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Yesterday, we asked a bunch of our favorite alternate history authors to list the biggest mistakes that they see other writers making in creating new historical timelines. One author who didn't get back to us by our deadline was Jo Walton, author of Farthing and several other great books. We just heard from her, and she raised an excellent point that nobody else had brought up yet: More »
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The past is another country — but an alternate history is a whole new world. The best alternate histories can make you see the real history of our world in a whole new way, and make you realize that events that seem like they were inevitable... may not have been. More »
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At the beginning of the 20th Century, the US decides to turn the tables on Mother England and turn its former motherland into a conquered territory. The American conquerors quickly get to work, importing architects and sculptors who make the city of London look just like New York. More »
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The Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war have reverberated through science fiction and fantasy for over a decade, giving us plenty of stories of terrorism, wars of occupation and clashes of cultures. But Matt Ruff's The Mirage, which comes out next week, might just be the ideal prism with which to refract your memories of that brutal decade and see them anew. Plus it's an addictive, fascinating read, which keeps you guessing. More »
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The 1969 moon landing was one of humanity's most impressive achievements, but there was always a chance that things could go terribly wrong. But if the worst happened, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were commended to the void of space, Nixon had a stirring speech prepared, one that celebrated the spirit of exploration and the nobility of our lunar dreams. More »
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The Hugo Awards are given to the best science fiction or fantasy works of the previous year. Unfortunately, they've only been awarded since 1953. That's where this column comes in — Jess Nevins will be awarding some honorary Hugo Awards to the best novels of the Victorian era... and beyond. More »
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The Hugo Awards are given to the best science fiction or fantasy works of the previous year. Unfortunately, they've only been awarded since 1953. That still leaves decades of science fiction and fantasy works deserving of recognition but receiving none. That's where this column comes in. More »
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What if Confederates, fleeing after the Civil War, ran to the shores of Brazil, and encountered... something? We were intrigued when a new novel trilogy sold to Christian publisher Barbour Books in a "nice deal," and it was pitched as "Gone With The Wind meets Lost." Does somebody say "Frankly, my dear Smoke Monster, I don't give a damn." More »
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Designer and futurist Thomas Thwaites recently posed an interesting question. What would life be like in a world where evolutionary science never took hold, but humanity was nevertheless as scientifically developed as we are today? In a series of stories and art projects, he tries to answer that question — and explains why, in this alternate scientific history, it might become popular to engineer your children to have wings. More »
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Today sees the release of Scott Westerfeld's and Keith Thompson's long-awaited third book in the Leviathan trilogy, Goliath. And we can't wait for a third dose of alternate-history World War I, with all the mechs and genetically engineered airships. (And to celebrate, here's a lovely new piece of artwork. Check out the full version below.) More »
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In his "Alternate Histories" series of prints, Matthew Bucholz takes the bygone years of American history and peppers them with marauding kaiju, alien conquerors, and frontier dinosaurs. Here are some of his more amusingly rejiggered ephemera, and you can see more examples over at his Etsy page. More »
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The next chapter of Scott Westerfeld's alternate World War I series comes out next month, and we've got an exclusive piece of amazing artwork from illustrator Keith Thompson. Plus an essay from Westerfeld, explaining how this artwork came to be. More »
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Back in 2007, Nick Abadzis wrote a graphic novel called Laika, about the eponymous Soviet dog who went bravely into space, proved that living creatures could survive there, and never came home. He says that the story was so sad that over the years, people have written to him over and over asking for another ending to the real-life tale. At last, he's decided to do it. Over the next six weeks, he'll be posting (happy) alternate history endings to Laika's tale. You can find them on the Big Planet Comics site — these stores in the Washington, DC area have commissioned the alternate endings from Abadzis to celebrate their 25th anniversary. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5819864&view=rss&microfeed=true Over the past few days, the winners of the Bram Stoker Awards (for horror fiction) and the finalists for the Sidewise Awards (for alternate history) were announced. Want to know what the best terrifying stories and allohistories are? More »
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On a given day in Subnormality, you might have a perfectly normal conversation with a particularly interesting stranger, or perhaps chat with a Sphinx, date one of Hell's sexy minions, or spend an afternoon at the Museum of the Theoretical. More »
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Yuri Gagarin's historic flight was just one of many Soviet victories in the Space Race, but the United States still won the big victory when they landed on the Moon. But what if the Russians had gotten there first? More »
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When Hitler's dino-hordes storm Normandy, will you have the wherewithal to beat them back? Allied propaganda posters from a lizard-filled WWII urge you to take arms against these Jurassic Nazis, while Axis posters tout raptors as the strength of Germany. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5783379&view=rss&microfeed=true The New York Times has a review of a fascinating new book, Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield. It shows just how easily things could have veered another way. More »
