The uchronie is a literary kind which rests on the principle of the rewriting of the History starting from the modification of an event of the past. One also uses the expression alternative history , directly translated Anglo-Saxon expression alternate history . When it is associated with average techniques which make it possible to go up in time and thus to modify the past, the uchronie is directly associated with the kind of the Science-fiction.

The author of a uchronie takes as starting point an existing historical situation and the exit for then imagining modifies some the various possible consequences. Starting from a modified event, the author creates a Effet butterfly which influences the course of the History.

This will to change the course of the history to imagine what it could have been points out the sentence of Blaise Pascal: “The nose of Cléopâtre, if it had been shorter, all the face of the earth would have changed” ( Pensées , 90).

Governed Messac, in its review of the Primaires gives, in 1936, of the uchronie this definition: unknown Ground, located at side or apart from time, discovered by the philosopher Renouvier, and where are relegated, like the old moons, the events which could have arrived, but did not arrive.

Definition

See also: Definition of the uchronie

A rather total definition, could be this one:

“ Romance being held in a world in any point similar to ours until a certain event, which, it, differs from what occurred such as we know it. It is what one will call thereafter, divergent event. This novel will have, in addition, to be interested in a substantial way in this new History. ”

It is appropriate indeed, and this definition allows it, to exclude the accounts from voyage in time and (for the majority) from parallel worlds, even if those have a close link with the uchronie.

History

The oldest known example of uchronie appears in the Histoire of Rome since its foundation of Tite-Live (Book IX, sections 17-19). It thinks of the possibility that Alexandre Large the launched its conquest to the west rather than to the east; it would have attacked Rome with.

The first works entirely uchronic seems to have been the novel of Louis Napoleon Geoffroy-Castle, Napoleon and the conquest of the world, 1812-1813 (1836). In this book, Geoffroy-Castle postulates that Napoleon would have fled Moscow before the disastrous winter 1812. For the author, the emperor would have had enough military forces to conquer the world.

In language English E, the known first uchronie is the news of Nathaniel Hawthorne, P. 'S Correspondence (1846) in which a man who seems insane tells his meetings with literary and political personalities of the Années 1840. The first English novel is Aristopia of Castello Holford (1895). Holford imagines that the first colonists of Virginia discovered a gold mountain which would have enabled them to build a utopian company in North America.

Several other uchronic works appear punctually with the end 19th and the beginning 20th century.

However, following major work was certainly, in 1932, the publication of an anthology of “alternative stories” (according to the English denomination) by the historian British, Sir Johan Squire and titrated If It Had Happened Otherwise (If that had taken place differently). It is a compilation of texts written by large professors of history of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. One finds there for example:

  • If the Moors had gained in Spain…
  • If Louis XVI had had an atom of firmness…
  • If Napoleon had gained…
  • a text of Winston Churchill: If Lee had gained the Bataille of Gettysburg which has as a framework the American Civil War. Winston imagines a historian alive Southerner in a world where Confédérés Southerners gained; this historian imagining what would be the world if the Northerners had gained. This text is thus a Mise in abyme of the uchronie which will be repeated by Philip K. Dick in the Master of the High Castle .

The uchronie gradually became popular thanks to the American magazines publishing of the news of science fiction. In December 1933, Astounding Stories publishes Ancestral Voices (ancestral voices) of Nat Schachner, then Sidewise in Time of Murray Leinster. Leinster complexes the historical changes: in its universe, the countries trade with their analogues of last and the future. The point of view is that of the hero, a professor of university, which travels of world in world to discover what would be occurred of the world if such event had been different. During the same time of the Années 1930 develop the stories of Voyage in time.

The kind of the uchronie knows a commercial boom since the end of the Années 1980 with several prolific authors:

and two authors who publish uchronic anthologies of accounts:

Turtledove developed several series of novels:

  • the South gains the American Civil War because of an incident between North and the Great Britain which decides to take party (initial volume How Few Remain then trilogies or tetralogies The Great War , American Empire , and Settling Accounts )
  • the Earth is invaded by the extraterrestrial ones in 1942 (series Worldwar and Colonization then volume of conclusion Homeward Bound )
  • the America was not colonized by the human beings during the Préhistoire. Nowadays, of the mammoths and the species préhumaines thus survived it.

In 1995 is created the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, of the name of the history of Murray Leinster.

Processes uchronic

Not divergence

See also: Événement diverges in uchronie

Moment when the real history and the uchronic history divergent are called “Point divergence”.

For example, in the Master of the High Castle of Dick, it is the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt with Miami in 1933 which makes rock the intrigue in the fiction. The the United States do not manage to leave the Grande depression and remain fixed in their neutrality vis-a-vis Hitler. The the United Kingdom is conquered.

The theory of the Multivers postulates that points of divergence occur at every moment, creating parallel Univers unceasingly.

Examples

  • If the Dinosaure S had not disappeared…
  • If the Roman Empire had not disappeared…
  • If the Black Death had completely decimated Europe…
  • If Christophe Colomb had not discovered Americas…
  • If the Sudistes had gained the American Civil War…
  • If the war of 1870-1871 had been gained by France…
  • If the First World War had not taken place…
  • If the Second world war had been gained by the Germans…

(Of good examples should include a point of precise divergence, like the early death of a historical character, and analyze the consequences well after that).

Wink and setting in abyss

Wink with the reader

What we call wink with the reader on behalf of a uchronist author, it when this one is done of the implicit references to our world in its book. It is a very widespread process, but it should not be taken for another thing only what it is, a means of making smile the reader because, indeed, these winks and this with what they refer are not significant in the uchronic History.

Honor to whom honor is due: in very first the uchronie ( Napoleon and the conquest of the world, 1812 - 1832 of Louis Geoffroy), one finds already a wink with the reader.

Regaining the Europe by the sea, with the return of the countryside of Oceania (after having conquered the Asia and the Africa), and before doubling the course of Tenerife which, carved under the direction of David, represents from now on his high effigy of 10000 feet, the Empereur passes to broad from Sainte-Hélène. Let us let Geoffroy tell what it occurred there:

“ the admiral Duperré, ordering the vessel, took the orders of the Emperor, and asked him when it would be necessary to approach.

- Never! , answered or rather shouted Napoleon.

All were petrified of astonishment and almost of terror.

- That the vessel moves away as soon as possible from the island, without approaching there.

It was obeyed. The vessel, moving towards the occident, crossed like an indignation the sea, and moved away quickly from the island. However, the emperor appeared to dominate this misunderstood emotion. Gone up on the bridge, and telescopes it directed towards Sainte-Hélène, it contemplated it with a dark attention that nobody had still dared to stop, when the old man Dolomieux, who, seeing everywhere only science and his effects, thought also that the attention of the emperor was very mineralogical, known as:

- But this ground is truly only the product of more than twenty volcanos which are extinct there.

I will remake to him, says the emperor.

''

One year later, one could include/understand the direction and the goal of these words, but not their reason, when, on its return in Europe, the emperor, having sent a squadron to Sainte-Hélène, made transport on board vessels all the inhabitants and all their richnesses. The island, thus depopulated, was mined in all the directions, was filled in its more great depths of volcanos factitious and powerful which gathered in them all that the newest physics had been able to join together destructive powder, terrible vapor, compressed gas forces and, when all had been laid out, then the squadron moved away at sea, with more than fifty miles of this infernal island. The explosion of all its mines burst with a terrible repercussion and such as at this distance the vessels heard it and were moved by it, and that the sea, raised by these immense disorders, prolonged until them a still terrible remainder of agitation and storm.

the vessels turned over, at once after the explosion, on spaces where Sainte-Hélène had existed; but was to only attend the last collapses of some calcined remainders which seemed to be remained up to that point only to note their anguish and their death with the face of their torturers. Lastly, these fragments were removed by the sea the May 5th 1827. All was consumed, and, the Ocean having plowed its furious waves the place where the island had existed, it did not remain about it any more any vestige, and the ships could from now on cross without danger this space where, since creation, the ground had hitherto reigned without delay.

Had What thus justified this death sentence of an island by a man? Was this whim, memory, horror, superstitious fear? Who knows it? ”

One knows, in any case, that the May 5th is the date birthday of died of Napoleon to Sainte-Hélène, date chosen by Geoffroy to be that of dead of Sainte-Hélène in his book.

