"What if the South had won the Civil War?"
"What if Hitler had won?"
"What if the Spanish Armada conquered England?"
"What if the Soviets kept missiles in Cuba?"
"What if the American Revolution had failed?"
"What if France defeated England in North America?"
There are literally millions of possible questions of this sort; what if this particular historical event had gone a different way? What would be the result?
This is the field of alternate history, a sub-set of science fiction. Basically, there is a PoD, a Point of Departure, where one, possibly very small, event turns out differently than it did in our actual history. One of the most well-known examples of this is Harry Turtledove's 'American Empire' series, where the Union never gets hold of Lee's plans for Gettysburg thanks to a sharp-eyed Confederate soldier who rescues the dropped orders. Not able to anticipate Lee's intentions, the Union is hopelessly outclassed at the battle, and the American Civil War is effectively over, with two countries now occupying the land where one once stood united. Turtledove wrote a lengthy series of eleven books in which he explores the aftermath of this single action, with the action beginning with another war between the North and South in 1881 and ending with the end of World War II in 1944. It's justly known as one of the most intricate and detailed alternate history stories out there, and Turtledove himself is the acknowledged master of the genre. So much so, in fact, that there is an award named after him on the Alternate History forums.
Yes, that's a thing; a web forum where people toss out ideas and write lengthy timelines exploring various facets of 'what if' in history. There are pre-Christian timelines, Fall of Rome stories, medieval alternates, and of course, Civil War and World War II explorations; those two are the most popular topics for alternate history speculations.
Right now, I'm reading a very lengthy and detailed timeline about what might have happened at the beginning of World War I, if the Germans had a couple of cruisers near the Canadian west coast at the time war was declared. Due to political wrangling and a focus on the east coast, Canada had but one functioning warship on the west coast at that time, the Rainbow, which would have been outclassed by either of the likely German cruisers in the region. It's a fantastic read, very well-researched, and while it only covers a brief span of time (the writer stated that it would only cover roughly the month of August, 1914), it's filled with incredible possibilities for a future in which Canada almost certainly develops a strong Navy in the aftermath of what would devastating coastal raids in British Columbia.
Alternate history has subgenres as well. There's fantastic alternate history, where magic makes an appearance in some historical period, such as the Crusades or the Roman Empire; there's sci-fi alternate history, such as an alien invasion in World War II (another Turtledove series). One recent addition to the alternate history genre is 'steampunk'. This is a genre in which fantastic technologies imagined by 19th-century writers such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells become a reality; a particularly popular point is Charles Babbage's attempt to build a functioning computer (The Difference Engine), which could do complex calculations. His designs were recovered decades later, and a working model of the Difference Engine has been built. Imagine Victorian England with computers. Where would we be today?
Some alternate history focuses on the actual PoD, where the immediate aftereffects of the change are explored. Others look further into the future, looking at how society would have developed differently in the intervening years between the PoD and the setting of the story. Both provide interesting and exciting possibilities. And there's another branch of this genre in which our timeline is somehow mixed with an alternate one, usually through time travel or some other such device, where people from our familiar history are transported to a different world with a parallel history.
While Turtledove is the master of the genre, he wasn't its originator. The oldest known example of alternate history comes from Ancient Rome; the historian Livy speculated on what would have happened had Alexander the Great lived to invade Europe as he had planned, and how Rome would have fared against his forces. That was written in the late 1st century BC.
I'm going to recommend a few alternate history books that deal with a variety of historical periods and how history could have been changed with just a twist of fate. All of these are rightly regarded as classic works of the genre.
L. Sprague de Camp, Lest Darkness Fall (a time traveler goes to Classical Rome and tries to prevent the fall of the Empire)
Eric Flint, 1632 (West Virginian miners are transplanted to the Thirty Years' War in Germany)
Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (The Nazis won World War II, splitting North America with Japan)
Keith Roberts, Pavane (Spanish conquer England, no Industrial Revolution but there are fairies)
William Gibson & Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine (Babbage succeeds in building the first computer in Victorian England)
Harry Turtledove, pretty much anything
These are a good start for the reader interested that most mysterious of questions, "What if?" Enjoy, and learn some history.
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