I think the best alternate-world novel would definitely be HDM. And i’m soooo glad you mentioned it! It seems more believable then most and i don’t think anyone else can beat that mark. He has raised the bar for sf fantasy authors trying write about alternate worlds.

As far as I’m concerned, alternate history is anything set in a world closely paralleling but not quite our own. Changing only one thing might have been an ironclad rule at one time, but as with so many other things in the book world, that’s changing. Now, to channel my inner pirate, it’s more like a guideline, really. Or, better yet, a starting point.

Great rant, Mr. Scott.

1: which Electric Monk espouses, is to imagine one change in history and then follow it through to see what results. What you might call top-down alternate history.

2: the alternative, which just about everybody else here is talking about, is to jump in media res and thrash about discovering how the world is different. You might trace things backwards to try and find what made the difference, but in such stories it’s unlikely there will be one clear and indisputable turning point.

The history of science fiction is littered with honourable examples of both.

And just for the record, if you want an incontrovertible example of alternate history which does not have a single Point of Departure, I direct you to The Separation by Christopher Priest.

By the way, Scott, Adam Mars Jones’s review was in The Observer, not The Guardian.

I am with you Haley. A world without cheese is a world without goats is a world without goat-loving aliens. And what kind of world would that be?

Great discussion. I linked to this post from my website.