a "counter-earth" that apparently is ours). Some critics believe that the references to a counter-earth suggest that the world portrayed in Ada is a delusion in the mind of

3190-505: Is another attempt to portray a Utopian society. In Aristopia , the earliest settlers in Virginia discover a reef made of solid gold and are able to build a Utopian society in North America . In 1905, H. G. Wells published A Modern Utopia . As explicitly noted in the book itself, Wells's main aim in writing it was to set out his social and political ideas, the plot serving mainly as

3300-477: Is defeated in 1940 in his bid for a third term as President of the United States, and Charles Lindbergh is elected, leading to a US that features increasing fascism and anti-Semitism. Michael Chabon , occasionally an author of speculative fiction, contributed to the genre with his novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007), which explores a world in which the State of Israel was destroyed in its infancy and many of

3410-479: Is inextricably intertwined with the state". Examples of the concept of the Kentucky Colonel being used to promote a product or idea include: The Kentucky colonel title in business marketing is seen in the ongoing historic association between Kentucky and bourbon whiskey production. As of 2013, approximately 95 percent of all bourbon was produced in Kentucky, and the state had 4.9 million barrels of bourbon in

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3520-421: Is often mistakenly believed to be the first recipient an honorary commission of a Kentucky colonel in 1813. This is disputed by Col. Todd's biography, and US military archives. The identity of first civilian honorary colonel is not known. In 1895, Governor William O'Connell Bradley commissioned the first honorary Kentucky colonels as an award of merit bestowed upon citizens for their individual contributions to

3630-664: Is set in Europe following the Nazi victory. The novel Dominion by C.J. Sansom (2012) is similar in concept but is set in England, with Churchill the leader of an anti-German Resistance and other historic persons in various fictional roles. In the Mecha Samurai Empire series (2016), Peter Tieryas focuses on the Asian-American side of the alternate history, exploring an America ruled by

3740-488: Is suggested that, had Gordon Banks been fit to play in the 1970 FIFA World Cup quarter-final, there would have been no Thatcherism and the post-war consensus would have continued indefinitely. Kim Stanley Robinson 's novel, The Years of Rice and Salt (2002), starts at the point of divergence with Timur turning his army away from Europe, and the Black Death has killed 99% of Europe's population, instead of only

3850-479: Is traditionally considered a goodwill ambassador of the Kentucky state, culture, folklore, traditions and values. Although Kentucky colonels are considered in Common Law to be aides-de-camp to the governors and members of their staff and thus entitled to the style of " Honorable ", Kentucky colonels are usually just referred to and addressed as "Colonel" and use the abbreviation "Col." or Kentucky colonel when

3960-643: The Crosstime Traffic series for teenagers featuring a variant of H. Beam Piper's paratime trading empire. The concept of a cross-time version of a world war, involving rival paratime empires, was developed in Fritz Leiber 's Change War series, starting with the Hugo Award winning The Big Time (1958); followed by Richard C. Meredith 's Timeliner trilogy in the 1970s, Michael McCollum 's A Greater Infinity (1982) and John Barnes' Timeline Wars trilogy in

4070-469: The Empire of Japan and the Germans (and doing almost as much harm as good in spite of its advanced weapons). The series also explores the cultural impacts of people with 2021 ideals interacting with 1940s culture. Similarly, Robert Charles Wilson 's Mysterium depicts a failed US government experiment which transports a small American town into an alternative version of the US run by Gnostics , who are engaged in

4180-755: The Worldwar series , in which aliens invaded Earth during World War II . Other stories by Turtledove include A Different Flesh , in which the Americas were not populated from Asia during the last ice age ; In the Presence of Mine Enemies , in which the Nazis won World War II; and Ruled Britannia , in which the Spanish Armada succeeded in conquering England in the Elizabethan era , with William Shakespeare being given

4290-571: The time travel novel Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp in which an American academic travels to Italy at the time of the Byzantine invasion of the Ostrogoths . De Camp's time traveler, Martin Padway, is depicted as making permanent historical changes and implicitly forming a new time branch, thereby making the work an alternate history. In William Tenn 's short story Brooklyn Project (1948),

