A classic of the genre is Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, an early-1960s novel about what happens to the United States after Japan and Germany win World War II. The West Coast has gone Japanese, while the South is full of Germans and the Midwest is still its own independent country. Meanwhile, a mysterious "man in the high castle" has written a book about an alternate United States which won World War II. Dick's mind-bending and tragic novel inspired a whole host of "what if the Nazis won" novels, including the critically-acclaimed Fatherland. Vladimir Nabokov also picked up on the idea of an alternate history novel-within-an alternate history novel for his book Ada or Ardor, about what would have happened if the U.S. had been colonized by Czarist Russia.

Another great look at an alternate United States comes in Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which is about what might have happened if Charles Lindbergh had defeated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for president in the early 1940s, and the country had slid into fascism.

Several British alternate histories focus on the Napoleonic Wars. Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell takes place in an alternate nineteenth century England where magic is a recognized scholarly pursuit like science. In fact, in Clark's England, one of the nation's medieval kings was a sorcerer, but the applied use of magic has fallen out of favor. The novel's two eponymous protagonists become the first practitioners of magic in England for two centuries, and aid the government in the war. Naomi Novik's popular series beginning with His Majesty's Dragon posits a Napoleonic War fought in part with dragons.

Jacqueline Carey's mammoth Kushiel series is about what would have happened to Europe if Christianity had not become the dominant religion, and instead paganism reigned. One result of this situation, at least in the region we know as France, is that prostitutes are revered like holy royalty. And in Kim Stanley Robinson's novel The Years of Rice and Salt, Christianity's march across Europe is halted due to the Black Plague and Islam becomes the dominant world religion instead.

Even cyberpunk has its alt.histories: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, kicked off the steampunk craze with its tale of what would have happened if the computer had been invented in the nineteenth century.

As you can see above, the city of Los Angeles would look a lot less ugly and disheartening if you could just wipe this traffic jam (photographed by The Infamous Gdub) out of existence and bring the city's formerly glorious cable car system back to life. If you ever want to see the LA cable car system of yore, it makes many exciting appearances in Harold Lloyd's 1923 comedy Safety Last!.

Right now, the city of Baltimore is considering upgrading its mass transit to include aerial gondolas, a system of elevated trams on cables with a tiny carbon footprint. They would initially service mostly the convention center and waterfront areas, but could branch out all over the city. Apparently gondola-makers have recently seen a spike in requests for mass transit systems, and even New York City is considering an aerial gondola to take commuters from Manhattan to Governor's Island and on to Brooklyn. Here is what the proposed gondolas might look like on a typical Baltimore city street (original photo from Zaloudek.net).

Seattle has a long and tragic history with monorails, once believed to be the public transit of the future. Just recently, the city voted to expand its tiny, largely-decorative monorail system, built for the World's Fair back in the 1960s. But urban planners have been trying to make Seattle a monorail city since 1910, when a Seattle monorail was first proposed (and shelved). We have yet to see whether the city will act on this latest vote for the monorail, but this is what you might see in downtown Seattle (original photo by GiSuser) if the system started ferrying commuters.

Although Melbourne has one of the most extensive electronic tram systems in the world, it might have been much bigger if early-twentieth century plans to expand it hadn't been derailed. If you look at images of late-nineteenth century Melbourne, you'll see a peaceful city full of trams and horses, but no traffic jams. Here's what Melbourne might look like today if the automobile had never taken over, and the city had become a haven for trams.

If you've ever visited San Francisco, you know that the downtown area is dominated by a wide street called Market (original photo by Hyku). What you probably don't know is that Market is actually a gushing river that early city planners decided to bury underground just to make everything nicer for carriages — and, later, cars. If we'd built San Francisco to cooperate with the region's actual geography, downtown San Francisco might have a system of canals like the ones in Venice (original photo by Minnaert). People could boat to work instead of burning gas in their cars.

Photoshoppage on all images by Stephanie Fox.

Partch's idea was to return to a more natural set of musical sounds, but unfortunately all Western instruments are set up to use the 12-tone scale. So he just invented his own new orchestra that used the Just Intonation scale, including instruments called the "harmonic canon," the "chromelodeon," the "boo," the "quadrangularus reversum" and (my personal favorite) the "spoils of war." Many of these instruments make sounds that will remind you of classical Chinese music, and in some cases African music.

Essentially, Partch imagined an alternate history of Western music, in which composers never abandoned the Just Intonation scale, and instrument-makers used materials like bamboo in their work to create a more Asian sound.

The best part is that you can not only hear the alternate history orchestra, you can play in it. American Public Media has an amazing multimedia site devoted to Harry Partch, complete with Flash thingers that let you play Partch's instruments with your mouse or keyboard. I spent quite a while zooming all over the nernnerners and boops and KLARNGs of Partch's orchestra, and it was damn fun. Highly recommended if you want to experience the speculative side of music-making. Image by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times.

Harry Partch's Instruments [American Public Media] (Thanks, Wishnevsky!)

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New Orange (1673). Those butter-fingered Dutch lost New York not once, but twice. The first time, the British came and seized the city of New Amsterdam by force in 1664, naming it New York after Charles II's brother the Duke of York. But then the Dutch took it back in the Third Dutch-English War of 1673 and renamed it "New Orange," after the Prince of Orange.
After that, the Dutch were living in a siege mentality and preparing to do whatever it took to keep the Big Orange in their grasp. But their politicians let them down, giving the city back to the Brits without a fight, in exchange for Suriname in South America. But what if the Dutch had hung on to it? It could have stayed Dutch long after 1776, and Americans would be making pilgrimages to the cannibis cafes of New Orange.

The Great Fire of New York (1835). This terrible conflagration started near Pearl St., and quickly spread to Exchange Place, the NYSE and Wall Street. It burned for between 16 and 24 hours, destroying 674 buildings across 17 blocks and 50 acres. Fire fighters had a hard time getting water because the Hudson was frozen solid. Metal from shutters and roofs melted and ran down the streets.
But it could have been much, much worse. The Great Fire of London, just 169 years earlier, burned for four days, not one. The New York Conflagration reached the top of the Tontine Hall, too high for the cold-numbed firefighters' hoses to reach. The last-ditch plan of using a huge "gin puncheon" (cask) to get water onto the roof tiles saved the upper part of the city. How would New York look now if the fire had destroyed mid-town Manhattan? Hint: the actual street where the fire started, Merchant St., doesn't exist any more, since that part of the city was rebuilt with a new layout.

The Blasting of Flood Rock (1885). In the nineteenth century, a section of the East River from 90th street to around 100th street, near the Harlem River was known as "Hell Gate" because it was so difficult for sea-faring vessels to navigate. It had a giant whirlpool (because of currents from Long Island Sound) and huge jagged rocks. A thousand ships ran aground every year. The Harbor Master of New York begged the federal government for help. So the U.S. Army destroyed the biggest rock, Flood Rock, by detonating 285,000 pounds of an explosive mixture called "Rack-A-Rock," plus 5,000 pounds of dynamite. It may have been the largest civil detonation up to that point. Here's a photo which 12-year-old Mary Newton took:
What if the Army had turned down the gig, or been unable to pull it off? Private efforts had already blasted some of the smaller rocks in Hell Gate. But without the destruction of Flood Rock, New York would have been unable to reach its full potential as a port city. Just 40 years after this blast, New York overtook London as the largest city in the world.

LOMEX (1941). Robert Moses, aka "Bob The Builder," had a plan to knock down a huge stretch of Lower Manhattan, including SOHO, and build a massive freeway across the city. It would have connected the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges. At one point, in 1946, Moses proposed a six-lane elevated expressway in the vicinity of Canal St. Just imagine the huge overpasses. Plans continued into the 1950s. Here's an artist's conception of what SOHO would have looked like:
A huge grass-roots movement opposed the development, led by Jane Jacobs, author of The Life and Death of Great American Cities. But in the end, it was skyrocketing budget estimates for the project, plus the failure of downtown Manhattan office buildings to generate the expected traffic, that scuttled the project. (As recently as 1998, planners were discussing reviving the project on the Usenet group misc.transport.roads.) If the city and federal bureaucracy hadn't delayed LOMEX for so long, SOHO wouldn't exist today.

Neu York (1946). Finally, here's an "alternate history map" that shows what NYC would look like if the Nazis had won World War II. Melissa Gould painstakingly reshaped "Neu York," giving streets German names (Rhein instead of Canal) and eliminating post-war buildings and anything with a Jewish name. (Via Claire Light.)
Blade Runner concept art by Syd Mead.

Famous Names: Rod Serling (Creator/Writer/Host); Stars who spent time in the Zone include Robert Redford, Burgess Meredith, Dennis Hopper, William Shatner and many more.

Crunchy Goodness: 4

Sequels: A 1983 movie, a 1985 TV re-launch that ran for three seasons and a single-season TV run in 2002.

Bang for Your Buck: No, not every episode's a keeper, and even Serling would admit that. But when Twilight Zone episodes work, they still have big-idea power nearly 50 years later. ...

Deadliest Spoiler: It's a cookbook! He breaks his glasses! She's not ugly, but everyone else is! The spaceship's from earth! And many, many more.

The Twilight Zone Museum