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129-408: The Red Spectacles was released on February 7, 1987. It would be followed by several works intended to explain and expand the film's universe, the most notable of them being Kerberos Panzer Cop . The film was followed by two prequels — StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops in 1991, and Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade in 1999—that adapted the established stories and settings from Kerberos Panzer Cop . In

258-523: 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

387-505: A coup d'état , known in the Kerberos Saga as the "Kerberos Uprising" or "Kerberos Riot". Handa, the leader of Jin-Roh, gathers the Kerberos members and delivers a rousing speech enlisting them to the coup's cause. On February 26 , 19XX, at around 7:12 a.m., the "Kerberos Uprising" is launched, when Tatsumi leads 1st Company " Kurzhaar " to Kasumigaseki , the location of a majority of

516-431: 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

645-624: A science fiction / horror two-monthly comics magazine published from 1988 to 1989 by Kasakura Shuppansha . After Amazing Comics last issue in April 1989, Kerberos Panzer Cop: Part I serialization restarted in Combat Comic (コンバットコミック), a monthly science fiction/ fantasy comic magazine published from 1985 to 1990 by Nihon Shuppansha . Part One (Act1~4) was completed in July 1990. In December 1990, Nihon Shuppansha compiled Kerberos Panzer Cop: Part One in

774-723: A JGSDF public equipment exhibition at Mount Fuji . Midori visits the event with fellow instructor Hachiro Tohbe and sees Kai demonstrating the Type 61 Protect Gears used by the JGSDF's Panzer Jägers. A tachiguishi ("Fast Food Grifter" in English) named Cold Badger Masa is brutally beaten to death by Kerberos member Chuichi Koshiramaru in Mach, an illegal stand-and-eat ( tachigui ) soba restaurant. The Self-Police quickly arrest Koshiramaru and rumors of an anti-Kerberos conspiracy emerge. Soon, another rumor arises:

903-463: A Kerberos member beats a misdemeanor offender to death, it sparks a massive controversy that leads to the unit's disbandment. However, three elite Kerberos members—Kōichi Todome, Washio Midori, and Sōichirō Toribe—refuse to disarm and flee to the Port of Tokyo, where they plan to escape in a helicopter. After repelling an ambush by bounty hunters, a grievously injured Sōichirō and Midori order Todome to leave in

1032-455: 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

1161-412: 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

1290-460: 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

1419-538: A bad sense of timing, and its people are unceremoniously stripped of their dignity." Kerberos Panzer Cop Kerberos Panzer Cop , also known as Hellhounds Legend ( 犬狼伝説 , Kenrou Densetsu , lit. "Legend of Dogs and Wolves") , and as Hellhounds: Panzer Cops or just Hellhounds overseas, is an alternate history political thriller manga written by Mamoru Oshii and illustrated by Kamui Fujiwara ( Studio 2B ) with mechanical designs by Yutaka Izubuchi , running from 1988 to January 2000. Part of

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1548-465: 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

1677-412: 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 ,

1806-546: 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

1935-525: A conflict over jurisdiction with the Self-Police, who normally have jurisdiction over the airport grounds and intend to deploy their Spezial Sturm Gruppe (inspired by the German Federal Police 's GSG 9 ) to resolve the hijacking instead. The jurisdictional conflict comes to a head when unit commander Hajime Handa orders his Kerberos unit to ignore the Self-Police's blockade of the scene, which leads to

2064-618: 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

2193-764: 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),

2322-446: A landfill on Showa Island. With Koichi and Soichiro dazed from the crash, Fujiwara attempts to escape, but Midori climbs the fuselage and begins setting up her Mauser C96 sidearm for long-range shooting. Handa and Kerberos rush to the crash site but are beaten there by the Self-Police, who surround Fujiwara and attempt to apprehend him; however, before they can do so, Fujiwara looks back at the plane and sees Midori, who shoots him between