4400-522: The "fair world" parallels our history, about fifty years out of step, there is functional magic in the fair world. Even with such explanation, the more explicitly the alternate world resembles a normal fantasy world, the more likely the story is to be labelled fantasy, as in Poul Anderson's "House Rule" and "Loser's Night". In both science fiction and fantasy, whether a given parallel universe is an alternate history may not be clear. The writer might allude to

4510-538: The 1920s. In Jo Walton 's "Small Change" series, the United Kingdom made peace with Hitler before the involvement of the United States in World War II, and slowly collapses due to severe economic depression. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have written a novel, 1945 , in which the US defeated Japan but not Germany in World War II, resulting in a Cold War with Germany rather than

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4620-484: The 1980s; Chalker's G.O.D. Inc trilogy (1987–89), featuring paratime detectives Sam and Brandy Horowitz, marks the first attempt at merging the paratime thriller with the police procedural. Kurland's Perchance (1988), the first volume of the never-completed "Chronicles of Elsewhen", presents a multiverse of secretive cross-time societies that utilize a variety of means for cross-time travel, ranging from high-tech capsules to mutant powers. Harry Turtledove has launched

4730-468: The 1990s. Such "paratime" stories may include speculation that the laws of nature can vary from one universe to the next, providing a science fictional explanation—or veneer—for what is normally fantasy. Aaron Allston 's Doc Sidhe and Sidhe Devil take place between our world, the "grim world" and an alternate "fair world" where the Sidhe retreated to. Although technology is clearly present in both worlds, and

4840-443: The 1995 Sidewise Award for Alternate History. His Worldwar series received a Sidewise Award for Alternate History Honorable Mention in 1996. In 1998, his novel How Few Remain won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History . He won his second Sidewise Award in 2003 for his novel Ruled Britannia . He won his third Sidewise Award for his short story "Zigeuner” and his fourth for his short story "Christmas Truce". Turtledove won

4950-509: The American Civil War (named the "War of Southron Independence" in this timeline). The protagonist, the autodidact Hodgins Backmaker, travels back to the aforementioned battle and inadvertently changes history, which results in the emergence of our own timeline and the consequent victory of the Union instead. The American humorist author James Thurber parodied alternate history stories about

5060-412: The American Civil War in his 1930 story "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox", which he accompanied with this very brief introduction: " Scribner's magazine is publishing a series of three articles: 'If Booth Had Missed Lincoln', 'If Lee Had Won the Battle of Gettysburg', and 'If Napoleon Had Escaped to America'. This is the fourth". Another example of alternate history from this period (and arguably

5170-721: The Austrians forsake trench warfare and adopt blitzkrieg twenty years in advance. Kingsley Amis set his novel, The Alteration (1976), in the 20th century, but major events in the Reformation did not take place, and Protestantism is limited to the breakaway Republic of New England. Martin Luther was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church and later became Pope Germanian I. In Nick Hancock and Chris England 's 1997 book What Didn't Happen Next: An Alternative History of Football it

5280-517: The Church Peter Damian in the 11th century. In his famous work De Divina Omnipotentia , a long letter in which he discusses God 's omnipotence , he treats questions related to the limits of divine power, including the question of whether God can change the past, for example, bringing about that Rome was never founded: I see I must respond finally to what many people, on the basis of your holiness's [own] judgment, raise as an objection on

5390-516: The Great had survived to attack Europe as he had planned; asking, "What would have been the results for Rome if she had been engaged in a war with Alexander?" Livy concluded that the Romans would likely have defeated Alexander. An even earlier possibility is Herodotus 's Histories , which contains speculative material. Another example of counterfactual history was posited by cardinal and Doctor of

5500-465: The HOKC, and it was widely promoted and published for use by colonels. The toast has since been ceremoniously presented at each of the Kentucky Colonels' Derby Eve Banquets: I give you a man dedicated to the good things of life, to the gentle, the heartfelt things, to good living, and to the kindly rites with which it is surrounded. In all the clash of a plangent world he holds firm to his ideal –

5610-620: The Hawaiian Islands. Perhaps the most incessantly explored theme in popular alternate history focuses on the aftermath of an Axis victory in World War II . In some versions, the Nazis and/or Axis Powers win; or in others, they conquer most of the world but a "Fortress America" exists under siege; while in others, there is a Nazi/Japanese Cold War comparable to the US/Soviet equivalent in 'our' timeline. Fatherland (1992), by Robert Harris ,

