Alternate history is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than they were in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alternative history stories propose What if? scenarios about crucial events in human history, and present outcomes very different from the historical record. Alternate history also is a subgenre of literary fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction; as literature, alternate history uses the tropes of the genre to answer the What if? speculations of the story.
Brian Wilson Aldiss was an English writer, artist, and anthology editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.
Avram Davidson was an American writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche. He won a Hugo Award and three World Fantasy Awards in the science fiction and fantasy genre, a World Fantasy Life Achievement award, and an Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine short story award and an Edgar Award in the mystery genre. Davidson edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964. His last novel The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil was completed by Grania Davis and was a Nebula Award finalist in 1998. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says "he is perhaps sf's most explicitly literary author".
Gordon Randall Phillip David Garrett was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction, and collaborated with him on two novels about men from Earth disrupting a peaceful agrarian civilization on an alien planet.
Keith John Kingston Roberts was an English science fiction author. He began publishing with two stories in the September 1964 issue of Science Fantasy magazine, "Anita" and "Escapism".
Lord Darcy is a detective in an alternate history, created by Randall Garrett. The first stories were asserted to take place in the same year as they were published, but in a world with an alternate history that is different from our own and that is governed by the rules of magic rather than the rules of physics. Despite the magical trappings, the Lord Darcy stories play fair as whodunnits; magic is never used to "cheat" a solution, and indeed, the mundane explanation is often obscured by the leap to assume a magical cause.
Barry Nathaniel Malzberg is an American writer and editor, most often of science fiction and fantasy.
Michael Joseph Kurland is an American author, best known for his works of science fiction and detective fiction. Kurland lives in San Luis Obispo, California.
Too Many Magicians is a novel by Randall Garrett, an American science fiction author. One of several stories starring Lord Darcy, it was first serialized in Analog Science Fiction in 1966 and published in book form the same year by Doubleday. It was later gathered together with Murder and Magic (1979) and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981) into the omnibus collection Lord Darcy. The novel was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1967.
Ten Little Wizards is a novel by Michael Kurland featuring Randall Garrett's alternate history detective Lord Darcy. It was first published in paperback by Ace Books in 1988.
A Study in Sorcery is an alternate history novel by Michael Kurland featuring Randall Garrett's fictional detective character Lord Darcy. It was first published in paperback by Ace Books in 1989.
"The Forest of Time" is an alternate history novella by science-fiction writer Michael Flynn. It was originally published in the June 1987 issue of Analog magazine. In 1988, the story was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novella. It was reprinted in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988) and Roads Not Taken: Tales of Alternate History (1998), as well as Flynn's short story collection The Forest of Time and Other Stories (1997).
Lord Darcy Investigates is a collection of short stories by Randall Garrett featuring his alternate history detective Lord Darcy. It was first published in paperback in 1981 by Ace Books, and has been reprinted a number of times since. It was later gathered together with Murder and Magic (1979) and Too Many Magicians into the omnibus collection Lord Darcy.
"The Bitter End" is a science fantasy short story by American writer Randall Garrett, featuring his alternate history detective Lord Darcy and magician Master Sean. It was first published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and has been included in the second edition of the collection Lord Darcy.
"The Wheels of If" is an alternate history science fiction story by American writer L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in the magazine Unknown Fantasy Fiction for October, 1940, and first appeared in book form in de Camp's collection The Wheels of If and Other Science Fiction. It later appeared in the paperback edition of the collection published by Berkley Books in 1970, in de Camp's subsequent collections The Virgin & the Wheels and Years in the Making: the Time-Travel Stories of L. Sprague de Camp, and in the anthology Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond. It also appeared, together with a sequel by Harry Turtledove, in The Pugnacious Peacemaker/The Wheels of If and Down in the Bottomlands and Other Places. The story has also been translated into German.
Lord Darcy is a 1983 omnibus collection of two previous fantasy collections and one fantasy novel by Randall Garrett featuring his alternate history detective Lord Darcy, published by Doubleday as a selection in its Science Fiction Book Club. The component books had originally been published in 1966, 1979 and 1981. The collection was reissued in 1999. A second edition, edited by Eric Flint, was published by Baen Books in 2002. The second edition reorganized the contents, added two stories not included in the original edition or its component volumes, and was edited slightly to remove duplicative material.
The Book of Fritz Leiber is a collection of short stories and articles by American writer Fritz Leiber. It was first published in paperback in January 1974 by DAW Books. It was later gathered together with The Second Book of Fritz Leiber into the hardcover omnibus collection The Book of Fritz Leiber, Volume I & II.
Bibliography of science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction and nonfiction writer Harry Turtledove:
The Eyes Have It is a fantasy short story by Randall Garrett, the first to feature his alternate history detective Lord Darcy. It was first published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1964 and included in the collection Murder and Magic in 1979.
