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- Making History
Stephen Frystandalone novel1996
similar bypolitical intriguealternate historyeuropescience fiction+1 more
Making History (1996) is the third novel by Stephen Fry. Its plot involves the creation of an alternative historical timeline in which Adolf Hitler never existed. While most of the book is written in standard prose, a couple of chapters are written in the format of a screenplay. The book won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.
- Roma Eterna
series11 books1989
similar byalternate history+4 more
Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna imagines an alternate history in which the Roman Empire never fell and endures into the present day, tracing its long, uneven survival through a sequence of pivotal moments across two millennia. Rather than one continuous plot, the book is a fix-up of ten linked stories, most first published in Asimov's Science Fiction over a fourteen-year span, each set in a different era of this unbroken Rome. It reads as the chronicle of a civilization rather than a story following a single cast of characters.
- Pavane
series9 books1966
completed
similar byreflectivealternate history+2 more
Keith Roberts' Pavane (1968) is a single fix-up novel built from linked stories rather than a multi-book series: in an alternate 20th century where Elizabeth I was assassinated and Spain conquered England, the Catholic Church suppresses Protestantism and keeps technology frozen at a steam-powered, feudal level. The interconnected stories follow different Dorset families across generations as long-suppressed dissent against Church rule begins to stir.
- The Last Man
Mary Shelleystandalone novel1826
similar byeuropescience fiction+2 more
The Last Man is an apocalyptic, dystopian science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, first published in 1826. The narrative concerns Europe in the late 21st century, ravaged by the rise of a bubonic plague pandemic that rapidly sweeps across the entire globe, ultimately resulting in the near-extinction of humanity. It also includes discussion of the British state as a republic, for which Shelley sat in meetings of the House of Commons to gain insight to the governmental system of the Romantic era. The novel includes many fictive allusions to her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, who drowned in a shipwreck four years before the book's publication, as well as their close friend Lord Byron, who had died two years previously.
- The Malacia Tapestry
Brian W. Aldissstandalone novel1976
similar bypolitical intriguereflectivealternate history+1 more
The Malacia Tapestry is a fantasy-historical novel by British writer Brian Aldiss, published in 1976. The story takes place in a fictional port city called Malacia, which is an alternate history version of a Renaissance city-state. It tells the story of a poor young actor named Perian de Chirolo who hopes to change his station in life so he can marry a wealthy merchant's daughter. While Malacia is considered a near-utopia, the happiness in the city belies the authoritarian rule of the powerful Supreme Council, which uses fear to prevent progress.
- Cahokia Jazz
Francis Spuffordstandalone novel2023
similar bypolitical intriguealternate history+1 more
Cahokia Jazz is an alternate-history detective novel by Francis Spufford released in Great Britain in 2023 and the United States in 2024.
- Through Darkest Europe
Harry Turtledovestandalone novel2018
similar bypolitical intriguealternate historyeuropescience fiction+1 more
Through Darkest Europe is an alternate history novel by Harry Turtledove. The book is set in an alternate present in which Islamic countries form a prosperous, democratic and progressive First World, while underdeveloped Christian countries suffer from religious fanaticism.
- The Smithsonian Institution
Gore Vidalstandalone novel1998
similar bypolitical intriguealternate historyscience fiction+1 more
The Smithsonian Institution is an alternate history novel by Gore Vidal, first published in 1998.
- Fatherland
Robert Harrisstandalone novel1992
similar bypolitical intriguealternate historyeurope
Twenty years after Nazi Germany won the Second World War, Berlin is preparing to celebrate Adolf Hitler's seventy-fifth birthday when detective Xavier March is called to investigate a body pulled from a lake, ostensibly an accident, but one that leads him to a string of suspiciously staged deaths among senior Nazi officials. Ordered off the case by the Gestapo but quietly told to keep going by his own superior, March teams up with an American journalist, Charlie Maguire, and starts following a trail toward Swiss bank accounts and a secret the regime has spent two decades burying. Robert Harris's alternate-history debut novel.
- Beyond This Horizon
Robert A. Heinleinstandalone novel1948
similar byreflectivescience fiction+1 more
From the front flap of a 2001 Baen reprint: "Utopia has been achieved. For centuries, disease, hunger, poverty, and war have been things found only in the history tapes. And applied genetics has given men and women the bodies of athletes and a lifespan of over a century. They should all have been very happy... But Hamilton Felix is bored. And he is the culmination of a star line, each of his last thirty ancestors chosen for superior genes. Hamilton is, as far as genetics can produce one, the ultimate man. And this ultimate man can see no reason why the human race should survive, and has no intention of continuing the pointless comedy. However, Hamilton's life is about to become less boring. A secret cabal of revolutionaries who find utopia not just boring, but desperately in need of leaders who know just What Needs to be Done, are planning to revolt and put themselves in charge. Knowing of Hamilton's disenchantment with the modern world, they have recruited him to join their Glorious Revolution. Big mistake! The revolutionaries are about to find out that recruiting a superman was definitely not a good idea..."
- Imperial Earth
Arthur C. Clarkestandalone novel1975
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Imperial Earth is a science fiction novel by British writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1975 by Gollancz Books. The plot follows the protagonist, Duncan Makenzie, on a trip to Earth from his home on Titan, in large part as a diplomatic visit to the U.S. for its quincentennial in 2276, but also to have a clone of himself produced. The book was published in time for the U.S. bicentennial in 1976.
- Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)
series36 books1982
similar byscience fiction+2 more
The Mars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning 187 years, from 2026 to 2212. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.