The reader knows pertinently why this small island makes fear with the Emperor, includes/understands the reasons which push this one to destroy it. On the other hand, he wonders about these motivations because, in the world uchronic, Sainte-Hélène, should nothing evoke of private individual for Napoleon.

In Parij of Eric Faye, the novel swarms with winks. Indeed, Paris undergoes there the fate which Berlin knew, with a separation in two zones, under Soviet influence, other American. The author multiplies the comparisons in an implicit way between the Paris of his book and the Berlin of our world. However, in the world uchronic of Parij , Berlin is not to in no case a city cut into two, but a “normal” city of the Eastern bloc.

It is necessary however to announce a corollary to this wink, which a uchronic Mise in abyme can constitute.

Setting in abyme

List uchronic works

In literature, works are classified alphabetically names of author. For the other categories of works, according to the alphabetical order of the titles.

Literature: writer of uchronie

French-speaking authors

  • Thierry Ardisson, Louis XX. Counter-enquiry on monarchy : A whole part of the work is devoted to a uchronie. Who would direct France today if, in 1870, the count de Chambord had been acclaimed king de France, and were ridden on the throne under the name of Henri V?
  • Pierre Bameul, Saga d' Arne Marsson and the Choice of the Destinies , two novels to be followed: about the year the 1000 Vikings took the head of the Aztec Empire thus allowing Aztec to conquer Europe some generations later.
  • Pierre Bordering, Wang : In 2212, the Occident, rich person and powerful, under the aegis of Europe (the United States lost their importance), is impassioned for the Uchroniques Plays, giving in scene of great battles of the History by using the immigrants like " flesh with canons". These challenges oppose great champions strategists (challenger against defendant) supported by the countries. The defendant often plays the part of gaining battle passed, which confers an advantage to him (because armed often better). French Frédric Alexandre is the first challenger to create true a uchronie, i.e. to save the people which had lost in the past.
  • Sylvain Brison , 1492 the Gabonese one Discovers Europe , theater: Wouldn't the Amerindians and Incas dominate yet the American continent if the Gabonese one had discovered Europe in 1492? Wouldn't Armorique, populated irreducible Gaulois be the last bastion of a pope in exile since the fall of the Vatican? And especially that could say today of the positive role of African colonization in Europe?
  • Roger Caillois, Pontius Pilate , novel: and if Pontius Pilate had pardoned Christ?
  • Andre Costa , the Call of June 17th , novel: June 17th 1940, the marshal Pétain invites France to continue the war vis-a-vis the German invasion.
  • Jacqueline Dauxois and Vladimir Volkoff, Alexandra : Lénine is assassinated before the Russian Révolution which thus does not take place. The Russia capitalist and ultra-liberal becomes the world super power.
  • Jean Dutourd, the Field-marshal von Bonaparte , test: and if Bonaparte had made career in the Austrian rows, the Corsica not having been bought by the France?
  • Eric Faye , Parij . The counter-offensive of the Ardennes by the German army functions better than in the true story. The Western face moves back, the Soviet opening continuing, it, without encumbers. The junction of the allied armies instead of being done in Germany is done in France, and Paris knows the fate which Berlin knew, crossed into 2.
  • Louis Napoleon Geoffroy-Castle , Napoleon and the conquest of the world, 1812-1832 : Napoleon does not know the Berezina and gains the Campagne of Russia. It then makes fall the England, the Ottoman Empire and… the whole world.
  • Johan Héliot, the Moon alone knows it , novel: an extraterrestrial civilization is combined with Napoleon III, offering the access to unknown technologies to him which enable him to conquer the Moon and a part of the world.
  • Johan Héliot, the Moon is not for us , novel (continuation of the Moon alone knows it ): Germany gained the Great War and seized the extraterrestrial technology held by the French. In the years 1930, Germany which Adolf Hitler directs dominates a great part of the world.
  • Guy Konopnicki , Hundred days - May 5th - August 4th, 2002 : and if Jean-Marie Le Pen had been elected in 2002? It would have held its electoral promises: national preference, exit of Europe, return of the Franc, re-establishment of the capital punishment… Its mandate will last finally only hundred days, ending by a popular insurrection and the fire of the Palate-Bourbon.
  • Jean Mazarin, the diverted History (1984), this prolific author of the collection Anticipation to the Editions Black River, gives here to reading a uchronie where IIIe Reich perdure. Mazarin takes up the idea of Norman Spinrad in Réve of iron , and its book shelters the work of John Stuart Grimsby, written in 1995, the Eagle and the sun , subtitle the first steps of the Third World war (10 April 12th, 1989) .
  • Governed Messac, Voyage in Uchronie (1936), news (matter of a utopien): We are in 1936, or 1938, Germany gained the war of 1914. " profiteurs" , that they were politicians, journalists or merchants of sardines, could gain London with the favor of the retirement of the English army. A federation of the European states saw the day…
  • Charles Renouvier, Uchronie (Utopia in the history): outline historical apocryphal book of the development of European civilization such as it was not, such as it could have been…
  • Nicolas Saudray , the Oranges of Yalta , novel: and if Japan, instead of attacking the United States in 1941, had tackled the Soviet Union at the same time as Germany?
  • Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, the Share of the other , novel: Hitler entered to the Art schools of Vienna.
  • Roland C. Wagner, H.P.L. (1890-1991) , news: Howard Philips Lovecraft was made operate before its cancer does not corrode its intestines and he lives up to 101 years - what allows him, inter alia, to collaborate with Philip K. Dick and to dispute with Robert Heinlein.