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5720-685: The Homer Award for Short Story in 1990 for "Designated Hitter", the John Esten Cooke Award for Southern Fiction in 1993 for The Guns of the South , and the Hugo Award for Novella in 1994 for Down in the Bottomlands . Must and Shall was nominated for the 1996 Hugo Award and Nebula Award for Best Novelette and received an honorable mention for the 1995 Sidewise Award for Alternate History . The Two Georges also received an honorable mention for

5830-650: The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels won their lawsuit. David J. Wright and his organization Kentucky Colonels International were held in contempt of the Permanent Injunction and ordered to pay legal fees of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Starting around 1889, culture began incorporating the idea of the Kentucky Colonel as the name or part of the name of bars, beer, bourbon , barbecue, burgoo , clubs, hotels, food, liquor stores, plants, restaurants, social venues, sports teams, tobacco products and even

5940-601: The Imperium is one of the earliest alternate history novels; it was published by Fantastic Stories of the Imagination in 1961, in magazine form, and reprinted by Ace Books in 1962 as one half of an Ace Double . Besides our world, Laumer describes a world ruled by an Imperial aristocracy formed by the merger of European empires, in which the American Revolution never happened, and a third world in post-war chaos ruled by

6050-508: The Japanese Empire while integrating elements of Asian pop culture like mechas and videogames. Several writers have posited points of departure for such a world but then have injected time splitters from the future. For instance James P. Hogan 's The Proteus Operation . Norman Spinrad wrote The Iron Dream in 1972, which is intended to be a science fiction novel written by Adolf Hitler after fleeing from Europe to North America in

6160-460: The Jews and Israel, Chabon also plays with other common tropes of alternate history fiction; in the book, Germany actually loses the war even harder than they did in reality, getting hit with a nuclear bomb instead of just simply losing a ground war (subverting the common "what if Germany won WWII?" trope). The late 1980s and the 1990s saw a boom in popular-fiction versions of alternate history, fueled by

6270-623: The Later Roman Empire During the Reigns of Justin II and Tiberius II Constantine (AD 565–582) . Turtledove published his first two novels, Wereblood and Werenight , in 1979 under the pseudonym "Eric G. Iverson". He later explained that his editor at Belmont Tower did not think that people would believe the author's real name was "Turtledove" and came up with something more Nordic . He continued to use "Iverson" until 1985. Another early pseudonym

6380-571: The Moors in Spain Had Won" and "If Louis XVI Had Had an Atom of Firmness". The essays range from serious scholarly efforts to Hendrik Willem van Loon 's fanciful and satiric portrayal of an independent 20th-century New Amsterdam , a Dutch city-state on the island of Manhattan . Among the authors included were Hilaire Belloc , André Maurois , and Winston Churchill . One of the entries in Squire's volume

6490-474: The Myriad Ways , where the reality of all possible universes leads to an epidemic of suicide and crime because people conclude their choices have no moral import. In any case, even if it is true that every possible outcome occurs in some world, it can still be argued that traits such as bravery and intelligence might still affect the relative frequency of worlds in which better or worse outcomes occurred (even if

6600-566: The Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 1998 for The Gladiator. : On August 1, 1998, Turtledove was named honorary Kentucky Colonel as guest of honor at Rivercon XXIII in Louisville, Kentucky . His The Gladiator was the cowinner of the 2008 Prometheus Award . Turtledove served as the toastmaster for Chicon 2000 , the 58th World Science Fiction Convention. Publishers Weekly dubbed Turtledove "The Master of Alternate History". Within

6710-531: The Second World War. His novels have been credited with bringing alternate history into the mainstream. Alternate history Since the 1950s, as a subgenre of science fiction, some alternative history stories have featured the tropes of time travel between histories, the psychic awareness of the existence of an alternative universe by the inhabitants of a given universe, and time travel that divides history into various timestreams . Often described as

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6820-742: The Soviet Union. Gingrich and Forstchen neglected to write the promised sequel; instead, they wrote a trilogy about the American Civil War, starting with Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War , in which the Confederates win a victory at the Battle of Gettysburg - however, after Lincoln responds by bringing Grant and his forces to the eastern theater, the Army of Northern Virginia is soon trapped and destroyed in Maryland, and

