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What if? A Guide to Alternative History

Summary/Abstract: The pocketbook chapter deals with one of the most prominent genres of speculative fiction – alternative history. It describes its interdisciplinary characteristics: its connection with physics, philosophy and history. It also focuses on its important property that even though it deals with an envisioned alternative past, it primarily depicts our own present with its challenges. The core of the chapter consists of Philip K. Dick’s opus,The Man in the High Castle, which initiated the renaissance of British allohistoricism.The work is relevant for teaching literature mainly because of its postmodern narrative,openness, fragmented nature, and intertextuality. The fact that it gives voice to the sup-pressed and the marginalized, and its playfully ironic relation to history also make it an interesting and motivating material. Thus the work functions as a lesson plan; it is an essential part of a continuously expanding literature pocketbook, which discusses the genre of allohistoricism and provides hermeneutical and drama-pedagogical exercises as well as tasks which aim at improving writing skills.

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