Alternate history, Postmodern alternate history and Uchoronie are the subgenres of science fiction. Science fiction is a novel genre that have futuristic elements, such as advance science, technology, or concepts of space and extraterrestrial being. The subgenres, alternate history, postmodern alternate history and Uchoronie have to do with their stylistic and philosophical time, dimensions or universe within the novel.
Alternate history is basically the “what if…” of a part of history that we known. Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, can perhaps be considered an alternate history piece, as the story is about one of the most well known history of all time, World War II, with the Nazis wining the war (Mountfort, 2016, p. 301).
Postmodern Alternate History, according to Mountfort (2018) it is a concept of Frederic Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future (2005). It has synchronic view of time with the spectre of the postmodern relativism (Mountfort, 2016, p. 301).
Uchoronie is a French term, according to Mountfort (2018) the genre describe “the presence of competing timelines or alternate histories” (p. 66). Referencing William Joseph Collins, there are three subcategories of uchoronie, which are Pure uchoronia, Plural uchoronia, and Infinite uchronia. Pure uchoronia have one alternative world. Plural uchoronia when one world and an alternate world exist in parallel. Infinite uchronia have many or infinite parallel worlds. (Mountfort, 2016, 306).
Looking simply at The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, it may look like a simple alternate history genre, however many also argue that its should be consider as postmodern alternate history genre and even uchoronie genre. When comparing ‘The Man in the High Castle’ story’s philosophical intricacies, literary quality and the intellectual depth, with how too wide and simple the alternate history genre seems to be, it does not seem appropriate. Winthrope Young said that this Philip K. Dick work piece outranks many other pieces that are considered alternate history (Mountfort, 2016, 301). The main argument has to do with Dick’s concept of time and the multiverse. According to Mountfort (2016), Heath Massey mention that “Dick’s idea of a temporal multiverse is, like eternal recurrence, more of a speculative hypothesis than a theory about the world” (p. 305). The Man in the High Castleview of time are not at all linear or casual, it actually breaks away from these basic alternate history genre elements, Dick’s notion of history is more synchronic (p. 301). Dick himself state that “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others” (1977). (Mountfort, 2016, 305). He takes the idea of the “multiverse” really seriously, he even frames the novel in the context of “possible time dysfunctions” in one of his letter (1975).
References:
Mountfort, P. (2016). The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. Science Fiction Studies.
Mountfort, P. (2018). Science fictional doubles: Technologization of the doppelganger and sinister science in serial science fiction TV. Journal of Science & Popular Culture, 1(1) 59-75. https://doi.org/10.1386/jspc.1.1.59_1
Pop Genres 2020 