Uchronia
01/12/2002 . Source: Stephen Hunt 

Fantasy beats the parallel reality sub-genre as the oldest branch of SFF; but only just.

Fantasy beats the parallel reality sub-genre as the oldest branch of SFF; but only just. If you crept back to Neolithic Britain, there was a caveman sitting around the chalk hills of Sussex thinking, shit, somewhere around the corner there must be a better world where it was me who won the fight, became leader of the tribe, got to marry Urgog, and has the first pick of the mammoth meat.

Uchronia - the alternative history list - is an incredibly content rich look at the fascinating subject of 'what-if'; otherwise known as 'alternative universe' or 'parallel reality fiction', depending on which branch of quantum physics lights your fire.

Somewhere, in another reality, this site is called SideWays.net

In fact, if you judged Uchronia against the much more crowded web space of 'SF-lit' sites, it would stand head and shoulders above almost all of the competition. As it is, with a focus just on the alternative reality branch of the genre, it has totally swept the field of competitors.

The site is basically an annotated bibliography of approximately 2200 novels, stories, essays and other material involving the 'what-ifs' of history; as well as pocket guides to the subject.

You can browse their database alphabetically by author name, with separate sections for anthologies, series, reference and foreign titles.

There's also an Amazon-affiliate bookstore to help pay the bills (is there any site on the world that doesn't have one of these, including of course the 'Nest?), a book cover gallery, and the Sidewise Awards for Alternate History. The latter are normally handed out at the WorldCons.

The only criticism which could be leveled at the site is that it doesn't cover the sub-genre in movies or comics (heck, Stan Lee even had a Marvel title called 'What-If', although it only existed to allow his writers the sadistic pleasure of killing off popular super-heroes).

Uchronia's creator, Robert B. Schmunk, is to be congratulated for the most complete look at the universe of parallel reality literature in existence today.

There may be a better site on this subject, but if there is, I suspect it's in French, written by Jules Verne III, and exists in a reality where Napoleon successfully invaded Britain in 1804.

Stephen Hunt

Visit them at www.Uchronia.net