Anthony Mayer ;  alternative history
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Contents

What is alternative history?

FAQ

Spinoza in Turkey

Thaxted

The Adventures of Thomas More

Just Another Thirty Years War With Steam

What is Alternative History?

Alternative history straddles speculative fiction and the practice of asking counter-factual questions in the academic study of history. I believe that alternative history can be entertaining, but also useful as a tool to help separate the contingent from the necessary, the underlying causes of real historical events from the accidental ones.

I am the FAQ maintainer for (and also a regular contributor to) the Usenet newsgroup soc.history.what-if (shwi), the subject of which is alternative history. Shwi has a nice mix of discussion, alternative timelines, narrative episodes and essays. It's a high traffic newsgroup, so while the signal to noise ratio is pretty good there's always quite a bit of rubbish floating around. Ignore it; the rest really is worthwhile. There are some very knowledgeable people contributing, the stories are well-written, and scarcely a week passes without someone saying something quite thought provoking. There is also a strong community spirit, which makes regular postings a pleasure.

For more information on alternative history and shwi, I can do worse than point to the official FAQ, a link to which is here:

soc.history.what-if Frequently Asked Questions

The rest of this page contains some work by master timeline writers of soc.history.what-if. My own work needs a thorough overhaul before it is presented here.

Jonathan Edelstein's
Spinoza in Turkey
In my opinion the best alternative history to appear on soc.history.what-if, Spinoza in Turkey, by Jonathan Edelstein, presents a world radically changed by the life of a philospher. It is with great pleasure that I am able to host the timeline here. Enjoy!

Sydney Webb's
Thaxted
It gives me great pleasure to be able to host this magnificent and relentlessly funny timeline by soc.history.what-if's own Sydney Webb. I present Thaxted. Enjoy!

Sydney Webb's
Thomas More
This is series of pieces charting the adventures of Thomas More, anti-hero, theologian, lover, and saviour of the Catholic Church, set in an alternative timeline where Lutheranism was surpressed as a dangerous heresy. We have great pleasure in presenting three of Thomas More's adventures by the irrepressible Sydney Webb:

Sydney Webb's
Just Another Thirty Years War With Steam
Sydney Webb's magnificent timeline where steam power is developed centuries earlier than in our history. Read on to discover the awe inspiring, gut wrenching, thrill a minute ride of Just Another Thirty Years War With Steam.

Last modified: Fri Jul 18 14:50:25 BST 2003