- The Alteration
Kingsley Amisstandalone novel1976
similar bypolitical intriguealternate historyeuropescience fiction
The Reformation does not take place, Martin Luther becomes pope, Italy never unites…
- Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America
Robert Charles Wilsonstandalone novel2009
similar bypolitical intriguereflectivealternate historyscience fiction
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America is a dystopian speculative fiction novel written by Robert Charles Wilson, and an expansion of Wilson's 2006 novella Julian: A Christmas Story.
- The Dragon Waiting
John M. Fordstandalone novel1983
similar bypolitical intriguealternate historyeurope
The Dragon Waiting: A Masque of History is a 1983 historical fantasy novel by American writer John M. Ford. It won the 1984 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. This book, set in an alternate history, contains such plot elements as vampirism, the House of Medici, and the convoluted English politics surrounding Edward IV and Richard III. It also deals with the fate of the Princes in the Tower.
- Dune
series20 books1963
part of Dune Universe
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Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles opens with 1965's Dune, set on the desert planet Arrakis where House Atreides takes control of the only source of the vital spice melange and young Paul Atreides is pulled into a struggle over its politics and religion. Herbert carried the story forward across five further novels — Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune — following Paul's line over the following millennia, before Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson later extended the saga. Many other editions of these six novels are omnibus and box-set repackagings rather than separate stories.
- Zimiamvian Trilogy
series4 books1922
completed
similar bypolitical intrigue+1 more
The Zimiamvian Trilogy is a series of fantasy novels by English author E. R. Eddison.Mistress of Mistresses (1935) A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941) The Mezentian Gate (1958)
- Lent
Jo Waltonstandalone novel2019
similar bypolitical intriguereflectiveeurope
"Young Girolamo's life is a series of miracles. It's a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with the force of his will. It's a miracle that he's friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. It's a miracle that when Girolamo visits the deathbed of Lorenzo "the Magnificent," the dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light, a surprise to everyone, Lorenzo included. It's a miracle that when Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field, and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it. It's a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. It's a miracle that, despite the Pope's determination to bring young Girolamo to heel, he's still on the loose...and, now, running Florence in all but name. That's only the beginning. Because Girolamo Savanarola is not who--or what--he thinks he is. He will discover the truth about himself at the most startling possible time. And this will be only the beginning of his many lives." - publisher
- Trouble with Lichen
John Wyndhamstandalone novel1960
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Biochemists Diana Brackley and Francis Saxover, working independently, both isolate a compound from a rare lichen that appears to dramatically slow the aging process. Francis quietly doses himself and his family and says nothing; Diana takes the opposite approach, opening exclusive beauty spas as cover to give the drug to well-connected women across Britain, reasoning that if longevity becomes known before women have a foothold, men will simply monopolize it as they have everything else. The secret can only hold so long, and the novel's tension builds toward the moment it gets out. A quietly subversive social science-fiction novel from John Wyndham.
- Ring of Fire (1632)
universe687 books2000
Start here1632 · Start here
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Somewhere in the spring of 1631, the sky over a stretch of Thuringian farmland cracks open, and when it closes a piece of the year 2000 is sitting in the middle of the Thirty Years' War. Grantville — a played-out coal town lifted whole out of West Virginia, high-school gym and pizza parlor and all — has landed three miles of the twentieth century three and a half centuries upstream, in the bloodiest war Europe would ever fight. The town does the only thing it knows how to do: it holds a meeting, elects a government, and gets to work. What Eric Flint began with 1632 he almost at once threw open to everyone else, and this is a shared world built the way Grantville rebuilds — by committee, by many hands, in public. The spine runs 1632, then 1633 and 1634: The Baltic War (written with David Weber), after which the timeline forks across a continent: the war in the north, the Roman intrigues of the Galileo Affair, Bavaria, the Ottomans, Russia, each carried in its own novel and its own numbered year. Feeding it is the Grantville Gazette, a running magazine of fan-then-professional fiction, and the Ring of Fire anthologies, where authors like Virginia DeMarce, Gorg Huff and Kerryn Offord supply the machinists, printers and lawyers one narrator never could. The same cosmic accident — the Assiti Shards — maroons other towns in other centuries in Time Spike and The Alexander Inheritance. There are no chosen ones here and no magic, only the terrifying leverage of already knowing how the next four hundred years turn out. The pleasure is procedural and democratic: union halls and lathes outfighting kings, down-timers and up-timers arguing their way toward a republic. Sprawling, uneven, warm-blooded, it rewards browsing over marching. Begin with 1632, read 1633 next, then follow whichever thread — sea, siege, or senate — pulls you in.
- The Leviathan Trilogy
series3 books2009
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Set in an alternate First World War, Leviathan splits the belligerents into Clankers, who fight with mechanical walkers, and Darwinists, who fight with fabricated living creatures built from spliced DNA. Scott Westerfeld follows a British girl disguised as a boy to serve on a living airship and the exiled heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne as their paths collide, continuing across Behemoth and Goliath. Keith Thompson's illustrations are integral to all three books, alternating text chapters with illustrated sequences.
- The Separation
Christopher Prieststandalone novel2002
similar byreflectivealternate historyeuropescience fiction
The Separation is a novel by British writer Christopher Priest, published in 2002. It is an alternate history revolving around the experiences of identical twin brothers during the Second World War, during which one becomes a pilot for the RAF, and the other, a conscientious objector, becomes an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. The author introduces a deliberate confusion by giving these brothers identical initials – J.L. Sawyer – one known as Jack and the other as Joe.
- 2312
Kim Stanley Robinsonstandalone novel2012
similar byreflectivescience fiction+1 more
In the eponymous year, when Earth's ecology is degraded and humanity has settled throughout the solar system by terraforming and genetic engineering, mysterious disasters strike some human communities and an assortment of human types from throughout the system seek to find and eliminate the cause.
