I’ve been binge watching this show called ‘For All Mankind’ lately. I won’t go too deep into the plot, but basically Soviet Russia puts a man on the Moon first which extends the goalposts of the space race, and push NASA to develop further and faster. The Apollo program was never cancelled, and a permanent base is established on the Moon. Some other events change too, but that’s the gist of it. You should check it out if you like space exploration, but that’s not the main point of this post. It occurred to me while watching that this is the first big TV show I’ve watched that features an alternate history plotline. I know of one other show ‘The Man in the High Tower’ that got popular as well. I’ve seen plenty of books in this genre too. In fact I see more and more of them. The rising popularity of alternate history inspired me to go look up the origins of the genre and it goes back a lot further than I thought. People have been fancifully rewriting history for centuries, reimagining their lives under different circumstances. Walk with me, down a true history of alternative reality.

The earliest one I could find was a romance called ‘Tirant lo Blanc’ written in 1490 by a Valencian knight, Joanot Martorell, and later finished by his friend Martí Joan de Galba. This one doesn’t revolve around the concept, but it does take advantage of an alternate history to tell the story of Tirant the White, a gallant knight who goes on several adventures throughout Europe. At some point Tirant is recruited to fight for the Byzantine Empire against Mehmed II at the battle of Constantinople, turning the tide against the Ottoman Turks. Here the alternate history begins, as the Ottomans are prevented from expanding any further to the West. This story is notable for many other reasons as well, but the big one is the influence it had on Miguel de Cervantes, the author of ‘Don Quixote.’ He called it the greatest book in the world, and said it was the jewel of his vast library. ‘Don Quixote’ is considered the first modern novel, so you might say that ‘Tirant lo Blanc’ lies at the core of Western literature for inspiring such a notable figure as Cervantes.

The novel most widely recognized as the first alternate history is called ‘Napoleon, and the Conquest of the World,’ written by Louis Geoffroy in 1836. You can probably guess the alternate part of this history from the title. Napoleon’s first empire conquers Russia, and then goes on to conquer England as well, creating an empire that spans continents. Napoleon centralizes all leadership to France, conquers the Middle East, then the rest of Asia, then Africa, and finally Australia. The new world rules decide to relinquish their sovereignty to Napoleon, and the universal monarchy is formed. Under Napoleon’s enlightened rule, science and culture make significant leaps, including such marvelous technology as electric airships, flying cars, weather control, and the discovery of a new planet named Vulcan. This one sounds like it might actually be an enjoyable read, unlike the one written before novels. I’m not sure how influential this work was, but it is a valuable find if you can get your hands on an early translation.

There’s lots more to explore in this genre, so I think I’ll continue this post tomorrow. These two stories are very interesting though, and there is a lot to explore in them alone. I’m sure there are dozens of resources on these if you go looking.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley