unhistory

Hitler moves into the Oval Office. Napoleon redecorates Windsor Castle. The South wins the Civil War. The Spanish Armada kicks English butt. Columbus and the New World, not so much. Forget the industrial revolution and the Reformation. Imagine that the Aztecs conquer Europe and a Roman discovers America and Neanderthals are alive and well in Wisconsin. And on and on and on. The past has long been our genre’s other playground because we are inextricably drawn to the provocative ideas of alternate history.

But what kind of writing is this anyway? The invaluable Alternate History Wiki <wiki.alternatehistory.com> defines it thus: “. . . alternate history generally exists as works of fiction, either in narrative (story) format or in the form of an essay or other non-narrative work, which have been created at least in part to showcase an imagined world where a change at some point in history led to events that could have happened, but did not happen in the actual past.” But is alternate history—or as historians sometimes call it, “counterfactual history”—SF or fantasy? It feels like science fiction, since it embraces SF’s extrapolative imperative: what if? And for the most part it accepts SF’s prime directive: obey the laws of nature.

For the sake of clarity, I make a distinction between alternate history and parallel worlds. A parallel world is one that is like ours in some ways and may well connect to our world, but in which the laws of nature are different. In many parallel worlds, magic works and fairies lurk. Think Oz <halcyon.com/ piglet/books1.htm>, for example. Or perhaps the physics are different, as in the immortal Isaac Asimov’s The Gods Themselves <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves>.

But, of course, alternate history is a mirror image of SF, in that it takes place not in the future but in the past. If we accept some simplistic but useful definitions of SF and fantasy—i.e., science fiction is the literature of the mind-boggling things that could happen and fantasy is the literature of marvelous things that can’t—then it would seem that alternate history is fantasy.

the quantum joke

Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one <www.phobe.com/s_cat/ s_cat.html>: A cat walks into a box with a Geiger counter, a radioactive atom, and a flask of poison. A guy named Schrödinger shuts the box and waits an hour. As it turns out, there is an excellent chance that the atom will decay in that time. If it does, the Geiger counter is rigged to break the flask and kill the cat. At the end of the hour, according to a hilarious law of quantum kinematics called superposition, the atom must exist in all its possible states. This means that it has both decayed and not decayed. Which means that the cat is both alive and dead.

By the way, Einstein liked to tell a similar quantum joke, only instead of killing a cat, his involved an exploding keg of gunpowder.

In any event, this joke has two punch lines.

The way Neils Bohr <nobelprize. org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates /1922/bohr-bio.html> tells it, when Schrödinger opens the box, he sees whether the cat is dead or alive, which means that he has also observed whether the atom has decayed or not. At the moment of observation the cat/atom system stops being in the superposition state and its wave function collapses into either a decayed or an undecayed state, dead kitty or live kitty. But wait, you may say, isn’t  Schrö-dinger part of the system? If a tree falls in the forest and Schrödinger isn’t there to hear it, does it make a noise? At this point, you should either begin work on your Ph.D. in physics or take two aspirin and go to bed.

But in 1954, a PhD candidate in physics named Hugh Everett <space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/Everett> came up with another punch line. In his version, there is nothing special about Schrödinger’s observation because the cat is both dead and alive, but in two separate worlds. At the moment Schrödinger opens the box, the world splits into two parallel worlds that are decoherent from one another. No communication between them is possible. This Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) <anthropic-principle.com/preprints/manyworlds.html> of quantum mechanics replaces the awkwardness of having observers create reality with the bizarre and continuous propagation of alternate worlds. Think of it: a gajillion Jim Kellys typing a gajillion columns in a gajillion Asimov’s. And there are quite a few of you as well, dear reader. But although there are many, many of us, there is only one “I” and just one “you.” Those other Jim Kellys have different bios, some radically different. But “I,” the Jim of our world, have but one biography.

If the Many Worlds Interpretation is right.

