Alternate History Books by Women

Strategos' Risk

Shannon Selin, author of Napoleon in America, compiled a comprehensive starter list:

shannonselin.com

Alternate History Books by Women - Shannon Selin

Yes, women do write alternate history/alternative history. Here is a list of alternate history books by women published within the past decade or so.
shannonselin.com shannonselin.com

A few things strike me about this list-

1. our hobby really isn't as male-dominated as I (or BBC Radio 4) would assume. That's pretty neat. I'm familiar with Carole Scott's Clopton's Short History back in the early '00s. There's also of course the works of the late Alison Brooks, who first coined "Alien Space Bat" on soc.history.what-if - but other than her and Scott, I wasn't aware of any other women participating in alternate history back during that era. I had assumed that more female alternate historians had joined mostly in the past decade, and I didn't know there were so many that have published!

2. This also goes to show that alternate history has really expanded in popularity, which is pretty great. I remember back when the entire genre's published online presence could have fit on Ian's AH Directory section of this website. Now there's more physically published works in this genre than one can keep track of. I'm not speaking of only the books on this list specifically, but it sounds like there's a new one coming out every month that people aren't talking about. It's not even just on the small presses, either. I remember coming to this realization even back in 2016.

I think AH is a unique genre in that it's not just about the stories these books tell, but the premises as well. It's why the venerable old Uchronia.com does such a great service by cataloging each work by their POD (sadly, it seems like that site is in dire need of updating). So being aware of a work with a specific idea out there is good, because you can at least read it for ideas.

So has anyone read any of these books, or even heard of them?
 

Coiler

The list would get even longer if you broadened the net just a little to "stuff that can very reasonably be considered alternate history, but isn't labeled as such". In fact, even some stuff on the list isn't stated as "alternate history" exactly-Kingdom of the Wicked is described on its Amazon page as being just "speculative fiction".

This isn't surprising to me as I've found firsthand how little commercial incentive there is to label anything but the most obvious "Axis/Confederate Victory" stories as "alternate history".
 
Miranda Brawner

Miranda Brawner

Thanks for bringing these authors to my attention. This is my first time hearing about them. The Professor in Erin and the Roma Nova series both sound interesting, as does False Lights, the one about Josephine in Britain.
 
Odinson

Odinson

The list failed to mention Judenstaat by Simone Zelitch, though the book may have come out after the article's publication.
 

theflyingmongoose

The Calculating Stars Series by Mary Robinette Kowal is a gem.

The initial POD is in 1948, when Thomas Dewey defeats Harry Truman in the election, although this has little to do with the actual events.

A meteor hits the Chesapeake in the early 1950's, which causes a runaway greenhouse effect requiring a vastly accelerated space tech evolution (man on moon by the late '50s).

It has two sequels, quite interesting if I do say so myself.
 

Viola

Banned
Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin.
It's an interesting one because it depicts an "Axis wins WW2" scenario but instead of being alternate history is technically speculative future history since it was written in 1937.
 
Mr_ Bondoc

Mr_ Bondoc

I would add the Kushiel's Legacy franchise by Jacqueline Carey which has, "In the series, the Roman Empire (called the Tiberian Empire) had fallen due to internal conflict instead of the Barbarian Invasions and the Germanic peoples were kept at bay to the east of the Rhine (called Rhenus with its Latin name). Paul the Apostle did not live to form Christianity and followers of Jesus (called Yeshua ben Yosef) live as a sect of Messianic Judaism known as the Yeshuites. An offshoot from Yeshuites, led by a descendant of Jesus and his angel companions, had made its foothold in Gaul after a long period of exile and persecution. Their creed based on the apotheosis of early angelic founders predominates in the country now known as Terre d'Ange..."

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushiel's_Legacy
 

Strategos' Risk

I've seen Kushiel's Legacy in bookstores a lot and never even looked at the back cover. Had no idea it was an AH, much less one with such an elaborate backstory! I'm surprised it's not talked about more on this board.
 
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