6930-549: The United States. He was educated in local public schools during his early life. After dropping out during his freshman year at Caltech , Turtledove attended UCLA , where he completed his undergraduate degree and received a PhD in Byzantine history in 1977. His dissertation was The Immediate Successors of Justinian: A Study of the Persian Problem and of Continuity and Change in Internal Secular Affairs in

7040-449: 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 1812 and in an invasion of England in 1814, later unifying the world under Bonaparte's rule. The Book of Mormon (published 1830) is described as an "alternative history" by Richard Lyman Bushman , a biographer of Joseph Smith . Smith claimed to have translated

7150-452: The authors did not alter the real history of the past when they wrote the stories. Similar to the genre of alternative history, there is also the genre of secret history - which can be either fictional or non-fictional - which documents events that might have occurred in history, but which had no effect upon the recorded historical outcome. Alternative history also is thematically related to, but distinct from, counterfactual history , which

7260-417: The bright sun. The broad door, open wide with welcome ... the slow, soft-spoken word ... the familiar step of friendship ... all of this is his life and it is good. He brings fair judgment to sterner things. He is proud in the traditions of his country, in ways that are settled and true. In a trying world darkened by hate and misunderstanding, he is a symbol of those virtues in which men find gallant faith and of

7370-431: The cause of a point of divergence (POD), which can denote either the bifurcation of a historical timeline or a simple replacement of the future that existed before the time-travelling event, has continued to be a popular theme. In Ward Moore 's Bring the Jubilee (1953), the protagonist lives in an alternate history in which the Confederacy has won the American Civil War. He travels backward through time and brings about

7480-435: The copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen." This view is perhaps somewhat too abstract to be explored directly in science fiction stories, but a few writers have tried, such as Greg Egan in his short story The Infinite Assassin , where an agent is trying to contain reality-scrambling "whirlpools" that form around users of

7590-485: The disintegration of the US Federal Government after Albert Gallatin joins the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 and eventually leads to the creation of a libertarian utopia. In the 2022 novel Poutine and Gin by Steve Rhinelander, the point of divergence is the Battle of the Plains of Abraham of the French and Indian War. That novel is a mystery set in 1940 of that time line. A recent time traveling splitter variant involves entire communities being shifted elsewhere to become

7700-420: The document from golden plates, which told the story of a Jewish group who migrated from Israel to the Americas and inhabited the region from about 600 B.C. to 400 A.D., becoming the ancestors of Native Americans . In the 2005 biography Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling , Bushman wrote that the Book of Mormon "turned American history upside down [and] works on the premise that a history—a book—can reconstitute

7810-440: 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 . This period also saw alternate history works by S. M. Stirling , Kim Stanley Robinson, Harry Harrison , Howard Waldrop , Peter Tieryas , and others. In 1986,

7920-485: The first settlers was reprinted in France, Germany, England and New York. With the widespread fame of Filson's novel came a greater recognition of Kentucky and its colonelcy. In 1890 Opie Read published A Kentucky Colonel which spawned a new public perception of what a Kentucky colonel was, posing himself more as a refined, well-mannered southern gentleman, rather than a figure in the Kentucky militia. In 1905, this view

8030-518: The first that explicitly posited cross-time travel from one universe to another as anything more than a visionary experience) is H.G. Wells ' Men Like Gods (1923) in which the London -based journalist Mr. Barnstable, along with two cars and their passengers, is mysteriously teleported into "another world", which the "Earthlings" call Utopia. Being far more advanced than Earth, Utopia is some 3000 years ahead of humanity in its development. Wells describes

8140-531: The genre, he is known for creating original alternate history scenarios, such as survival of the Byzantine Empire or an alien invasion during the middle of the Second World War . In addition, he has been credited with giving original treatment to alternate themes that had been dealt with by many others, such as the victory of the South in the American Civil War or the victory of Nazi Germany during

8250-445: The good men might distill from life. Here he stands, then. In the finest sense, an epicure ... a patriot ... a man. Gentlemen, I give you, the Kentucky Colonel. In 2016, Governor Matt Bevin briefly suspended the program to conduct a review of the requirements for receiving the title and then changed the nomination process so that "only active members of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels" were allowed to make recommendations for