2451-474: 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

2580-571: A public armed standoff between the two police forces in the airport terminal . The resulting backlash leads to Kerberos being kicked from the airport, with the risk of arrest if they violate Self-Police jurisdiction again. Unwilling to allow the Spezial Sturm Gruppe to fight the terrorists instead of them, Handa procures a Volkswagen Type 26 service truck and sends Kerberos members Koichi Todome, Washio Midori, and Soichiro Toribe—three members closely associated with each other, and later nicknamed

2709-491: A single paperback volume with the original cheap paper quality and B5 size kept (25.7 cm x 18.2 cm). This original edition features a curved silver dust jacket cover that included a white obi strip promoting the StrayDog theatrical adaptation's March 1991 roadshow ("映画化公開決定!"). Re-issue of the 1990 Original edition by Nihon Shuppansha. Paper size is smaller than the original B5 edition (now 21 cm x 14.8 cm) but

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2838-637: 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

2967-592: 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

3096-655: A stolen Volkswagen Kübelwagen toward the Port of Tokyo , where they plan to escape in a helicopter . The Special Issue details the aftermath of the "Park Incident" (Act 7) with Todome, Midori, Toribe, and Kerberos sniper Eito Kurosaki, a major character in Kerberos Saga Rainy Dogs . Various editions and reissues were released since 1988, and both the paper size and included bonus materials differ between them. The Magazine, Original, Zen, and Kerberos Saga editions use standard B5 (25.7 cm x 18.2 cm / 10.1" x 7.2");

3225-470: 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

3354-619: 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

3483-503: 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

3612-411: 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

3741-427: 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

3870-531: 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

3999-520: Is a boxset reissue of the Frozen version including Acts 1~8 in a +400 pages single volume bundled with goodies. As a collector item it was packaged in a white carton box bearing a "Zen" sticker and including a deluxe black carton boxset (with grey obi), three original B5 postcards, the drama CD version of While Waiting for the Red Spectacles (" Radio Kerberos "), the revised script for While Waiting for

The Red Spectacles - Misplaced Pages Continue

4128-491: 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

4257-636: Is a reissue of the 1993 Popular edition, though it is a smaller format (18 cm x 13 cm) but the paper quality is even better ( supercalendered ). The second volume is the first ever compilation of Kerberos Panzer Cop Part II. It is dubbed "Conclusion" and was issued as a 10th anniversary of the Original edition, and also to coincide with the release of the theatrical adaptation, Jin-Roh , in Japan. Both volumes were issued within illustrator Kamui Fujiwara's works collection reissue. The Zen ("Complete Book") edition

4386-405: 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

4515-505: 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

4644-462: Is brought back to field duty as his unit's rearguard , he encounters the same woman escorting another injured man. Before he can act, the woman reveals herself to be a terrorist and shoots Inui, killing him. Metropolitan Police Aerial Squadron pilot Hachiro Kishu is assigned to aerial reconnaissance and traffic enforcement in a Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 , much to his dismay, as he dreams of experiencing real aerial combat . However, this changes when

4773-477: 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

4902-611: Is learned that the attack was not the work of the Sect, but rather the Four Seasons League , a communist terrorist splinter group (loosely based on the Japanese Red Army ) formed after the Sect's leadership, making a compromise with the government while in custody, agreed to abandon its most extreme and violent members, including radical Fujiwara, who promptly formed the group. The Metropolitan Police are then alerted that Fujiwara and

5031-664: 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

5160-488: 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

5289-403: Is unable to relieve because there is a goldfish living in the toilet. These moments appear at first to make absolutely no sense, but when given more thought, they add a great deal to the dystopian atmosphere. These sequences are horrifying; they are completely out of place, and as such, they illustrate the ignominy of life in the new Japan. Under the new regime, the city has a bad sense of humor and

The Red Spectacles - Misplaced Pages Continue

5418-544: The Kerberos Saga and set before Oshii's 1987 film The Red Spectacles , the manga details the history and events surrounding the Special Armed Garrison , nicknamed " Kerberos ", a Tokyo -based counterterrorist police tactical unit operating in an alternate history authoritarian postwar Japan . Part I (Act 1~4) of Kerberos Panzer Cop was published in various Japanese comic magazines from 1988 to 1990, it

5547-643: 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

5676-640: The Defense Division ("Capital Area Security Police Agency" in English), experiences interservice tensions with the Metropolitan Police's intelligence agency -like espionage unit, the Public Security Division . Additionally, into the 1950s, changes in Japanese society over time—improving living standards, the loss of the Sect's public appeal, and Kerberos's increasingly brutal tactics—lead to

5805-469: 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

5934-556: The Weimar Republic , and occupied Japan (part of the Allies in this timeline) to establish authoritarian rule. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the German occupation attempts to globalize and urbanize Japan through a government called the "Weimar Establishment" ( ワイマール体制 , waimāru taisei ) , it sparks massive increases in poverty and class stratification , resulting in

6063-755: 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

6192-412: The storm sewers of Tokyo, but fails to kill a suicide bomber and is unable to apprehend a suspicious wounded man escaping through a manhole with an innocent woman; the man is shot by Metropolitan Police snipers and revealed to be an armed terrorist. Unsure why he was unable to perform his duties and doubting his ability to work in Kerberos, Inui is transferred back into training for reevaluation. When he

6321-571: 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),

6450-468: The "Devil's Trio"—to board Flight 666 disguised as caterers delivering food to the hostages. As Handa launches a diversion, Koichi, Midori, and Soichiro storm Flight 666 and kill most of the Four Seasons League terrorists, but before they can fully secure the plane, Fujiwara orders the pilot to take off. Koichi, Midori, and Soichiro promptly shoot the engines of the plane, forcing it to crash-land in

6579-522: 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

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6708-538: 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

6837-484: 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

6966-479: The 1987 radio drama While Waiting for the Red Spectacles . In 2006, it was loosely adapted as the film Tachiguishi-Retsuden . Two German officials visit Japan on a diplomatic trip, but are met by hundreds of anti-Weimar Establishment protestors at a bridge junction near Tokyo International Airport. As the protest devolves into violence, the diplomatic convoy is attacked, and the Self-Police are overwhelmed, Kerberos members deployed on standby as backup open fire on

7095-468: 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

7224-772: The 20th century, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department loses control of crime in Tokyo. In response, it establishes the Anti Vicious Crime Heavily Armored Mobile Special Investigations Unit, nicknamed "Kerberos", a heavily-armed police tactical unit tasked with combating crime and evil, equipped with machine guns and reinforcement gear. However, while Kerberos succeeds in their mission, by the 1990s their overzealous actions and fanatical hatred of evil lead to them becoming increasingly aggressive, cruel, and corrupt. When

7353-668: The Aerial Squadron receives a new Fa-666 "Jagdhund" attack helicopter , and Kishu is assigned to pilot it. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police Public Security Division attempts to apprehend a Sect mole within the Metropolitan Police, but a Kerberos platoon interrupts their operation by raiding an accomplice's house, killing several Sect members but losing the mole. When the Public Security agents inform their director Bunmei Muroto of what happened, they learn

7482-454: The Aerial Squadron's ground crew , though all of their aircraft escape. After 3rd Company's demise, Handa orders 1st and 2nd Companies to storm the headquarters. Though Kerberos succeeds in seizing the Self-Police headquarters, additional Self-Police officers and Riot Police Units, including the JGSDF 1st Airborne Brigade commanded by Kai, arrive to besiege them; in the meantime, the Self-Police and JSDF besiege Kerberos's other facilities, such as

7611-509: 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

7740-412: 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

7869-721: 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

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7998-517: 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

8127-425: The Four Seasons League have hijacked Lufthansa Flight 666, a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor , at Tokyo International Airport , and that the embassy crisis was a diversion to draw police attention away from the hijacking. The Four Seasons League intend to face off with Kerberos. Kerberos is charged with defeating Fujiwara and the Four Seasons League, and they are deployed to Tokyo International Airport. However, they have

