So You Want to Read Alternate History: Here’s Where to Start

This steampunk classic, widely considered the novel that established the genre, is a fascinating exercise in imagination. Part noir and part historical thriller, The Difference Engine posits what would have occurred had Charles Babbage perfected his Analytical Engine and brought about the age of the computer a century early. The result of deeply influential sci-fi classic.

Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer and National Book Award winner imagines the Underground Railroad as a literal underground rail system devised to carry runaway slaves to freedom. The story centers around Cora, a young slave on a Georgia cotton plantation who makes a desperate bid for freedom. However, she is doggedly pursued by a ruthless slavecatcher in a story that is both brilliantly imagined and painfully timely.

Set in a world where Teddy Roosevelt is elected President for a second time and World War I is just on the horizon, Roosevelt relies on a top secret clandestine network known as the Black Chamber. The novel centers around Luz O’Malley Arostegui, a deadly spy set on a mission to infiltrate the German Reich and discover how the desperate country intends to deal with the United States.

This classic cautionary tale is an unnervingly plausible look at the fragility of American democracy and how easily and insidiously fascism could take hold in the U.S. The novel charts the rise of populist huckster, Buzz Windrip, touting a return to patriotism and the “traditional” America. His ascent to the Presidency slowly devolves into an authoritarian dictatorship on the back of his attacks on the “liberal” press and his political enemies. It’s as unsettling now as it was in 1935.

Fatherland is a classic of the alternate history genre. It’s a meticulously thought out detective yarn set in a world where the Nazis won World War II. Set in Berlin in 1964, The Greater German Reich enjoys an uneasy peace with the U.S. and is preparing for Adolph Hitler’s seventy-fifth birthday as well as a visit from American president, Joseph Kennedy. However, the discovery of a dead body will lead a German detective named Xavier March deep into a shocking conspiracy that reaches the very top of the Reich and could alter the course of history.