Alternate history or alternative history is a subgenre of literary fiction, though it often uses the tropes of science fiction and historical fiction that is set in a world in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. It is sometimes abbreviated AH. Another occasionally-used term for the genre is "allohistory" (lit. "other history").
Since the 1950s, this type of fiction has to a large extent merged with science fictional t...
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Alternate history or alternative history is a subgenre of literary fiction, though it often uses the tropes of science fiction and historical fiction that is set in a world in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. It is sometimes abbreviated AH. Another occasionally-used term for the genre is "allohistory" (lit. "other history").
Since the 1950s, this type of fiction has to a large extent merged with science fictional tropes involving cross-time travel between alternate histories or psychic awareness of the existence of "our" universe by the people in another; or ordinary voyaging uptime or downtime that results in history splitting into two or more timelines. Cross-time, time-splitting and alternate history themes have become so closely interwoven that it is impossible to discuss them fully apart from one another.
In French and German, alternate history novels are called uchronie. This neologism is based on the prefix u- (as in the word utopia, a place...
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