Der Meinung sind wenige. Weißnixpedia etwa gibt diese schnurrige Definition:
Und diese englische Seite müht sich redlich:
Hier gibt es auch eine ausführliche Definition zum Thema, einschließlich einer interessanten Definition von Science Fiction:
Während Science-Fiction mit dem Potentialis operiert, operiert die kontrafaktische Geschichte [also die Alternativgeschichte] mit dem Irrealis, stellt also die Frage: „Was hätte sein können, wenn ...?“.
I found out that some people don’t think alternate history is science fiction. Well, they do if it has time travellers or aliens messing things up, but not when it’s just a story set in an alternate history ... So if they’re not SF, what are they?
Generally as far as finding things in the bookshop goes, alternate history is treated as SF if it’s published by SF writers, and as mainstream if by mainstream writers. This isn’t very helpful.
It’s definitely not fantasy by my excellent definition of fantasy—fantasy is about approaching the numinous. I really like this definition.
The argument against counting them as science fiction is that they don’t have any science in them—which actually would exclude quite a bit of science fiction. But conversely they can’t be claimed for SF just because they contain a “what if”—I mean even Trading Places, the world’s most mainstream novel, has “what if two academics on exchange fell in love with each other’s wives?”
So I’m throwing this open as a question—where does alternate history belong, or is there enough of it for it to be considered its own genre? Is Alternate History SF? | Tor.com
Generally as far as finding things in the bookshop goes, alternate history is treated as SF if it’s published by SF writers, and as mainstream if by mainstream writers. This isn’t very helpful.
It’s definitely not fantasy by my excellent definition of fantasy—fantasy is about approaching the numinous. I really like this definition.
The argument against counting them as science fiction is that they don’t have any science in them—which actually would exclude quite a bit of science fiction. But conversely they can’t be claimed for SF just because they contain a “what if”—I mean even Trading Places, the world’s most mainstream novel, has “what if two academics on exchange fell in love with each other’s wives?”
So I’m throwing this open as a question—where does alternate history belong, or is there enough of it for it to be considered its own genre? Is Alternate History SF? | Tor.com
Alternate History is a strange genre of fiction. Sometimes it fits the definition of Science Fiction by providing both cognitive estrangement and answers the question of “What if?”. Other times it does one or the other, and sometimes, as in Triumph, it does neither. Because of this Alternate History should not be lumped together with Science Fiction. It is a genre which has enough interest and writings to exist on its own. [Hervorhebung von mir] paper
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