Why do we ask "what if?" Reflections on the function of alternate history

History and Theory

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 90-103

  Rosenfeld, Gavriel ^a  

^a FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33750737398     PISSN: 00182656     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2303.00222     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. For a representative survey of the stunning number and diversity of alternate histories, visit the internet web site, Uchronia (www.uchronia.net, accessed August 30, 2002), which offers a mammoth bibliography of accounts on all manner of topics.
2. See, for example, "Historians Warming to Games of 'What If,'" New York Times (January 7, 1998), B7;
3. Martin Arnold, "The 'What Ifs' That Fascinate," New York Times (December 21, 2000), E3.
4. American Heritage devoted several articles to the subject in its September 1999 issue, including Phil Patton, "Lee Defeats Grant," American Heritage 50. (September 1999), 39-45
5. and Frederic Smoler, "Past Tense." ibid., 45-49.
6. The German media has covered the trend as well; see Sven Felix Kellerhoff, "Was wäre, wenn . . , Ein neuer Trend in der Geschichtswissenschaft: Historiker spekulieren. Was wäre geschehen, wenn Ereignisse gar nicht oder anders stattgefunden hätten? Berliner lllustrirte Zeitung (January 30, 2000), cited at: http://www.stauff.de/grundkursdeutsch/ dateien/histkonj/histkonj.htm (accessed September 6.2002).
7. Much of the media attention surrounded the publication of three major mass-market books: Niall Ferguson's edited volume, Virtual History: Alternatives and Counter-Factuals (New York: Basic Books, 1999),
8. and Robert Cowley's two edited volumes, What If? The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (New York: Putnam, 1999) and What If? 2: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (New York: Putnam, 2001).
9. Other works by historians include Alexander Demandt's pathbreaking work, originally published in German in 1984, History That Never Happened: A Treatise on the Question, What Would Have Happened If...? (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1993) and, forthcoming,
10. Philip Tetlock, Richard Ned Lebow, and Geoffrey Parker, Unmaking the West: Counterfactual Thought Experiments in History (Cambridge. Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
11. Significantly, literary scholars have been as active as historians in studying the subject. Among the pioneering studies by historians are Jörg Helbig, Der parahistorische Roman: Ein literarhistorischer und gattungstypologischer Beitrag zur Allotopieforschung (Frankfurt am Main and New York: P. Lang, 1987);
12. Christoph Rodiek, Erfundene Vergangenheit: Kontrafaktische Geschichtsdarstellung (Uchronie) in der Literatur (Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 1997);
13. Karen Hellekson, The Alternate History: Refiguring Historical Time (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. 2001);
14. William Joseph Collins, "Paths Not Taken: The Development, Structure, and Aesthetics of Alternative History" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Davis, 1990);
15. Edgar V. McKnight Jr., "Alternative History: The Development of a Literary Genre" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1994);
16. Gordon Chamberlain, "Afterword: Allohistory in Science Fiction," in Alternative Histories: Eleven Stories of the World as It Might Have Been, ed. Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg, (New York: Garland, 1986), 281-300;
17. and Johannes Bulhof, "What If? Modality and History," History and Theory 38 (1999), 145-168. My own study, The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism, which I am currently completing, is. to the best of my knowledge, the first to analyze the allohistorical imagining of a single theme.
18. Demandt, History That Never Happened, 70, 122;
19. Chamberlain, "Afterword: Allohistory in Science Fiction," 284;
20. McKnight, "Alternative History: The Development of a Literary Genre," 10.
21. The first acknowledged allohistorical novel was published in 1836: Louis-Napoleon Geoffroy-Chateau, Napoleon et la conquete du monde 1812 - 1832, Histoire de la monarchie universelle (Paris: Tallandier, 1983),
22. followed by Charles Renouvier, Uchronie (l'utopie dans l'histoire): esquisse historique apocryphe du développement de la civilisation européenne tel qu'il n'a pas été, tel qu'il aurait pu être (Paris: Bureau de la Critique Philosophique, 1876).
23. See Collins, "Paths Not Taken," 159-174;
24. Rodiek, Erfundene Vergangenheit, 68-70.
25. Hellekson, The Alternate History, 18.
26. Among academic alternate histories, the most influential early work was J. C. Squire's If It Had Happened Otherwise: Lapses into Imaginary History (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1931).
27. David Pringle notes that science fiction and alternate history came of age around the same time in the 1950s. David Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction: An A-Z of Science Fiction Books (London: Grafton, 1990), ix-x.
28. See, among others, Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1988);
29. Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1984).
30. For a broader discussion, see Keith Jenkins, Rethinking History (New York: Routledge, 1991).
31. Generally, see Lutz Niethammer, Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End? (London: Verso, 1994);
32. Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?" The National Interest 4 (Summer, 1989), 3-18.
33. Ferguson, Virtual History, 75-76;
34. James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987).
