2. What distinctions are there between alternate history, postmodern alternate history and uchronie genres?
As we know, science fiction is a genre of fiction that typically includes themes of futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extra-terrestrial life. Within science fiction there are various literary subgenres, including alternate history, postmodern alternate history and uchronie. According to Wegner (2013) alternate histories focus on crucial historical points of our existing universe which have radically different results thus creating an “alternate history” different from our own, with examples such as: the Nazis winning World War II, the American Revolution failing to occur, the South winning the Civil War or Hitler escaping into postwar hiding, and many others (Rosenfeld, G., 2002).
Alternate history is the first distinct subgenre of science fiction which I will be discussing. Alternate history is built upon the idea of the “what if” scenario rather than the inclusion of science or parallel universe and time travel. Thus, the reader experiences a creative text of an alternate reality in which past events have radically different outcomes. First and foremost an alternate history possesses the same historical background of the real world, secondly, a crucial moment in history is altered by a major degree and the story addresses the shifts of the world in response to that dramatic difference (Winthrop-Young, G., 2009) but still follows the natural order of a linear, or ‘diachronic’ view of time (Mountfort, P., 2016).
According to Mountfort (2018) postmodern alternate history, while still exploring an alternate historical event and its consequences and influences on the world’s wider timeline, enters a synchronic view of time. Postmodern alternate history applies themes of postmodern relativism in which the casual line is discarded in favour of multiple coexistences of factors or facts (Mountfort, P., 2018), and placing at the foreground a highly chaotic historical event or moment.
Unlike the two previous genres, uchronie, a French term used to describe alternative history genres, focused primarily upon the coexistence of alternative worlds, universes or timelines in conjunction with one another, or parallel universes and histories (Mountfort, P., 2018). Rather than an individual historical event radically changing the outcome of the universes timeline, uchronie explores individual events, sometimes one or many, which exist side-by-side (Mountfort, P., 2018).
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.
Rosenfeld, G. (2002). Reflections on the function of alternate history. Wiley for Wesleyan University.
Wegner, P. E., (2013). Detonating new shockwaves of possibility: Alternate histories and the geopolitical aesthetics of Ken MacLeod and Iain M. Banks. Michigan State University Press.
Winthrop-Young, G. (2009). Fallacies and Thresholds: Notes on the Early Evolution of Alternate History. Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, 34(2 (128)), 99-117.
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