Not-French-speaking people authors

  • Poul Anderson, Operation chaos (1971): if nonEuclidean mathematics had been developed with the place of those which found our universe and our reasoning, sorcery would be the rule and the fight against the forces of Darkness would proceed at the great day.
  • Poul Anderson, Patrol of time ( Time Patrol , 1960), collection of news: a group of Anglo-Saxon spationauts is charged to patrol in the past (until prehistory) to inquire into disturbing anomalies of the history " normale" and, if required to prevent the events bringing of the changes in a historical screen favorable to the Anglo-Saxon countries.
  • Stephen Baxter, Vessels of time , novel: in this following the novel the Machine exploring time H.G. Wells, the Nazis go up in the past to modify the course of the history; in parallel, the descendants of the Morlocks try to push back the most extreme limits of temporal exploration.
  • Stephen Baxter, Voyage , novel: Kennedy survived the attack, and by its popularity, obliged the president Nixon with a higher bid in the space conquest and to give up the Space shuttle with the profit of a voyage towards Mars.
  • John Baxter , Alternate Luftwaffe and Trägerflotten , collections of news. The Australian, old author of the RAAF, proposes an alternative history of the German air force to us during the Second world war. A step to be brought closer to that of the specialist in the aeronautics Mike Spick which signed Luftwaffe victorious .
  • Greg Bear, Eternity , novel: in a parallel universe, Alexandre Large the lived until a advanced age, which allowed its Empire to durably remain and to prevent the appearance of the Roman Empire. In this world, in fact the Carthaginois discovered and colonized the America.
  • Ray Bradbury, a clap of thunder , news: during a shooting party prehistoric carried out thanks to a machine to travel in time, a butterfly is crushed by error. At the time of their return, the characters discover a world which is not modified in its underlying structures, but in details of importance.
  • Fredric Brown, universe in Madness , novel: the director of a review of science fiction is projected by the crash landing of a rocket in a quasi-similar world parallel with ours. A scientific event which has occurred into 1903 there made it possible the man to very quickly travel in space (the novel goes back to 1967 but is held in 1954), and caused many changes in the company. Interesting Romance, which postulates that there exists an infinity of parallel worlds uchronic.
  • Winston Churchill, If Lee had gained the Bataille of Gettysburg , test: Its victory with Gettysburg makes it possible Lee to take Washington; then by abolishing itself slavery it makes it possible the South to be combined in England Gladstone and to carry it. The American continent becomes thus an explosives magazine which avoids the all-out war of accuracy.
  • Lyon Sprague de Camp, in For fear darkness , American plunged by chance in the past (year 535 after J.C.) tries to protect the Italian kingdom from the cruel invasions thanks to anachronistic inventions.
  • Philip K. Dick, the Master of the High Castle , novel: and if the Nazisme had triumphed? Price Hugo 1963.
  • Keith Roberts, Pavane , novel: and if the Invincible Armada had overcome the English fleet?
  • Brendan Dubois , Resurrection Day , novel: the Crise of the missiles of Cuba degenerated into nuclear war; ten years later the United States hardly rectifies itself and became a military dictatorship. See the site of the book. Not translated into French.
  • William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, the Machine with differences , novel: And so at the 19th century, the mathematician Charles Babbage had succeeded in building the machines with differences, these “computers with vapor” which he had invented?
  • Robert Harris, Fatherland , novel: an police investigation in Berlin in 1964, eighteen years after the Nazi S gained the war.
  • Roy Lewis, true story of the last socialist king , novel: the revolutions of 1848 were confined of socialist monarchies and luddites.
  • Paul J. McAuley, entreated of Florence , novel: Raphaël was assassinated and Léonard De Vinci invented photography.
  • Kim Stanley Robinson, Chronic of the black years , novel: the conquest of the world by China and Islam following the Black Death which killed 99% of the European population at the beginning of the 15th century.
  • Philip Roth, the plot against America , Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not gain the elections in 1941. Charles Lindbergh becomes president of the United States and sign a treaty of non-aggression with the Nazi Germany.
  • Sarban, pseudonym of John William Wall, the Sound of the Horn , a world where the Nazis, victorious of the Second world war, devote themselves to plays macabre and cruel, like the hunt on human game.
  • Robert Silverberg, Roma Æterna , novel: the Jewish did not succeed in fleeing the Egypt and the Roman Empire survived.
  • Robert Silverberg, the Door of the worlds , novel: the Black Death killed much more Europeans, the Turks conquered all the continent, the empires American and African developed.
  • Orson Scott Card, chronicles of Alvine the maker , novel: at the beginning of the 19th century, the maintained English revolution sent all the wizards and witch of the kingdom in America and the king to Charleston; Redemption of Christophe Colomb , novel: the navigator remakes the way in opposite direction with an army of Indians equipped well.
  • Michael Swanwick, Jack Faust , novel: during the the Middle Ages, Doctor Faust knows all new technologies of the future and tries to adapt them to a world still full with superstitions and obscurantism.
  • Norman Spinrad, Dream of iron , in which, an obscure author of heroic fantasy , named Adolf Hitler, reached a certain success with its novel the Lord of the Swatiska . Description in the foreword and the postface, of the double jacket of the book, a world not having lived the second world war.