8256-516: 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

8385-620: 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 ,

8514-435: 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

8643-401: The Iron Sands " and " The Ogre Saved by the Fisherman ", or through classic poet-authors quotes, Shakespeare and Pushkin. The characters refers to European medieval tales and Greek mythology , such as oral versions of Little Red Riding Hood and the three-headed watchdog of Hell Cerberus . The Red Spectacles premiered on February 7, 1987 in Japan. On February 25, 2003, the DVD edition

8772-450: 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

8901-542: The Japanese government's offices, supported by Handa's 2nd Company " Langhaar ", Ichiro Kure's 3rd Company " Drahthaar ", and the Aerial Squadron " Laelaps ". Fighting breaks out when a Kerberos Fa-330 attacks a Self-Police Riot Police Unit dispatched to contain them, and Kerberos engages in direct combat with the Self-Police. 3rd Company eventually reaches the Self-Police headquarters and storms it, briefly capturing it before being defeated by Muroto's Public Security Division agents; meanwhile, Self-Police officers attack and kill

9030-415: The Japanese version. The American The Red Spectacles DVD edition was reprinted in 2004, and since then is only available in the box set which was printed three times as of 2006 and remains the only edition released outside Japan. The A.V. Club , reviewing it as part of the 2003 DVD release with the other parts of the trilogy, called the story "alternately hilarious, bizarre, and incoherent, right up to

9159-413: 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

9288-497: The Kerberos Academy Training School, where Tohbe and the other instructors are also holding out. After several hours, at 12:00 noon, Shiro rallies the remaining Kerberos members for a last stand , and they exit the Self-Police headquarters to charge at the JGSDF, who fire back in response. As Kerberos fights their final battle, the last surviving Kerberos members—Todome, Midori, and Toribe, the "Devil's Trio"—flee in

9417-571: 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

9546-474: 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

9675-554: The Popular edition uses A5 (21 cm x 14.8 cm); and the Frozen edition uses B6 size (18 cm x 13 cm). Additional contents such as prologues, production notes, scenarios, organization charts, glossary, staff interviews, and bibliographies are always included in tankōbon editions to explain the Kerberos Saga 's complex background. Kerberos Panzer Cop was first published in October 1988 through Amazing Comics (アメージング·コミックス),

9804-452: The Red Spectacles and various appendices. A limited Kerberos Panzer Cop Kubrick ( Protect-Gear '92) was offered to first print pre-orderers on Kadokawa's website. The "Zen" edition was produced in small quantities sold 5,800¥ (+$ 51). Single act releases reissue in B5 format by Barque (Raiden company) through the Kerberos Saga official website. Kerberos Panzer Cops (with the plural form as in

9933-610: The Sect plans to sabotage the Fa-666 in an upcoming aerial demonstration; however, Muroto chooses not to inform the Metropolitan Police Defense Division out of retaliation for their botched operation. The Sect mole, revealed to be a Metropolitan Police aircraft mechanic, plants a bomb aboard the Fa-666 and detonates it during the demonstration, destroying the helicopter and Kishu's aspirations. Public Security Division director Bunmei Muroto, realizing society has evolved to

10062-742: 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

10191-667: 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

10320-405: The alternative titles Hellhounds (Cerberos: Panzer Cop) and Hellhounds . This adaptation was later issued in the United Kingdom by Diamond Comic Distributors in 1998, and a translated version was published in the German magazine Manga Power  [ de ] in 1996. In 2009, an omake -style issue, Kerberos Panzer Cop: Special Issue (前夜-ケルベロス騒乱異聞, zenya - keruberosu souran ibun ),

10449-452: 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

10578-463: The cast members are voice actors and appeared in Urusei Yatsura , which Oshii worked on as chief director and head writer. The Red Spectacles is probably Oshii's most literate feature work. Not only, dialogue and narrative parts are prominent over drama but the film contains a variety of philosophical concepts such as free will and determinism , mentioned through fables, like " The Magnet and

10707-481: 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

10836-435: 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

10965-414: The disappointingly conventional ending." Blogspot user bloodandsoulsformylordarioch stated from the review article that "For all intents and purposes, “The Red Spectacles” is a serious film about serious issues, and yet it does not shy away from having Bunmei, the face of the evil Cats, burst into an impromptu mambo for seemingly no reason, or having Koichi become incapacitated by explosive diarrhea that he

