What If? 15 Great Alternate History Books and Series
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What if Europeans never came to America? What if Germany won World War II? What if there were magicians during the Napoleonic War? Or zombies during the U.S. Civil War? These are the kinds of tantalizing questions that alternate history books explore. Set in our world, but not quite, these books give us a way to look at our past—and sometimes our present—with fresh eyes.
The book and book series listed below are just a few examples of the many creative explorations of history that are out there. Some are set in the real world, but in a version where a past event turned out differently. And some introduce a fantasy element and consider how history would be different if those fantasies were real. But all of them hinge on the question, “What if…?”
The Black Plague devastated the population of Europe. But what if it had been worse? This novel imagines centuries of history in a world where 99 percent of Europeans died, leaving Muslim and Chinese cultures in control of the world.
This steampunk novel presents an alternate history in which a group of British philanthropists buy up land in Africa to create Everfair, a safe haven for Africans fleeing King Leopold’s rule in the Congo and formerly-enslaved people who were able to return from America. The book chronicles the history of this new society.
The first novel, Farthing, is set in 1949, in a version of England that made peace with Hitler instead of continuing the war. The novel begins with a murder, and most of it reads like a straightforward mystery. The subsequent novels, Ha’Penny and Half a Crown, follow Inspector Carmichael, the detective who investigated the Farthing murder, as he watches England plunge further into darkness.
When magic returns to England during the Napoleonic wars, two magicians rise to power, and their actions change the course of history. Susanna Clarke not only presents an alternate version of history in which magic is real, she writes in the style of the 19th century and presents a complete world (with footnotes!).
In this version of American history, the Civil War is disrupted by the rise of zombies. Slavery as we understand it ends, but young Black and Native Americans are recruited to fight the zombies and protect wealthy whites.
Beginning with The Lives of Tao, this series imagines that aliens landed on Earth thousands of years ago and have been enacting their own civil war by taking over human bodies. This time, one of the aliens takes over the body of an out-of-shape IT pro who must now become a spy.
What other alternate history books would you add to this list?