Cinema

  • 2009 : Lost Memories : an assassination made in 1909 changes the course of the history: 100 years later, Korea remained Japanese…
  • the Effect butterfly : an young man handles the past, but realizes very quickly that the consequences are unforeseeable…
  • Jean-Philippe : and if Johnny Hallyday had not been able to assist one of its first hearings and had remained unknown general public…
  • Pile & face : and if Helen were gotten into the subway? It would have met there a charming young man, full with spirit: James. While arriving to it, it would have surprised sound promised in marriage to the bed with a woman. She would have broken, and taken at once a new departure in her life… And if Helen had missed the subway? She would have been attacked in the street by a pickpocket, and would have returned to her to be made comfort by its been engaged, whereas this one hardly left the arms of its mistress. And the life would have continued…
  • prohibited Fréquence : John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel), police inspector, is always haunted by the death of his father, fireman, which has occurred at the time of a spectacular fire in 1969. By one night enlightened of northern light and magnetic flashes, John starts an old radio and believes to hear the voice of a man. Upset, he recognizes his father. Beyond death and time, the two men speak each other. But any miracle has a price and the sequence of the events will be some modified. Vis-a-vis the strange vagueness of murder which starts, father and wire will fight, each one in its dimension.
  • One day without end : of Harold Ramis, with Bill Murray. Journalist weather on television, Phil Connors leaves like each year in Punxsutawney to make his report on the " Groundhog Day" (" Day of the marmotte"). A storm preventing it from leaving the city, it is seen constrained to spend a night more there. The following day, it notes that all is held exactly like the day before and that it is condemned to revive this day of February 2nd indefinitely… Film which overexploits in a comic way the concept of " not divergence". Wedged in this February 2nd, the hero explores all the possibilities of them, until (almost) controlling all unfolding of it.
  • Nimitz, return towards the hell , ( Final Countdown in original version). The nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in operations in the Pacific crosses a round storm, a kind of storm electromagnetic, which propels it in time the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Extremely on a technology in 40 years advance and knowledge of the events to come, the pasha Mat Yelland (Kirk Douglas) and his right-hand man, the captain of the Naval Aviation Richard T. Owens (James Farentino), decide to intervene. Only a civilian David Lasky (Martin Sheen) of the Department of Defense, embarked on board like simple observer on order of mysterious Mr. Tideman, the met keeps some against any modification of the History which could have dramatic consequences and unforeseeable…
  • the film 1984 of Michael Radford offers a very interesting example of uchronie. The novel of which it is adapted, written by George Orwell in 1949, is a work of Anticipation imagining how would be the world later some 35 years: a totalitarian universe. But the film cannot be classified in the " category; anticipation" , because it was precisely turned in 1984, year when the action is supposed to proceed. It puts in scene a dictatorship similar to that evoked in the novel, which makes of this film a uchronie imagining how would be the world of the years 1980 so totalitarian modes had managed to entirely control it.