8360-402: The hero (another favorite theme of Dick's novels ). Strikingly, the characters in Ada seem to acknowledge their own world as the copy or negative version, calling it "Anti-Terra", while its mythical twin is the real "Terra". Like history, science has followed a divergent path on Anti-Terra: it boasts all the same technology as our world, but all based on water instead of electricity ; e.g., when

8470-475: The honor. Up to that point in time, the longstanding practice had been that recommendations could be submitted by anyone who already was a Kentucky colonel, without any requirement for donations or membership in any particular organization. The nomination process was changed under Governor Andy Beshear . Beshear had the nomination process frozen starting in December 2019. In February 2020, Governor Beshear removed

8580-478: The names of civilians aged 18 or over, for noteworthy accomplishments, contributions to civil society, remarkable deeds, or outstanding service to the community, state, or a nation. The Governor bestows the honorable title with a colonelcy commission , by issuance of letters patent . While many famous and noteworthy people have received commissions as Kentucky colonels, the award is equally available to those of all backgrounds based on their deeds. A Kentucky Colonel

8690-486: The nation. The subsequent governors, however, have typically been much more liberal in issuing Kentucky colonel commissions. The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels (HOKC) was first established during the depression in 1933 by Governor Ruby Laffoon as a state order of merit with an office at the capital. In 1957, it was incorporated as a nonprofit dedicated to building playgrounds, curating history, awarding scholarships and providing relief to Kentuckians in need. After

8800-600: The novel's anachronisms, the latter was not published until 1932. By contrast, the novel's timeline ends in 1871. Kentucky Colonel Kentucky Colonel is the highest title of honor bestowed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky . It is the most well known colonelcy in the United States. A Kentucky Colonel Commission (the certificate) is awarded in the name of the Commonwealth by the governor of Kentucky to individuals with "Honorable" titular style recognition preceding

8910-522: The number of colonels by issuing more than 10,000 commissions in 1933 and 1934; among his motives was officializing the Kentucky colonel to identify with the Commonwealth, taxing the title of colonel, and boosting his own political support. One of his most famous colonelships was granted to restaurateur Harland Sanders , who was commissioned by Laffoon in 1935. When Governor Albert Benjamin Chandler (better known as Happy Chandler ) took office in 1935, he took

9020-460: The poets Robert Burns , Lord Byron , Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats , the actor Edmund Kean , the British politician George Canning , and Napoleon Bonaparte , are still alive. The first novel-length alternate history in English would seem to be Castello Holford 's Aristopia (1895). While not as nationalistic as Louis Geoffroy 's Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812–1823 , Aristopia

9130-452: The point of view of an alternate history is variously known as " recursive alternate history ", a "double-blind what-if", or an "alternate-alternate history". Churchill's essay was one of the influences behind Ward Moore 's alternate history novel Bring the Jubilee in which General Robert E. Lee won the Battle of Gettysburg and paved the way for the eventual victory of the Confederacy in

9240-545: The process of aging. The historic distiller James B. Beam is referred to as "Colonel James B. Beam" for the marketing of the Jim Beam brand (the largest-selling brand of bourbon). The Sazerac Company similarly refers to the distiller Albert Blanton as "Colonel Blanton" for their marketing of the Blanton's brand. In both cases, the "Colonel" title refers to being a Kentucky colonel. A brand of Kentucky bourbon called Kentucky Colonel

9350-543: The protagonist's doppelganger. Philip K. Dick 's novel, The Man in the High Castle (1962), is an alternate history in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won World War II. This book contains an example of "alternate-alternate" history, in that one of its characters authored a book depicting a reality in which the Allies won the war, itself divergent from real-world history in several aspects. The several characters live within

9460-408: The ramifications of that alteration to history. Occasionally, some types of genre fiction are misidentified as alternative history , specifically science fiction stories set in a time that was the future for the writer, but now is the past for the reader, such as the novels 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke , 1984 (1949) by George Orwell and the movie 2012 (2009) because

9570-415: The reality that is most suitable for him or her. Some of the worlds they visit are mundane, some are very odd, and others follow science fiction or fantasy conventions. World War II produced alternate history for propaganda : both British and American authors wrote works depicting Nazi invasions of their respective countries as cautionary tales. The period around World War II also saw the publication of