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This week we posted America Under Communism, a propaganda comic about life in Soviet America. Here's If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, probably the only evangelical Christian grindhouse horror movie ever made about life in Commie America. More »
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In 1947, the Catechetical Guild Educational published Is This Tomorrow: America Under Communism, a propaganda comic classic about the impending Sovietification of America. According to the comic, Communist saboteurs would maintain dissident camps in Alaska and North Dakota. More »
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Once upon a time, the Beatles wanted to star in a Stanley Kubrick-directed Lord of the Rings movie. Art blog Super Punch is holding a contest that imagines how this alt-history flick might have looked. More »
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The production team behind the forthcoming Finnish-German-Australian alternate history flick Iron Sky have alerted us to a ton of new behinds-the-scenes features including a production-shot-of-the-day page, a production blog, a director's diary, new set footage, and a sneak peek featurette. More »
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These diagrams from the March 2, 1942 issue of Life detailed the Nazi invasion of America shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Check out such alternate reality battles like the bombing of Detroit and invasion of Norfolk, Virginia. More »
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In the early 1900s, Dr. T. Kenard Thomson proposed increasing NYC's property value by creating a land bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn, building an island off the Jersey shore, and constructing a "New Manhattan" directly below the old one. More »
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Ridley Scott is going back to the man who gave him one of his greatest movies, Blade Runner. What would the world look like if we'd lost World War II? Scott's Man in the High Castle miniseries will show us. More »
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Somewhere in a universe not unlike our own, David Carradine starred in Blade Runner, Sidney Poitier played Morpheus to Bruce Lee's Neo, Tim Curry got his own Joker movie, and Robo Cop was a 1970s porno. More »
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This 1935 map from Fortune magazine depicts "The Great Invasion of 19??," a three-pronged invasion from Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Note the 25,000 Japanese saboteurs in California and the distinction of an Anglo-Japanese alliance as the most dangerous. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5596036&view=rss&microfeed=true If you think your favorite science fiction TV show is full of nonsensical plot twists and lazy writing, you should check out the World War II documentaries, suggests Squid314 on Livejournal, in the funniest blog post you're likely to read this week. Who on Earth would believe that the Allies could actually win the Battle of the Bulge? It's total nonsense, and "Whoever wrote this episode obviously had never been within a thousand miles of an actual military." Adds Squid314, aka Scott: More »
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Plenty of alternate history books focus on World War II, but a new series coming in 2011 goes one better. Because World War II played out differently, the Cold War is very different. Including spy cyborgs and super-enhanced terrorists. More »
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Now that Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan has won a Locus Award, we're even more excited to read the next chapter in the alternate-universe World War I saga. Here's your exclusive first look at the cover of book two, Behemoth. Spoilers below. More »
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You've heard of alternate futures where everybody is flying zeppelins, but what about coal-powered airplane engines? One artist has imagined air travel whose carbon footprint is utterly abominable. And yet it looks awesome. More »
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The movie for Atlas Shrugged, that brick o' Objectivist philosophy by chain-smoking aficionado Ayn Rand, is in a weird place. Its director was canned right before filming. The new director? The male lead, the dad from One Tree Hill. Cool? More »
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We've got tons of alternate history books, comics, and video games, and yet we have so few committed alt-history motion pictures. On this Sunday's Great Moments in Alternate History, we're going to the movies! More »
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The finalists for the 2009 Sidewise Awards, honoring the best in alternate history, have been announced. And just in case the version of you in this universe hasn't already read the novel and five short stories, here's your primer. More »
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This week we take a break from examining alternate timelines and recap the real-life origins of the alternate history genre. Did you know such historical luminaries as Benjamin Disraeli, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and H.G. Wells were alternate history aficionados? More »
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SF writer Lavie Tidhar has just published the first installments of his online serial "Jesus & The Eightfold Path," which imagines what would have happened if the "three wise men" of the New Testament nativity story had actually been Buddhists. More »
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In his book Lost States, Michael Trinklein maps out the never-was states of Transylvania, Nickajack, and Jefferson. Check out his bizarro imaginary cartography. More »
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He raised the ire of readers all over the world with his sideways glance at the Catholic Church in the series "His Dark Materials." With his new novel, Philip Pullman imagines a Jesus that had, yes, an evil twin brother. More »
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We've been excited about alt history flick Iron Sky for a while, mostly because it's a comedy about Nazis building a base on the Moon. Test shooting just started, and we've got our first look at the Moon Nazi troopers. More »
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