  • the trilogy Retour towards the future of Robert Zemeckis puts in scene multiple uchronies by taking for postulate the invention of a machine to travel in time. The points of divergences appear at times and key situations of the McFly family (the meeting of the parents, the setting with the variation of the enemy of the family) and more precisely of the hero (its capacity of decision in the critical moments and vis-a-vis a provocative element). The force of the uchronies present in this saga is not based on great historical facts, but on the events relative to a family lasting of the outstanding times (industrially and culturally), which are turnings for our current society, which undoubtedly left a larger field of creativity for the author (in particular during memorable dialogs, comprising nonvoluntary anachronisms, making the bridge between a modern education and an old model of life) and thus a better expression of its open-minded, engine of the uchronie… One can speak about first uchronic cinematographic trilogy.
  • Already Considering : Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) agent of the FRA inquires into the explosion of a bomb into a ferry in New-Orleans. It is then recruited by a " research unit spéciale" where he discovers that the government has the capacity to observe the events which proceeded 4 days and half before. While seeking to be sent a message of warning statement to itself, it interferes in the course of the History… To note once again the presence of Jim Caviezel (prohibited Frequency) in a history of temporal voyage.
  • Mr Destinée : The main character (James Belushi) complains about his life without taste and thinks of the moment of his youth which marked a decisive turn in its life: he could have become a great champion of baseball if he had one day not blinked eyes at the bad time and thus magnifying glass the ball. One evening, in a lost bar, a strange barman offers to him to retrogress and to make a success of this time his master key of ball… what will modify its career and its life.
  • Punishment Park : Film (turned in the form of documentary) American of Peter Watkins, left in 1971, or it develops the possible consequences of a declaration of state of emergency by the president of the United States during the war of the Vietnam who does not have, in reality, ever issued. The film puts in scene young militants of the civic rights, feminist, conscientious objectors, Communists and anarchists who must, if they do not want to be put in prison, cross a desert on 85 km without water nor provisions while being continued by a squadron of armed police officers the purpose of which will be only to neutralize them, definitively.
  • Jin-Roh, the Brigade of the Wolves : Japanese cartoon film of Hiroyuki Okiura (1998). The history proceeds in Tokyo of the years 1950 disturbed by social movements. Although nothing indicates it explicitly, of many elements allow to deduce from the context which the Nazi Germany gained the Second world war then occupied the Japan: the hero belongs to a unit of maintenance of law and order named " PANZER" , the Volkswagen Coccinelle became the vehicle of reference, the Government operates a policy of repression increased while being pressed on police brigades with the weapons and uniforms of German inspiration, the books are published in German…
  • the life is beautiful (film, 1946) : realized by Frank Capra, this film tells the life of a good man who one day is victim of the bad luck and fact bankruptcy. Despaired, it then tries to commit suicide by throwing top of a bridge. But another person the fact before him. It is actually an angel sent on ground to save it. It then will show him what would have been its city if there had not existed and all repercussions only one have small actions of its life.