11094-706: 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

11223-517: 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

11352-553: 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,

11481-408: The existence of " Jin-Roh ", a secret counterintelligence unit within Kerberos that seeks to protect the unit from any threat to their existence. The Self-Police's investigation, led by Detective Takahiro Matsui (from Patlabor ), details the intricacies of the existence and extent of the tachiguishi in the Japanese society of the Kerberos Saga . This Act is an adaptation of "Third Night" from

11610-496: The eyes with her C96, killing him and securing the operation as a success for Kerberos. Tetsurō Kai , the young leader of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force 's 1st Airborne Brigade Panzer Jäger Unit (ギア部隊), nicknamed "Molosser" and equipped with Protect Gear and anti-tank rifles , enters Kerberos's Academy Training School (首都警·養成学校) as an undercover trainee, where he falls in love with Midori and invites her to

11739-518: 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

11868-459: The gleaming office buildings of Tokyo prominently visible in the distance, symbolizing the coming of a new era without Kerberos. The Sect attacks the German Embassy in Japan, taking several hostages and threatening to kill them, which could spark an international incident; Kerberos is deployed to handle the crisis, and they storm the embassy, eliminating the terrorists within minutes. However, it

11997-435: The helicopter alone, but they make a promise that Todome will return for them. Three years later, Todome, a fugitive from the government, returns to Tokyo, but finds the city inexplicably no longer resembles the one he left behind: the buildings have decayed at an exponential rate, and everything is strange, surreal, and nondescript. He wanders, trying to find some semblance of his past and to find Sōichirō and Midori, and along

12126-402: 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

12255-460: The historical record. Some alternate histories are considered a subgenre of science fiction , or historical fiction . 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

12384-559: The live-action film StrayDog ) is used instead of the original title Kerberos Panzer Cop . Alternate history Alternate history (also referred to as alternative history , allohistory , althist , or simply AH ) is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which one or more historical events have occurred but are resolved differently than in actual history. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alternate history stories propose What if? scenarios about crucial events in human history, and present outcomes very different from

12513-517: The manga's premise; and again in 1999's Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade , directed by Hiroyuki Okiura and written by Oshii, based on Act I of the manga. A sequel, Kerberos Saga Rainy Dogs , was serialized in Ace Tokunoh from 2003 to 2005, then published as an extended single volume in 2005. Kerberos Panzer Cop is set in the 1950s in the Kerberos Saga 's alternate timeline, where Nazi Germany won World War II , eventually denazified and restored

12642-517: The merger to go ahead. After meeting with Self-Police officials, he accuses an underling, Tsujimura, of leaking secrets to a friend in Kerberos; however, as Public Security agents arrive to apprehend him, Tsujimura unmasks Muroto's ambitions and draws a gun on him, prompting the agents to shoot and kill Tsujimura. Later, a stray dog finds Tsujimura's corpse in a junkyard surrounded by decommissioned Stahlhelms , Protect Gears, firearms, and armoured personnel carriers from Kerberos lying throughout, with

12771-468: The necessity of Kerberos being brought into question. A dedicated prologue to the manga, detailing the setting and history of the saga's fictional universe , as well as why the Metropolitan Police were formed. In the English adaptation, this is replaced by a single-page synopsis with no illustrations nor references to Japan, which is simply referred to as "the country". Metropolitan Police rookie Toru Inui, part of Kerberos, engages with Sect terrorists in

12900-552: The paper quality is a bit better. Half of the bonus material was removed though for a budget release. The sequel and completion of Kerberos Panzer Cop , featuring Acts 5~8 (第二部, Part 2 ), was published in Monthly Shōnen Ace (月刊少年エース, Gekkan Shōnen Esu ) monthly comics magazine, property of Kadokawa Shoten . Kerberos Panzer Cop was completed in January 2000. The "Frozen version" is a 2-volume renewal edition. The first volume