35. Mark Slouka, War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High-Tech Assault on Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
36. Demandt writes that alternate history is based upon "private conjecture, which reveals more about the character of the speculator than about the probable consequences [of a different historical scenario]." Demandt, History That Never Happened, 5.
37. As various scholars have noted, examining the representation of Nazism is not the same as studying the memory of it. Only by combining an analysis of representation with reception does a clear sense of a narrative's broader societal resonance emerge. Alon Confino has been one of the leading advocates of including the societal reception of cultural products in analyzing their significance as indices of memory. See Alon Confino, "Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method," American Historical Review 102 (December, 1997), 1386-1403.
38. While the French arguably invented alternate history in the nineteenth century, American and British writers distinguished themselves in the twentieth century as the primary developers of the genre. Some have argued that this is due to the crucial Anglo-American contribution to the creation of modern science fiction. Neil Barron writes that "there is still a tendency to regard science fiction as a primarily Anglo-American phenomenon." Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction (New York: Bowker, 1981).
39. Hendrik Willem van Loon, Invasion: Being an Eyewitness Account of the Nazi Invasion of America (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1940);
40. Fred Allhoff, Lightning in the Night (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1979);
41. Marion White, If We Should Fail (New York: M.S. Mill Co., Inc., 1942);
42. Alfred Bester, "The Probable Man," Astounding Science Fiction 24 (July, 1941), 75-104.
43. The general field of alternate history, indeed, largely focused upon an imaginary U.S.-Soviet conflict and expressed cold war fears of nuclear destruction. See, for example, such works as Leonard Engel and Emmanuel S. Piller, The World Aflame: The Russian-American War of 1950 (New York:Dial Press, 1947);
44. Cyril M. Kornbluth, Not This August (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1955), which chronicled the occupation of the U.S. by China and Russia;
45. and Pat Frank, Alas Babylon (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959). These accounts focused largely on a catastrophic Third World War.
46. Cyril M. Kornhluth, "Two Dooms," reprinted in Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg, Hitler Victorious (New York: Garland, 1986), 11-52.
47. William L. Shirer, "If Hitler Had Won World War II," Look. 25 (December 19, 1961), 28-43;
48. Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).
49. For the original screenplay, see Harlan Ellison, "The City on the Edge of Forever: An Original Teleplay," in Roger Ellwood, Six Science Fiction Plays (New York: Washington Square Press, 1976), 5-138.
50. John Lukacs, "What if Hitler Had Won the Second World War?" in The People's Almanac, #2, ed. David Wallechinsky (New York: Morrow, 1978), 396-398.
51. Moon of Ice was originally published as a long short story in 1982 and was expanded into a full-length novel in 1988. All quotations in this chapter come from the novel. Brad Linaweaver, Moon of lce (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1988).
52. The short-story version is reproduced in The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century, ed. Harry Turtledove and Martin H. Greenberg (New York: Del Rey, 2001), 356-415.
53. Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry into World War II (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), 42.
54. I am grateful to Harold Forsythe for alerting me to the existence of this episode. For a transcript of the episode see: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/78/ 78jwhatif.phtml (accessed September 6, 2002).
55. Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen, 1945 (Riverdale, N.Y.; Baen Publishing Enterprises, 1995).
56. Robert Harris's original novel was an international bestseller, selling over three million copies worldwide. Fatherland was also translated into twenty-five different languages. On the HBO film, see Christy Campbell, "The Shrinking of Fatherland," Sunday Telegraph (June 26, 1994), 5.
57. Generally, see Craig R. Whitney, "Inventing a World in Which Hitler Won," New York Times (June 3, 1992), C17.
58. Leo Rutman, Clash of Eagles (New York: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1990);
59. Arthur Rhodes, The Last Reich (Danbury, Conn.: Rutledge Books, 2001).
60. Patrick J. Buchanan, A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Pub., 1999).
61. Ward Moore, Bring the Jubilee, reprinted in Turtledove and Greenberg, eds., 151-250.
62. Moore was born in Maine. See the profile of Moore in Contemporary Authors, Volume 29-32 (Detroit: Gale, 1984)
63. and Dictionary of Literary Biography, volume 8 (Detroit: Gale, 1984).
64. MacKinlay Kantor, "If the South Had Won the Civil War," Look Magazine 24 (November 22, 1960), 30-62.
65. Tom Wicker, "If Lincoln Had Not Freed the Slaves," in Cowley, ed., What If? 2, 152-164.
66. Robert Sobel, For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga (London: Greenhill Books. 1997).
67. Robert Sobel was Lawrence Stessin Distinguished Professor of Business History at Hofstra University. See his obituary, "Robert Sobel. 68, a Historian of Business, Dies," New York Times (June 4, 1999), C18.
68. Richard Dreyfuss and Harry Turtledove, The Two Georges (New York: TOR, 1996).
69. Smoler, "Past Tense," 46.