Histories Future And Alternative

How are future histories and alternative histories connected? First, both are fictions. Secondly, Wells wrote both. I have mentioned his future history often enough. Men Like Gods is a novel about a visit to a parallel Earth. A Modern Utopia is a speculative discussion of an alternative history.

American sf writers followed Wells. Robert Heinlein's Future History and Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History were neither prophecies nor predictions but nevertheless were each intended as a fictitious account of one single linear future timeline. When our future had become our present and had diverged from the fictions, then the future histories retroactively became alternative histories. To prevent this from happening again, Anderson started his Technic History further in the future.

An alternative history can be presented as such without having to be a future history first. SM Stirling's Angrezi Raj timeline diverged in 1878. His "Shikari in Galveston" contains many passages narrated from the point of view not of the visiting Imperials but of the North American natives, thus presenting a more rounded account of this alternative Earth, although there still remain many other countries that Stirling could show us.

The natives have reverted to patronymics. "Robre sunna Jowan" is "Robre, son of Jowan" and "Sonjuh dowtra Pehte" is "Sonjuh, daughter of Pehte." I still have fifty pages to read so I expect to learn more about the Second British Empire.