Televised series

  • Sliders : during each episode, a group passes from parallel parallel Ground Ground; in each one, an element of the history changed: the the USSR conquered the world, the the United States are a monarchy, etc
  • Seven days to act : an astronaut (" chrononaute") American retrogresses seven days thanks to a temporal caspule to regulate all the concerns for his government.
  • Code Quantum : in the near future, Sam Beckett, brilliant physicist, explores time in spite of him replacing some protagonist various. He repairs the errors of last with the assistance of his holographic friend Al Calavicci and a characterial computer Ziggy. Sam Beckett thus finds himself to cross characters as Michael Jackson with which it learns the moonwalk, Stephen King, and even in the skin of Elvis Presley or of Lee Harvey Oswald…
  • Demain with : Gary Hobson receives the every day the newspaper of the following day. Hero in spite of him, it helps the inhabitants of Chicago to leave himself all the bad steps by modifying their present (past of the newspaper). A concept to be brought closer to the film One day without end (Groundhog Day) with Bill Murray: Phil Connors, presenter tele with the execrable character, is found wedged (geographically and temporally) with Punxsutawney the feastday of the marmot… Condemned to live this day indefinitely, it realizes that its mission is to help people instead of deploring his fate.
  • Doctor Who : This series reports the adventures of the Doctor, extraterrestrial, a lord of time originating in the Gallifrey planet, which travels on board a TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions In Space), a machine being able to travel in space and time.

Video games

  • In the series of plays Command & Conquer , the series Red Alert is located in a uchronie: the point of divergence is before the Second world war. In fact, during this war, Albert Einstein, afflicted by carnage, invents a machine to be gone up in time, and will make disappear Hitler before this last does not start to have the least influence… Only, Hitler absent, that leave the free field to Stalin, and to finish the axis of the evil is Communiste, and the Second world war takes place nevertheless.
  • In Operation Flashpoint , a dissenting Soviet chief tackles the West in 1985. The war takes place.
  • In Resistance: Fall off Man , in 1951, the Earth is invaded by a mutant, semi-human race semi-alien, infected by a virus called " Chimera". In this universe, the Bolchevism was reversed by the tsarists in 1917 and the Second world war forever take place.
  • In Iron Storm left in 2002 on PC then in 2004 on PS2 (famous World War Zero: Iron Storm, the play places us in 1964, whereas the First World War always lasts.
  • In Day off the Tentacle , in the tradition of the point & click, the player is brought to sail between the three times and the three characters to free the puzzles and to advance the intrigue, thus modifying the past, the present and the future without shame on bottom of American History.
  • In Scarface: The World is Yours , the history begins at the end from original film, Scarface . Tony Montana was cut down by a killer behind him. But in the play, Tony is turned over and killed the killer in first… He will have thus to set out again of zero and to rebuild his empire.
  • In Boxing ring off Red , Japan does not go in 1945 by receiving the bomb but is invaded. Like Korea, it is divided into two by the cold war, Japan of the north and Japan of the south, pair of countries which clash with tanks equipped with legs…
  • In Turning Point: Fall off Liberty , the Nazi Germany with definitively gained the war in Europe, the United States having remained in an isolationist position. Having the freehands on the old continent, Hitler then launches the invasion of the United States by the surprised attack of New York.
  • In Freedom Fighter , the USSR does not crumble in 1989. The Soviets invade the USA with the beginning of the year 2000, while starting with New York. Resistance is organized.