9680-465: The requirement that the nominators be among those previously designated as Kentucky Colonels. The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels filed a Federal lawsuit against Kentucky Colonels International in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky in 2020. The lawsuit alleged infringement of the registered trademark "Kentucky Colonels ®" . In 2021, the parties settled the case with

9790-453: The slaughter of the innocent thus entailed, remaining solely in the timeline where the country is saved. The cross-time theme was further developed in the 1960s by Keith Laumer in the first three volumes of his Imperium sequence, which would be completed in Zone Yellow (1990). Piper's politically more sophisticated variant was adopted and adapted by Michael Kurland and Jack Chalker in

9900-489: The state, good deeds, and noteworthy actions. In 1784, John Filson published his book The discovery, settlement and present state of Kentucke which contained an appendix entitled "The adventures of Col. Daniel Boon, one of the first settlers " . Filson's book gained popularity and Boone became a symbol of American pioneering. There became increased interest in the trans-Appalachian West among both Europeans and Americans. Filson's The adventures of Col. Daniel Boon, one of

10010-570: The task of writing the play that will motivate the Britons to rise up against their Spanish conquerors. He also co-authored a book with actor Richard Dreyfuss , The Two Georges , in which the United Kingdom retained the American colonies, with George Washington and King George III making peace. He did a two-volume series in which the Japanese not only bombed Pearl Harbor but also invaded and occupied

10120-507: The term is not being used as a specific title for an individual. Most properly in writing this becomes "Col. First Name, Middle, Surname, Kentucky Colonel". In 1776, Col. John Bowman was the first Kentucky colonel officially appointed. Col. John Bowman was appointed as colonel of the Militia of Kentucky County by Governor of the Colony of Virginia , Patrick Henry . Notable pioneer, Daniel Boone

10230-528: The title "Master of Alternate History" by some. His books include those of Timeline 191 (a.k.a. Southern Victory, also known as TL-191), in which, while the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War , the Union and Imperial Germany defeat the Entente Powers in the two "Great War"s of the 1910s and 1940s (with a Nazi-esque Confederate government attempting to exterminate its black population), and

10340-441: The title, idea or the image of the concept of the idealistic Kentucky Colonel to promote art, business, events, music, places and recreational activities while simultaneously promoting the state's customs and traditions, resulting in the honor becoming a well-recognized trademark of Kentucky's culture. As it was explained by the defense in the U.S. District Court in 2020, "the idea and image of the Kentucky Colonel and Kentucky colonels

10450-505: The topic of this dispute. For they say: If, as you assert, God is omnipotent in all things, can he manage this, that things that have been made were not made? He can certainly destroy all things that have been made, so that they do not exist now. But it cannot be seen how he can bring it about that things that have been made were not made. To be sure, it can come about that from now on and hereafter Rome does not exist; for it can be destroyed. But no opinion can grasp how it can come about that it

10560-445: The total number of worlds with each type of outcome is infinite, it is still possible to assign a different measure to different infinite sets). The physicist David Deutsch , a strong advocate of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, has argued along these lines, saying that "By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives. When you succeed, all

10670-522: The unwitting creators of new time branches. These communities are transported from the present (or the near-future) to the past or to another timeline via a natural disaster, the action of technologically advanced aliens, or a human experiment gone wrong. S. M. Stirling wrote the Island in the Sea of Time trilogy, in which Nantucket Island and all its modern inhabitants are transported to Bronze Age times to become

10780-559: The war ends within weeks. While World War II has been a common point of divergence in alternate history literature, several works have been based on other points of divergence. For example, Martin Cruz Smith , in his first novel, posited an independent American Indian nation following the defeat of Custer in The Indians Won (1970). Beginning with The Probability Broach in 1980, L. Neil Smith wrote several novels that postulated

10890-480: The world's Jews instead live in a small strip of Alaska set aside by the US government for Jewish settlement. The story follows a Jewish detective solving a murder case in the Yiddish-speaking semi-autonomous city state of Sitka . Stylistically, Chabon borrows heavily from the noir and detective fiction genres, while exploring social issues related to Jewish history and culture. Apart from the alternate history of

