Alternative History

Many years ago, when I was just 25, I wrote a book called "die Stunde X". Back then, in 1994, the alternative history scene was small. Publishers told me the book was good, but that stories about the Nazis winning World War 2 had been done before, and so my work wasn't original. Now, twenty years later, alternative history is a growing genre, full of books written not only by mainstream writers but by hundreds of Indie writers. The fan-base is huge. Alternative history offers us - usually - nightmarish visions of what would've happened if events in events had taken a different turn. The two books I have written so far in this genre - "die Stunde X" and its follow-up, "nach Schema F" - are set in a Britain dominated by the Germans, a dystopian vision not of the future, but of the present, had the Nazis won the war.

You need only enter alternative history into Amazon's search box and you will be presented with hundreds of novels on the subject. Most of them seem to cover the Nazi regime. Others describe an America where the Confederates won the civil war. Some are more fantastical - Turtledove's tales of an alien invasion during World War 2 - but nonetheless still enjoyable. Enjoying alternative history novels requires us to suspend our disbelief for the duration of the book and enjoy a fantasy world, to imagine an England where swastikas hang from public buildings and English men and women fear the Gestapo. Some have described it as a geeky genre, and perhaps that is true, but alternative history novels are generally thrillers set against the backdrop of an imperfect present, one where Nazis rule over us, or Americans still hold slaves, or aliens fight alongside the Japanese.

If you can, momentarily, and for the enjoyment of a good thriller, suspend your disbelief, then grab yourself an alternative history novel from the thousands that are out there. They are no less believable than tales of wizards and sorcerers, or lightsabre-wielding Jedis.