Cartoons

  • Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Watchmen , cartoon: the appearance in 1959 of a superman equips the the United States with a weapon which enables them later to gain the Guerre of Vietnam; Richard Nixon chokes the Watergate and is always president in 1985.
  • In the Adventures of John F. Kennedy , the president reigns on a America of a parallel Monde which forever known the Moyen-âge.
  • D-day, the day of the disaster by Scott Hampton commemorates with its manner the 60e anniversary of the Normandy landing.
  • In Luxley , written by Valerie Mangin, the Aztec , Mayas and Incas (Telamones) makes the conquest of the Europe in 1191 whereas the kings of England and France left to the Croisade.
  • In the series General Leonardo of Erik Svane and daN Greenberg (three albums envisaged), the the Vatican requisitions the military inventions of Léonard de Vinci towards 1480 and embrigade the Florentin inventor in order to use his machine in a news Croisade towards the Holy Land with an aim of reconquering Jerusalem.
  • Rodolphe wrote Citadel and Route of Swastikas where the Germany gained the war while launching a Atomic bomb on London in spring 1945.
  • Jean-Pierre Pécau scénarise Empire , in which, in 1815, Napoleon completes the conquest of the the Indies.
  • the album number 240 of the Italian cartoon Dylan Dog is entitled Ucronia , Uchronie in Italian. In this number, there exists a parallel dimension in which Hitler was combined with Stalin to dominate the world.
  • the series of the Valérian, agent spatio temporal presents an original uchronie. This cartoon was created by the scenario writer Pierre Christin and the draftsman Jean-Claude Mézières. Initiated in 1967, the history is based on a nuclear cataclysm occurring in 1986. Humanity will emerge then from this drama and will manage to open the way with the temporal voyage. With the wire of the albums, the continuum of time is disturbed and finally 1986 becomes that which one knows, without cataclysm. The heroes thus find themselves in a future which is not any more that from which they result. It is our present which becomes a uchronie for them.

Music

  • "The Black Slavics" , creates by Thierry Van Roy according to his concept uchronic of " music-fiction" , sings a traditional music which could have existed if Christophe Colomb had run off Lisbon without never discovering America. In the history of Black Slavics, the African slaves were off-set in Russia on behalf of the brother of the Tsar, which finally released them after a few years. Those Ci founded colonies in the the Ural, and while mixing to the Russians created a common culture and a Slavic kind of Gospel, vocal art with capella of which the roots draw from African slavery and the serfdom of the Russian peasants.

Uchronie inside a fictitious universe

To vary the intrigues of their series, of the scenario writers variations of the uchronic type inside the fictitious universe imagine which they animate.
  • In the Universe Marvel, the series What yew? gave place to each number with the history of a news uchronie starting from big events.
  • Mark Millar (scenario writer), Superman - Red Its , cartoon: and if the capsule transporting Kal-L baby had landed in Soviet territory and not in Kansas. The Univers cd. abounds in this type of history, generally published under the label Elseworlds .
  • Don Rosa, If Donald did not exist? ( The Duck who never was ), cartoon, 1994: what would have become the inhabitants of Donaldville if Donald had not been born?

Uchronies on line

  • Dusk is an Open Source novel, modifiable by wiki. It has 50.000 years, in the middle of the galaxy, was necessary an explosion of neutron star which reaches our ionosphere on December 27th, 2004.

  • And if Rome had not fallen to the hands from the barbarians? is a uchronie initial at the 3rd century of our era with a point of divergence located in 212 a. J. - C.: in a universe where the edict of Caracalla allotting the Roman citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the Empire was not taken, the Roman Emperors know more stable reigns who strongly attenuate the “great crisis of the 3rd century” and gives to the Empire the force to resist to the barbarians. Which will be the evolution of the world in this Europe remained unified where North Africa remains related to Rome? A forum in addition allows everyone of poster its questions and its comments on the uchronie.
  • It Bethisad, a collaboratif project of alternative history: the vulgar Latin developed in some Romance Langues in British Isles and in median Europe.
  • Odd Time Line , a collaboratif project telling one 2nd World war in which France does not go in June 1940, but on the contrary continues the fight starting from its colonies. Subject already covered in a book of Andre Costa ( the Call of June 17th ), but developed here using logistic, strategic and tactical tools for simulation (wargames). And of a large amount of analysis and discussion.

Random links:The Sun (Senegal) | Micheline Morisset | General Lamadrid (partido) | List publications by editors - Winds of West - S | Glass, a cigarette

© 2007-2008 speedlook.com; article text available under the terms of GFDL, from fr.wikipedia.org