13029-460: 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

13158-402: 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

13287-635: The point that it will eventually no longer need Kerberos, and deciding there is no room for them in the Metropolitan Police anyway, begins to work against it. He proposes to merge Public Security with the Self-Police to create "a new public peacekeeping apparatus that has the Public Security Division at its core", and implies this move would dismantle Kerberos. However, knowing Defense Division director Isao Aniya and Kerberos leader Shiro Tatsumi would view this as betrayal and attempt to strike back, Muroto realizes he must discredit or eliminate Kerberos for

13416-543: 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

13545-529: The protestors, killing around 200 people. The event, known as the "Park Incident", becomes a political scandal and a firestorm that leads to public opinion turning sharply against the Metropolitan Police and Kerberos. In response to backlash, and deeming Kerberos no longer necessary in modern society, the National Public Safety Committee votes for the Metropolitan Police's dismantlement. However, Aniya and Tatsumi refuse to disband and instead plan

13674-408: 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

13803-415: 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

13932-616: The rise of anti-government movements that escalate into terrorism when their protests are countered with repression. The Japanese government, unable to effectively handle the increase in terrorism and violence using regular police, but unable and unwilling to deploy the Japan Self-Defense Forces , forms the Metropolitan Security Police Organization (commonly "Metropolitan Police" (MP) or Shutokei (首都警); "Capital Police" or "CAPO" in English) to counter

14061-453: 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

14190-729: The spike in terrorism and forcing most of the terrorist groups to merge under a single group called the Sect . However, the Metropolitan Police faces friction from the Self-Police ("Local Police", "Metropolitan Police Force", or " NPA " in English)—officially the Tokyo Metropolitan Self-Police Department , whose jurisdiction overlaps with the Metropolitan Police—as well as the JSDF, while Kerberos's division,

14319-519: 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

14448-433: The terrorists and restore order to Tokyo. The Metropolitan Police's main combat force, the paramilitary Special Armed Garrison ("Special Unit" in English), nicknamed "Kerberos", are issued powerful military equipment such as MG 42 machine guns and powered exoskeletons called "Protect Gears", and are permitted to use violent force against their targets. The Metropolitan Police and Kerberos succeed in their goals, quelling

14577-528: 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

14706-505: 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

14835-445: 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

14964-522: 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

15093-559: 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

15222-468: The way encounters strange and unusual characters—a mysterious young lady clad in red, hitmen led by Bunmei Muroto, and eccentric con artists called tachiguishi who swindle inexplicably-illegal stand-and-eat food stalls (tachigui) after they were deemed to violate public order and standard of decency. In the end, it is revealed that most of the events of the film were a dying dream, as Todome was attacked and killed shortly after returning to Tokyo. Several of

15351-480: 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

15480-513: 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

15609-514: 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

15738-451: 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

15867-487: 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

15996-543: 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

16125-515: Was later completed with Part II (Act 5~8) published in Monthly Shōnen Ace from 1999 to 2000. Translated versions of the complete series were issued in South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Taiwan in the early 2000s. An English language adaptation of the first four acts was published under the title Hellhounds: Panzer Cops in 1994 by Dark Horse Comics . The American translators from Studio Protheus, Alan Gleason and Toren Smith , randomly used

16254-554: Was made available in Japan as part of the Mamoru Oshii Cinema Trilogy anthology box set, which contained four DVDs and one soundtrack CD. On November 4 of the same year, a subtitled version of Akai megane was released in North America as both a single DVD and also as part of a US release of the box set. The US version of the trilogy box set has different box artwork and lacks the "Revisited Scene & Production" DVD of

16383-578: 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

16512-684: Was published in Kerberos Panzer Cops: Tokyo War , the Kerberos Saga 's definitive guide. In April 2010, for the 20th anniversary of the Original Edition (1990 volume compilation), publisher Gakken issued Kerberos Panzer Cop a Revision: 20th edition (犬狼伝説 20周年エディション) , a digitally refined and corrected reissue of the entire manga, alongside a special pamphlet and a Protect Gear model figure . Kerberos Panzer Cop has been adapted into films twice: first in 1991's StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops , directed by Oshii, loosely based on

16641-450: 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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