Week 10

What distinctions are there between alternate history, postmodern alternate history and uchronie genres?

The alternative history subgenre is used in a wide variety of medias. This subgenre can be connected to a few different genres. Fantasy is one example. In the fantasy television show ‘Once Upon A Time’, an episode deals with an alternate history created when a villain travels in time to ensure a King and Queen never meet. However, the genre it affiliates with most often is science fiction. This is probably because of science fiction’s mysterious, unknown beats. One common trope of science fiction is multiple dimensions, parallel universes. For example, the multimedia Star Trek franchise has the ‘Mirror Universe’, a dimension where the same characters and places exist, but they are more savage, and dark due to altered events in history. Science fiction also is centred around a ‘what if’ idea. This is an idea that coincides closely with alternative history. For example, a common question used in alternative history involves a world where the Nazis won WW2. That idea has been adapted into multiple works, most famously the novel ‘The Man In The High Castle’.  Alternative history can be split into three sub-genres.

The first sub-genre is pure alternative history. This is one of the most popular sub-genres of science fiction. Alternative history gives us a version of the world that has some similarities to our present, but due to one particular event in history that has been altered, the present that is shown is different. For example, if the JFK assassination attempt was unsuccessful, or as mentioned earlier, if the Nazis won WW2. This change can be positive or negative. In this genre the event leads to a singular line of effect. Basically, all of the changes that have occurred is due to one single event. Alternate history looks at how these events would unfold in reality, showing us an alternate timeline. A great example of this explanation can be seen in ‘Avengers: Endgame’. In this scene, the Ancient One, played by Tilda Swinton, shows us a single timeline, and explains how a single change in the timeline creates a completely different timeline.

The second sub-genre is postmodern alternative history. This genre has similarities to traditional alternative history, however it focuses on a single point in time where a doomsday type of event must be stopped in order to save the world. A great example of this is in the ‘Days Of Future Past’ saga in the X-Men comic series. Robots have enslaved most of the world’s population, and have killed the others. One of the team, Kitty Pryde, is sent back in time to alter the singular event that triggered this apocalypse. Postmodern alternative history uses this apocalypse in order to further a plotline, unlike alternate history, where this event has already happened. Postmodern is about preventing the event, rather than the aftermath.

Uchronie is the third sub-genre. This genre’s origins lie in France. This genre has similarities to both alternative history and postmodern alternative history. It is the idea of alternative universes, worlds, and timelines, “pure uchronia,” consisting of one alternative world; “plural uchronia,” in which this and an alternate world exist in parallel; and “infinite uchronia,” in which there are many, even infinite parallel worlds” (Mountfort, 2017). The genre shows how simple changes could totally alter the world we live in. This idea of multiple realities tells readers that we can make positive changes, and a better reality, if we work hard to make these changes. This could be done through things as simple as protesting.

References

Mountfort, P. (2016). The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. SF-TH Inc.