What distinctions are there between alternate history, postmodern alternate history and uchronie genres?
Originally pegged as being a piece of the alternative history genre, the true identity of Phillip K. Dick’s 1962 novel The man in the high castle has been disputed, and several alternatives have been offered.
Alternative history has its place as a subgenre that has applications in both literary and historical fiction, but its true home seems to be as a subgenre of Science Fiction. Science fiction is a genre that speculates on futuristic and scientific concepts, like space travel, time travel, and parallel universes. Alternative history belongs in this genre because they are both speculative in nature. Alternative history has been expanded upon further, with texts being classified into several distinctive types of genres.
The first genre is alternative history. Alternative history presents the viewer with a version of the real world that is substantially or slightly different because of one significant event in world history that happened differently from reality. In pure alternative history the cause, or the event that plays out differently, leads to a singular line of effect. The implications then are that all of the effects that play out within the alternative history text, are all directly connected to the same cause.
Postmodern alternative history has a more complex suggestion. That even after the significantly altered event has transpired, the different occurrences after the event are still only one of many possible occurrences (Mountfort 2020.) Because of this distinction, the revelation of alternative timelines within the world of the text, postmodern alternative history becomes much more deserving as a sub genre of science fiction.
Uchronie is the French equivalent of alternative history but is far more similar to postmodern alternative history. A large influencing presence from the I Ching or book of changes, in texts such as The man in the High Castle offers different solutions and outcomes to determine character action and outcome within the book (Mountfort, 2016). The usage of something like the I Ching implies that there is a sense of chance within the outcome, and that alternative possibilities exist in different realities, without a change in material circumstances, only in a metaphorical dice roll with different results.
The distinctions between the genres of alternate history, postmodern alternate history, and Uchronie are based in the layers of complexity offered in regards to ideas such as cause and effect, alternative universes, and chance. The complex nature of The man in the high castle is what makes classifying it a surprisingly complex task.
Mountfort, P. (2016). The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. SF-TH Inc.
Mountfort, P. (2020). Week 10: The Man in the High Castle, uchronie and the I Ching. PowerPoint Part 1 and 2
Pop Genres 2020 