11000-513: The world's first superpower. In Eric Flint 's 1632 series , a small town in West Virginia is transported to 17th century central Europe and drastically changes the course of the Thirty Years' War , which was then underway. John Birmingham 's Axis of Time trilogy deals with the culture shock when a United Nations naval task force from 2021 finds itself back in 1942 helping the Allies against

11110-514: The world, without people being aware of it. Poul Anderson 's Time Patrol stories feature conflicts between forces intent on changing history and the Patrol who work to preserve it. One story, Delenda Est , describes a world in which Carthage triumphed over the Roman Republic. The Big Time , by Fritz Leiber , describes a Change War ranging across all of history. Keith Laumer's Worlds of

11220-451: The writer explicitly maintains that all possible decisions are made in all possible ways, one possible conclusion is that the characters were neither brave, nor clever, nor skilled, but simply lucky enough to happen on the universe in which they did not choose the cowardly route, take the stupid action, fumble the crucial activity, etc.; few writers focus on this idea, although it has been explored in stories such as Larry Niven 's story All

11330-487: The writer uses human decisions, every decision that could be made differently would result in a different timeline. A writer's fictional multiverse may, in fact, preclude some decisions as humanly impossible, as when, in Night Watch , Terry Pratchett depicts a character informing Vimes that while anything that can happen, has happened, nevertheless there is no history whatsoever in which Vimes has ever murdered his wife. When

11440-776: Was "Mark Gordian". That year, he published Herbig-Haro and And So to Bed under his real name. In 1998, he began publishing historical novels under the pseudonym "H. N. Turteltaub" ( Turteltaube means turtle dove in German ). He published three books as "Dan Chernenko" (the Scepter of Mercy series). He has written several works in collaboration, including The Two Georges with Richard Dreyfuss , "Death in Vesunna" with his first wife, Betty Turtledove (pen name: Elaine O'Byrne); Household Gods with Judith Tarr ; and others with Susan Shwartz , S. M. Stirling , and Kevin R. Sandes. Turtledove won

11550-543: Was Churchill's "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg", written from the viewpoint of a historian in a world in which the Confederacy had won the American Civil War . The entry considers what would have happened if the North had been victorious (in other words, a character from an alternate world imagines a world more like the real one we live in, although it is not identical in every detail). Speculative work that narrates from

11660-624: Was expanded by Zoe Anderson Norris publishing Twelve Kentucky Colonel Stories: Describing Scenes and Incidents in a Kentucky Colonel's Life in the Southland in The New York Sun . In 1931, a story about the growing amount of Kentucky colonels emerged, "Thousand New Kunnels, Suh, In 25 Years". Prior to 1932, only about 1,000 people had received official "Honorable" commissions as Kentucky colonels from Kentucky's governors. Governor Ruby Laffoon , in office from 1931 to 1935, dramatically increased

11770-410: Was given the title "colonel" by Col. Judge Richard Henderson in 1775 when he founded the settlement of Boonesborough . Boone was not officially granted a Kentucky colonelcy until 1780 when he was commissioned by the governor of Virginia. At the time Kentucky colonelcy was still military appointment in contrast to the modern Kentucky colonelcy which is an honorary title for civilians. Charles S. Todd

11880-520: Was not founded long ago... One early work of fiction detailing an alternate history is Joanot Martorell 's 1490 epic romance Tirant lo Blanch , which was written when the fall of Constantinople to the Turks was still a recent and traumatic memory for Christian Europe . It tells the story of the knight Tirant the White from Brittany who travels to the embattled remnants of the Byzantine Empire . He becomes

11990-654: Was produced in the 1980s, and at least two current brands of Kentucky bourbon have the word "Colonel" in their name, the Colonel E. H. Taylor and Colonel Lee bourbon brands. In 2020 the Neeley Family Distillery (a craft bourbon distiller) in Sparta, Kentucky filed for the trademark "Old Kentucky Colonel" to bring back the original Kentucky Colonel brand. Each governor decides the selection process and number of colonelcies that are issued. The process has previously required

12100-450: Was quickly followed by Murray Leinster 's " Sidewise in Time " (1934). While earlier alternate histories examined reasonably-straightforward divergences, Leinster attempted something completely different. In his "World gone mad", pieces of Earth traded places with their analogs from different timelines. The story follows Professor Minott and his students from a fictitious Robinson College as they wander through analogues of worlds that followed

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