9 books in this genre
Nine reviews, and the counterfactual takes a different shape in almost every one. Philip K. Dick hands the Second World War to the Axis and divides America between the victors; Philip Roth puts Charles Lindbergh in the White House. Michael Chabon settles a Jewish homeland in Alaska, Susanna Clarke brings English magic back during the Napoleonic wars, and Colson Whitehead lays the Underground Railroad down as real track. Paul Auster splits one boyhood four ways, Claire North lets a man relive his life from birth, and Fritz Leiber sends soldiers to fight a war across time itself.
Paul Auster4-3-2-1Paul Auster kills off his hero on page 180 of a novel almost 900 pages long. Ted Gioia on how 4 3 2 1 carries on without the protagonist it just buried.→Ian McDonaldBrasylIan McDonald's Brasyl may l remind you more of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness or V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River than of anything from the Asimov-to-Zelazny playbook.But it's a lot more fun than those pessimistic tales.→Colson WhiteheadColson Whitehead and the Evolution of the American Slave NarrativeA long study of black music and folklore led Ted Gioia to the American slave narrative, and from there to Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad.→Susanna ClarkeJonathan Strange & Mr NorrellCertainly Pottermania helped pave the way for this novel's success. But Clarke delivered a more peculiar and daring book than any of Rowling's behemoths. Fantasy fiction fans beware: there's more Jane Austen and William Thackeray in this novel than Middle-earth and Narnia.→Fritz LeiberThe Big TimeIn a famous quip, Anton Chekhov claimed that if a gun appears on the stage in Act One, it will be fired before the conclusion of the play. But what if an atomic bomb shows up in the drawing room at the start of the drama? Does it blow up or get defused?→Claire NorthThe First 15 Lives of Harry AugustPerhaps this sounds like a cross between a James Bond movie and the Upanishads. But North succeeds both as a storyteller attuned to pacing and action and also as a guide to the philosophical issues raised in the course of her novel.→Philip K. DickThe Man in the High CastleA review of Philip K. Dick’s alternate-history novel of a divided America and the fiction hidden inside it.→Philip RothThe Plot Against AmericaThe idea of writing a story about the Germans winning World War II actually dates back to before the war. In 1937, Murray Constantine -- a pseudonym for Katharine Burdekin -- published Swastika Night,envisioning Britain under the future dominance of Nazi overlords→Michael ChabonThe Yiddish Policemen's UnionConceptual Fiction celebrates great works of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism and alternate history. In this installment, Ted Gioia reviews The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon→