Introduction
By Steven H Silver
Like science fiction, alternate history is a game of “what if.” While science fiction explores the ifs of science, alternate history explores the ifs of history, introducing points in time when the fictional history branches off from the established history of our own timeline to produce a new world, rife for exploration.
Sometimes it seems like the only historical branch points that are explored by authors are those that arise out of war. What would have happened if the Civil War had gone a different way? What if the Nazis had won World War II? What if the American Revolution had failed?
However, there are many more peaceful points of divergence which can be explored, some of which may impact world history just as much, while others may have more focused changes.
On June 5, 1858, a cub pilot on the steamboat Pennsylvania got into yet another argument with the pilot who was teaching him. The pilot, William Brown, put the cub pilot ashore and continued his journey. The cub pilot managed to continue his training under another pilot on a different steamship.
This incident can be used to explore how alternate history can work on a microscale. The cub pilot could have stayed on the Pennsylvania with Brown rather than the two men going their separate ways. If the cub pilot had stayed on board, surely nothing really would have changed. Except…
On June 13, 1858, the steamship Pennsylvania was cruising on the Mississippi near Memphis, Tennessee when its boiler exploded. The ship was destroyed and more than 250 of the 450 people on board were killed, with many more fatalities over the next few weeks, including the cub pilot’s brother, who had recently been brought on board at his brother’s urging.
The altercation between Brown and his cub had a major impact on the young man’s life. Although he lived, when he otherwise may have died, he suffered the immense loss of his brother. Still, nothing really changed the world’s history because he was put ashore. Except…
The cub pilot was a boy named Samuel L. Clemens, who would adopt the name Mark Twain. His writing, which included descriptions of the loss of the Pennsylvania, was often influenced by his training on the river and the tragic death of his brother Henry. Had William Brown not put Clemens ashore, the world would have missed out on the writings of Mark Twain, as well as all those he influenced over the years.
Many alternate histories can be written that trace the point of change to Mark Twain’s death in the explosion on board the Pennsylvania in 1858. Others could explore how different Twain’s writing might have been if Henry hadn’t been injured in the explosion and died a week later, or if Twain had never found Henry a berth on the doomed ship in the first place.
Each branch point, whether in time of peace or time of war, can lead to a myriad of stories, limited only by the imagination of the author and the plausibility of the changes they introduce into the time stream.
There is a time for war and a time for peace. This is the time for peace. This volume offers the latter, with fifteen stories of alternate history that explore changes that occurred in a time of peace. Some of the stories take place immediately after the point where the timelines diverge and will present a world which is familiar to the one in which we live. Others are set many years after the divergence and may seem to be set in practically a different world.
—Wapakoneta, OH, March 31, 2019