And how likely is that? In 1995, American researcher David Raub took a poll of 72 leading physicists and reported that 58 percent agreed with the statement “Yes, I think MWI is true,” 18 percent said “No, I don’t accept MWI,” 13 percent equivocated “Maybe it’s true but I’m not yet convinced,” and 11 percent had no opinion. Among those in the majority were Stephen Hawking <hawking.org.uk>, Murray Gell-Mann <nobelprize.org/nobel_ prizes/physics/laureates/1969/gell-mann-bio.html> and Richard Feynman <feynman.com>. On the other hand, Roger Penrose <en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Roger_Penrose> does not accept MWI. Of course, science has often as not refuted majority opinion and in the wacky precincts of quantum theory, reality is regularly reduced to a probability. But if these distinguished scientists hold to at least some flavor of MWI, then maybe it’s time to regard alternate history as closer to SF than fantasy.

clickage

The Alternate History Wiki is brought to you by the good folks at AlternateHistory.com <AlternateHistory.com>, the largest gathering of fans of AH on the internet. This busy site has over 4000 registered members and is home to three quarters of a million posts. The discussions are erudite and far-ranging; however, they focus on history itself and not the literary incarnation of alternate history.

For that try Uchronia, the Alternate History List <uchronia. net>. This is a must click site for AH buffs, coordinated by Robert Schmunk. It is the most comprehensive list of published alternate history books and stories you’ll find anywhere, sorted alphabetically by author. Each of the works in the list is given a summary, date of divergence from history as well as a publication and awards history. For many of the works listed there is also a what if entry: what if Al Smith beat Herbert Hoover in the election of 1928, what if Leonardo Da Vinci developed his flying machine with the help of Niccolo Mach-iavelli, what if the dinosaurs hadn’t died off. Like AlternateHistory.com, this is a treasure trove of ideas for the aspiring writer of AH.

Ever since 1996, the very best AH has been recognized by the Sidewise Awards <uchronia.net/sidewise>. These juried awards are given in two categories, short and long form. In addition, the jury from time to time gives a Special Achievement Award. You should not be surprised to find that many stories from this very publication have either been finalists for the Sidewise or have won the award.

The front page of Othertimelines.com <othertimelines.com> offers this greeting: “Welcome to This Day in Alternate History.” When it was active, this site allowed you to propose a divergence from history and then to explore the ramifications of that change through time. Other people could help you explore your timeline as well. Alas, the site does not seem to have been updated recently, but there are many timelines still in place. Checking the events that occurred on my birthday, for example, I find nine different timelines mentioned. Here are some of the things that happened on that happy (for me!) day: in 324 Licinus defeated Constantine, becoming sole ruler of the Roman Empire. In 1589, British troops invaded Spain, which never recovered from the defeat of its Armada. In 1980, the hostages were rescued in Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s power began to fade.

An online AH ’zine that is still going strong is Changing The Times <changingthetimes.net>. Updated monthly, the content on this lively site comes from a number of regular contributors. You must join in order to post, but anyone can read. Members agree to post regularly. While the quality of the prose varies considerably, the quality of thought is uniformly high.

One of the most amusing AH sites I found is actually an extended post on the excellent No Fear of the Future <nofearofthefuture. blogspot.com> blog. It is An Alternate History of Chinese Science Fiction <nofearofthefuture.blogspot. com/2007/05/alternate-history-of-chinese-science.html>, which is part jape and part literary criticism. Writing as Wang An Nuan, one Jess Nevins <geocities.com/ratmmjess> lists the most influential SF books of the last hundred years, from 4600 to 4700. (For those of you who are wondering, this is the year 4705 in the Chinese calendar.) He reviews such classics as Bai Ai Tan’s A Princess of Mars (4609) “No one will ever call Bai Ai Tan a great writer, and parts of A Princess of Mars have aged badly . . . but A Princess of Mars and the other Barsoom stories still carry a certain pulp charge.” Of Bei Ao Lan’s The Stars My Destination (4653), he writes “All Bei and Stars did was capture the mood of SF fans impatient to reach the stars before the Americans.” He restates the obvious in his discussion of Kong Wang Lian’s Neuromancer (4681). “Kong didn’t create cyberpunk, or even coin the word, but Kong’s enormous success, far more than Xu Bin Rong’s, spawned a decade of imitators.” The cover art accompanying the reviews is priceless. Give this essay a click for insight mixed with chuckles.

exit

Like so many of you, I love AH. Some of my dozens of fans (hi, Mom!) may be wondering why I haven’t dipped into this vibrant genre. I have, but you’ve never heard about it. You see, I have a parallel career up here in chilly New Hampshire as a playwright, and, in 2005, my full-length play The Duel had its world premiere with nine performances in Ports-mouth and two in Manchester. Here’s my what if: Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton fight their famous duel, but they both miss. Result: the Civil War breaks out fifty years early, except the North secedes from the South. Okay, you’re dubious. Google the Hartford Convention <en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Hartford_Convention> and think about it.

You see, I enjoy the game as much as the next guy.